February 16, 2023 – During this Martechify session, three of our martech experts gave an insider view of the latest martech trends, including use cases, valuable insight, and advice.
Martech Stacks: Fitting the Pieces Together
Learn how to build and optimize your martech stack, from selecting the right tools and components to managing its evolution–and how to avoid pitfalls as you grow.
Martech Stack Evolution: Latest Trends
Explore the latest trends and innovations in the ever-evolving martech landscape, and break down the factors that are driving change.
October 2022 Recap
October 6, 2022 — During this Martechify discussion, four of our martech and content experts discussed approaches, best practices, and tools for upleveling content including using personalization.
Martechify May 2022 Recap
Session Recap
How to Build an A-Grade Martech Team
May 19, 2022 — During this Martechify discussion, three of our experts outline best practices for developing martech skills and building competencies in new hires.
In this session, Darren Atkins of Sabre Corporation, Ali Rastiello of Health Catalyst, and Sujoy Chandra of SiriusXM explain common considerations when integrating new and existing employees into an effective martech team. They outline what skills to look for in a prospective employee, as well as how to implement more efficient processes for onboarding and training.
Featured experts
Framework
Although it may seem straightforward enough, building a competent martech team requires coordination and forethought to prepare for inevitable challenges along the way. Arguably, the first hurdle when assembling a martech team is identifying which skills are needed—which is, itself, a complex thought exercise. This then determines whether company decision-makers should focus on developing capabilities of current employees or hiring new talent. Next, team leaders need to know how to turn these old and new skillsets into actionable roles. Finally, companies must properly nurture their teams and ensure their knowledge is current in a rapidly-evolving technological world.
Each of these interdependent steps is challenging enough in isolation, which is why it is crucial to have a detailed plan in place beforehand. Chandra, for example, recommends that hiring managers dedicate 10 hours per role, at the very least. Hiring managers should also have a clear idea of the company’s vision to articulate to prospective employees, as well as a clear scoring method to determine the skills that are most important for employees to implement this vision. Perhaps the most difficult planning aspect of your team-building process will be preparing for the future of marketing technology. Because the nature of marketing as a discipline continues to become more AI-centric, it is important to ensure that your team members have the right attitude toward technology and continuously up-to-date martech training for their role.
Team-building considerations and challenges
When starting to put together a martech team, there are a few initial considerations to keep in mind. Atkins notes that the complexity of your organization—i.e., your business’ size, geography, channels, products, and so on—will determine much of your thinking around martech team-building. Of these factors, size is perhaps the most consequential; Rastiello noted that a main challenge for smaller martech teams is ensuring that every discipline and task is covered. This means that good martech teams will likely be larger than many businesses anticipate, since a too-small team may not be able to handle more specialized tasks. Knowing your team’s skills, as well as those of other related and relevant members of your organization, will help make sure that every task is well-addressed by the appropriate people.
Oftentimes, however, your team may need to consider outsourcing the tasks that your team is unable to cover effectively. Rastiello suggests finding an agency that can work as an extension of your team and is familiar with your specific martech stack. If done right, this can provide an immediate boost to your team’s efficacy and your company’s growth. Nevertheless, this option may not be available to all companies due to limited resources. As an alternative, Atkins explained a situation in which outsourcing at Sabre was minimized by introducing a new training program. Ultimately, deciding whether to train or outsource to meet skill gaps will depend on your business’ specific resources and requirements.
Of course, these holes in a team’s skillset can be quickly patched by hiring the right new team member. Chandra explains that attracting the perfect fit means writing a job description that provides an optimized experience for each candidate. This means that each description should function like a good landing page—providing an informative yet memorable introduction to the company and role. Be sure to outline a list of hard and soft skills necessary for each role, which you can use in both a job description and to assess prospective employees in interviews. Creating a candidate scoring method ahead of time is especially important, in order to ensure an optimal fit and reduce bias.
