“Everything changes, and nothing stands still.”  -Heraclitus

We’ve all been forced to deal with a lot of changes in the last few months, and there are certainly more to come. But as we’ve hastily adapted to new ways of working, this may actually be a good time to consider voluntary changes to improve work going forward. 

Customers and markets seem to be changing faster than ever; you may find that changing up the marketing tools in your stack will help you keep up.Of course, marketing tools and solutions are also changing rapidly. As of May 2024, there were over 14,000 MarTech solutions on the market, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. From 2023 to 2024, ChiefMartec recorded an incredible 27.8% YoY growth in tools.

Understanding how to use the best marketing tools to your advantage will not only make your life easier but it’ll help you provide better services to your clients resulting in higher retention.

Evaluating all the options on your own can be daunting, so here's a  guide to some of the solutions our customers like best, based on where they choose to route data.

What is a martech stack?

Marketing technology, or Martech, are the tools and software used by marketers to accomplish a wide range of tasks. Martech includes tools that touch on hundreds of process, both big and small, including activities like advertising, email marketing, analytics, content marketing and SEO, and more.

A martech stack is the suite of tools that the marketing team uses – like a development team, marketing assembles a 'stack' based on factors such as interoperability, ease of use, cost, and ability to execute. The ideal martech stack is a moving target, with new tools released nearly daily, but the true north for a martech stack is to help marketers run efficient, effective, and scalable marketing campaigns.

What are the components of a martech stack?

Your martech stack should be composed of the tools and software needed to run the entirety of your marketing efforts. The full stack of martech for modern digital marketing is expansive and covers tools like:

• Content management systems
• Social media tools
• Digital advertising
• Marketing automation
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Customer Data Platforms (CDP)
• Analytics and Reporting
• Email marketing

List of Marketing Tools for Martech Stacks

Our library of cloud destinations is well-stocked with a variety of online marketing tools. Some are narrowly focused, but most are multi-tools, supporting a variety of marketing functions, from data storage and management, through marketing analytics, to advertising management.

This guide divides the tools into three main categories: data and analytics tools, audience analytics and user behavior, and advertising management and placement. The multi-tools, naturally, do not fit neatly into categories. This guide lists the key features of each tool; you can find more detailed descriptions in our library. 

Data and Analytics Tools List

Effective marketing starts with data, lots and lots of data, which needs to be organized, stored and analyzed to give you the insights you need to create a compelling marketing campaign and deliver effective advertising to the right audience. A big part of learning how to build a martech stack is doing the things that no one else wants to do. Managing data in an efficient and effective way gives you the best chance to generate new leads, build new business, and get results for your clients.

Data Storage and Management

This category includes data warehouses, data streaming services, tag managers and event logging solutions. 

Of course, these represent a wide variety of use cases. From simple tag management, which involves no real data collection at all, to data warehousing which can be used for incredibly advanced analysis and data science.

If you're ready to move beyond tag management and start storing data, consider the difference between data lakes and data warehouses to help make your decision. 

Audience Analytics and User Behavior

This next bucket of solutions analyze user interaction on your website and mobile applications, and provide the insight you need to segment and target audiences through behavior analysis, customer intelligenx, market research and surveys. Remember what we said about managing data? Once you have all that data, you need to know what to do with it. There are many types of marketing tools within the marketing tech stack to help you translate the data into actions you need to take within your business.

Marketing Analytics

What you measure, you improve. Marketing analytics tools help to provide insights about what is happening on your web properties to allow you to optimize for conversions, engagement, and brand recognition.

Marketing Content and Customer Experience

Effective marketing content and customer experience are critical for building lasting relationships and driving conversions. These tools focus on personalized campaigns, seamless customer interactions, and optimizing every touchpoint to enhance engagement and ROI.

Campaign Management

Running efficient and impactful campaigns is a cornerstone of digital marketing success. These tools enable streamlined campaign performance tracking, ad optimization, and real-time analytics to ensure maximum effectiveness across multiple channels.

Customer Relationship Management

A strong CRM system helps businesses connect with their audience by streamlining communication and personalizing customer interactions. These platforms offer tools like live chat, behavior-based messaging, and integrated customer insights to drive engagement and loyalty.

Marketing Automation

Automation tools are designed to take the heavy lifting out of marketing processes, from email campaigns to predictive analytics. These solutions help businesses scale their efforts while delivering personalized, data-driven communications.

Optimization and A/B Testing

Understanding what resonates with your audience is essential for continuous improvement. Optimization and A/B testing tools offer insights into user behavior, enabling businesses to fine-tune their strategies and deliver top-performing digital experiences.

Advertising Tools and Resources

Having the right advertising tools is a crucial component when learning how to build a martech stack. These tools will not only help you put together your advertisements but they’ll also help with managing and organizing them. Best of all, many advertising tools can help you schedule and place your ads too. The less time you have to spend in front of the computer the better. Converting all that advertising data into actionable insights is crucial. Many of these tools help translate the data into steps you can take to improve your business and your results.

Advertising Management

Managing advertising campaigns effectively requires tools that provide deep insights and streamline cross-platform operations. These solutions focus on attribution, performance tracking, and optimization to ensure maximum ROI from ad spend.

Advertisement Placement

Placing ads strategically is essential to reaching the right audience at the right time. These tools support ad creation, placement, and syndication across multiple platforms, helping businesses achieve higher visibility and engagement.

Other

These platforms enhance productivity, monitor performance, and facilitate seamless communication within marketing teams.

Let MetaRouter Connect Your Data to Its Destination

MetaRouter is a dead simple customer data infrastructure that collects customer data from all your devices and routes it to all your destinations. 

We have simplified analytics integration to these destinations, making it easy for you to change your stack without consuming developer resources. There is no need to set up JavaScript libraries on every page of your site for each new tool, or install API libraries or  SDKs, or make major changes to your code. Once you have set up event tracking in your MetaRouter UI, you will be able to route and send data to any of our cloud destinations, without writing custom code for each one. 

We may not be free to roam the world as we once we did right now, but MetaRouter can take your data to new destinations. We make it easy for you to stay flexible and keep your marketing stack agile. The whole goal of our product is to make it easy for you to not just understand but actually try out different combinations of tools to find the stack that works best for you—with the click of a button. 

We’re always developing new integrations on customers’ requests, so if you don’t see a tool you really want in our library, contact us at support@metarouter.io and we’ll get you connected. 

Photo by Iva Rajović on Unsplash