Stack Architecture: Build a Marketing Tech Stack to Fit Your Business Objectives
Thanks, for coming to our presentation. It's about stack architecture, and how to build a customer, marketing stack I'm. A soft Stein and I'm a technical project manager, an optimal I help on board our customers, on to our platform and with, an emphasis on, the different integrations, of the different tools into, optimal core. And. I'm Lee Noi I leave, the solutions engineering, activities, an opportune of this, role is commonly, known as a pre. Sell engineer, or Solutions, Architect and. As part of my job I work with customers day-to-day, on mapping out what, is the best way to fit up to move into their existing marketing stack or how to build their marketing stack with opt in move accordingly. What. We're going to talk about today is, marketing stacks of course we'll. Start with a little background on, what is a marketing stack and why is it important, then. We'll talk, a little bit about what what to take into consideration when building and. Constructing your marketing. Stack and a, few examples including, opportunity of course of how different marketing stacks can look like. So. What is the marketing technology, stack a marketing. Technology stack is the layering and interconnections. Of different technologies, that make marketing, happen so, it's basically all of the different tools, and technologies, that you use in order to create your marketing, this. Starts from the back end from where, you store your customer, data it, could be a data warehouse, or, a CDP, that you use to aggregate customer, data, and. It ends with the actual execution, of the message right the email let's, say for example that you send out to your customers, that's, very very personalized. And includes different personalization, fields that come from that beginning. Point from that back end data source that we were talking about. The. Reason we call it a stack is because these different technologies need, to work together so they're, sort of stacked one on top of the other each one has their own roles their own responsibilities. That. Allow marketing, to happen in an efficient way and. A marketing technology, stack will of course be part of your technology, stack within your organization, but it's going to be the parts that are in charge of, marketing. Now. Marketing, stacks are important, because in today's world you can't really do marketing, without different, technologies, that allow you to do marketing in an effective, way and efficient, way you. Can't really scale, up and create you know a robust, marketing, plan if, you don't have the right technologies, in place and this really gives us two challenges. The first one is how do we choose the right technologies. To put within our stack and the. Second one is how do they connect to each other who's in charge of what how do they pass information between, them and how do they do that in an effective way because, even. If you have all the right tools in place but they don't know how to coordinate and work with each other then, you really can't make anything happen. If. A company, chooses the right technologies. For East tasks for each area and of need and those, will be the right tools. For you you, can give yourself a real edge over competition. Because. You'd be able to focus on the, important things in marketing what, should you do what communications, do you send to what group of customers and allow marketing, to happen in an effective, and efficient way. This, is a. More, tech landscape. Map that. Was invented by Scott, Brinker. He, basically created this concept of Mark tech marketing, technology, tools and. Back in 2011. He mapped out the, different, marketing technology. Solutions. That were out there and you. Can't really see it's, very very small um but. It's, basically divided, into different sections so we've got mobile marketing, we've got targeting, we've, got display management, and personalization, and optimization.
And. Predictive. Modeling, and there are many many different tools. And options for, how to create marketing, for, what solutions, are you going to use for marketing and. Back in 2011 there are a hundred and fifty of these and. I think this is challenging, enough to kind of select what, tools you want to use here and which will do what. Any. Idea how many marketing technology, tools exist today a. Little. More than 1,000 so we've got about seven thousand, today. And. If we look at this map, it's. Slightly evolved, so there are many many many more sections, that are available here, there are tons of many different solutions and, you. Can see that just just looking at the sections, the colouring of the different, types. Of solutions that are out there and. It's becoming more and more challenging, to select the right technology, tools and, this trend is actually increasing. As time goes by so between 2017, and 2018, there, was an increase of about 27% in the number of marketing. Technologies. That were available out, there only. About 4.5, percent of them churned between, those years so we're just growing, and there's gonna be more and more solutions, and we don't really see this trend stopping, what. It means is that it's very challenging to select, which ones you want to use which, ones are responsible. For what and there. Are many many different options, on how to build your marketing. Stack um. As, a result there is no typical stack, there are many stacks that are out there each company, needs. A different stack and, the stack that you need really depends, on your, team how experienced, they are um how tech-savvy you are the scale of your organization. Your business model are you a b2c or a b2b and many, other factors, and. It's. Important, to find the right stack, that meets your business objective, when you're trying to build your marketing stack there. Are so many different approaches, on how to build different, stacks. And, how to look at these stacks when designing, them we, like to kind of take, your marketing stack and split it into three different layers. On. The bottom we have the data layer so this is where data sits of course um so you'll have your data warehouse I'm, our e-commerce platform. Basically the source where you store your customer, information on. Top of that you'd have your CDP or a single customer view basically, where, you aggregate, all of your customer, data, according. To each individual, customer on the individual, customer level which, makes it something that we can actually use for marketing, and. Then we've got CRM, tools that will utilize this information, and we've got data modeling, tools that will create, segmentations. Highlight. Actionable, insights, create. Different predictions, start, processing, this data to enrich it and make it even, better for us to use for marketing. Then. We have the campaign management layer in the campaign management layer we'll take this data and we'll create audience out of it so we need a segmentation, tool we, also need a campaign management tool ideally, a cross-channel, marketing, automation tool, that will connect to the different channels you use.
