• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, April 9, 2019

Like other marketers, email specialists are warily eyeing martech. What should they be spending? On what should they base their marketing? Will technology rob them of their jobs?

To answer the first question, 75% feel they are spending the right amount on martech, up from 63% last year. 

Moreover, 46% plan to increase their budgets slightly this year, and 18% plan to greatly add to them. Another 34% will keep them at the same level, and a tiny fraction will slightly reduce them. 

Then there’s the second question, For 62%, their marketing strategies are now people-based — 62% vs. 38% that are data-driven. And 34% are also pursuing account-based strategies.

And to answer the last question, 42% fear they will lose their jobs to martech someday, up from 39% in 2019.  

Here’s another big if: What about GDPR and privacy in general?

Of the marketers polled, 27% claim they haven’t changed the way they do their job in response to the threat of data breaches. In contrast, 16% use less customer data, and 7% collect less. In general, 50% say they are protective of the data they use/collect.

That said, 33% say complying with GDPR is somewhat easy, and 15% very much so. Only 15% find it somewhat difficult, and 3% find it very daunting.

But media apparently isn’t getting the GDPR story right.

Of those polled, 29% say GDPR has been accurately portrayed in the news. But 28% feel it has not been discussed enough, and 18% who say it was overhyped. Another 35% feel GDPR hasn’t affected their company. And 25% ask: What is GDPR?

Here’s a one-off question thrown in: Is vendor consolidation hurting martech implementation?

No way--58% agree it has made martech more accessible, 13% very much so.

Meanwhile, 52% say customers access all or mot of their content on mobile and 10% say consumers access all content via mobile — " a bold sign of desktop’s decline under mobile’s reign," the study states.

Here’s how the respondents describe their marketing stacks:

• Integrated best-of-breed architecture — 34%
• Single-vendor suite (Adobe, Oracle, etc.) — 27%
• Limited piecemeal solutions — 9%
• Fragmented best-of-breed architecture — 8%
• Proprietary technology developed internally (“dark martech”) — 5%
• Nonexistent — 17%

Here are a couple of other stats:

This year, 62% plan to create more social media posts, 47% plan to create more videos and 35% plan more blog posts. Tip sheets and white papers don’t rank as high. Fifty-four percent of respondents incorporate ad tech into their strategies.

Walker Sands surveyed 316 marketing, sales and advertising specialists.