Maropost’s MarTech Checklist

According to Gartner, 29% of total marketing budget is now dedicated to marketing technology. On the surface, this stat makes sense — for marketers to do their jobs well, they need technology that doesn’t just support their efforts, but also makes them more efficient. With marketing technology playing such a crucial role in how processes – and even jobs – are being created, it is more important than ever to make sure that the marketing solutions you implement have capabilities that allow you to better understand your customers, craft and deliver relevant messaging through various channels and allow you to evaluate how well your campaigns are working.

Marketing Technology Stack Checklist

We want to go on the record as saying that it is absolutely crucial that you have your marketing goals and strategy mapped out before you begin building your marketing tech stack. That’s because any software is only as good as that strategy and approach it enables. Most importantly, keep in mind how this new solution will impact your customer experience.

That being said, to help you put together your tech stack, we put together this quick capabilities checklist:

1. Email Marketing

Email has the biggest return on investment of any marketing channel out there, so you need to pick an ESP that enables your marketing team to reach out to customers and prospects effectively. This means segmentation capabilities and automation for triggered email campaigns that ensure the right messages get to the right people at the right time.

2. Content Management System (CMS)

A content management system, or CMS, is a tool that allows marketers to create, upload, manage, and schedule digital content for their audiences－from website and landing pages to blogs and forms. With everyone working in the same place, there’s no confusion on versioning or whether any edits have been made.

3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

To reach and make an impact on your target customers, you need to have a streamlined process for interacting with them and progressing them through the buying journey. A CRM helps marketing teams more organized, with the ability to view previous customer interactions and behaviors. Tracking and nurturing leads results in better and more influential outreach.

4. Social Media

The average time spent on social media in 2018 was 144 minutes per day, and if you want to build a relationship with your ideal customers, you’ve got to be where they are. Various tools are available on the market that make social posting easier, with features for creating and scheduling posts on social networks, monitoring account activity and social listening, and reporting.

5. Data Analytics

Effective marketing means analyzing your strategy’s impact and making changes based on what you discover. If a certain email had a low open rate, why did your subject line miss the mark? Since testing and tracking are key to success, all of the tools above should have their own built-in reporting.

While you can view engagement on each individual channel, the challenge comes with tying it all together to see how marketing is performing as a whole. The ideal solution is an all-in-one marketing platform that aggregates data and provides a 360-degree view of a contact and all their interactions with you.