If you work in a company that invests a lot in martech, chances are you’ve got a towering technology stack. The average enterprise uses 91 cloud services, according to a recent study. Each platform is bought to offer a solution. But when does investing in marketing technology (MarTech) become overkill? When is your #martech stack getting too high?
When your marketing stack is getting too high
You might be thinking, “But, I need all of these tools!” If that’s you, sit down, take a breath and ask yourself the following:
- Can I access the data I need to do the best possible job?
- Are my marketing platforms integrated or do I need to gather separate data from each system??
- Do we actually use the systems currently in place?
- Do I feel comfortable with all the systems in place?
- Does my team understand how to use the systems?
If you answered ‘no’ to any of the questions above, your marketing stack is TOO HIGH. Yes, you have too much going on and you are wasting precious resources. And you are not the only one, only 9% of marketers strongly agree that they have exactly the right amount of MarTech investment.
Once your pain points become more apparent, and you see no solution in sight, it’s time to get to the bottom of the issue. Find out what is causing the problems and tackle them head-on.
So, how do you know if your technology stack is about to crumble? The following are common pain points from businesses using too much Martech.
Pain Point 1: Multiple Systems + No Integration = Time Wasted.
Earlier in my career, I believed our process of working was totally normal. I always felt busy, but was it really productive?
My responsibilities included email marketing, social media management, content creation, campaigns, and more. All of this was accomplished in different systems. That meant a lot of time logging in and out of multiple systems every day. Not to mention pull data in from each system. It made it more difficult to get real work completed. A lot of time seems to disappear in trying to manage the different systems.
As we were creating and deploying more campaigns, I realized we were hitting a plateau. Once the data was gathered, the campaign created, and was ready to launch, I found myself asking, “is this still up to date?” It always got the urge to go back and recheck the data even if nothing really changed in the meanwhile.
A survey from Morgan Stanley found that 81% of CMO’s already find that more than 3 pointsolutions are too much to handle.
All the behind-the-scenes busy work to create effective campaigns was EXHAUSTING. Not to mention, a waste of time and money. All that time and energy spent would of seen a better ROI if we weren’t so busy cross-checking and integrating data.
When you have too many disconnected platforms, you spend a lot of time piecing together data. The information needed to create compelling campaigns comes from all the departments within an organization. This means marketing, sales, and customer service. Contact data is dynamic, constantly changing. Effective marketing requires an agile (email) marketing team. It is hard to be agile when your data moves quicker than you can, and you don’t have the technology to support it.
Pain Point 2: You don’t work with other departments within the organization.
Siloed Departments + No Integration = Incongruent Data
Each department is primarily working on their own team objectives..The marketing team, the sales team, the customer service team. In enterprise organisations there are even sub-teams per department. Departments are expected to work on their own goals. But it becomes troubling if these rarely connect with the rest of the teams.
Maybe you aren’t just stacking MarTech, but you are stacking “silos”.
Unfortunately, a stack of silos restrict collaboration and make it hard to do new things.
As marketers and data enthusiasts, we want to forge a 360-degree view of our customers. If you’re reading the back of any random MarTech brochure, a few things they (always) promise are:
- Creating better customer experiences from sales and customer service feedback
- Using data to accurately understand who customers are
- Tracking engagement levels to understand what customers want
These all sound promising, but if you don’t have the data easily available it’s hard to build and understand the marketing reports. Collaborate as one team to gather information from each department to develop precise customer profiles and a realistic view of the current customer experience.
How does marketing know what content to create if they aren’t talking directly to sales or customer service? How does sales know the best way to communicate and connect with leads if they don’t know what web pages are being visited or the content being consumed? Keeping track of engagement behavior helps all departments execute better strategies and deliver better results.
If you experience either of these pain points, fear not. There is a solution to simplify and streamline.
The solution to a towering marketing stack
One word. Integration.
The key to achieving sustainable growth and avoiding data mishaps in your sales and marketing (and customer service) efforts is to invest in a platform that integrates the features your entire team needs. It’s important to open up the lines of communication between the different departments, allowing each to contribute to the 360-degree view of the customer.
Finding a complete solution that includes key features helps your business integrate your efforts. It saves valuable time, money, and improves the customer experience.
The process
To start, identify the current platforms your team doesn’t use or need.
Then, find out which key features each department actually needs. As a general rule, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and a central database should sit as the foundation. Every department needs access to customer data and the ability to contribute to that data.
Marketing focused tools are the next priority. For example, email marketing, marketing automation, campaign optimization, customer journey building, landing pages, signup forms, and social media.
Ticketing or customer service features is another great tool to have integrated. That way all support inquiries, live chats, etc. are automatically stored in the CRM.
Choosing the right platform for your business
It’s important to get team members from each department involved. Get their opinions and feedback since they are the people actively using the software. Once you have selected the tools that meet your requirements, you can begin to test them out!
Remember, just because a solution is ‘best in class’ doesn’t mean it’s the right solution for your team. It also doesn’t mean that you have to stack up all of them and end up right back where you were…with too much Martech!
It’s important to realize that the more people you have using a single platform, the better your data will be. When each department sees what other departments and teams are doing, the team as a whole becomes more integrated and collaborative with working towards a common vision or goal.
Don’t get bogged down by too much unnecessary Martech. Instead, work smarter with an integrated platform that allows your team to grow together and drive revenue like you’ve never seen before.
