Yesterday we celebrated the tenth annual Stackie Awards as a part of #MartechDay. Yearly for the previous decade, we’ve invited entrepreneurs to ship in a single slide that illustrates their advertising and marketing tech stack and the way they conceptualize it. From these entries, we choose 5 “winners” whose visualizations we thought had been significantly noteworthy indirectly.
I put “winners” in quotes as a result of, as we at all times acknowledge, the actual willpower of a profitable stack is that if it delivers worth to your online business. But it surely’s nonetheless enjoyable to have fun with a number of awards for some exceptional illustrations. In truth, everybody who enters The Stackies deserves recognition for contributing their stack visualization to the neighborhood. We overtly share all of the entries, so all of us profit from seeing how totally different firms assemble their martech stacks.
You possibly can obtain the entire deck of all 26 this yr’s Stackie entries right here.
And there are a whole lot extra from earlier years right here: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
There has by no means been a payment to take part in The Stackies. As an alternative, we choose a charity yearly and make a $100 donation on behalf of each qualifying stack entry we obtain. This yr we’re donating $2,600 (26 x $100) to UNICEF. In complete, this may make $38,500 donated from The Stackies to worthy causes.
2024 Stackie Lifetime Achievement Awards
There are some firms which have entered The Stackies many occasions through the years. We’re particularly grateful for these repeat contributors as a result of they present how stacks evolve over time.
So earlier than we share the 5 new winners this yr, we need to introduce you to the six inaugural Stackie Lifetime Achievement Award winners. To be eligible for one among these awards, an organization should (1) enter a stack within the present yr, (2) have entered a stack in at the least 3 earlier years, and (3) must have gained in at the least a type of years.
Esri (4 Martech Stacks)
Right here’s Esri’s 2024 Stackie illustration. Esri has at all times accomplished a beautiful job of illustrating their stacks. We significantly just like the ecosystem theme that they’ve chosen a few occasions. In spite of everything, your stack is a form of inner expertise ecosystem. One of many issues that we respect about their slides is that for every product recognized of their stack, they embrace a brief little blurb about what that product does.
Itaú (4 Martech Stacks)
Right here’s Itaú’s 2024 Stackie illustration. With out naming names — Itaú’s Stackie entries have by no means recognized the particular martech distributors they use — Itaú at all times does a wonderful job of illustrating the community of capabilities of their stack. Their visualizations typically remind me of system dynamics maps, which is apropos to real-world advertising and marketing operations.
Philips Digital Advertising and marketing (5 Martech Stacks)
Right here’s Philips Digital Advertising and marketing & E-Commerce’s 2024 Stackie illustration. This crew at Philips has gained a number of occasions, and by finding out their slides, you possibly can actually see why. First, they’re visually gorgeous. However extra importantly, yearly they discover a strategy to current new insights into the construction of their martech stack and the way they give it some thought. For instance, this yr, we love how they present the totally different layers of their stack — information, content material, buyer engagement, commerce, and expertise — and the instruments related to every.
Sargento (6 Martech Stacks)
Right here’s Sargento’s 2024 Stackie illustration. Indubitably, Sargento is our reigning champion. They’ve despatched in six exceptional visualizations of their martech stack through the years. Each has shared a story about how they conceptualize their stack, but in addition how they see it aligned with their multi-channel, go-to-market technique. Bravo, Sargento. Bravo.
SAS (5 Martech Stacks)
Right here’s SAS’s 2024 Stackie illustration. With 5 terrific entries through the years, SAS is one other hero of our martech neighborhood. Whereas they’re one of many main martech platforms on the earth, we’ve at all times appreciated how they present the best way their very own merchandise intersect with a wider area of different martech merchandise in their very own advertising and marketing operations. This yr’s Stackie is definitely the third in a collection — rising, harvesting, delivering — which will be appreciated back-to-back. Properly accomplished, SAS!
Verizon (4 Martech Stacks)
Right here’s Verizon’s 2024 Stackie illustration. We have now at all times respect the clear design of Verizon’s Stackie entries. They make it very straightforward to see the important thing capabilities of their stack and the “circulation” of their advertising and marketing operations for the shopper journey. A fantastic Stackie — for that matter, a terrific stack — doesn’t should be sophisticated. Verizon’s slide this yr places extra emphasis on explaining the intent and rationale of their stack.
Congratulations to all of our Stackie Lifetime Achievement Award winners. We hope you’ll be again subsequent yr to carry on to your title — and that you may be joined by others!
2024 Stackie Award Winners
Now we’re excited to current the 5 Stackies we selected as particular person winners this yr. We confess, these had been particularly arduous selections to make this yr, given how compelling so most of the entries had been.
ChurnZero Martech Stack
ChurnZero went with a enjoyable musical themed hieraracy of genres, playlists, and artists — classes, capabilities, and particular martech merchandise they use for every. They color-coded instruments by the frequency through which thy’re utilizing, from least to most. (One among our ongoing commentaries on this weblog is that not each instrument must be used on a regular basis to nonetheless have worth in your martech stack.) They famous that 80% of the merchandise of their stack use AI, together with, in fact, ChurnZero.
Demandbase Martech Stack
Demandbase has been one of many pioneers of the ABM motion. We thought their built-in circuit board motif was a cool illustration of an built-in — get it? — martech stack. Merchandise of their stack are organized round 4 fundamental phases of the shopper journey: goal/uncover, inquire/consideration, interact/convert, and develop/retain. In addition they recognized which instruments they noticed as notably AI-enabled expertise (together with most of the modules of the Demandbase platform itself).
Sage Martech Stack
Sage did a wonderful job of juxtaposing two totally different dimensions of their martech stack. The primary dimension is the shopper journey, framed within the language of the shopper: I’m conscious, I contemplate, I purchase, I arrange, I undertake and use, I’m supported, I flex, and I keep. The second dimension organizes merchandise by advertising and marketing operations capabilities: advocacy, marketing campaign & lead administration, neighborhood & social, compliance, content material administration, occasion administration, advertising and marketing information & analytics, advertising and marketing administration, and optimization. Particular merchandise are recognized by their icons. The way in which these two dimensions are interwoven is spectacular and tutorial.
StackMoxie Martech Stack
We cherished StackMoxie’s illustration for a number of motive. First, it clearly illustrates the entire journey of the shopper and the martech merchandise that journey flows by at every stage. Second, it exhibits how that journey spans a number of departments — it’s a crew sport, not only a advertising and marketing contest. And third, it’s simply very easy to know. Enlightenment is healthier than complexity.
Thomson Reuters Martech Stack
Lastly, we selected this stack illustration from Thomson Reuters. They’d us initially within the primoridal “spreadsheet forest” — let’s admit it, that’s the place so many martech capabilities started. They then take us on a trek by all six top-level classes of the martech panorama and the particular merchandise they use inside every of them. The final word vacation spot? An AI future. The narrative on the backside of the slide describes their imaginative and prescient of evolving martech capabilities, from yesterday, to at present, to tomorrow.
Once more, you possibly can obtain the entire deck of all 2024 Stackie slides.
An enormous thanks to everybody who entered The 2024 Stackie Awards. We deeply respect your willingness to share your stack visualizations with the martech neighborhood.
We additionally need to specific our deep gratitude to the 5 sponsors for #MartechDay 2024, who helped cowl our bills for sustaining the martech panorama and spending months on the analysis and evaluation round it: GrowthLoop, MoEngage, SAS, Syncari, and WordPress VIP.
In the event you haven’t but picked up a duplicate of 101-page The State of Martech 2024 Report we launched yesterday, you possibly can register for a free copy to be emailed to you right here.