How to Build an Awesome Marketing Stack With Real Life Examples

Tools are only as good as your ability to use them.

That much is true.

However, without the right tools, it’s impossible to do your job well.

That’s why modern marketing teams must be thoughtful and strategic about how they build their marketing technology stacks.

By aligning the right tools and technologies with each step in your marketing process, you can ensure you’re well-equipped to work efficiently and effectively to tackle tough challenges.

In this post, we’ll cover three key points:

• What should an effective marketing stack include?
• What does a marketing stack look like when it’s mapped out?
• Which tools should your business consider adopting?

Plus, we’ll give you the inside scoop on the exact marketing tools and technologies we’ve used to build CoSchedule into North Dakota’s fastest-growing startup.

See CoSchedule’s Marketing Technology Stack

CoSchedule has quickly grown into the industry’s preferred marketing calendar solution.

Here are some quick stats highlighting our growth:

• More than one million unique monthly page views.
• More than 200,000 email subscribers.
• More than 60,000 total social media followers.

How did we do it?

By executing an agile marketing strategy with the right tools and technologies (including our own).

Want to see which marketing tools CoSchedule uses today?

Snag our free infographic and take a look.

What Is A Marketing Technology Stack?

According to Optimizely, a marketing technology stack is:

A grouping of technologies that marketers leverage to conduct and improve their marketing activities.

Why Does My Organization Need A Marketing Stack?

Modern marketing is nearly impossible to do well without tools.

By choosing the best technologies for each task and area of need, marketing departments can give themselves the edge over competition while working more effectively and efficiently.

What Does A Marketing Stack Look Like?

The specific tools that make up a marketing technology stack may vary from one organization to another.

Each tool in your stack needs to fulfill a specific obligation, like letting your social media strategists post content more often for example.

A typical marketing tool stack will look something like this:

What Tools Make Up A Full Marketing Stack?

A marketing tool stack is usually made up of one or more tools across multiple categories.

Here are all the different types of tools we’ll cover in this post:

Keep reading to learn more about the different tools in each of these categories.

CRM Tools

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools allow organizations to track detailed customer data and maintain relationships with them.

If you’re looking for a CRM, check out these options.

Salesforce

Salesforce offers an array of marketing software solutions, including their popular CRM, with features like account and contact management, social customer service, and order management (to name a few) SalesForce helps businesses connect with customers.

Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is another versatile platform. Users can focus on customer and data management, lead scoring, and segmentation features. Infusionsoft also offers a mobile app for on the go work.

Hubspot CRM

Hubspot CRM is a free tool from Hubspot. Organizations can manage their pipeline in a visible calendar, create enriched contact records for consumers, and set up personalized email sequences.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive focuses on giving your customer support and sales teams a visual pipeline that lets them manage their deals, plan and organize their tasks, as well as keep track of their progress.

Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics offers a suite of business intelligence applications that offers pre-built and custom solutions to gather and analyze consumer data (and a whole lot more).

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Customer Support Tools

Your customer service team will need technology, too. Since customer support and marketing teams often work closely together to identify common problems customers often have, we’ve included some options here.

Intercom

Intercom is a customer service messaging tool that allows your CS team to access your customer requests through multiple channels. They also have a built-in team inbox and powerful analytics.

Zendesk

Zendesk focuses on giving users the ability to connect directly to customers to solve problems, as well as live chat options to address issues the second they appear.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk allows users to work in a team inbox to manage all incoming tickets, agent collision detection to make sure multiple people aren’t working on the same ticket, and custom ticket status help keep your representatives on track.

Desk.com

Desk.com is part of the Salesforce platform that is focused purely on customer support. Its features include multi-channel assistance, case management, and mobile support.

TeamSupport

TeamSupport is a collaborative customer support system. Users can build customer and contact databases, create notes and alerts for each customer and it has system that lets you know the distress level of your client.

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Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing tools are an essential tool in your marketing stack. On the fence about email marketing? Maybe these three statistics will change your mind.

 

MailChimp

Mailchimp has an easy to use interface, advanced analytics and the ability to integrate with other apps. As one of the most popular options on the market, MailChimp might be the tool you’re looking for, especially if you’re just getting started.

Emma

Emma is another email marketing platform that offers the ability to create targeted messages, list segmentation, and A/B test newsletters.

Aweber

Aweber is an email marketing platform that utilizes drag and drop editorial functions, an RSS to email tool that will automatically create an email for your new blog posts, and autoresponder follow-ups that send your emails to your audience at the right time.

Get Response

Get Response is a multi-feature tool. Some of its abilities include built-in design templates, dynamic content that helps personalize your emails and automated autoresponders to help send your content to your consumers at the right time.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is able to build smart segments and data collection to help you give a personalized approach to your emails. There’s even marketing automation features that can help you customize the email journeys.

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Social Media Marketing Tools

Social media is a staple in most every marketing plan, and the right tools can help you get it done in less time without pulling your hair out.

