10+ ways to visualize your martech stack

This is the 8th yr we’re working The Stackies. It is an awards plan that invites entrepreneurs to share a one slide illustrating their martech stack — the diverse apps and platforms they use and how they conceptualize them performing with each other.

I’d really encourage you to participate (deadline for entries April 29). It is a excellent way to add to our community’s being familiar with of how martech suits into the purpose and circulation of fashionable promoting.

Even so, even if you in no way share your stack outside the walls of your organization, illustrating it can be an exceptionally practical exercising to much better recognize it — and be in a position to clarify it to other stakeholders.

So what’s the very best way to illustrate your stack?

Turns out there are numerous techniques, every bringing a distinct lens. Possessing reviewed hundreds of entries to The Stackies about the a long time — here are all of them from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 — I’ve distilled 10 designs that I have viewed on their possess and in mixture alongside one another.

1. Seller Class Map

Frequently using the taxonomy from our marketing and advertising technological innovation landscape, martech apps are structured into their solution classes and subcategories. It demonstrates your stack via the lens of a seller marketplace map and identifies the products and solutions you have picked. This is a great way to look at your in general stack inventory and show the span of martech answers.

Here’s an instance from SAS and their 2021 Stackie entry:

2. Consumer Journey Map

One more widespread model is to align your martech stack versus different stage of the customer’s journey. Commonly for entries to The Stackies, the journey is simplified into 4-5 levels, these kinds of as Find, Look at, Obtain, Onboard, and Increase.

This terrific illustration from Juniper Networks and their 2021 Stackie entry illustrates two proportions: the buyer journey horizontally and the vendor classes made use of vertically:

3. Again-Phase vs. Entrance-Stage

A further way of seeking at your stack is via a theater metaphor: again-stage and entrance-stage apps and platforms. Entrance-stage applications directly contact the buyer — e.g., world-wide-web ordeals, email campaigns, social media engagement equipment, marketing, etc. Back-stage apps are employed to serve internal stakeholders, these kinds of as analytics, planning, asset management, productivity, and so on.

This is an sophisticated illustration from Purple Wing Footwear and their 2017 Stackie entry, with again-phase to front-stage categorization along the vertical accessibility and client journey stage along the horizontal axis:

4. Purpose or Job-Based mostly Map

Whilst martech stacks can be quite significant, any a person particular person in the advertising and marketing office is unlikely to have to learn all of the applications in it. Distinctive roles inside promoting will use diverse tools. So a further useful way of mapping your martech stack is to team apps by the roles or capabilities that use them. This is reveals the “who” dimension of your stack, which is handy to see the interrelation involving applications, capabilities, and outcomes.

This instance from Bigtincan’s 2019 Stackie entry illustrates three key roles: world-wide-web management, marketing and advertising automation, and content advertising:

5. Level Option/Platform Ecosystem Map

Integration is critical to an effective martech stack. A different good way to visually examine your stack is to show the platform(s) that are the gravitational centre(s) of your martech stack and which expert applications integrate to each and every of them. It is an ecosystem see of your stack.

This illustration from Poly’s 2020 Stackie entry essentially captures 5 diverse dimensions, such as relative expense, compensated/gained/owned solutions, seller group — and identifies platforms, integrated expert apps, and stand-on your own stage options:

6. Utilization Map (Relative Time in Applications)

Some martech applications are utilised constantly, as an integral element of marketing’s day-to-working day functions. Other apps, nonetheless, are far more specialised and employed less usually. This does not indicate they’re not beneficial. They just have a time and put for their intent. Figuring out greatly-applied most important tools vs. flippantly-employed applications experts can be a further insightful way to comprehend the composition of your stack.

This case in point from Airstream’s 2019 Stackie entry cluster applications primarily by their use scenario — planning, creative, engagement, supplier channel, and measurement — but the height of the pine tree icons represents the relative time entrepreneurs spend interacting with just about every software:

7. Relative Diploma of Automation

When considering the total of time that end users devote engaged with various tools in your stack, it’s an fascinating lens to analyze how automatic people applications are. Which resources are made use of generally manually? Which types have substantial automations? This perspective can be useful both to recognize the relationship involving instruments and marketing and advertising process and functions. It can also assistance detect opportunities to automate.

Automation is the biggest frontier in Massive Ops in my view.

This illustration from Paychex’s 2019 Stackie entry maps out their martech apps on two dimensions: unique promoting capabilities and the diploma to which they are automatic:

8. Rate Layering of Platforms and Applications

Above a decade ago, as tech stacks in standard — not just martech — were being increasing quickly, Gartner proposed a way to arrange them by “tempo layer.” They prompt 3 levels: units of file, techniques of differentiation, and techniques of innovation.

Devices of record should really be extremely secure and have a gradual tempo of transform. They are the platforms upon which other software program and products and services depend. Programs of differentiation embody the processes and encounters that make your small business special. They improve much more routinely, but are however reasonably secure. Devices of innovation are additional experimental, the spot exactly where new abilities can be developed and piloted quickly.

1 of the ideal Stackie entries was this a person from Microsoft in 2017, which mapped tools along the infinite loop of consumer journeys, but then also separated them into Gartner’s a few tempo layers:

9. Evolution of Martech Resources In excess of Time

Martech stacks do not stand however. New resources are additional. Aged instruments are changed. This is aspect of the pure evolution of a company as it grows — and as the broader marketing and advertising and martech setting carries on to improve all-around it. It can be practical to look at your martech stack by the lens of its changing app stock around time.

This illustration, despatched in by reader John Schott in 2017, displays a five-yr journey of a smaller money solutions business:

10. Connected Capabilities Map

At the intersection of teams and resources, capabilities are developed. Fairly than hunting at your stack as a result of the lens of vendor groups, you can prepare a perspective close to distinctive abilities, such as marketplaces, consumer-produced information, content material syndication, qualitative and quantitative investigate, etc. Mapping these capabilities in clusters, to demonstrate their adjacencies and relationships with each and every other presents you a picture of the ecosystem close to your stack.

This 2021 Stackie entry from Philips is a great illustration:

Other Ways to Map Your Stack

Of program, there are lots of other means to visualize other dimensions of your stack.

For occasion, you may organize it close to aggregation technologies inside of your martech stack. How are you horizontally aggregating knowledge, workflow, working experience, and governance across numerous unique apps, data sources, and shopper touchpoints? Which equipment are you working with to vertically integrate those people layers inside of unique domains, this sort of as CRM?

Alternatively, you could possibly illustrate your stack to emphasize the diploma of customization inside of distinct applications and platforms. They may well assortment of purely out-of-the-box professional apps, to packaged solutions that have been custom made or extended with your have code, to totally tailor made applications that are special to your business.

Just about every of these diverse methods can give you distinctive insights into the nature of your stack — and aid you converse them to stakeholders throughout your group.

What does your martech stack look like?

Reminder: Even if you do not enter The Stackies by yourself — despite the fact that we surely hope you do — do not ignore to indication up for the totally free webinar on #MartechDay, May well 3. We’ll be unveiling the new 2022 martech landscape, releasing a State of Martech report, and celebrating the entrants and winners of this year’s Stackie Awards.