The ultimate marketing tech stack for 2022

Creating a martech stack that helps you achieve real business impact is no small feat. With thousands of options to choose from, how do you choose the right marketing technology for your business?

You may be familiar with Scott Brinker's famous marketing technology (martech) landscape slide. Known as the Martech 5000 - named after the 5,000 companies that competed in the global marketing technology space in 2017 - this is said to be the most frequently shared slide of all time.

By 2020, Brinker had added more than 2,000 vendors, or more than 7,000 marketing software vendors competing for the attention of the same buyers in a $121 billion industry. He revisited his landscape research in 2021 and confirmed that it does indeed not shrink. One thing is clear: this market is HUGE.

Despite marketing executives' optimism that spending will recover in 2021, marketing budgets have fallen to 6.4% of overall company revenue. That's down from 11% in 2020. Thanks to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, marketers are under more pressure than ever to get more bang for their buck, and that means they are looking for tools that have a big return on investment. (ROI) associated with an acceptable price.

These days, teams want a simplified, integrated martech stack so they don't waste time switching between tools or manually transferring information from one place to another. This not only saves time and makes marketers more efficient, but also reduces the amount of budget required for effective campaigns.

Customer expectations are also higher than ever. As digital offerings across industries become more sophisticated, consumers want their interactions with brands to be seamless, personalized, and engaging (that's not too much to ask, is it?). To meet people where they are and build meaningful relationships at every stage of the customer journey, marketers need an integrated marketing technology stack with tools that drive one-to-one engagement.

A new wave of low-code and no-code marketing technologies makes it easier for marketers to take ownership of the tools they work with, without having to be coding experts or rely on outside agencies to make things work. These modern martech stacks allow marketers to do more with less, which is ideal for teams trying to build business efficiency and resilience.

We wanted to know how companies were defining and redefining their marketing technology stacks and using marketing technology to help them achieve their goals. With that in mind, we spoke with executives from some of the fastest-growing software companies — including Hubspot, Clearbit, Aircall, Heap, and more — to get a sense of their vision for the year ahead. , what areas they invest in the most, and their tips for building a winning martech stack. (Tip: Marketing tech stacks are getting smarter, sleeker, and infinitely more streamlined.)

We'll also show you how your business can navigate the marketing technology landscape to create a flexible and productive marketing technology stack that can help scale your business this year and beyond. Take a look.

What is a marketing technology stack?

A marketing technology (or martech) stack is the set of technologies that marketers use to optimize and augment their marketing processes throughout the customer lifecycle. Marketing technologies are used to streamline internal collaboration, analyze marketing campaign performance, and conduct personalized and proactive communication with customers.

Building a smarter martech stack

Before we dive into the strategy and design of your martech stack, we spoke with some of the most innovative and fastest growing software companies to understand how they plan their martech stacks. The most striking find? Companies are thinking about how they can optimize their existence...