Clients saw an average of 21% improvement In commerce-marketing performance

Independently owned, global commerce marketing practice The Mars Agency this week unveiled the newest generation of its Marilyn^® Commerce Marketing Technology platform, which has been re-designed to give clients full visibility into the total business impact of their commerce-marketing activities.

The measurement methodologies available to commerce marketers have long been inconsistent in breadth, depth, and even taxonomy, making them woefully inadequate for optimizing investments across the retail landscape.

The upgraded Marilyn platform solves those issues by giving clients a clear, consistent view of  commerce marketing on brand growth, moving measurement beyond campaign-specific performance metrics like ROAS, or even ROI to evaluate the full financial contribution being made to the bottom line of their businesses.

The impact has been impressive: Companies using the Marilyn platform have leveraged the richer insights they gain to optimize investments and improve their commerce marketing performance by an average of 21% year-over-year.

"We've taken Marilyn's industry-leading capabilities to an even higher level with new solutions that not only provide a complete understanding of performance, but also make it easier for clients to access the information they need," said Jake Berry, EVP, General Manager of The Mars Agency and team lead of the Marilyn platform. "The results aren't just changing the go-to-market strategies of our clients — they're changing the perception of commerce marketing in their organizations."

The refreshed Marilyn platform is driving Total Business Impact through four key solutions:

• Data Management: Marilyn delivers the proverbial "single source of truth" for commerce-marketing performance by aggregating and normalizing data from all of a company's numerous sources. The platform has saved clients countless hours of work by putting all the necessary data at their fingertips while delivering the real-time transparency needed to make more informed, timelier decisions.
• Measurement & Intelligence: Marilyn's core offering is an unmatched ability to consistently pinpoint the incremental ROI and sales lift from commerce marketing by accurately segmenting out base sales, the effect of other marketing activities such as trade promotion and advertising, and other macroeconomic and environmental factors. The platform lets brands understand the Total Business Impact of their omnichannel programs at multiple levels, including retailer, program, and tactic.
• Planning Optimization: This unprecedented transparency into performance eliminates ineffective and inefficient spending, thereby improving productivity and accuracy and increasing profitability. Clients are able to maximize their investments by shifting dollars to the brands with the greatest growth potential and the retailers, programs, and tactics that are best able to drive that growth. 
• Insight & Analytics Hub: Marilyn's cutting-edge, user-friendly dashboards are designed to serve as "home base" for clients' complete commerce-marketing needs by providing a seamlessly integrated ecosystem for data analysis, media planning, and financial accounting that incorporates all required internal and external data sources.

"Brands can't afford to rely on inconsistent, vendor-reported data, and they can't be satisfied measuring their performance by ROAS," said Berry. "They need a single ecosystem that will help them standardize results, measure the Total Business Impact of their spend, and make smarter decisions. That's exactly what we've designed the new Marilyn platform to do."