Commentary

Martech Tooling Around: Teams Have Too Many Solutions To Deal With

Marketers are using too many tools and integrations — and getting too few results, according to The State of Martech, a study from SharpSpring conducted in partnership with Ascend2. 

This is a special headache for email marketing teams, since email is the top tool used by both marketing and sales. Overall, 83% agree that consolidating tools would increase their efficiency. 

In general, 21% of firms are extremely successful at achieving their priorities with their marketing strategy , and 70% somewhat so. Only 9% are unsuccessful.  

But they’re unhappy with the tools they use for these functions:  

  • Use data between the sales and marketing teams to management and convert leads? Six, a failing grade. 
  • Track customer demographic, firmographic, and behavioral data across the entire lifecycle? Six. 
  • Achieve a single, centralized view of the customer? Six. 
  • Work with customer data seamlessly across all tools? Six. 

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Some of this may have to do with skill level: Of the marketers polled, 52% have the expertise to personalize the customer experience based on demographic data. But only 41% can do so with behavioral data, and 37% with firmographic data. 

And, 61% of marketers are only somewhat satisfied with their ability to link Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) across channels and stages of the funnel. Only 10% are extremely happy, and 25% are somewhat unsatisfied and 4% very much so.  

In general, marketing campaigns have these priorities:

Acquiring more customers — 59%

Growing revenue — 59% 

Building a strong brand — 42% 

Generating quality traffic and leads — 32%

Optimizing customer experience — 30%

Increasing ROI — 18% 

Aligning marketing and sales — 13%

Improving conversion rates — 9%

Measuring performance — 9% 

Note: Executive teams are 40% less likely than others in the firm to consider general quality leads and aligning sales and marketing as top priorities. 

Their greatest challenges have a different skew: 

  • Generating quality leads — 37%
  • Attributing results to marketing — 26%
  • Generating enough leads — 25% 
  • Retaining customers — 22%
  • Staying current with new marketing trends —21%
  • Tracking leads — 18% 
  • Personalization — 18% 
  • Brand consistency across all channels — 17%
  • Allocating sufficient resources — 17%
  • Interpreting data and analytics — 16%
  • Alignment with sales team — 15%
  • Determining success of specific channels — 12%
  • Understanding customer journey/buying cycle —10%

What’s more, marketers are bedeviled by these problems:

  • Lack of time — 47% 
  • Lack of budget — 47% 
  • Lack of people to perform work — 39% 
  • Lack of tools or technology — 30% 
  • Lack of appropriate data — 29% 
  • Lack of buy-in from management — 11%

What goes into the average martech stack? Marketing teams use these tools:

  • Email — 78%
  • Social engagement — 60%
  • Landing pages — 39%
  • Video — 34% 
  • Brand management — 31% 
  • Social listening — 29% 
  • SEO — 28%
  • Ad retargeting — 26%
  • Forms — 25% 
  • Workflows/drip campaigns — 18% 
  • CMS—15% 
  • Testing—12%
  • Chatbot—10% 

Sales teams utilize these tools:

  • Email — 76%
  • Social media — 60%
  • Calendar/scheduling — 43% 
  • Project management — 32%
  • Video — 31%
  • Brand management—30% 
  • CRM — 26% 
  • CMS — 26% 
  • Conferencing/demos — 25%
  • Automation/sales enablement — 12%

The most successful marketers are 182% more likely to be using drip campaigns to nurture all of their leads:

  • Every time — 5%
  • Most of the time — 16%
  • Sometimes — 31%
  • Rarely — 23% 
  • Never — 25%

How many tools do they use?

Of those polled, 52% use three, 27% deploy six and 12% have 10. In addition, 5% have 11 or more tools and 4% have none. 

Companies manage their customer data in customer data platforms (6%), customer relationship management systems (35%), spreadsheets (21%) and a combination of the above (36). 

Working with SharpSpring, Ascend2 surveyed 187 marketing professionals in the U.S. in July 2021.

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