Life is like a stack of martech

Kicking off the first full day of the MarTech East conference, MarTech conference chair Scott Brinker delivered his welcome keynote filled with valuable approaches to martech and Indiana Jones references a-plenty.

Brinker dove into concepts ranging from product adoption to stack integration, sharing his “eight P’s of self-service martech” to help demonstrate how our organizations can move from being assisted by martech to being embedded (or even absorbed) by martech.

But what do organizations look like when they are embedded or absorbed by martech – and should we bother trying to get to the next level?

Embedded MarTech

Organizations embedded in martech, according to Brinker, typically have controlled efficiency, but are often limited to a few players within the company. Requests are often queued as they flow between departments, and projects are managed in a narrow and sequential manner that can put limitations on our own capabilities.

Absorbed MarTech

Absorbed environments rely on instantaneous self-service, allowing marketers to make martech decisions without involving IT departments thanks to free and freemium go-to-market models. The scope of projects are wide and parallel, managed in shorter sprints rather than implementing a single project at a time. Absorbed organizations can bring together many diverse ideas and bring them to life with increase adaptability as projects scale.

The eight p’s of Self-service MarTech

You may be familiar with the four p’s of marketing, and according to Brinker we have another set of “p-words” to remember. Brinker breaks the eight p’s of martech into two categories: technology and people.

Technology consists of:

• Platform (the commons)
• Partitions (modular design)
• Permissioning (governance) and perception (monitoring).

People consists of:

• Permission (empowerment)
• Preparation (enablement)
• Principles (guardrails)
• Passion (self-explanatory).

Our different approaches to martech will continue to evolve as the technology does, and we’re excited to continue to explore these themes throughout the rest of the conference.