The Different communications, across them um we. Also need to have some sort of analytical, tool right we need to have dashboards, so we can measure what what, have we sent out did it work or not can, we improve it and, ideally some sort of optimization platform. That you can use to, optimize these. Automatically. On the last. Layer we have the actual execution, so these will be your, email provider your, push provider your the social networks you use um, it could be SMS, it could be real-time I'm, campaigns, and your website in your mobile app you. Need to think about how are you assigning, promotions, to different customers. Now. If you notice here in parallel, to all of these we've got real time real time is optional, right so some companies use real time communications. And some don't if you, do this is something that we'll need to think about in all of the different layers and. I. Can think of many many other tools, that I can add into, this chart right so I can have a bi and reporting, layer and I have my, actual content. So. I need to have a content, management platform, but. Basically if we split it into these kind of three different layers we can start thinking about what solutions, we're going to use when, we build our stack. Another. Important, factor to take into consideration is, that there are many different stakeholders. That, will use this stack, so, in the data layer you'll probably have, the, bi team, and the data science team and the IT team, making. Decisions regarding how to use data you'll. Have your planning team the. Planning layer the customer. Marketing, layer which. Will be used by marketing, and leadership to look at the different reports, and tools on how this marketing is operating, marketing. Will also live in the execution, layer where you'll also find design, team creating, the different templates, that are sent out the different content pieces that you send out to your customers, um and. Ops team if we try to kind of, delete. These lines between the different separations, and we like to call it democratizing. Data making, data accessible, to marketers, without, a dependency, on different teams but, you're always gonna have all of these stakeholders that, are interested in this marketing technology, stack em what. We see in many cases, during, the cell cycle with Optima is that. Companies. Approach. This process of creating their stack when they're not really prepared and. It's very important, before you go into this process.
To. Analyze what, are you trying to do what is your end goal how is this going to fit in with your existing marketing which. Is why we've come up with a few points that are important to take into consideration, when building your, marketing stack. So. Now we're going to talk about actually, building your marketing stack we're going to talk about two main approaches, a few things to bear in mind determining. Factors and a few final things to consider. So. The first dilemma you'll encounter when approaching building your marketing stack is are we going to go single vendor or are we gonna go best-of-breed so, I like thinking of single vendor as a jack of all trades master of none its, benefits are you only have to manage one vendor relationship, and the. Tools, you get will probably complement, each other rather. Seamlessly. Coming off from the same vendor on the, other hand it's rather expensive and it might be better suited for large, organizations. With big marketing budgets not so much for startups. And small to medium organizations. It's. Also putting all your eggs in one basket which, isn't always the best approach on the, other hand we have the Best of Breed option, so it might be a bit harder, to put together and, it requires more work and more research but at the end of the day just gives you a degree of flexibility, that you will not find with, a single vendor solution, it, gives you the opportunity, to curate, a combination of technologies, that will really, fit. Your needs best out of all available options out there it's. Also not as costly in. Single vendor you'll probably need to implement a whole set of products all at one go while, in best-of-breed you can kind of plug them in as we go and when we need them it. Does have its downsides, you will be managing multiple processes, multiple, vendors multiple, points of contact this can be challenging when you have a large marketing stack with a large amount of tools in it the. Tools themselves that, you choose might not complement, each other out of the box like they would come in all from a single vendor so it's on you to kind of take that into consideration and, think how everything is going to be connected all that, being said in today's API, and micro service fuelled world single, vendor is becoming a less common place and best-of-breed, has really taken its place so. A few things to think about things to bear in mind before. Approaching, building, your marketing stack.
