Integrated or ‘best-of-breed’ Marketing Tech – which is best?

Alternatives for managing marketing technology systems

This new, independent research from the IAB and Winterberry Group reveals that Marketers are still divided over which technology will solve their key challenges - how to gather, merge and manipulate cross-channel data.

'Marketers are on a journey to unlock the power of their data by unifying it across desktop, mobile, CRM, email, point-of-sale and more.

Their vision is to create a seamless experience for customers, but many brands are stuck in first gear because of the complex and difficult task of connecting massive amounts of fragmented data,'

Mike Sands, CEO, Signal.

In this report executive-level marketers and key experts mainly from North America, working in the advertising, marketing, media and technology industries gave their views and goals for cross-channel marketing, and how to extract the value of data along with the challenges of technology.

Which systems do marketers prefer?

There was no clear preference of 'Integrated (stack-approach)' which manages multiple functions in one platform vs 'Independent model' with a focus on one or a handful of specialisms. 30% of respondents had 'no preference for integration' and 15% were planning on using an 'independent solution'.

How can you support your marketing and advertising better, with your data technology?

We know that a single system will never a sole solution across marketing and requires additional factors. It's the old saying that it's only as good as the data, the people, the processes, the strategy and it goes on.. The research supports this, and highlights that businesses are looking for 1. improved system integration 2. Better processes for data sharing and 3. skilled colleagues to drive their strategy.

For the full report you can download Winterberry Group's Report on 'Marketing Data Technology: Cutting Through the Complexity, January 2015 ' (registration is required).