30-second summary: The Stackie Awards are presented each year at the annual MarTech Conference, a conference series put on by Chiefmartec.com, Third Door Media, and MarTech Today. There were 48 entries in the 2019 Stackies, with five winners. We reviewed all entries to glean some insights from how all entrants (not just the winneres) visualize their martech stack. There is no perfect martech stack. Each stack is custom fit to match a company’s industry sector, marketing approach, and unique needs. The Stackies don’t require entrants to stick with specific categories, but most included variations of the following: planning/strategy, Creative, Engagement/Marketing, Customer, and Measurement/Analytics. The Stackie Awards are presented each year at the annual MarTech Conference, a vendor-agnostic conference series put on by Chiefmartec.com, Third Door Media, and MarTech Today. The Stackies challenge entrants to visualize the tools in their martech stack, illustrating how each marketing category is connected. This helps …

30-second summary: ClickZ’s quarterly advisory board meeting focused on unpacking the most important marketing takeaways for 2020 and what it means for 2021 and beyond. Our Advisory Board members consist of thought leaders and luminaries who bring decades of marketing experience to the table. Key themes from this quarter’s meeting include the importance of agility, the frenzied pace of digital transformation (and the accompanying digital backlash), and the need for more agility across the board when it comes to martech tools, messaging, and creative. At the quarterly ClickZ Advisory Board meeting on December 3rd, our focus was on looking back at the most important things we’ve learned over the course of a very unusual year. We also looked ahead and made some predictions based on how these learnings can inform the next year and beyond. Our Advisory Board members consist of thought leaders and luminaries who bring decades of marketing …

30-second summary: Voice technology is being widely adopted, thanks to the global distribution of voice assistants like Google Assistant, which is installed in over 1 billion devices as of 2020. Improvement in voice recognition accuracy is also helping with widespread adoption of voice technology. Google achieved a 95% accuracy rate for the English language as of March 2017. This is the same threshold for human accuracy. 82% of consumers expect an immediate response on sales or marketing. Voice recognition technology, which enables the immediacy of customer service responses, is addressing this need for many businesses. Voice-enabled tools are increasingly being employed within an organization’s martech stack, to facilitate internal operations. Examples include speech-to-text transcription tools, real-time conversational analysis, and automated call listening/conversational analysis platforms. Voice technology is playing an ever-growing role in a variety of martech applications, from AI-powered transcription tools like Trint to signal-based AI tools like Cogito that …

30-second summary: Complexity is an ongoing challenge. Martech’s proliferation of data and tools can be overwhelming, making it difficult to keep technology up-to-date and staff up-to-speed on how best to utilize the stack. Finding the right talent is another big pain point. A technical marketing landscape requires technical skills, but marketing still requires creativity, empathy, and humanity. Avoid the temptation to over automate. Balancing data with creativity is incredibly important, particularly in the post-COVID-19 marketing universe. Consumer behavior and sentiment can change in an instant, so messaging must be authentic, appropriate, and supremely human. Martech stacks tend to be underutilized, meaning companies are wasting money by not fully leveraging their martech. Understanding the pitfalls listed here can help businesses better plan and maintain their stacks and the resources needed to ensure they facilitate business growth. Marketing technology (martech) touches every aspect of modern business, going far beyond the marketing department …

30-second summary: Data paralysis is a natural consequence of the marketing technology businesses use daily, but there are tools that can help manage the proliferation of data so that it can be used efficiently and effectively. In this post, we review five tools, each of which help mitigate the data paralysis connected to a specific area of data usage including CRM, lead management, business insights, customer experience, and website traffic/campaign analysis. The tools listed here are examples of the technology that exists to help manage and leverage data. There are many more tools available, so be sure to research solutions that fit within your budget and business type. Data paralysis is a real problem. The proliferation of martech tools and marketing touchpoints has created a wealth of data which, while a boon for businesses, can also present challenges when it comes to data management, analysis, security, and consistency. A 2018 …

