At a recent Marketing Live event, I joined a panel moderated by seasoned martech practitioner Satya Upadhyaya, Former VP Campaign Optimisation Marketing Capability and Change at Citibank, NAB, with Tim Armstrong, Director of Digital Capability and Data at Nova Entertainment.

Together, we unpacked the current martech landscape, uncovering the latest challenges associated with the ever-growing tech stack.

The pressure to attract and retain customers

Brands and businesses are under immense pressure to attract and retain customers in a strained economic environment. They’re turning to technology to improve customer experience and stand out in a saturated landscape. However, ‘panic buying’ for the martech stack isn’t the answer to surviving, much less thriving, in this uncertain landscape.

MartechTribe and chiefmartech’s latest marketing technology landscape reveals the martech industry was pushing 10,000 vendor solutions in 2022, up from 8,000 in 2020. With an abundance of new solutions, each one touting benefits more remarkable than the last, it can be tempting to fall victim to the “shiny new tool syndrome.”

However, it’s vital marketers stay mindful of managing their ever-growing tech stack, ensuring simplicity and integration remain a core function. This is critical to delivering what matters most – a seamless customer experience.

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Marketing technology: there’s now a solution for everything

The marketing industry is exploding, valued at more than AU$500 billion, Upadhyaya points out. “Now, there’s a solution for everything from privacy to compliance, data management and everything in between. Yet, despite this, overall utilisation has dropped. What’s the driving factor for the underutilisation of this tech?” he asks.

It can be attributed to two things: data access and resourcing. Businesses want to be able to deliver results. However, doing so requires access to consumer data. Data is the fuel to drive messaging and systems.

When it comes to resourcing, businesses aren’t really thinking about providing the right skills internally or allocating the budget to make the most out of whatever platform they’ve invested in. Armstrong adds that it’s also challenging for a vendor to sit in the buyer’s shoes. “There are so many things at play,” he says. “Realistically, it’s hard for the client or the customer to encapsulate that into a narrative to a vendor to help them understand.

“There’s always going to be that disconnect there. A platform must do more than fit into your living, breathing business, it must be used by everyone regularly. Often, companies waste a tonne of money on a platform that never gets used. They have to invest in one that allows different people with different capabilities within the organisation to use it effectively.”

While a large number of platforms are sold as ‘drag and drop’, that’s not always the case. Oftentimes, they end up being much more complex in the back end, requiring advanced technical skills for full operationality.

Unlocking the value of your customer data with a CDP

A customer data platform (CDP) helps unify customer data. It takes data from every source inside your organisation, whether that’s point of sale, eCommerce, CRM (customer relationship management) web behaviour, etc and brings it together, so you can understand who the humans are behind the data.

That gives you the customer 360 and insights into your customers that are useful to the business like the last purchase to power the next best recommendation. This data can then be shared with other departments like IT for analytics or marketing for communications. It’s unified, unlocked data.

About Amperity

Amperity delivers the data confidence brands need to unlock growth by truly knowing their customers. With Amperity, brands can build a first-party data foundation to fuel customer acquisition and retention, personalise experiences that build loyalty, and manage privacy compliance. Using patented AI and ML methods, Amperity stitches together all customer interactions to build a unified view that seamlessly connects to marketing and technology tools. More than 400 brands worldwide rely on Amperity to turn data into business value, including Alaska Airlines, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Endeavour Drinks, Planet Fitness, Seattle Sounders FC, Under Armour and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. For more information, visit amperity.com or follow us on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

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