Most marketing teams today that aren’t hitting their goals — no matter how fantastic their team is or how incredible their ideas are — are failing due to tech. More specifically, most teams today are operating off of a hollow tech stack — one that operates without a core that connects and powers its platforms. Any steps a team takes to deliver truly meaningful, personalized experiences will ultimately fall flat if their stack isn’t prepared to handle the lift that it involves.
Marketing teams used to focus on driving customers to the brand’s store, website, or app where the customer experience would take place. But today, marketers are increasingly being asked to bridge the customer experience divide, with marketing becoming ever more closely entwined in the customer experience. In fact, nearly twice the number of marketers (79%) say they lead customer experience initiatives across the organization compared to two years ago.
When marketers were only responsible for delivering brand messages on select channels, independent platforms got the job done, but as the marketer’s role within the customer experience has evolved their tech stacks have remained static and siloed and have become increasingly hollow. Brands, with the best of intentions, have bought best-of-breed solutions to address their various objectives only to find they are left with a stack that cannot meet their needs. Solutions like CRMs, ESPs, and more were brought on to solve very specific use cases and address new channels, but this resulted in poorly-functioning, disconnected tech stacks full of band-aid solutions to core problems in your stack — solutions that won’t function properly until you address the root cause.
The issue is that these platforms lack a central view of customers and a unified strategy of how to best engage them. Without this holistic understanding of the customer at the center guiding your stack and being accessible across platforms, channels, and departments, you’re left with a hollow stack — and your marketing will remain purely surface level and ineffective until you fill the gap.