Marketing technology stack

A martech (marketing technology) stack is a set of technologies marketers apply to bring their marketing activities to life. It covers software, tools, and platforms that allow companies to automate, streamline, and analyze their marketing efforts. By combining various technologies, marketers manage to support their marketing activities, improving effectiveness and productivity.

In this article, we’ll unveil why martech is essential for your business and uncover its main components. We’ll also explain how to build a martech stack for your business.

Why is martech important for your business?

Martech is essential for every business because it helps implement marketing strategies at their best. With a set of the necessary technologies, you’ll be able to improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and bring your company to growth. There are even more reasons to consider martech for your business. Let’s uncover them all.

• Data-driven decisions. With marketing technology, your teams can access to all the necessary tools to conduct research and analysis, supporting your marketing efforts. Your marketers can analyze customer behavior before launching campaigns and ensure they are relevant and timely. After implementing marketing campaigns, your teams can feel free to assess campaign performance using special tools.
• Automation. Martech stack implies using automation for repetitive and time-consuming tasks. As a result, email campaigns, social media posts, and lead nurturing are put on autopilot without addressing an agent. Automation helps you improve productivity by focusing on more urgent tasks rather than spending time on routine marketing activities.
• Cost-effectiveness. Although you need an initial investment when incorporating martech, the technology tools you’ll use ensure long-term cost savings. Moreover, it allows your company to properly manage its marketing budget and focus on effective marketing strategies. It results in a higher return on investment and appropriate budget allocation.
• Competitive advantage. When you use martech tools, you ensure your business stays ahead of others. If you utilize technology for your company, you are closer to innovation, targeting, and better marketing performance. With marketing tech tools, you can really get a grip on your audience, shoot out spot-on campaigns automatically, keep tabs on how they perform, and fine-tune your marketing game for even better results.
• Personalization. Marketing tools enable you to collect customer data and decide on the campaigns, their content, and other marketing approaches. With their help, you can develop personalized marketing campaigns targeted to your audience. Personalization is essential for every company because it allows you to improve customer experience, encourage higher engagement, and boost conversions.
• Customer relationship management. Martech covers many crucial tools for a business, including CRM. A CRM system is essential for storing customer data in one place, managing customer relationships, and tracking the status of orders. When you use CRM and nurture leads and customers right, you can notice positive changes in customer retention, satisfaction, and customer lifetime value. CRM from SendPulse enables you to automate sales and customer communication, taking care of your customer data and storing it in one place.
• Multi-channel approach. Today, companies interact with prospects and customers across multiple channels. This way, clients can use their preferred channels, and businesses ensure their messages are visible. Social media, email, and websites are the channels you usually use for marketing. Having martech for these communication channels is a must if you want to expand your reach and grow your business. Marketing technology tools help you handle your marketing activities across several channels, providing enhanced customer experience.
• Better collaboration between departments. Collaboration tools are also a part of martech. They help you facilitate coordination between departments and ensure proper communication with them. With collaboration tools, the work of your company teams is aligned. It results in better teamwork and faster achievement of goals.
• High level of adaptability. Since marketing trends and customer behavior change fast, it’s essential to adapt. Martech helps companies quickly react to changes within the market and develop innovative ideas. This technology allows you to stay ahead of the competition even in changing environments.

Now that you know the benefits martech brings to businesses, it’s time to jump into the marketing stack components.

Marketing Stack Components

A marketing stack is a term used to unite various tools used by marketers. Marketing stack components differ based on the business and the goals it strives to achieve. In this section, we’ll uncover the most important components every company needs to succeed, so let’s start.