First One is to be thoughtful now by, being thoughtful I mean a lot of markers today tend, to choose the easy route and instead of sitting through hours on top of hours of product demos and doing their thorough research they, just stay with their same tried, and true stack or just go with the latest trendy, hip, technology, without thinking, about how, these, tools cater to their specific needs so. I think marketers today should take a patient, and thoughtful approach towards, building their marketing stack the. Next one is to visualize your stack so before we even start thinking about specific, tools we, need to step over to the whiteboard and make a blueprint, of our marketing stack so, there are endless ways to visually, organize your stack from. Circuit. Boards to flowcharts clustered, by marketing functions, or organized, around the customer journey the. There's no right or wrong way here and. We'll show you some examples, later in the presentation, the. Next one is to focus on the big picture. So. Don't. Fall prey into thinking of each of these specific tools as specific, tools try, to think of them all as part of one big system, and adapt a more holistic point of view, the. Final ones is to think long term so, a marketing stack is dynamic, it's not static it should and it will change over time so when approaching building your marketing stack don't only think about what you need now but, try to envision how you see your marketing operations, scaling into the future. Some. Determining, factors we wanted to talk about the. First one is the company stage of maturity, you. Know where are you are just the founders, have you made your first sales and marketing hires maybe, you already have constantly, growing sales and marketing teams so, where you are as a company is gonna have a tremendous effect on your marketing, stack and. Naturally, on your budget as well the, next one is your team and talents so you need to understand, who your team is and what their talents are because technology, or any tool as great, as it may be isn't, going to accomplish anything for you unless. You know how to leverage analytics. So make sure you spend enough time and money and teaching, your team not only on how to use.
The Tools technically, but also on how to leverage analytics, into insights and into actions the. Next is your existing, tools so, what have you done for me lately that's, a question you should be asking every, tool in your marketing stack continuously. Not, only when you're investing in new ones and you should have the numbers to back it up so, make sure you continuously, audit. Tool in your marketing stack and see how it fits in your overall vision. Next. Is the scope of the funnel and the customer experience you're trying to create, so, you need to understand, your customer, needs build, your customer journey determine. Exactly how it needs to be and then map out technology to line with that and not the other way around and finally. Your business model, so are you b2b are you b2c everyone, has the same overall goals and increasing, revenue increasing efficiency, but, the value you find in specific tools will probably differ based on your business model so, assuming most of you hear from a b2c, world you'll, probably find more value, in tools that support your customer journey and enable, you to send, out highly. Relevant automated. Personalized, messages, every, step along the way while, from a b2b perspective, you might find more value in tools that help you nurture a lead through a sales funnel for example. Few. Final things to think about before. Building your marketing stacks so the first one is to align with IT now. Coming from an onboarding. Project manager point of view I can't express how, much I feel this one is important. Because. If you aren't aligned with IT then, you might just be creating a mess that they'll have to clean up after you and this happens all the time so, get IT involved, in the process from the get-go and make. Sure they're involved especially when you're thinking about the different tools how they're connected, how they're integrated and how data flows between them, next. Is to create a use case wish list so map out different use cases and scenarios before, even thinking about specific, vendors what, do you need and what would be nice to have so, a lot of marketers like making their needs wish list out of gaps and holes they see in their current marketing stack and. Their wants from things they've seen around the market and think, might be valuable to them the. Next step is to take these wish lists and test the vendors against, them so, this could be a formal RFP, it could be a live use case demonstration. It could, even be just a list of questions that came up internally, and you send out to the different vendors but don't skip this step on these use cases and, understand, the implications, are fulfilling or not fulfilling them, final. One is to understand, are in our roles and responsibilities. So whichever way you choose to visualize, your marketing stack whatever flow you're going with make, sure you know which tools in charge of what and when and that there are no gaps and holes between, them. Now. I want to show you a few examples of, how different companies he's visualizing. Their marketing stacks and we'll finally get to how Optima fits into all of this so, this first one