Martech teams devote most of their time to automation, campaign management tools

When asked which marketing tools are most likely to be used during the week, 70% of the more than 250 martech professionals we surveyed in our MarTech Career Survey put marketing automation and campaign management solutions at the top of their list.

This comes as no surprise to the MOPs community — especially right now as many teams are focused on getting campaigns out the door without limited resources and staff. What is surprising is the second most popular martech platform: Spreadsheets.

Stuck in reporting mode

Martech professionals report they spend at least 10 hours a week in spreadsheets — solutions like Excel, Google Sheets and Airtable. So what do we make of these findings? Most likely, while many MOPs teams are devoting much of their time to automation and campaign management responsibilities, a fair number of martech teams are spending just as much time reporting on their efforts.

Which marketing technology tools, if any, do you spend at least 10 hours a week working in?

Project management — a crucial function of any effective martech team — was another popular platform, with half of the survey respondents spending a large part of their workweek using project management tools. Nearly 60% of the martech professionals surveyed said they spend 10 hours or more in CRM platforms and other customer data tools.

We’ve been at this a while now

Almost 40% of the survey respondents said they have been working in marketing technology for a decade or more now, proving martech’s legacy. It may feel like yesterday we were just getting started automating our email marketing campaigns and researching analytics platforms that could integrate with our anchor platforms, but time flies when you’re trying to keep up with the exponential growth that happens across the technology landscape.

We’ve witnessed the martech landscape go from 100 logos in 2011 to more than 7,000 solutions last year. Now we know from the survey’s findings that a large majority of people currently managing their company’s martech stacks have been at it from the start.

How many years experience do you have specifically working in marketing technology, marketing operations, or a similar role?

The 2020 MarTech Today Career Survey was conducted in conjunction with ChiefMartec.com, the marketing technology blog run by MarTech Conference Chair Scott Brinker. Survey participants included 258 marketing technologists primarily located in the U.S., supporting both B2C and B2B marketing organizations.

Over the next few days we will be highlighting various elements from that survey.

But as Brinker noted during Tuesday’s Discover Martech keynote, more than 60% of the survey participants identified as “Operations Orchestrators” when asked which role — operations orchestrator, brand builder, analytics architect, martech manager or marketing maker — was an integral part of their current job responsibilities.

Related: Get to know today’s marketing technologist archetypes