30-second summary: COVID-19 has caused a seismic shift in digital operations and consumer behavior, leading to an acceleration in digital transformation. commerce penetration grew from 16% to 27% over an eight-week period this year, for example, fundamentally changing the way retailers sell goods. As martech players emerge to address increased shifts to digital, companies are caught in the middle of an explosion of complexity, trying to figure out how best to leverage new technology with little time to plan. The digital skills gap has widened with the increased rate of digital transformations. Businesses are scrambling to find talent that has experience across ad tech, martech and data.. Sales and marketing alignment has become even more important as teams balance decreasting marketing budgets and increase in pressure to deliver more sales with less to keep the business alive. The cost of complexity is high when companies purchase technologies they don’t use, …

30-second summary: Exponea created a Knowledgecard, CDP vs DMP vs CRM, which serves as a handy cheat sheet to help clarify the definition and purpose of each martech solution. Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) collect first-party data from online and offline sources in real-time, creating a unified view of each customer that enables ultra-personalized targeting for marketing campaigns. Data Management Platforms (DMPs) segment anonymous third-party data from other websites that can be used to create audience segments for marketing campaigns. Customer Relationship Platforms (CRMs) are utilized by customer-facing teams, including sales, customer support, and client/customer advocates to facilitate managing a company’s relationships with existing or potential customers. CDPs, CMS, SaaS… the world of marketing technology (martech) is punctuated by acronyms representing a host of technologies that can be confusing to parse through, particularly when companies are evaluating what they need to add to their tech stack. Chiefmartec’s infamous graphic, the Martech …

30-second summary: Following a survey and some editorial research, we have highlighted 13 people we think are either respected industry guardians, or are making some noteworthy contributions to the marketing technology space. Scott Brinker, Tamara McCleary, Ann Lewnes, Des Cahill, Stephanie Buscemi, Tony Ralph and David Encizo, amongst those named in the list. Katrina Lake, Werner Vogels, Max Wessel, Jay Richman, Melanie Deziel and Erin Rowles also honored in the list. With February widely regarded as awards season in the realm of pop culture, we thought we’d get on the act as well and recognize some of the leading personalities in the marketing technology sector. We asked you, our valued readers, to send us your picks and combined that with hours of relentless editorial research, to narrow down our list to 13 deserving people. So without further ado here are our list of 13 (in no particular order) who we …

30-second summary: Founded in 2010 by twin sisters Kristine and Katherine Steuart, Allocadia has over 100 employees around the world. Allocadia serves mid-to-large businesses with their cloud-based MPM platform, which is available at three price points, depending on the level of management required. MPMs enable companies to plan, gain insights, and optimize multiple marketing campaigns and programs from one central location. After implementing the platform, Allocadia customers can begin seeing results within thirty days. Since Juniper Networks implemented Allocadia seven years ago, the marketing team has closed the quarter within 1% of target for the past 29 quarters. After Microsoft implemented Allocadia in 2016, the company experienced an 88% reduction in manual data entry, were able to account for 100% of field marketing dollars, and generated over 1 million leads via planned marketing activities. By using Allocadia’s tools, GE Digital’s marketing organization reported 2.55 times greater return on marketing investment …

30-second summary: We provide five examples of enterprise-level providers of marketing automation solutions including industry case studies. Each of these companies are leaders in marketing automation, with enterprise businesses (and, in some cases, SMBs) benefiting from their platforms, solutions, and technology. This list is not inclusive of every enterprise-level provider, but is meant to present an overview of best-in-class tools that exist in the market today, including tangible examples of how organizations are using them to improve their marketing, sales, and customer experience initiatives. It’s marketing automation week at ClickZ, and as part of our coverage of this game-changing technology, we’ve compiled a list of the top five enterprise-level solutions based on market share. The global marketing automation software market was $2.4 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach over $6.8 billion by 2026. Social Media Today’s 2019 State of Marketing Automation survey revealed that two-thirds of marketers are …