• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, October 26, 2018

Ad tech and Martech may be linked in some people's minds, but they are two different things.

“Marketers have had siloed teams  —  one responsible for acquisition, and the other for retention and nurturing,” says Jeff Kupietzky, CEO of ad-tech platform PowerInbox. “The first is primarily supported by ad tech, and those teams never interact with current customers.”

On the other side, it is unlikely that the customer support team has contact with prospects or is using the CRM system.

So what is the connection between these two marketing technologies? Email.

“Email is a tool that can be used for both acquisition and/or retention,” Kupietzky says. “It has as its core a unique identifier that can lead a brand to connect with a known individual.”

Unlike cookies, which can lead to vague determinations, email IDs are precise. A specific individual can be compared across platforms, whether mobile or desktop. 

Don’t you first have to know the email address?

“It’s contingent on getting the email address,” Kupietzky answers. “Usually, there’s an existing relationship if you start with Martech.”

That’s all it takes?

“To be honest, I would argue the email address is the minimum you need,” he adds. “There are ways to aggregate other data against hashed email.” 

For example, marketers can acquire data points such as gender or age in the open market.

OK. But Drift just did a paper urging marketers to do away with gated content and web forms. 

“It all depends on what the marketer is trying to accomplish ,” Kupietzky says. “The most likely situation is that they are trying to reduce the barriers for individuals to engage with content. But say you wanted to find that user again — they may not be able to be found through a cookie. At some point there has to be an acquisition event."

That could be achieved with an offer — say, 10% for signing up for the list, or an invitation to receive pricing alerts.

Even then, success may hinge on whether the two sides are leveraging the same data. The prospecting side may look at “all advertising wares,” from analog to digital. But the prospect is soon passed off to the marketing department, and then the upselling begins. 

In an integrated company, the data would fly back and forth, and the ad tech side would look at “lookalikes or folks with these segmentation aspects,” Kupietzky says.

Do companies really get it?

“It’s very early — I don’t think they’re there yet. If it’s still two departments, it’s a good indicator they’re siloed,” Kupietzky adds. Pure-play digital companies are more likely to have integrated teams and technology. 

Kupietzky concedes that the task is far from easy, given the multitude of channels. “It becomes complex to keep track of all these different sources, but having email as the primary key will be the best strategy,” he concludes.