| Good morning Marketer, are you frustrated with one (or more) of your marketing tools?
Before you start the search for a new tool, take a step back. Rather than scrapping tools and replacing them with quick solutions, consider building a roadmap based on an assessment of your martech needs. “We see customer tech stacks that have 30-plus applications — even 50-plus is not unusual,” said Ed King, CEO for the data orchestration platform Openprise. “Installation for a lot of these marketing technologies and sales technologies are very easy. This is the attraction of [the tools], but making them work together is becoming more like a nightmare.” During his Discover MarTech presentation, King outlined the challenges of building a scalable and manageable martech stack — and offered a roadmap to move your tools to the next level. King suggested that martech stacks include six functional areas: data gathering and storage, data quality, funnel management, process automation, reporting and analytics, and compliance. To be effective in those six areas, martech teams must commit to an assessment — either internally or conducted by an outside consultancy — to identify gaps in technology and where tools overlap. An effective assessment will help evaluate and justify new technology investments, as well as determine if existing martech contracts should be renewed. We’ve got more for you below, including an indicator of forecasted versus actual time spent on social media in April. Taylor Peterson,
Deputy Editor | 