Key considerations before consolidating your MarTech stack | Blog & News

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July 17, 2024

This year alone, total U.S. MarTech spending is expected to reach $27.06 billion, according to EMARKETER. That’s an increase of 12.7% year over year. MarTech tools make up a considerable portion of the marketing budgets at most enterprise companies, so they're often on the chopping block as a new fiscal year or mini-review time approaches.

While streamlining your stack may result in initial cost savings, four key factors should be considered before eliminating an individual tool or service.

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Factor 1: Customization

No two departments or teams within an organization are completely the same. Because of this, each may have unique needs that require specific tools. If you consolidate your MarTech stack too much, you might unwittingly limit your ability to tailor solutions to individual department requirements.

Let’s say a company wants every team to use the same project management software for cross-company standardization. Standardization procedures are helpful — until they’re not.  Many times, once a company runs into its limitations, the software is already integrated into the company's teams, and the budget has been tied to the transition. This event horizon usually occurs when a department-specific need can’t be addressed through a standardized approach. For example, there are many project management tools that are employed by engineering teams with great success, but they’re not well suited for use by creative teams, even within the same company.

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Factor 2: Access to innovation

When you rely on just a few overarching MarTech solutions, your company risks missing out on emerging tools and technologies. 

According to ChiefMartec’s recently released 2023 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic, the number of MarTech solutions grew by 11% in just one year, delivering new technology at a blistering speed.

“Jack of all trades” platforms often lag behind nimbler startups when it comes to implementing new technologies in a particular solution. If you want the very best chatbot, for example, you’ll have a hard time finding it alongside a laundry list of features in a large platform solution. Your best chatbot solution is going to be found at a company that specializes in chatbots. By opting for best-of-breed solutions, you can adopt cutting-edge tools that give you a competitive edge. 

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Factor 3: Vendor flexibility

Relying on only a handful of vendors for multiple MarTech solutions can result in vendor lock-in. This can lead to limited flexibility and difficulty in switching providers if the need arises. Migrating between platforms isn’t an impossible task, but depending on how much you’ve invested in a particular platform, it can be a Herculean effort to move everything (contacts, activity logs, sales data, pipeline models, analytics, workflows, templates, etc.) without hiring a specialty consultant to help you do it.

Not only can it be costly (in time, effort, and resources) to take on a multifaceted migration, but the vendor lock could result in price locks where you are unable to negotiate a competitive rate because of the cost-benefit analysis of switching. 

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Factor 4: Risk of single point of failure

When you rely on a small number of large platforms, a single outage can disrupt multiple facets of your marketing operations. Additionally, many end users leverage ad blockers and tracking/personalization blockers in their browser’s list of plugins. If you rely too heavily on one solution provider, one blocker could cripple your entire ability to interact with the end user. For example, anything from the HubSpot set of domains might be blocked; not only will this limit tracking the pages a user visits, but it might also block the browser from showing an embedded form on a landing page. That’s an opportunity loss your marketing team doesn’t want to risk.

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What’s in it for you? 

Anytime you audit your MarTech stack, it’s important to get clear on your company’s present needs and future ambitions so you can weigh the pros and cons of consolidations. While we’ve only scratched the surface here, the key takeaway is that keeping a diverse set of MarTech solutions in your stack can provide growing companies with the scalability, flexibility, and future-proofing they need.

If you need an audit or architecture strategy for your MarTech stack and would like a deeper dive, check out our Platform Strategy services or contact OneMagnify’s team. We can help identify which approach is best for your company.

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Contact our MarTech experts

About OneMagnify

OneMagnify helps the world’s leading brands create optimal customer experiences through digital transformation, driving personalization at scale through data-driven, AI-enhanced, and technology-enabled marketing solutions.

With more than 50 years of creative brand-building experience and deep industry vertical expertise, OneMagnify excels at magnifying brands across digital channels, offering measurable results, and setting our clients apart from competitors.

With more than 700 marketing, creative, technology, analytics, and AI experts, OneMagnify executes digital activation strategies with best-in-class technology platforms and co-innovation.

Founded in 1967, OneMagnify is headquartered in Detroit with offices in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Louisville, Ky.; Wilmington, Del.; Charlotte, N.C.; Cologne, Germany; and Chennai, India.

About Crestview Partners

Founded in 2004, Crestview is a value-oriented private equity firm focused on the middle market. The firm is based in New York and manages funds with approximately $10 billion of aggregate capital commitments.

The firm is led by a group of partners who have complementary experience and distinguished backgrounds in private equity, finance, operations, and management. Crestview has senior investment professionals focused on sourcing and managing investments in each of the specialty areas of the firm: industrials, media, and financial services.

For more information, please visit www.crestview.com.

OneMagnify contact

Simone Bailey‍

872.243.1421
sbailey@onemagnify.com

Crestview contact

Jeffrey Taufield or Daniel Yunger‍

Kekst CNC
jeffrey.taufield@kekstcnc.com / daniel.yunger@kekstcnc.com
212.521.4800

Authors

Joshua Schlag

Senior Manager, MarTech

OneMagnify

Joshua Schlag brings a robust blend of technical expertise and business acumen to his Senior Manager of Marketing Technology role at OneMagnify. With degrees in Computer Science and Business Administration from the University of Arizona, Joshua takes a comprehensive, platform-agnostic approach to tackling digital marketing challenges.

At OneMagnify, Joshua spearheads the development of innovative strategies that harness the power of diverse technology solutions. His leadership spans CRM, ABM, analytics, generative AI, and the critical integrations that unify these platforms, driving impactful client results.