• Customer relationship management. Tools related to customer relationship management help take care of interactions with customers. They ensure seamless communication by saving and storing customer data and information connected to customer behavior. CRM allows you to analyze all contacts with clients during their customer lifecycles. With SendPulse, you can establish a robust database and streamline proper communication with customers.
• Marketing automation. With marketing automation, you can put repetitive tasks on autopilot. This technology helps send greeting emails, perform lead scoring, set up meeting reminders, and deliver abandoned cart messages without human involvement. Automation 360 empowers you to connect eight marketing channels and streamline your sales pipeline with little or no human involvement.
• Web analytics. Martech stack implies web analytics. Analytics tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or Matomo provide insights into customer behavior and client interactions with your site, marketing campaigns, or specific marketing activities. You can find out whether your campaigns are successful after assessing their performance. When you have some issues with your marketing efforts, analytics tools will identify them. As a result, you’ll be able to address the gaps and prevent customer dissatisfaction promptly.
• Email marketing. Bulk email software helps you effectively manage email campaigns. Email services enable you to design professional emails in no time by using ready-to-go templates. Without the code knowledge, you can add all the necessary elements, design your emails, segment them based on customers, and send them to the right audience segments. You can set up a day and time when your emails will be delivered to customers and prospects. The bulk email service from SendPulse has a no-coding editor and friendly interface that allows you to design highly personalized email campaigns that cater to the needs and requirements of your customers.
• SEO tools. SEO tools are necessary for every company striving to
  become visible in search results. With these tools, you can optimize your content and site, in general, to perform better in SERP and take top positions on result pages.
• A/B testing. When it comes to figuring out which version of your marketing campaign or content clicks better with customers, A/B testing comes in handy. With its help, you can identify the best option based on the performance of both versions.
• Social listening tools. If you actively promote and sell your products through social media, it’s necessary to utilize social media management tools. They let you scoop up all those social media interactions and customer moves, then dive deep to analyze what's happening. These insights will help you with your further product promotion, update, or improvement. Listening to customer feedback on social media is essential for your business growth.
• Survey and feedback platforms. The interactions with clients don’t end at the checkout. Relationships with customers continue with the help of surveys and feedback forms. They help you show that you value customers’ opinions regarding your product or service and establish loyalty. However, you need to use specific platforms since you can’t manually create surveys and analyze all the data. SurveyMonkey, Typeform, and Google Forms are examples of services businesses usually use to survey their customers. These platforms make it much easier for you to obtain and analyze all insights. It results in fewer gaps and enhanced customer experience. With SendPulse, you can design customer surveys and send them out automatically through email and chatbots after setting up display conditions.
• Customer support. Customer support can cruise along smoothly with some extra tools in your toolbox. Chatbots and live chat can become the sources of information where users can immediately receive answers and resolve their problems. By training chatbots to communicate the information to customers clearly, you improve satisfaction with your company and encourage loyalty. Live chat lets users connect to a human agent to get open-ended answers. SendPulse allows you to create chatbots and add a live chat widget to your website, enabling your customers to get 24/7 support.

Now that you know the elements, let’s proceed to the next section to find out how to create a martech stack for your company.

How to build a martech stack for your business?

Creating a marketing technology stack for your business involves choosing and utilizing various tools that help you with your marketing activities. In this section, we’ll provide detailed instructions on how to make it right. So, let’s begin.

1. Identify your marketing goals and needs. Before diving into the process of choosing the platforms, consider determining your main objectives first. However, there are other things to pay attention to. Ensure you understand your company's needs, customer behavior, and your team’s skills. Be prepared for technology that requires some basic knowledge and skills to handle.
2. Outline your marketing strategy. The second step implies having a clear understanding of your marketing strategy. Having a ready strategy helps you outline the technology you need. You’ll know what platforms to use to perform specific marketing efforts and achieve your goals. Identify the best channels to reach your audience with the right marketing message.
3. Determine touchpoints with customers. The next step is identifying your touchpoints with people during their customer journey. This is the right time for you to find out how clients interact with your brand, what communication channels they use, and what they like and don’t like. Identify areas where your product or service needs improvement.
4. Identify your marketing budget. Think of the costs you can spend on marketing tools. It will help you wisely allocate resources and find the right solutions for a reasonable price. Make sure to allocate a budget based on the priority of tasks you should complete.
5. Choose the right platforms. Once you figure out how much you are ready to spend on each tool, it’s time to find the best technology for your business. Focus on essential tools like CRM, analytics, SEO, marketing, and email automation tools. They ensure proper communication with customers, promotion, and selling processes. Then, select the services based on their priority for your company.
6. Provide your teams with training. Since sometimes martech requires special skills and knowledge from their users, it’s essential to establish a training program. Prepare your team members for these tools by teaching them how to use them. It will help you save time and improve productivity. Your marketing team won’t need to figure out how everything works by themselves.
7. Monitor and evaluate your martech performance. After you start using tools for your business, make sure to keep an eye on the performance. Monitor the progress of your marketing campaigns, communication with customers, effectiveness of social media content, etc. If something has drawbacks, you’ll be able to handle them promptly.

Congrats, now you know why martech is crucial for your business. Register in SendPulse to enjoy the benefits of chatbots, automated SMS campaigns, email service, CRM, and other valuable marketing tools.

References:

1. This article provides the ultimate marketing technology stack.
2. In this article, you’ll find the reasons to incorporate a martech stack for your business.

Last Updated: 27.11.2023