Essential Steps to Optimizing Your MarTech Stack

Data and analytics may be at the center of the marketer’s universe, but technology is the gateway to collecting, storing, analyzing, and distributing that information.  With so many platforms to choose from, antiquated or incompatible systems managing everything from your CRM and content driven campaigns to Ecommerce, and the varied degrees of expertise needed to implement, it is no wonder that martech assessments are often put off or overlooked altogether. But when you apply essential steps that look at the organizational process as a whole, evaluating technology platforms doesn’t need to be dreaded. Systematic temperature checks that look at goals, performance deliverability, and gaps will improve marketing results and keep your ecosystem running at optimal levels.  

Despite the obviousness, the first step – aligning objectives and goals across teams and departments – is often missed or assumed. Before going through the process of evaluating your platforms, it’s important to set clearly defined marketing objectives and goals, how they are measured, and ensure they are aligned with overall business goals. Without establishing a shared understanding cross-departmentally of needs, resources, and budget before you begin the process, unforeseen obstacles can arise and cost time and money. It’s key to choose and measure technology success and performance based on how well it delivers on the agreed upon goals rather than on the features and benefits of the platform itself.  

A sound martech strategy can be looked at as an organizational process where platforms, tools, and software work together to ingest, organize, and consolidate data; understand offer and promotion history and how it’s attributed; and then generate meaningful analytics based on those findings. This includes consolidating customer identities and appending data to known contacts for better conversion and personalization and having the ability to deliver automated messages at the right time and channel. Understanding the flow of data in and insights out requires the compatibility of your CRM, content management systems, analytics platforms, and automation tools.  

How well do they integrate with other systems you currently have or will add to the mix? 

As more advanced tools and platforms are continually entering the market, assessing your current technology to determine whether it is delivering on the vision and ROI that was planned, and keeping up with the evolving industry, are two important factors to appraise before making any changes to an existing tech stack. Are there redundancies and/or gaps in capabilities that are hindering campaign performance? Are all of the platform features that are available being utilized?  Identifying what is missing or not being leveraged due to complexities to implement may benefit from an outside resource that can help optimize the functionality rather than introducing new systems. Finding an implementation partner that understands your business goals can help you to optimize marketing, sales, and service cloud platforms to realize the full potential of the software to drive leads, engagement and revenue.  

When it’s time to upgrade systems or add new technology in your martech stack, having a clear understanding of what you’re looking to achieve, what limitations are hindering better performance outcomes, and which platforms adapt to your current mix, simplifies the process of evaluating vendors. Embracing martech rather than dreading it improves scalability and customer experience, and delivers better results across the entire customer journey. 

Contact US for more information on how we can help optimize your martech stack.