Innovative brands need the right connected technology to power and orchestrate customer experiences at scale. As industry leaders deliver personalized offers and relevant content, consumer expectations surge, making it a must for everyone else to rise to the challenge. Any business can implement technology, but the most successful ones align their tech to drive a unified business strategy that meets today’s needs and brings flexibility for tomorrow. But how can you do this?

The blueprint for your tech

We laid out an ideal tech stack that takes a capability-first approach that can serve as a blueprint to organize and think about your technology to turn aspirations into reality.

For those with an existing platform and tool set, it’s likely that you just need to understand your current structure and gap in capabilities to then optimize, integrate, and implement additional functionality. The key to your technology foundation is starting with a strong central cloud data warehouse.

At a minimum, your tech stack needs:

Data to activate the experiences you want to serve your audience.

Identity to bring the data together and build customer profiles.

Accessibility to help teams across the organization (marketing, sales, service, etc.) access that data you brought together.

We’ve outlined the core elements for your tech stack to meet customer demands and provide the composability to stay agile in the future. Let’s explore the essential components to bring this vision to life:

Data and infrastructure

A comprehensive approach to data and infrastructure doesn’t just enhance operational efficiency, it also lays the foundation for anticipating customer needs and learning from insights. This ensures a seamless integration and analysis across various data sources, allowing for a unified understanding of customers to arm your teams for more informed decision-making. 

There are a few challenges to watch out for when it comes to managing your data. Click the video below to learn more about what those are and how you can avoid them.

Identity

Identity ensures that brands possess a holistic understanding of individuals (yes, both known and unknown) to help cater to each person’s preferences and needs. It also helps avoid common mistakes like sending marketing promotions to a customer who just made a full-price purchase

Analytics and AI

At the analytics and AI layer of the tech stack, analytics are tracked across all tools and platforms. This enables seamless accessibility and utilization of insights, empowering marketers to continuously enhance and refine their strategies for best performance.

Orchestration

The orchestration layer is where brands hit the turf to facilitate the cohesive integration of marketing tools and platforms. This enables them to sync the delivery of personalized messages and experiences, ensuring that they resonate with target audiences.

Content and commerce

This layer is the central hub for the creation, management, and optimization of content and assets. When set up well, these assets can be easily found and edited or repurposed when needed, saving precious time and resources.

Experience

Customer journeys and key touchpoints are crafted in the experience layer to help nurture both customers and prospects to build loyalty and, in turn, encourage repeat business.

Want to learn more? Check out our quick interactive tech stack guide below for a clickable visual that walks you through these layers in more detail.