is the stack II award winner from. This year that's right there's a award. Ceremony, for marketing stacks it's. By Blackrock and American investment management company and I, think this one's really impressive. First of all just on a visual. Production. Point of view but, also because, it, kind, of captures. The, cyclical. Process, that Blackrock, uses to iterate on their, strategy, on their marketing and on their execution. So. The four different parts of Mart extra lists, you. Have for example at the top discover city which is all about defining the opportunity, and the value and the user so, you'll have analytics. Tools and, data. Visualization tools. To. The right we have concept, Park about defining of the direction or idea brainstorming. Tools and wire framing tools plan, ville at the bottom is about assembling, your team so you have different project. Management, tools and collaboration, and finally, do town which. Is self-explanatory it's. All about execution, so, you'll have online management marketing automation tools and so, on this. Next one by Microsoft, is a different, approach this, is the stachy Award winner from 2017. So, what Microsoft basically, wanted to do here is to create an efficient, and highly scalable. Marketing, to sales automation, platform, so what you have here is a continuous, loop from marketing to sales to post sales marketing, all within three layers of Gartner's paste.
Layering Model it's. Also interesting to see that there are a lot of Microsoft, tools in here not. Surprisingly, and also, it's really easy to see the roles and responsibilities. In this way, of visualization, you know which tools in charge of what part of the process and what are the next tools it connects to. This. One is a good one to show that. Marketing stacks are dynamic. As we said earlier they're not static and they change over time so this is the Cisco's. Stack II Award winner from, 2017. And this is their stack II entry, from, 2018. So you can see that they've added some products, they removed some products they tweaked a bit of the organization. Of their whole foundation layer so, this one really shows us that even the bigger organizations. Aren't afraid to continuously, try to improve their marketing stack from year after year. But. Before, we kind of finish. We're. All here to talk about opti move, and, this is an example of optimum, system architecture, or a basic high-level one and. It's kind of parallel, to that example, that we were looking at earlier with the different layers so we've got the data layer going. Into optative this, beautiful circle here in the middle is optimum of of course, data, can come from different sources it, can come from your data warehouse, it, can come directly from your website or, mobile app in the form of real-time events, it's. Then processed, within the system of course so, we act as a sort of a CDP, we have our, segmentation, model, and predictions, that are generated, and. The data is really processed, to generate, an. Optimal, marketing plan what customers, should be targeted, with what communication, through, what channel, and at what time we. Also need to connect to the execution, layer this. Can be internal. Solutions, from opti move like optimal, and opti push or. It can be third-party, tools that are already integrated with us or are not yet, integrated with us that will connect to optima to execute the communication.
And Of, course we've got the promotion system connecting. Top to move for automatic promotion assignment. But, even looking at optimum, as. A whole and even once you've selected a, single, provider a single vendor for, example up to move there are still many configurations. That are available with. Up to if we call it different solutions, to the same problem that. Problem is personalization. So. Optimum of core our. Core offering, will take care of a, customer. Data platform, and segmentation. Predictive. Modeling, different, analytical, tools cross channel automation. Optimization. Will. All happen in one place but then you need to decide do you want to send out scheduled, messages only or do you want to add real-time messaging as well what. Channels are you gonna use and for those channels what providers, will use will you use internal, solutions like optimal, and opti push or third-party, integrations. Will. You create your own integrations. - internal tools that you already have, and, there are many different configurations that, are available here which are also important, to take into consideration. So, to summarize, this session we, talked a little bit about marketing technology, stacks and why, are they important, they, can really help you strive. And succeed and have a benefit, over your competitors when. Working more effectively, and more efficiently, there's, no typical stack out there but rather many many different combinations that are available when. Building your stack it's important, to create a wish list decide. What you want to do before you actually go ahead and complete it and. Then tests, vendors against, that wish list and define what are the roles and their responsibilities. Who's in charge of what and how does the communication happen. And. Then we looked at a few examples different. Sizes different shapes different combinations. Which. We hope could give you some ideas, for your own marketing, stack.
2018-12-20 06:44
