Get Stacked 2020 – Key Learnings

It’s hard to believe that the time has rolled around again for the annual B2B Marketing Get Stacked event, but as with most things in the current climate – with a change in approach! Set up as a virtual event, this would typically strike the fear of death by PowerPoint into the hearts of most marketers, but I’m pleased to report that B2B Marketing executed this in a way that was not only smooth running and engaging, but every bit as insightful as previous years.

Get Stacked is *THE* event for everything marketing technology, hosting the cream of the martech crop – with networking opportunities with some real pro’s, inspirational speaking and Q&A sessions run across 5 streams, (including a session from our in-house expert Ashley Chandler – more on that later!), Get Stacked promises to give answers to some of the burning questions in martech. I’ve summarised some of my learnings from the two days below.

Structure a martech stack that works

When building out your stack from scratch, its best to start with a strong “spine” of functions that deliver the core needs of the business, and once this is in place and functioning as it should, look to enhance with additional platforms as you need them. Having this structure in place will not only prevent a chaotic situation later down the line but will ensure that you can demonstrate value for each function to key stakeholders.

Don’t cave into the shiny new toy

With ever emerging technology, it can be easy to get caught in the “shiny new toy” trap, so it is important to maximise your existing tech stack before caving into buying something that may become an integration nightmare. Not everything works together as seamlessly as it promises! Do your research first, not just into the new function and the integration – but on your existing stack.

Tidy your room!

Its easier to keep things in order if you “tidy your room” as Emily Gravel at Carbon Black brilliantly puts. Its all too easy to not follow the above advice and find yourself trying to wrangle a martech beast. She suggests a three-step process for keeping on top of your stack.

• 1. Simple, short, and clear naming conventions
• 2. Folder systems – by year/program type
• 3. Effective archiving

Spending the time to train your team thoroughly on these processes will help to keep things clean – practice good feng shui with your martech stack and you and your clients will reap the benefits.

Test and Learn

Without an ounce of bias, I took a huge amount of value from our very own inhouse MA expert Ashley Chandlers’ session, which is focused around building their award-winning marketing automation campaign with TMF. He talks about “Test and Learn” which actually makes a lot of sense for all aspects of marketing – not just martech.

Ash credits a great deal of the TMF campaign success around continual testing and learning throughout this campaign to drive better results, top 3 being:

• 1. Tactical/campaign Testing – Martech lets you easily do A/B testing, design testing and way more.
• 2. Structural level – Plan, test and learn over longer time periods whether that is testing different campaign lengths, increasing complexity over time or testing integrations one at a time rather than all at once.
• 3. Lead scoring analysis – Test a simpler lead scoring setup for a reasonable time then check the quality/volumes of leads coming through. Then make updates and test again over time.

The key thing to remember here, is to learn – adapting your processes as you go, or all the measuring work will have been for nothing!

Ash also suggests setting learning objectives and measurables as well as just KPI’s and statistic deliverables – this will not only prevent burning out with information overload but will be a great morale booster for the team.

So there are my 4 key learnings from Get Stacked 2020 – being a relative novice to the martech world, I hope they will be useful for those starting out their martech journey, or indeed for the martech team getting a bit lost in the chaos.

Really B2B have an inhouse team of marketing automation experts on hand to support businesses no matter the stage of their journey – get in touch for an informal chat on 02392 314 498.