HootSuite

Hootsuite is a social media marketing platform that gives it’s users the ability to scale their plan based on how much content they send on their channels. Some of Hootsuite’s popular features are bulk scheduling, RSS feed integrations, and social analytics.

Buffer

Buffer users can set a posting schedule, queue content, and check how their posts are doing with built-in analytics.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social includes features for planning campaign content, engaging directly with your audience through the app and the ability to identify brand advocates.

Meet Edgar

Meet Edgar is a strictly social media marketing tool. Its features revolve around everything automated content scheduling to an unlimited content library and category based scheduling.

CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a powerful all in one marketing calendar that allows marketing teams to plan, publish, and measure content, projects, and campaigns. That includes robust social media scheduling and analytics features.

First CoSchedule offers a drag-and-drop calendar that you can use to schedule social media content, from one-off posts to entire campaigns.

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Marketing Project Management Tools

Marketing project management can seem like an impossible task. But, with the right tools, you can make it a snap. Here are some stats on why project management is so important.

Wrike

Wrike is a project management tool offering real-time status updates, resource and workload management, and the ability to collaborate across teams.

Asana

Asana allows teams to create custom projects, control who sees what tasks, and see the progress of projects at a glance.

Basecamp

Basecamp is a team based tool that sorts your co-workers into categories who are then given their projects, task lists and more based what team they’re on.

CoSchedule

CoSchedule knows how difficult it can be to juggle multiple marketing campaigns. Our calendar lets users create different content pieces that are grouped together under one project title. From their users can give feedback, check on progress or ask questions without getting lost in an email chain or having to wondering when a deadline is coming up.

Take a look at how our own team uses CoSchedule for marketing project management (skip to 48:00 ... or watch the entire webinar recap, we promise it's good stuff):

Trello

Trello is a kanban-style tool with customizable boards, lists, and cards that allow users to see at a glance the status of their project, share updates and communicate directly in the app.

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Social Listening and Brand Monitoring Tools

Dropping in on conversations and seeing what your audience and others have to say about your brand is a vital part of maintaining the story of your organization. With the right tools, your social media team can eliminate the tedious task of tuning in manually. Here are a few more statistics to show you why your marketing tool stack should have a monitoring tool:

Mention

Mention is a social listening tool that lets users monitor discussions around their brand on social and the web.

Talkwalker

Talkwalker lets you monitor the conversations happening about your brand on over 150 million websites with customizable alerts and real-time response capabilities.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is an easy way to set up keyword or topic related alerts that send links directly to your email address.

BrandWatch

Brandwatch lets users monitor the conversation about their brand with custom reports and demographic data about their audience and share of voice data which allows you to see how much of the conversation your brand is dominating.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo has features that create custom alerts for content around keywords, authors, and domains. This gives a brand a chance to see what their customers are talking about and what types of content they’re consuming the most of.

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Landing Page Tools

Landing pages are the bread and butter of your website and building them correctly can make or break your organization. A tool can help make that process easier. Check out these three statistics on why you need a landing page tool.

 

Unbounce

Unbounce allows marketers to create landing pages without having to code by having multiple templates to choose from. Plus, they integrate with a ton of other tools.

Leadpages

Leadpages has created features like mobile-friendly templates and drag-and-drop customization options.

Instapage

Instapage is a landing page tool with the ability to create custom fonts, generate heat maps and it integrates with multiple platforms.

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Content Management Systems (CMS)

There are a lot of content management systems out there. How do you pick the best one for your business? It all comes down to balancing budget with your unique requirements. Let’s look at some popular options, from free and open source, all the way up to commercial enterprise solutions.

Contentful

Contentful is a CMS that has a rich editor interface, multi-language options, and a full media library.

WordPress

WordPress lets users build everything from blogs to full-blown websites with 100s of themes to choose from.

Expression Engine

Expression Engine has features like the ability to publish in multiple locations, community management tools, and flexible content types to name a few.

Adobe Experience Manager

The Adobe Experience Manager has the ability to create mobile content and marketing campaigns as well as managing multiple sites.

Hubspot

Hubspot allows businesses to create, edit and manage their blog content, landing pages and more all in one spot.

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Marketing Analytics Tools

As a marketer, you want to be able to prove that efforts that you are putting forward are having a positive effect on your business. Having an analytics tool allows you to see what’s working, and what isn’t. Here are three reasons to show you why you should have an analytics tool in your marketing technology stack.

Clicky

Clicky gives users features like heat maps and on-site analytics which are updated in real time.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics has the ability to build, segmentation options, custom reports and gives it to users in real-time. Plus, CoSchedule integrates with Google Analytics and bit.ly to make tracking social media referral traffic easy.

Piwik

Piwik has options customizable dashboards, goal conversion tracking, content tracking and site search analytics just to name a few.

Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is another analytics app that allows users to build customizable reports based on metrics and KPIs that your organization wants to track. It will enable users to A/B test almost anything as well as track activity on your website.

Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics is another powerhouse tool from the Adobe software team. Its features include advanced segmentation, activity maps and the ability to build and see customer fallout and flow movements.

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SEO Tools

Search engine optimization tools are a powerhouse when it comes to getting your organization in front of potential consumers. Targeting the right keywords at the right time can help increase the conversion potential of your audience. In case you need any more reasons to have an SEO tool check out these three statistics.

Moz

Moz makes it easy to do keyword research, track rankings, monitor inbound traffic, gather backlink data, crawl your site, and more.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs includes features for backlink analysis, keyword research, and more.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools has built an SEO auditor, a link manager, and the ability to monitor your competitors from one place.

SERPs.com

SERPs.com includes access to a keyword rank checker, a keyword research database, and Google location changer.

SEM Rush

SEM Rush allows users to conduct SEO research using keyword difficulty tools, backlink analysis, and a keyword research database.

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Online Advertising Tools

Online advertising has become a massive tool for marketers because of its necessity. Without a tool it becomes nearly impossible for your team to execute your ads well. Why? Because of all the different moving parts. Check out these statistics on why you should be involved with online advertising.

WordStream

WordStream helps users manage multiple online advertising channels including Facebook, Google, and Bing as well as being able to handle online advertising for companies if they choose.

AdRoll

AdRoll let’s customers create ads with CRM data, expanding the reach of your ads and options to personalize ads for your audience.

SEM Rush

SEM Rush has some PPC functionality including the ability to manage and optimize keyword lists using Google Ad Words.

Adwords Performance Grader

WordStream created a free Adwords Performance Grader which allows users to grade things like account activity, click through rates and wasted spend through their AdWords account.

Adstage.io

Adstage.io is an all in one tool that tracks your organization's paid search and social search across multiple channels. It also builds automated custom reports that users can download at any time.

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Video Tools

Video marketing has been on the rise, and its impact across marketing teams is becoming more and more apparent. In fact, Facebook alone garners 32 billion video views a day. If that’s not enough to drive home the value of having a video tool maybe these three statistics will.

Wistia

Wistia is a robust video hosting platform that is packed full of features like the ability to customize thumbnails, the ability to embed videos and robust video analytics.

Animoto

Animoto is an all in one video platform that has tools like a voice over creator, pre-made storyboards, and collage and layout options.

Vimeo

Vimeo is a video platform that lets people host their videos, live stream or sell content with a variety of plans to choose from.

Brightcove

Brightcove helps marketers create powerful videos with automatic optimization options, build customizable video galleries and the ability to live stream.

Vidyard

Vidyard is able to personalize videos, optimize them to convert your leads into sales and gather data on the performance of your videos.

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Marketing Automation Tools

Marketing automation is becoming a lifesaver for marketing teams that are trying to get more done in less time. The right tool can be a lifesaver for the members of your marketing team. Check out these statistics that show you why you need marketing automation.

Marketo

Marketo allows users to automate some of their marketing processes like creating personalized campaigns that scale, identifying top prospects,  and finding and connecting with the right customers.

AutoPilot

AutoPilot can create custom campaigns that nurture customers through engaging with them through different channels automatically,

Wishpond

Wishpond lets users build personalized campaigns through email to help identify leads to send to your sales team automatically.

Eloqua

Eloqua is a tool that is branched off of Oracle. Customers can automatically create information-rich profiles for customers, build cross-channel campaigns and use powerful data collection to identify the right leads.

Customer.io

Customer.io is an email marketing automation platform with features that let you get more done by automatically sending email campaigns at the perfect time based on the triggers your potential customers selects.
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Content Curation Tools

Curating content is vital for any marketing team due to its ability to fill gaps in a schedule, allowing others to work ahead on other projects. However, you can’t curate content from just anywhere and throw it up on a social platform or blog. Content curation tools can help you filter through the fluff and find what you need. Check out three statistics that will convince you to add a curation tool to your stack.

Curata

Curata is a curation tool that uses keywords, sources and more to determine preferences of users who are curating content. You can scroll through feeds to find and share pieces that connect with your and your audience.

Feedly

Feedly allows users to build RSS feeds of content around topics, keywords or themes making it easy to skim content and add it to your schedule.

Pocket

Pocket is a curation tool built around the idea that you can save content that you want to read or view later directly from their browser.

Scoop.It

Scoop.It works by letting users search and discover content with different topics and keywords. Then users can publish their newly found content directly on their website from the app.

CoSchedule Chrome Extension

The CoSchedule Chrome Extension lets you add curated content right to their calendar without having to open a second app or screen. Just click the logo, add your text and schedule it to publish.

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What Are You Going To Add To Your Marketing Tool Stack?

You’ve got a list of over 60 different tools to support every phase of your marketing team's workflow. Changing or adding tools to your marketing tool stack can help you move faster, get more done and save time.

Do you have a favorite marketing technology tool? Let us know about it in the comments.

December 14, 2017