After finding and beginning to integrate the candidate with the best fit, it is of course important to keep them well-trained and happy. This requires building a strong company culture, which can be somewhat tricky if your employees rarely or never see each other in person, but is very possible with the right processes. All of our experts stressed the importance of transparency and work-life balance, but these are not the only factors relevant to a company’s culture. Investing in the right processes and toolsets ahead of time goes a long way toward promoting an excellent culture, as does cultivating an attitude of lifelong learning. When these factors are taken into account, your teams will cohere and function at a much higher level.
Although putting together a dream martech team can require immense planning and forethought, the results are transformational. To refine your team-building process even further, try asking yourself these questions:
What drives your team?
Knowing how to use martech is only part of the job. The more that martech tools align with what each team member is passionate about, the more effective your team will be. Employees should feel empowered and autonomous enough to use their skills as they see fit, and should be able to clearly see the impact of their good work.
Do your team members understand and share the same vision?
Atkins explains that unity and clarity of purpose is essential for martech teams to cohere. Ensure that your team is aligned on how “success” is measured (and be sure to celebrate successes whenever you can).
How can your martech stack change with your business?
Chandra suggests that when selecting the right tools for your martech team, rather than being distracted by the Next Big Thing, try focusing on the direction your business is heading in six months or six years. Your team can then tailor its preferred martech stack to your business’ needs.
How are your martech processes being documented?
Having your team’s processes recorded in a location that is easy to find can make all the difference, says Rastiello. This will not only improve clarity within your team, but can also help smoothen onboarding immensely. These processes should ideally be repeatable and scalable for the sake of efficiency.
Discussion and takeaways: Advice from our experts
Here are some highlights from our experts’ advice:
Atkins: One of the key questions for me is, do you have absolute clarity on what marketing is here to do? The interpretation of this question changes with each organization. Without having this North Star of what it is you are trying to achieve and where your priorities lie, you can get pulled in every kind of direction.
Rastiello: I tell any startup or CEO trying to figure out how to create their marketing team to start with their ops team—they are going to lay your foundations for growth. Everyone else can be outsourced, for the most part.
Chandra: If you want to get the right people on the bus, you need to recruit like a marketer. What that means is, think about applying marketing concepts toward building your dream team.
Related resources
New to this topic? Find helpful external links below.
Watch the recording
For more insights and takeaways from the session, watch the full recording here:
Previous sessions
Watch previous session recordings and read recaps of our past Martechify events to learn about a variety of martech-related topics straight from the experts.
Martechify November 2021 Recap
Session Recap
CDPs Demystified: The Source of Truth for Customer-Driven Marketing
November 18, 2021 — Our martech leaders, Carrie Sinclair of Honeywell and Brian Prascak of Wawa, explained where martech succeeds and fails in capturing customer data, and how CDP tools can better segment and grow your customer base. They outlined instances in which CDPs may be useful (or perhaps necessary) for content personalization and collecting behavioral data, and explained why CDP implementation may be easier than you think.
Featured experts
Carrie Sinclair
Vice President of
Customer Marketing for Performance Materials & Technologies
Honeywell
Framework:
Although Customer Data Platform technology is relatively new, having only recently gained widespread recognition in the late 2010s, it has already fundamentally restructured how many businesses manage their customer data. Unlike most CRMs, CDPs can consolidate customer data from multiple channels and sources into one secure, easily navigable database. Crucially, the data structures are built with a focus on activation; CDP technology prioritizes accessibility of data elements across teams and departments, offering marketing professionals more flexibility and control. Additionally, CDP tools can aggregate and analyze large volumes of behavioral data to create more specific and actionable customer profiles while remaining well within the bounds of privacy regulations.
More recently, CDP capabilities are increasingly becoming embedded in existing CRMs and other customer data management platforms, removing the need for a standalone CDP solution—although purpose-designed CDPs may still be the most appropriate for your business. Other businesses may opt for an in-house solution with CDP functionalities, perhaps using a related technology (e.g., Azure, AWS, Databricks, Spark, Snowflake, etc.) to manage data pipelines.
