The Bottleneck
Costing Millions
Through conversations with Jesse, Diane, and direct observation during the Summit event, we identified systemic constraints preventing marketing from operating at the speed the business demands.
What We Observed
Marketing Speed is Critically Constrained
The current production workflow — copywriter → design (Figma) → web ops (HubSpot) → IT integration (Salesforce) — introduces multiple handoff points where work stalls.
A simple SKU creation or campaign attribution match in Salesforce requires IT involvement, turning what should be a 30-minute task into a multi-day wait.
Data is Inconsistent and Fragmented
Sales data lives in Salesforce. Leads live in HubSpot. Attribution lives in Hyros (pulling from Stripe). Analytics are split between Amplitude (tracking only ~65% of what's needed) and Google Analytics (GA4).
An Amazon data lake project is underway but lacks the features and usability of purpose-built platforms. There is no single source of truth that marketing can access independently.
Ownership Gaps Cause Cascading Failures
When work crosses from marketing to IT, accountability disappears. QA is claimed but not executed — the Summit page was never load-tested from a user experience perspective.
The IT team stress-tested APIs but missed that the actual web page took over a minute to load under traffic. A $15/hour QA step could have caught the issue that cost thousands of tickets.
IT and Marketing Have Different Priorities
The IT team is built to maintain infrastructure, manage security, and control costs — all valid objectives. But marketing needs speed, agility, and the ability to launch and iterate in hours, not days.
These two missions are fundamentally in tension, and the current workflow forces marketing through an IT pipeline that wasn't designed for the pace of modern digital campaigns.
What This Costs
Ticket gap from 2.5 days of tech failures during Summit
To implement a promo code system
Amplitude tracking only ~65% of needed data prevents accurate A/B testing
Apple Pay was disabled during prime sale opportunities
Checkout redesigns executed without marketing input, undoing tested conversion optimization