Elements of a Functional MarTech Stack
In this edition of Outside In, we try and learn about the “essential” elements of a functional marketing technology (MarTech) stack for consumer-oriented organizations. Obviously, today’s martech landscape is infinite (Check this map of 8000+ Solutions: https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/) and I couldn’t possibly capture it all in a post, leave alone understanding it all. But this is largely an effort to at least identify the basic stack that most organizations should be cultivating, to create impactful marketing initiatives that find relevance with their customers and are delivered effectively. Here we go…
Organizing the MarTech Stack
I think this diagram below adequately identifies the building blocks of today’s martech stack. At the input side, it needs to capture data inputs from a variety of online and offline sources. It needs to collect and synthesize this data with a reasonably ‘intelligent’ customer insights platform which will not only give insights on behaviours but will also provide cues for engagement & commerce opportunities with the customers. Once that is discovered, there’s the activation stack that again needs to be proficient in delivering ‘optimized’ engagement and commerce ideas at the points in a customer’s journey in the form of marketing campaigns and service use cases. If I were to summarize, thereby, the key expectations of a well-functioning martech stack, it would be: reasonably clean data collection, intelligence tools to articulate customer insights and integrated marketing delivery systems
However, the building blocks are indeed easy to identify. The devil is in the details… This is what it will probably look like when in motion –
The Challenges for Marketers
According to the Salesforce Report on the State of Marketing (6th Edition), the biggest challenges for Marketers are existing within each of these simple boxes noted above. Let’s take a quick look at what those are:
1. Engaging with customer’s in real-time
2. Innovating (across the martech landscape)
3. Creative cohesive customer journeys across channels and devices
4. Unifying customer data sources (Projected median number of data sources in 2021 is 12)
5. Sharing a unified view of customer data across business units
To meet the expectations and persist over the challenges of a functional martech stack, they have made their plans for investments – not only in technology but even in skills & capability building. Here’s a snippet of what Investments in Tools look like:
And, what Investments in Channels look like:
They have especially changed use of Channels over the last 2 years – with key focus use cases being:
1. Improved Audience Segmentation
2. Improved Personalization
3. Expanded User Functionality
The channel-agnostic nature of today’s customers has made full digital experiences the focus over individual touch-points. It’s logical, then, that marketers have spread these efforts across their websites, social channels, and mobile properties, among others. Improved in-channel user functionality initiatives, such as headless commerce, are also common
India Industry Snippets
Having the seen the building blocks, tools and popular use cases for a well-functioning MarTech Stack, let’s have a look at some Illustrations from the Industry – where the broad mantra seems to be “build data engines yourself as an organization and acquire marketing experience delivery tools from outside”. And CFO collaboration for Martech Investments is order of the day. Most CMOs are learning to speak their language and win their trust – by giving a business case of making ROI for Investments made – by linking NPS/CSAT (say) with ROI alignment that can be presented to the Board
As per my notes from the ET Martech event last year, some Martech Initiative Budgets as proportion of Marketing Budgets are as follows: HDFC – 25%, Aditya Birla Group – 10%, Angel Broking – 10% – while Salesforce Industry Trends study pegs it at 20-30% for most Organizations that were part of their Study
a) Angel Broking –
They have deployed an AI/ML Model and a Google 360/Analytics/Advanced Data Hub – It helps them build a single source of ‘data’ truth at the beginning of the Journey itself
They are broad-basing the Talent Pool – whereby a fair amount of technology orientation is needed now even in Marketing
b) HDFC Bank –
They are targeting 25% of Sales via ‘Unassisted’ Initiatives, via Martech Automation-focus
CX KPIs will be aligned with broader organizational Service, Marketing and Commerce KPIs – since they can’t standalone on their own
Key investment areas are: Digitization, Advanced Analytics and Omnichannel Outreach
c) Bajaj Allianz –
The Insurance Company intimates the Customer proactively on Flight Delays/Cancellations (integrated with Flight Data themselves) and settles their Claim Payments without the customer having to raise it himself
Global References of Full Martech Stack
Getting a sense of complete Martech Stacks even from global players was a difficult exercise. However, I have managed to get a few which could give a sense of the Martech journey needed by Industry-type.
a) B2C – FMCG – Food Category – Sargento Foods
Sargento Foods engages mostly in e-commerce, sales, and creative campaigns (which can be seen in the piecharts on the bottom of infographics). Their 2020 martech stack solution is shown in 4 stages where different platforms are in use. These stages include: Planning, Creating, Activating and Measuring. An American cheese company, Sargento, has showed their tech stacks in the form of a recipe
b) B2C – Retail – Shoes/Fashion – Red Wing Shoes
Red Wing Shoes has integrated tools via a flexible marketing tech that is divided into two business concepts: B2B and B2C. In addition, there is the shared sector across customer facing parts of the organization. On the front end, there are sales (business and consumer) meanwhile on the back end – operations and analytics
It is a perfect example of an e-commerce and brick and mortal business that divides their processes into 3 main strategies: Personalization, Productivity and Illumination of Value
c) B2B – Technology/Software – Juniper Networks
Their MarTech stack example contains 3 customer lifecycle clouds: Pre-sales, Post-sales and Pre & post-sales marketing. Above all, their martech stack is easy to follow thanks to five different functional layers including: Sales, Data, Relationships & Social, Content & Experience and Management
KPIs Tracking for Martech Impact Measurement
The definition of martech success is evolving as customer experience joins business value as the performance north-star. In addition regular KPIs like revenue growth and sales effectiveness, marketers are increasingly embracing customer satisfaction metrics, as well as associated signs of success such as referral rates and customer lifetime value (LTV). As touch-points multiply and customer attention spans shorten, marketers are also delving deeper into web & mobile analytics, social analytics and digital engagement metrics
In Conclusion
The Martech Law (as quoted by someone in one of the martech events) comes to mind: Technology changes quickly, Organization changes slowly. While we are still synthesizing the current Martech stack, the future is already arriving. These are likely to be the use cases of future martech initiatives:
References and Sources
1) My Notes from ET MarTech Summit
2) Infinite MarTech Landscape: https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/
3) Organizing for the Marketing Function: IAMAI Presentation – Growth Marketing Cloud –NotifyVisitors
4) Salesforce – State of Marketing – 6th Edition
5) Illustrations of Martech Stacks: https://klintmarketing.com/marketing-tech-stacks/