The 3 C’s of the MarTech Conference

Buzzwords, lessons and helpful advice from the 2019 Boston MarTech marketing technology conference.

What is martech? According to Scott Brinker and MarTech Today, “MarTech is Marketing.” I learned this mantra at the 2019 Boston MarTech Conference. I have to say I agree, and not just because of my background in marketing automation and operations. The marketing technology stack is quickly becoming the backbone of marketing teams around the world. Without the basics, such as a CRM, an email platform and a CMS, Enterprise marketing teams struggle to exist. In addition to these pillars of marketing, I gathered info on some cutting-edge topics, that all happen to start with C. Sort of.

1. CDP: The buzzword of the conference. CDP stands for Customer Data Platform, a type of software with a dual purpose. The first purpose is to clean, transform, unify and enrich data. The second purpose is to take that data and segment it for personalized messaging directly to customers. Marketers can now gather everything they know about customers into one centralized place for unified and consistent messaging. CDP is the next level of what it means to be customer-centric.

2. SEO: If you say it out loud, it sounds like the letter C, so just go with me. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of adding relevant keywords to marketing content in order to be positively noticed by search engines like Google. With proper strategy, your company’s web pages will rank higher in searches, driving organic traffic to your website. For many companies, SEO is already considered a pillar of the marketing tech stack, but Jessica Bowman gave us a great reminder during her talk on the subject. She reiterated how important it is for every marketing employee to consider SEO in their work. The SEO marketing manager makes suggestions for keywords and offers reporting on performance, but he or she does not make good SEO happen. We are all responsible for what we write and how we write it.

3. CSV: Yes, that CSV – comma-separated values, as seen in Microsoft Excel. This is definitely not a latest and greatest tool, yet it shockingly came up in conversation many times on the exhibit hall floor. Most, if not all, of the great martech vendors featured at the conference produce copious amounts of data. Many of them have excellent dashboard tools for reporting and analysis, and many offer APIs to connect to typical applications such as Marketo or Salesforce. But what about connecting to an outside business intelligence or reporting tool? Interestingly, many people said they still rely on the import and export of CSV files.

At Progress DataDirect, we don’t expect our customers or their customers to rely on CSVs. We offer cloud and on-premises data connectivity solutions across Relational, NoSQL, Big Data and SaaS data sources, including popular martech applications. We believe you should be able to access and analyze your data quickly, securely and reliably. That is why Progress DataDirect is the trusted vendor for 350+ ISVs and 10,000+ enterprises for all their analytics, integration and data management needs. Are you ready to learn more?

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