10+ ways to visualize your martech stack

This is the 8th yr we’re operating The Stackies. It is an awards system that invitations marketers to share a one slide illustrating their martech stack — the unique apps and platforms they use and how they conceptualize them doing the job alongside one another.

I’d persuade you to participate (deadline for entries April 29). It’s a wonderful way to contribute to our community’s comprehending of how martech fits into the perform and flow of modern day advertising and marketing.

Nevertheless, even if you by no means share your stack outside the walls of your organization, illustrating it can be an unbelievably helpful exercise to much better understand it — and be capable to explain it to other stakeholders.

So what is the best way to illustrate your stack?

Turns out there are quite a few means, every single bringing a various lens. Possessing reviewed hundreds of entries to The Stackies above the years — here are all of them from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 — I have distilled 10 styles that I have seen on their own and in combination alongside one another.

1. Vendor Class Map

Normally utilizing the taxonomy from our marketing and advertising know-how landscape, martech applications are arranged into their item types and subcategories. It shows your stack by means of the lens of a vendor sector map and identifies the goods you have chosen. This is a wonderful way to study your total stack stock and exhibit the span of martech answers.

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

2. Shopper Journey Map

Yet another frequent product is to align your martech stack against distinct phase of the customer’s journey. Usually for entries to The Stackies, the journey is simplified into 4-5 phases, these as Find out, Contemplate, Invest in, Onboard, and Expand.

This terrific example from Juniper Networks and their 2021 Stackie entry illustrates two dimensions: the client journey horizontally and the vendor types made use of vertically:

3. Again-Phase vs. Entrance-Stage

Another way of seeking at your stack is as a result of a theater metaphor: again-stage and front-phase apps and platforms. Front-phase applications straight contact the buyer — e.g., internet ordeals, e-mail campaigns, social media engagement equipment, promotion, and many others. Back again-phase apps are utilised to serve inner stakeholders, these kinds of as analytics, scheduling, asset administration, productivity, and so forth.

This is an sophisticated illustration from Pink Wing Sneakers and their 2017 Stackie entry, with back again-phase to entrance-phase categorization along the vertical accessibility and purchaser journey stage along the horizontal axis:

4. Purpose or Purpose-Dependent Map

Though martech stacks can be rather significant, any one man or woman in the advertising division is not likely to have to find out all of the apps inside of it. Distinct roles within just advertising and marketing will use diverse tools. So a different beneficial way of mapping your martech stack is to group 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 concerning applications, capabilities, and results.

This example from Bigtincan’s 2019 Stackie entry illustrates three key roles: internet administration, advertising automation, and content material promoting:

5. Level Alternative/System Ecosystem Map

Integration is crucial to an helpful martech stack. A different fantastic way to visually review your stack is to clearly show the platform(s) that are the gravitational centre(s) of your martech stack and which specialist apps integrate to each and every of them. It is an ecosystem see of your stack.

This illustration from Poly’s 2020 Stackie entry in fact captures 5 diverse proportions, like relative expenditure, paid/earned/owned answers, seller class — and identifies platforms, built-in professional apps, and stand-by yourself stage methods:

6. Utilization Map (Relative Time in Equipment)

Some martech applications are used frequently, as an integral portion of marketing’s day-to-working day operations. Other apps, having said that, are extra specialised and made use of fewer routinely. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not useful. They just have a time and position for their intent. Figuring out heavily-used principal resources vs. lightly-utilized applications professionals can be yet another insightful way to fully grasp the composition of your stack.

This example from Airstream’s 2019 Stackie entry cluster apps mostly by their use circumstance — planning, innovative, engagement, supplier channel, and measurement — but the peak of the pine tree icons represents the relative time marketers shell out interacting with each software:

7. Relative Diploma of Automation

Whilst taking into consideration the volume of time that end users invest engaged with unique tools in your stack, it is an interesting lens to look at how automated people tools are. Which equipment are utilized typically manually? Which ones have considerable automations? This view can be beneficial both to fully grasp the romantic relationship involving resources and advertising method and functions. It can also help detect prospects to automate.

Automation is the most important frontier in Huge Ops in my impression.

This case in point from Paychex’s 2019 Stackie entry maps out their martech apps on two dimensions: distinct internet marketing capabilities and the degree to which they are automatic:

8. Speed Layering of Platforms and Applications

In excess of a ten years in the past, as tech stacks in basic — not just martech — were being increasing fast, Gartner proposed a way to manage them by “tempo layer.” They recommended a few levels: units of document, devices of differentiation, and units of innovation.

Methods of record ought to be very stable and have a slow tempo of transform. They’re the platforms on which other computer software and providers depend. Methods of differentiation embody the processes and activities that make your company distinctive. They modify far more regularly, but are even now comparatively stable. Programs of innovation are a lot more experimental, the location where new capabilities can be made and piloted rapidly.

A person of the most effective Stackie entries was this one from Microsoft in 2017, which mapped resources along the infinite loop of buyer journeys, but then also divided them into Gartner’s three rate layers:

9. Evolution of Martech Resources In excess of Time

Martech stacks really don’t stand still. New applications are added. Outdated resources are replaced. This is part of the natural evolution of a business enterprise as it grows — and as the broader marketing and advertising and martech natural environment continues to improve about it. It can be beneficial to take a look at your martech stack via the lens of its changing application stock around time.

This case in point, sent in by reader John Schott in 2017, reveals a 5-calendar year journey of a smaller monetary products and services organization:

10. Associated Capabilities Map

At the intersection of teams and instruments, abilities are developed. Relatively than searching at your stack as a result of the lens of vendor types, you can prepare a look at all-around diverse abilities, such as marketplaces, consumer-produced information, written content syndication, qualitative and quantitative investigation, and so on. Mapping these capabilities in clusters, to show their adjacencies and relationships with each and every other provides you a photo of the ecosystem all over your stack.

This 2021 Stackie entry from Philips is a great example:

Other Approaches to Map Your Stack

Of study course, there are lots of other methods to visualize other dimensions of your stack.

For occasion, you could possibly manage it all over aggregation systems within just your martech stack. How are you horizontally aggregating knowledge, workflow, working experience, and governance throughout numerous diverse apps, knowledge sources, and client touchpoints? Which applications are you making use of to vertically combine those people layers in just precise domains, such as CRM?

Alternatively, you may well illustrate your stack to emphasize the diploma of customization in various apps and platforms. They might array of purely out-of-the-box commercial applications, to packaged items that have been personalized or extended with your personal code, to fully customized applications that are one of a kind to your small business.

Every single of these distinctive techniques can give you diverse insights into the character of your stack — and assistance you connect them to stakeholders across your business.

What does your martech stack search like?

Reminder: Even if you never enter The Stackies on your own — while we certainly hope you do — really don’t forget to signal up for the no cost webinar on #MartechDay, May 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.