10+ ways to visualize your martech stack

This is the 8th year we’re managing The Stackies. It is an awards plan that invitations entrepreneurs to share a one slide illustrating their martech stack — the various apps and platforms they use and how they conceptualize them performing jointly.

I’d stimulate you to take part (deadline for entries April 29). It is a fantastic way to lead to our community’s understanding of how martech suits into the operate and movement of present day marketing and advertising.

Having said that, even if you never ever share your stack exterior the partitions of your business, illustrating it can be an incredibly useful physical exercise to superior have an understanding of it — and be ready to make clear it to other stakeholders.

So what is the most effective way to illustrate your stack?

Turns out there are many ways, each bringing a diverse lens. Possessing reviewed hundreds of entries to The Stackies above the yrs — here are all of them from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 — I have distilled 10 designs that I have viewed on their individual and in mix jointly.

1. Vendor Classification Map

Typically utilizing the taxonomy from our advertising technologies landscape, martech applications are organized into their item groups and subcategories. It reveals your stack by means of the lens of a seller market place map and identifies the solutions you have picked. This is a terrific way to look at your all round stack inventory and demonstrate the span of martech solutions.

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

2. Customer Journey Map

A different popular product is to align your martech stack against various phase of the customer’s journey. Frequently for entries to The Stackies, the journey is simplified into 4-5 stages, these kinds of as Find, Contemplate, Get, Onboard, and Develop.

This fantastic case in point from Juniper Networks and their 2021 Stackie entry illustrates two proportions: the client journey horizontally and the seller classes made use of vertically:

3. Again-Stage vs. Front-Stage

Yet another way of searching at your stack is by a theater metaphor: back again-phase and front-phase apps and platforms. Front-phase applications instantly touch the purchaser — e.g., internet experiences, email strategies, social media engagement equipment, advertising, etcetera. Back again-phase applications are made use of to provide inside stakeholders, this sort of as analytics, organizing, asset management, productivity, and so forth.

This is an sophisticated case in point from Red Wing Shoes and their 2017 Stackie entry, with again-phase to front-stage categorization along the vertical access and consumer journey stage alongside the horizontal axis:

4. Perform or Role-Primarily based Map

Even though martech stacks can be rather large, any a person person in the advertising division is not likely to have to master all of the apps within just it. Diverse roles inside of marketing and advertising will use various resources. So yet another beneficial way of mapping your martech stack is to team applications by the roles or capabilities that use them. This is reveals the “who” dimension of your stack, which is beneficial to see the interrelation involving applications, skills, and results.

This case in point from Bigtincan’s 2019 Stackie entry illustrates a few primary roles: world wide web management, promoting automation, and content material marketing and advertising:

5. Place Resolution/System Ecosystem Map

Integration is critical to an efficient martech stack. A different great way to visually assess your stack is to exhibit the platform(s) that are the gravitational heart(s) of your martech stack and which specialist apps combine to each and every of them. It’s an ecosystem look at of your stack.

This illustration from Poly’s 2020 Stackie entry in fact captures five distinctive proportions, including relative investment, paid/acquired/owned options, seller class — and identifies platforms, built-in professional applications, and stand-alone level alternatives:

6. Use Map (Relative Time in Equipment)

Some martech applications are applied continuously, as an integral aspect of marketing’s working day-to-day functions. Other applications, having said that, are a lot more specialized and utilized much less frequently. This does not suggest they’re not valuable. They just have a time and location for their function. Figuring out intensely-made use of main applications vs. flippantly-utilised instruments experts can be one more insightful way to comprehend the composition of your stack.

This case in point from Airstream’s 2019 Stackie entry cluster applications mainly by their use case — planning, inventive, engagement, dealer channel, and measurement — but the top of the pine tree icons signifies the relative time entrepreneurs commit interacting with each resource:

7. Relative Degree of Automation

Even though contemplating the sum of time that consumers invest engaged with diverse tools in your stack, it is an interesting lens to study how automated people resources are. Which resources are used primarily manually? Which types have considerable automations? This look at can be handy each to fully grasp the marriage among applications and advertising and marketing approach and operations. It can also help discover prospects to automate.

Automation is the biggest frontier in Huge Ops in my opinion.

This instance from Paychex’s 2019 Stackie entry maps out their martech apps on two proportions: different marketing capabilities and the diploma to which they are automatic:

8. Speed Layering of Platforms and Applications

Above a 10 years back, as tech stacks in normal — not just martech — have been growing promptly, Gartner proposed a way to arrange them by “rate layer.” They prompt a few layers: techniques of report, units of differentiation, and programs of innovation.

Methods of file need to be really stable and have a sluggish speed of improve. They’re the platforms upon which other software package and solutions rely. Programs of differentiation embody the processes and encounters that make your business distinctive. They transform a lot more commonly, but are nonetheless somewhat steady. Units of innovation are a lot more experimental, the spot in which new capabilities can be formulated and piloted swiftly.

One particular of the finest Stackie entries was this 1 from Microsoft in 2017, which mapped equipment together the infinite loop of shopper journeys, but then also separated them into Gartner’s a few rate levels:

9. Evolution of Martech Instruments About Time

Martech stacks never stand even now. New applications are included. Previous equipment are changed. This is portion of the organic evolution of a small business as it grows — and as the broader internet marketing and martech ecosystem continues to alter about it. It can be helpful to take a look at your martech stack by means of the lens of its shifting application stock about time.

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

10. Connected Capabilities Map

At the intersection of teams and tools, capabilities are made. Alternatively than searching at your stack through the lens of vendor types, you can prepare a see about different capabilities, these as marketplaces, user-produced content, content syndication, qualitative and quantitative investigation, etcetera. Mapping these capabilities in clusters, to display their adjacencies and associations with every single other presents you a image of the ecosystem around your stack.

This 2021 Stackie entry from Philips is a wonderful case in point:

Other Ways to Map Your Stack

Of system, there are numerous other techniques to visualize other dimensions of your stack.

For instance, you may possibly organize it all over aggregation technologies within your martech stack. How are you horizontally aggregating facts, workflow, working experience, and governance throughout quite a few various apps, information sources, and buyer touchpoints? Which resources are you applying to vertically combine individuals levels inside of specific domains, this kind of as CRM?

Alternatively, you might illustrate your stack to emphasize the diploma of customization in just unique apps and platforms. They could possibly range of purely out-of-the-box commercial applications, to packaged goods that have been customized or extended with your very own code, to wholly tailor made apps that are exclusive to your enterprise.

Each and every of these diverse techniques can give you diverse insights into the nature of your stack — and enable you communicate them to stakeholders across your firm.

What does your martech stack seem like?

Reminder: Even if you never enter The Stackies oneself — although we absolutely hope you do — really do not ignore to indicator up for the no cost webinar on #MartechDay, May well 3. We’ll be unveiling the new 2022 martech landscape, releasing a Point out of Martech report, and celebrating the entrants and winners of this year’s Stackie Awards.