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A typical CMO writes most martech postmortems from their own perspective. I’ve sat in these rooms for 30 years and the story rarely changes.
The platform wasn’t delivered correctly, the ROI was never shown, or the vendor oversold the demo. The tools are blamed, but the battery never responds. This time I’ll let him answer.
Imagine a CMO in a room with their martech stack, faced with 18 months of expenses, stable results, and a CFO asking what the money bought. She’s done being patient. The battery, for once, responds.
The marketing director explains that she invested in the martech stack to help her team move faster. She needed better segmentation, cleaner data, and the personalization engine her team had requested over two budget cycles.
However, 18 months later, the speed of the campaign is stable. Additionally, its two reporting tools show different numbers for the same metric. What exactly is she paying for?
The stack responds that it pays for three tools that do overlapping work. For example, the Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) both create audiences. They rely on the same slice of customer data and define the segments differently.
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The cost of ongoing maintenance
The CMO believes that integrations are responsible for managing the overlap between tools. But the stack reveals that API updates broke integrations. This required ongoing engineering resources.
This cost has not been on the CMO’s radar. Historically, it only tracked tool subscriptions. But it did not take into account the cost of operating the battery as a connected system, because its accounting framework is not designed to take this into account.
The difference between familiarity and ability
Although the CMO believes his team has received sufficient training on each component, the stack clarifies what actually happened. This explains why his team learned the buttons on the stack, which promoted familiarity. A customer success representative walked her team through creating a segment, setting up an identity rule, and exporting to a channel.
But the team still lacks capacity. Capacity involves knowing which segment to create for the campaign you’re launching next quarter and why exports to your MAP and ad platform require different structures.
The CMO paid for familiarity and assumed capacity would follow. But the first 60 days after the battery went live established the ceiling. No one adapted the work to the rhythm of the team.
The inevitable performance drift
The CMO wants to know why the performance of the martech stack has deteriorated. The stack explains that it was configured for activity that existed at launch, but the activity has since evolved. The company now has new channels, volumes and expectations.
The stack continuously reports availability, error rates, and throughput. Yet no one acts on the data. This inaction causes the battery to drift over time, which the CMO only notices when repair is costly.
The possible lack of ownership
Finally, the CMO asks about a certain martech tool in the stack. Few team members use it and finance keeps reporting it. Stack explains that the team that initially needed it was reorganized 18 months ago, but the subscription was automatically renewed.
The organization has an elaborate procurement process involving evaluation committees, scorecards, business cases and approval chains. But there is no established process for removing a tool from the stack. The tools remain default, so the stack continues to grow.
The person who initially selected the stack changed roles a year ago. The stack now has no owner.
It works and consumes budget, but it’s not up to anyone to decide if the pile still deserves its place. Instead, the CMO governs by default. Whoever buys the tool owns it, and when he leaves it, no one becomes the owner.
The disconnect from return on investment
The marketing director says that in 18 months, the stack has never provided a single number that it can give to its CFO. The battery reports activity but not capacity. She has to make seven-figure renewal calls based on anecdotes and who complains the loudest.
The stack explains that someone was supposed to connect their production to business results. But the team never assigned this responsibility.
Translating activity into results requires human judgment. However, this person does not exist in the organization chart. The stack reports what it can measure and the CMO reads what it can get.
Closing the gap between purchasing and running martech tools
Neither the CMO nor the martech stack are the bad guys. The CMO bought good tools for real reasons, and the stack did pretty much what it was set up to do. The organization still needs someone to manage the stack as a system, evaluate whether each tool still has its place, maintain integrations, and connect results to business outcomes.
This role requires staff, a budget line and the power to remove a tool defended by a vice-president. A reasonable benchmark is one person responsible for operations for three to four major platforms, with a corresponding training investment. Many organizations will not fund it.
Stop auditing tools and check the gap between who buys them and who manages them. Give someone the mandate, budget, and authority to manage the stack. Do that, and the next time your CFO asks you what the battery is worth, you’ll have an answer that isn’t a shrug or a renewal bill.
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