While every company’s martech stack looks different, they’re all designed to work in harmony to attract, engage and understand their customers in their own way. | Image: Shutterstock
What’s in a Martech Stack?
For marketing teams to do their jobs effectively, they often have to rely on an entire group of technology, also known as the martech stack. It is a collection of software and digital tools that work together to improve a company’s marketing efforts, and is often managed by a marketing technologist.
Martech tools
AnalyticsSEOEmail MarketingCustomer Relationship ManagementCustomer Experience SoftwareContent Management
Exactly what goes into a given company’s stack varies based on its unique goals and business model. Therefore, to build a strong martech stack, a company must first figure out its key marketing metrics, i.e. the goals or key performance indicators (KPIs) that set a clear path to success . In doing so, companies must also consider the unique value of their brand and what makes it stand out from the competition. Understanding these differentiators will help identify the martech tools and resources that will be most useful.
From there, companies should take inventory of their existing technology stack to see what they need, and then build a marketing technology stack from that based on their customers’ unique journey across the marketing funnel.
While every company’s martech stack looks different, they’re all designed to work in harmony to attract, engage and understand their customers in their own way.
Martech tools (with examples)
These are just a few of the categories of technology that can be found in a martech stack today.
Analytics
Analytics tools are useful in helping marketers better understand their customer base and monitor the effectiveness of specific campaigns or marketing materials. Marketers also rely on a lot of analytics to develop targeted ads and timely posts that increase social media engagement.
In fact, there are several types of marketing analytics tools, depending on the strategy and goal. Web analytics tools help marketers track, measure, and report website activity, such as traffic, time spent on the website, and where users are coming from. Hotjar, Google Analytics and Contentsquare are popular web analytics tools. And then there are email marketing analytics tools, which track things like how many people opened a given email, how far they read, and which subject lines were opened the most. Examples include Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign.
seo
SEO, or search engine optimization, is vital to maintaining a strong digital presence. Although there are simple ones general rules to increase their SEO ranking, companies are relying on it more and more SEO software too. This technology analyzes which keywords are currently performing well in a given industry and then helps marketers create targeted content to increase web traffic. Many also offer competitive data and extensive industry analysis.
Ahrefs and Semrush are popular SEO software options. Some free alternatives include Google Search Console, SEO Analyzer, and SEOquake.
Email marketing
Email is an effective route for marketing teams to stay in touch with their customers, and there are specific tools designed to make launching and optimizing these campaigns easier. Services include templates to create new emails, A/B testsecuring emails are sent to customers’ inboxes efficient, and much more.
Dripping is one email automation software which allows businesses to send personalized emails to customers automatically when they take a certain action, such as purchasing an item or abandoning their cart. Campaign Monitor is another popular one email marketing tool, which offers templates and a drag-and-drop email builder that lets users customize everything from font to color schemes.
Customer relationship management
Customer relationship management, or CRM, technology can be useful in building better relationships with current customers by tracking communication, payments, orders and any other interaction in one place. Because CRMs can be good for lead generation, they are more common for B2B companies.
Some popular CRM tools include HubSpot Sales Hub, Salesforce CRM, and Zendesk Sales.
Customer experience management
This part of the marketing technology stack focuses on helping companies monitor and manage interactions with their customers throughout their journey, especially as it relates to the company’s website. The idea is that marketing teams can use these tools to provide faster and more personalized support and communication with their customers. Many customer experience tools offer things like A/B testing and personalization for different website visitors.
In addition to being popular CRM software, Salesforce, Zendesk, and HubSpot are also customer experience management options.
Content management
Once custom content is created, it’s important that marketers can manage it. Content management tools they’re great at helping businesses not only keep track of all their marketing materials and website content (aka owned media), but also update, tag, and edit that content. Some content management systems, or CMSs, also have built-in analytics capabilities to track content engagement, while others work with third-party plugins like Google Analytics.
Drupal, Squarespace, WordPress, and Adobe Experience Cloud are popular CMS options
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