🔊 Building a roadmap for your martech stack

Plus, time spent on social media in April surged beyond original predictions. May 19, 2020 Good morning Marketer, are you frustrated with one (or more) of your marketing tools? Before you start the search for a new tool, take a step back. Rather than scrapping tools and replacing them with quick solutions, [consider building a roadmap]( based on an assessment of your martech needs. “We see customer tech stacks that have 30-plus applications — even 50-plus is not unusual,” said Ed King, CEO for the data orchestration platform Openprise. “Installation for a lot of these marketing technologies and sales technologies are very easy. This is the attraction of [the tools], but making them work together is becoming more like a nightmare.” During his [Discover MarTech presentation](, King outlined the challenges of building a scalable and manageable martech stack — and offered a roadmap to move your tools to the next level. King suggested that martech stacks include six functional areas: data gathering and storage, data quality, funnel management, process automation, reporting and analytics, and compliance. To be effective in those six areas, martech teams must commit to an assessment — either internally or conducted by an outside consultancy — to identify gaps in technology and where tools overlap. An effective assessment will help evaluate and justify new technology investments, as well as determine if existing martech contracts should be renewed. We’ve got more for you below, including an indicator of forecasted versus actual time spent on social media in April. Taylor Peterson,Deputy Editor Indicators Time spent on Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook in April exceeds forecast Social media usage increased sharply in April as stay-at-home orders remained the norm, surpassing expectations originally predicted in November 2019. Research firm [eMarketer]( released revised estimates for usage on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook this week. Its previous forecast pegged time-spent on social would increase by only 6 seconds in 2020. In this latest forecast, the time spent on social is expected to increase by nearly 7 minutes over last year. If that bears out, it will be the first year of positive growth in time spent among U.S. social users since 2017. The bonus for marketers during this time is that ad rates are still relatively depressed with many businesses having paused their campaigns. What’s a DAM and why should marketers care? What should a digital asset management (DAM) platform do and what are the ways that vendors differ from one another? This new guide from MarTech Today examines the market for enterprise DAM platforms and includes the latest industry statistics and developing market trends. Also included are profiles of 18 leading vendors, capabilities comparisons, pricing information, and recommended steps for evaluating. [Read more »]( Attend SMX next month for free Join thousands of search marketers June 23-24 to access more than 30 sessions from leaders in search marketing technology, actionable insights from senior-level search marketers, and four, just-announced keynotes from the Search Engine Land experts you know and trust… [Check out the keynotes! »]( What we're reading We've curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader [Walmart’s Brand New CMO Reports To The Chief Customer Officer: Why It Matters]( – Forbes [Google Will Require Proof of Identity From All Advertisers]( – New York Times [Facebook’s Giphy acquisition might have big implications for iMessage and Twitter]( – The Verge [As States Reopen, Conversion Patterns Point to Early Programmatic Recovery]( – Street Fight [The Luckiest and Unluckiest D2Cs, and How They’ll Adapt to Survive]( – eMarketer [Justice Department, State Attorneys General Likely to Bring Antitrust Lawsuits Against Google]( – Wall Street Journal [McDonald’s will boost US marketing $100M as dining rooms reopen]( – Marketing Dive [Marketing Land] []( [Want to advertise?]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. [Unsubscribe]( [We respect your privacy.]( This email was sent by: Marketing Land - a Third Door Media, Inc. publication with headquarters at 279 Newtown Tpke. Redding, CT 06896 USA © 2006-2020 Third Door Media. All Rights Reserved.