10+ ways to visualize your martech stack

This is the 8th yr we’re functioning The Stackies. It’s an awards software that invites entrepreneurs to share a one slide illustrating their martech stack — the distinct applications and platforms they use and how they conceptualize them performing collectively.

I’d stimulate you to participate (deadline for entries April 29). It’s a wonderful way to add to our community’s knowing of how martech suits into the functionality and movement of modern promoting.

On the other hand, even if you never ever share your stack exterior the walls of your firm, illustrating it can be an exceptionally beneficial physical exercise to improved comprehend it — and be able to reveal it to other stakeholders.

So what is the finest way to illustrate your stack?

Turns out there are quite a few ways, every single bringing a distinct lens. Obtaining reviewed hundreds of entries to The Stackies in excess of the many years — here are all of them from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 — I have distilled 10 styles that I have viewed on their possess and in mixture alongside one another.

1. Vendor Class Map

Typically utilizing the taxonomy from our advertising technological innovation landscape, martech apps are structured into their item categories and subcategories. It reveals your stack through the lens of a vendor sector map and identifies the products you’ve selected. This is a terrific way to take a look at your over-all stack inventory and display the span of martech options.

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

2. Buyer Journey Map

Another popular product is to align your martech stack versus distinct stage of the customer’s journey. Usually for entries to The Stackies, the journey is simplified into 4-5 levels, this sort of as Discover, Look at, Purchase, Onboard, and Expand.

This great instance from Juniper Networks and their 2021 Stackie entry illustrates two dimensions: the buyer journey horizontally and the seller groups made use of vertically:

3. Again-Phase vs. Front-Stage

Yet another way of seeking at your stack is as a result of a theater metaphor: back-stage and entrance-phase applications and platforms. Entrance-phase apps right contact the purchaser — e.g., web ordeals, e-mail campaigns, social media engagement instruments, promoting, and so on. Again-stage applications are applied to serve internal stakeholders, these kinds of as analytics, preparing, asset administration, efficiency, and so on.

This is an elegant instance from Crimson Wing Shoes and their 2017 Stackie entry, with back-phase to front-stage categorization alongside the vertical accessibility and shopper journey stage along the horizontal axis:

4. Perform or Purpose-Centered Map

Though martech stacks can be very massive, any a single individual in the marketing and advertising department is unlikely to have to understand all of the applications inside it. Diverse roles inside advertising will use distinctive instruments. So an additional beneficial way of mapping your martech stack is to team applications by the roles or features that use them. This is reveals the “who” dimension of your stack, which is handy to see the interrelation in between apps, techniques, and results.

This example from Bigtincan’s 2019 Stackie entry illustrates 3 major roles: world wide web management, internet marketing automation, and content promoting:

5. Point Option/Platform Ecosystem Map

Integration is critical to an successful martech stack. Another terrific way to visually assess your stack is to exhibit the system(s) that are the gravitational middle(s) of your martech stack and which specialist applications integrate to just about every of them. It is an ecosystem see of your stack.

This instance from Poly’s 2020 Stackie entry actually captures 5 different proportions, which includes relative expense, paid out/earned/owned remedies, seller classification — and identifies platforms, built-in professional apps, and stand-alone place solutions:

6. Usage Map (Relative Time in Equipment)

Some martech apps are employed consistently, as an integral portion of marketing’s working day-to-working day functions. Other apps, nonetheless, are a lot more specialized and utilised fewer commonly. This does not mean they are not important. They just have a time and location for their purpose. Figuring out closely-made use of major instruments vs. evenly-used resources professionals can be an additional insightful way to have an understanding of the composition of your stack.

This illustration from Airstream’s 2019 Stackie entry cluster apps largely by their use situation — planning, inventive, engagement, vendor channel, and measurement — but the top of the pine tree icons signifies the relative time entrepreneurs invest interacting with each and every resource:

7. Relative Degree of Automation

Though looking at the amount of time that end users commit engaged with distinct instruments in your stack, it is an intriguing lens to look at how automatic all those equipment are. Which tools are utilized largely manually? Which ones have major automations? This see can be practical both of those to understand the romance amongst tools and marketing system and functions. It can also aid discover prospects to automate.

Automation is the most significant frontier in Large Ops in my feeling.

This instance from Paychex’s 2019 Stackie entry maps out their martech applications on two dimensions: distinct internet marketing abilities and the diploma to which they are automated:

8. Pace Layering of Platforms and Applications

Above a 10 years in the past, as tech stacks in typical — not just martech — were being expanding swiftly, Gartner proposed a way to organize them by “speed layer.” They recommended three layers: methods of file, programs of differentiation, and methods of innovation.

Devices of history really should be pretty steady and have a sluggish rate of adjust. They’re the platforms on which other program and solutions depend. Units of differentiation embody the processes and ordeals that make your company exceptional. They adjust extra usually, but are however reasonably stable. Programs of innovation are much more experimental, the position where by new abilities can be designed and piloted immediately.

One particular of the ideal Stackie entries was this one particular from Microsoft in 2017, which mapped resources together the infinite loop of buyer journeys, but then also separated them into Gartner’s a few rate layers:

9. Evolution of Martech Resources About Time

Martech stacks don’t stand even now. New applications are added. Old resources are changed. This is portion of the normal evolution of a business enterprise as it grows — and as the broader marketing and martech environment carries on to alter around it. It can be helpful to take a look at your martech stack by the lens of its transforming app inventory in excess of time.

This illustration, despatched in by reader John Schott in 2017, demonstrates a five-calendar year journey of a tiny money providers enterprise:

10. Associated Abilities Map

At the intersection of groups and applications, abilities are created. Rather than looking at your stack by means of the lens of vendor types, you can set up a watch all over various abilities, these types of as marketplaces, person-generated content material, information syndication, qualitative and quantitative investigate, etcetera. Mapping these abilities in clusters, to demonstrate their adjacencies and associations with every single other presents you a image of the ecosystem all-around your stack.

This 2021 Stackie entry from Philips is a great illustration:

Other Approaches to Map Your Stack

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

For occasion, you might organize it around aggregation systems in just your martech stack. How are you horizontally aggregating information, workflow, working experience, and governance across several unique apps, info resources, and client touchpoints? Which resources are you applying to vertically integrate people levels inside unique domains, these types of as CRM?

Alternatively, you may well illustrate your stack to emphasize the degree of customization within just various applications and platforms. They may vary of purely out-of-the-box industrial apps, to packaged merchandise that have been custom-made or extended with your very own code, to completely personalized apps that are special to your organization.

Each individual of these diverse approaches can give you diverse insights into the mother nature of your stack — and aid you converse them to stakeholders throughout your organization.

What does your martech stack glimpse like?

Reminder: Even if you really do not enter The Stackies you — though we unquestionably hope you do — do not ignore to sign up for the totally free webinar on #MartechDay, May possibly 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.