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PoliciesTune your tech stack
Two thirds of marketers underutilise their tech stack1 – meaning it could be time for a tune up.
This week is all about tech stacks. And what did we find? It's not what you have... but how you use it that counts.
Clint Bauer
Technology
Technology
4 minute read
While optimising your tech stack may seem like a daunting task, it’s well worth the effort. Once you have the right resources, it's easier than you think to get it operating at it's full potential, helping lift the customer experience.
In short
- Tech stacks are the backbone to Marketing Technology automation platforms.
- Optimising your stack can improve customer advocacy, conversion and retention.
- There are six common areas where MarTech can be improved.
Hold up. What’s a tech stack?
‘Tech stack’ is a shorthand term coined by developers to communicate lots of information about how an application is made. In short, it’s a combination of technologies a business uses to build and run an application or project.
Why optimise?
As the control centre of your brand and customers’ experience of it, your tech stack holds the key to everything from more effective acquisition tactics to smarter retention strategies. Top reasons to optimise include:
- A more authentic delivery on brand promise and heightened customer advocacy.
- Increased productivity, saving time and resources.
- Targeted, relevant and timely communications that increase conversion.
- Improved CSAT, CLV and retention.
- A consolidated data view and enhanced reporting, leading to a greater understanding of customers.
“Your tech stack holds the key to everything from more effective acquisition tactics to smarter retention strategies.”
Where do I start?
In our experience, we’ve identified six areas that need some attention. Let’s unpack them.
1. End-to-end blueprint design
Start by identifying measurable outcomes, your current systems and any business constraints and gaps that may exist. Then, build a strategic plan and design solutions that maximise value and return.
2. An actionable roadmap.
Create an ongoing, customised plan for your specific business requirements that can be actioned, reviewed and updated in phases. With a clear roadmap, your in-house teams will have a defined action plan that aligns all resource and effort towards delivering unified, measurable goals.
3. Sharpening your CX
Start by conducting customer and stakeholder research to develop actionable and dynamic customer personas. This information can be used to re-inform connection points along your automated journeys, and build out the macro and micro experiences that will make each one compelling.
4. Putting data to work
Ensuring your data is accessible, accurate and available in real time will enable you to efficiently deliver a truly engaging customer experience. The key areas to focus on are data hygiene, data completeness, data context and data accessibility. These will help form a future-oriented data strategy, that when combined with progressive profiling, will give you a comprehensive understanding of your customers.
5. Systems integration
Often new and existing technology ecosystems have trouble working together. You’ll want to connect any disparate systems and data sources in order to maintain the 360-degree customer view you need for a seamless, hyper-personalised customer experience.
This can be done with traditional middleware, cloud middleware, micro-services and cloud APIs to help you develop the right integration strategy and architecture for your requirements.
This can be done with traditional middleware, cloud middleware, micro-services and cloud APIs to help you develop the right integration strategy and architecture for your requirements.
6. Performance tracking in real time
It’s important you understand the performance of your cross-channel customer journeys and campaigns. Using real time reporting dashboards, you can outline meaningful KPIs, all tracked to give your team a centralised snapshot of your in-flight and historical activities.
Where to from here?
As billboards shrink to digital banners and customers’ worlds become bigger and more palm-sized at the same time, the value of crafting hyper-personalised, customer-centric journeys can’t be underestimated. That’s why engaging the right people for the job can be a valuable investment in the future effectiveness of your comms and your customers’ ongoing experience of them.
on MarTech
Marketing and technology – it’s a match made in heaven. But only half of marketers are leveraging MarTech’s full capabilities, losing out big time on its effectiveness. What’s missing? Adequate investment of time, money and expertise to keep these resources up to date.1
MarTech or Mark from Tech?
A recent survey conducted by Gartner identified the top eight impediments to businesses achieving their MarTech goals (shown here). Of these eight, a whopping five centred around talent deficiencies1 – a stat that only goes to show when it comes to success, it really is about who you know (or are willing to hire).
References
- Benjamin Bloom and Charles Golvin, Marketing Technology Survey 2019: Marketers Boost Martech Efficacy Through Disciplined Planning and Collaboration With IT, (14 November 2019) Gartner.
