Exploring Marketing Technology Stacks

Marketing Technology Stacks Defined

Through Marketing Technology Stacks, marketers group sets of technologies that help leverage and improve their marketing activities. The technologies are intended to take difficult or repetitive tasks and simplify them or save time. Some of these technologies include a CMS (Content Management System), Email, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), CRM (Customer Resource Management), A/B testing and more.

In 2011, there were only 130 marketing technology apps, but in 2018, there are over 5,000! This exemplifies the difficulties that marketers face in the industry today: There are new apps being created every day in addition to the overabundance of technology apps already on the market making it difficult to fully comprehend each app’s usefulness or ability to vet all of them.

2018 AAM Summit

At this year’s 2018 AAM Summit in Portland, Oregon, I took in the session “Marketing Technology Stacks”. The session was presented by Lori Colvin, partner at Armanino LLP, California’s largest independent audit, tax, consulting & business and Jody Gruden, CEO of Summit CPA Group, a virtual CFO and 401k audit service provider to small and medium businesses. These two firms are very different in size and scope, but they both rely heavily on their individual marketing technology stacks.

Armanino LLP – Stacked for Over a Decade

Lori Colvin knows the problems that come with marketing technology stacks all too well. Over the past decade Armanino LLP has tried, rejected and re-tried dozens of apps. Some of the changes come about due to new and improved apps and some of the changes come from shifts in priorities and marketing goals. Currently, Armanino LLP is spending 22% of their marketing budget on their current stack of marketing technology, so you can see the importance they place on technology.

Summit CPA Group – The 4 C’s in a Virtual World

Jody Gruden has a different perspective on marketing technology stacks since his firm is solely cloud-based. Without the capabilities of modern marketing apps and technologies, his business model would not be possible.

To summarize and simplify the vast array of marketing technology stacks, Jody broke them down into 4 C’s: Connections, Content Creation, Customer Data and Collaboration. Within the 4 C’s and via apps that assist in everything from their business development, scheduling, meeting management, quoting and deal conversion, they are able to remotely manage virtually all aspects of their business.

Learn More with AAMplify! Podcasts

If you are interested in hearing more about Armanino LLP’s experiences with marketing technology stacks, or about building your own, check out the AAMplify! Podcast “Building Your Marketing Technology Stack”. In that episode, I interviewed Mischel Justesen, Armanino LLP’s former Marketing Technology Manager, about her experiences and she provided tips and tricks on how to build an effective marketing technology stack.