Know emerging CDP best practices
The strength of CDP platforms and technology comes from the ability to merge and analyze cross-channel behavioral data to create rich, meaningful customer profiles and journeys.
- A CDP can provide a consistent view of a customer’s interactions and purchases across multiple channels, allowing for fine-tuned customer segmentation and dynamically tailored content.
- Importantly, CDPs can resolve a customer’s identity across different sites and devices, using artificial intelligence to match user data and build upon prior information.
- CDP technology can segment customers more accurately and rapidly, expanding options for personalization.
In the video, expert Carrie Sinclair showcased multiple targeted emails she personally received that exemplified some right (and wrong) ways to use customer databases.
Although Customer Data Platforms enable complex personalization, achieving optimal results comes from learning up-to-date best practices for activation.
- CDPs can capture a customer’s specific interests, as well as their maturity and evolution through their lifecycle. Awareness of how these factors intersect may determine which products and services may be most relevant to promote at a particular time.
- With CDPs, as with all data management software, data hygiene and regular maintenance are essential. Fortunately, many platforms have AI-enhanced tools for automated database and profile cleanup, enhancing productivity by minimizing hours spent clicking.
- CDPs offer possibilities for extremely fine-grained segmentation—savvy marketers should take advantage of this! Journey mapping and regular thought exercises can help determine the number and type of customer segments most relevant to your business, which can be fine-tuned and updated with ease.
Our expert, Brian Prascak, predicted that CDP technology will continue to expand using graph databases or networks. Network science, or data science for networks, involves mapping and modeling customers’ transitions between journey stages in terms of maturity and value. Better prediction of customer behaviors can lead to better targeting and personalization, as well as measurably stronger customer development.
CDPs can produce invaluable insights into how customers relate to your company’s products or services. Nevertheless, expanded opportunities for personalization mean that customers increasingly expect content to be well-tailored to their interests, with profound implications for the business-customer relationship. Marketing professionals can and should ensure that the most relevant content is delivered at all stages of the customer journey, which can be easily done with a CDP and some relevant training.
Framework and discussion: Results-driven channel integration
Our two experts both shared their experiences with customer data management and thoughts on CDP integration. Here are some highlights of their advice:
Sinclair: At the top of the customer lifecycle funnel, you have more chances to get customers engaged and grab them, but once you get to the middle of the funnel, you’d better have your message honed. Do your testing at the top, because closer to the middle they need to be more relevant or customers will unsubscribe.
Prascak: The benefit of CDP technology—it’s real. Providers continue to mature very quickly, and even 5 years ago these processes would have been much more difficult. Customer-centric analytics is proven to work for businesses, but you can’t do analytics if you don’t have the data. CDP is the starting point; it took us 18 weeks to fully implement, but it’s doable and can give your business a lift.
Related resources
Watch the recording
For more insights and takeaways from the session, watch the full recording here:
Previous sessions
Watch previous session recordings and read recaps of our past Martechify events to learn about a variety of martech-related topics straight from the experts.
CDPs in Action: Essentials for Implementing a Customer Data Platform
Brian Prascak of Naratav and Rich Herbst of Ascend Marketing discuss some tips, best practices, and use cases for choosing and implementing CDP technology.
CDPs Demystified: The Source of Truth for Customer-Driven Marketing
Discover ways to utilize customer data platforms to execute customer-driven marketing strategies.
Adtech: Emerging Trends and Methods
Adam Cox of YETI and Nicolette Harper of Marriott International discuss how their highly distinct and diverse companies pivoted tactics and expanded reach during challenging times, thanks to the flexibility afforded by their respective adtech stacks.
Advanced Audience Segmentation: Leveraging Powerful Data
Martha van Berkel of Schema App, Chad Milligan of Frontier Communications, and Theresa Kushner of NTT DATA Services discuss how to best utilize data to extract actionable consumer behavior insights.