At the core of every marketing stack is a suite of anchor platforms that are essential to your marketing and sales activities and that provide the foundation for the rest of your marketing technology stack. These platforms are generally integrated with other elements of your stack.
Typically, these would include your:
Because these platforms require a significant financial investment and an investment in operator training, it’s important to get the selection right.
As part of your stack rationalization effort, you should be assessing the value that each current anchor platform delivers and ensure that each platform meets your current functional requirements. You should also be checking that the vendor has a robust road map that will deliver new, relevant functionality to carry you forward.
It’s also important to look at how much of each platform’s capabilities you are actually leveraging, and whether there is an opportunity to take advantage of additional features.
Of utmost importance is ensuring that each platform integrates well with your other anchor platforms. If it doesn’t, you may need to develop custom integration code yourself or find a 3rd party provider to develop custom code for you.