The technology now available to marketers can be a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, there is software for almost any problem a marketer could think up, from marketing automation to content distribution. On the other hand, all these platforms create massive amounts of data that can be overwhelming to most marketers and a big problem for CMOs to manage.

The latter problem continues to grow as the technology stack becomes bigger…and IT IS becoming bigger. Considering some companies have an annual technology budget, it is almost certain that new apps will be added every year. Yes, this is great, but what do we do with all the data that is being created?

The Data Problem

With every app comes more data. This is great…if there is a way to manage the data and make sense of it. The problem is that companies are creating and adding new data without a strategy to manage or create actionable insights from it. What is the purpose of adding all this cool technology if the data cannot be analyzed and marketing teams are unable to draw conclusions and improve?

Some of the challenges marketers are facing with the growing marketing stack include:

• Properly training employees to use all the technology in the stack effectively.
• Having the talent necessary to manage data flowing through all data generating platforms.
• Maintaining control of data from platforms owned by business groups outside of marketing.
• Cost of housing data in multiple platforms.

The Solution

Fortunately, adding technology to the stack does not have to be a double-edged sword. There is a solution to the data problems that go along with the growing marketing stack. That solution is called Cross Stack Segmentation. This innovative new concept is designed to pull data from any app connected to it and allow the marketer to segment and move that data seamlessly from one platform to another. This solves many of the problems that come with a large technology stack by:

• Limiting the number of platforms a marketer needs to be trained on effectively manages the data being created.
• Eliminating the need to hire a specialist for specific platforms to manage the data being created by them effectively.
• Giving marketing the access to data they need from technology that is owned or administered from other departments.
• Minimize the cost of storing data in multiple platforms by pulling specific data on demand when you need it.

These can be major pain points especially for small businesses and startups with limited budgets. It essentially allows the marketing department to maintain a larger technology stack user fewer resources and lower costs.

Another good thing is that technology is helping entire organizations become integrated. But, that also means that some of the technology marketing is used to owning may now fall under the ownership of a different group. This can be very frustrating to marketers who have traditionally had full control over these platforms. Cross Stack Segmentation can help alleviate this frustration by non-invasively giving marketing the data they need from these platforms without causing a headache for the platform owner.

To Conclude

Technology has revolutionized marketing and has opened many doors as to how marketers reach their customers. For the most part this has been a positive movement, but opportunity can create challenges, such as big data. Fortunately, there are solutions to overcome these challenges and allow marketers to keep reaping the benefits of marketing technology. To learn more about how Cross Stack segmentation is helping marketers overcome these challenges and maintain control of their data in a changing technology environment check out our new whitepaper, Taming the Marketing Stack ‘Tower of Babel’

To learn more about how 4Thought Marketing utilizes Cross Stack segmentation through its 4Segment platform, please feel free to contact us.