• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, September 20, 2021

Marketers are using too many tools and integrations — and getting too few results, according to The State of Martech, a study from SharpSpring conducted in partnership with Ascend2. 

This is a special headache for email marketing teams, since email is the top tool used by both marketing and sales. Overall, 83% agree that consolidating tools would increase their efficiency. 

In general, 21% of firms are extremely successful at achieving their priorities with their marketing strategy , and 70% somewhat so. Only 9% are unsuccessful.  

But they’re unhappy with the tools they use for these functions:  

• Use data between the sales and marketing teams to management and convert leads? Six, a failing grade. 
• Track customer demographic, firmographic, and behavioral data across the entire lifecycle? Six. 
• Achieve a single, centralized view of the customer? Six. 
• Work with customer data seamlessly across all tools? Six. 

Some of this may have to do with skill level: Of the marketers polled, 52% have the expertise to personalize the customer experience based on demographic data. But only 41% can do so with behavioral data, and 37% with firmographic data. 

And, 61% of marketers are only somewhat satisfied with their ability to link Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) across channels and stages of the funnel. Only 10% are extremely happy, and 25% are somewhat unsatisfied and 4% very much so.  

In general, marketing campaigns have these priorities:

Acquiring more customers — 59%

Growing revenue — 59% 

Building a strong brand — 42% 

Generating quality traffic and leads — 32%

Optimizing customer experience — 30%

Increasing ROI — 18% 

Aligning marketing and sales — 13%

Improving conversion rates — 9%

Measuring performance — 9% 

Note: Executive teams are 40% less likely than others in the firm to consider general quality leads and aligning sales and marketing as top priorities. 

Their greatest challenges have a different skew: 

• Generating quality leads — 37%
• Attributing results to marketing — 26%
• Generating enough leads — 25% 
• Retaining customers — 22%
• Staying current with new marketing trends —21%
• Tracking leads — 18% 
• Personalization — 18% 
• Brand consistency across all channels — 17%
• Allocating sufficient resources — 17%
• Interpreting data and analytics — 16%
• Alignment with sales team — 15%
• Determining success of specific channels — 12%
• Understanding customer journey/buying cycle —10%

What’s more, marketers are bedeviled by these problems:

• Lack of time — 47% 
• Lack of budget — 47% 
• Lack of people to perform work — 39% 
• Lack of tools or technology — 30% 
• Lack of appropriate data — 29% 
• Lack of buy-in from management — 11%

What goes into the average martech stack? Marketing teams use these tools:

• Email — 78%
• Social engagement — 60%
• Landing pages — 39%
• Video — 34% 
• Brand management — 31% 
• Social listening — 29% 
• SEO — 28%
• Ad retargeting — 26%
• Forms — 25% 
• Workflows/drip campaigns — 18% 
• CMS—15% 
• Testing—12%
• Chatbot—10% 

Sales teams utilize these tools:

• Email — 76%
• Social media — 60%
• Calendar/scheduling — 43% 
• Project management — 32%
• Video — 31%
• Brand management—30% 
• CRM — 26% 
• CMS — 26% 
• Conferencing/demos — 25%
• Automation/sales enablement — 12%

The most successful marketers are 182% more likely to be using drip campaigns to nurture all of their leads:

• Every time — 5%
• Most of the time — 16%
• Sometimes — 31%
• Rarely — 23% 
• Never — 25%

How many tools do they use?

Of those polled, 52% use three, 27% deploy six and 12% have 10. In addition, 5% have 11 or more tools and 4% have none. 

Companies manage their customer data in customer data platforms (6%), customer relationship management systems (35%), spreadsheets (21%) and a combination of the above (36). 

Working with SharpSpring, Ascend2 surveyed 187 marketing professionals in the U.S. in July 2021.