Your success as an E-commerce development service hinges on your capacity to enhance the online shopping experience. You may improve the user experience for your customers by constructing the appropriate marketing stack for your e-commerce store. Your marketing stack is the key to e-commerce success, from a smooth checkout process and targeted recommendations to timely email marketing.
An e-commerce development company operates on online store projects of varying complexity and in various industries, whether they are focused on distributing media, delivering food, buyer or capital products, or delivering business or public services.
💡Continue reading to comprehend the fundamentals of devising a marketing stack as well as some tools and advice for your online store.
Table of Contents
What are Marketing Stacks?
- The marketing technology stack, often known as Martech, is a collection of tech (tools) used to streamline and accelerate marketing operations at each stage of the customer journey, including lead generation, personalized communications, and campaign analysis.
- The group of technologies that marketers employ to enhance and improve their marketing procedures across the client lifecycle is known as a marketing technology stack (or Martech stack). Marketing technologies are used to conduct tailored and pro-active customer communication, analyze the effectiveness of marketing efforts and streamline internal collaboration.
- The trick is to build a marketing stack around the requirements of your SaaS, not the hottest trends. Additionally, you shouldn’t feel compelled to have a tool for every business process. Only use a tool if you believe it will help you solve a problem or increase team productivity.
What are E-commerce Stores?
- Any website that enables online purchasing and selling is considered to be an e-commerce site or E-commerce store. E-commerce websites include businesses like Amazon and Alibaba as examples.
- A few of the aspects to evaluate include personalization, the inclusion of features facilitated by augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI), product management and tracking, marketing, driving your customers’ post-purchase experience, payment methods, and sustainability. That’s why professionals in a variety of technologies are needed to handle e-commerce problems.
Why is Marketing Stack used for E-Commerce Stores?
- The overall amount of money spent on digital advertisements grew 41% in the first half of 2021, according to data from The Drum. Choosing the appropriate e-commerce marketing tools is a crucial aspect of developing an efficient marketing strategy for your online store if you want to keep up with the competition, which is investing more money in advertising.
- Creating the ideal e-commerce marketing tool tech stack gives you access to a wide range of features, such as visitor insights, keyword research assistance, email and PPC campaign management, and more.
- Hence, balancing your stack budget against potential ROI becomes vital. For example, if your optimistic estimate suggests that an email marketing tool will increase your store’s cash flow by 10%, then you could factor this estimated ROI into how much of your funding is allocated for this tool.
💡 How can you pick the marketing technology that’s best for your company when there are thousands of options? Continue reading to see our ranking of the top marketing stacks.
Tips To Build Smarter Martech Stack
- Streamline and Optimize your Martech stack
- Use the power of flexible platform ecosystems
- Adopt personalization and power automation by utilizing data
- Set the right strategies before fixing your Martech
What is the Best Marketing Stack for E-commerce Store?
In a perfect world, we’d be able to provide you with a generic Martech stack that could be used by any type of company. However, the truth is that every organization is different, and how you run things will affect which technology you might find valuable and how they should be set up. For instance, a company that offers its goods or services to consumers (B2C) or businesses (B2B) may employ different channels and marketing strategies to attract clients, and as a result, will require distinct marketing technology.
Having said that, there are a few technologies you should take into account as you start to develop your marketing technology stack. These are equally effective for B2B businesses and B2C businesses like retailers and streaming services.
We’ll begin by dividing your marketing stack into three distinct phases:
- Stage 1: Draw in
- Stage 2: Act
- Stage 3: Evaluate and improve
Although the aforementioned stages have many sub-phases, we’ve selected the three that practically every organization can connect to.
Whether you work in B2B or B2C marketing, you’ve experienced lead-generating challenges. Given how competitive both markets are, it is not surprising that 61% of marketers cite lead generation as one of their top challenges. However, traffic is the initial step in the lead creation process, and the first group of marketing technology solutions will deal with this.
Google Ads – Ad Tech
The quickest approach to get results when it comes to bringing qualified visitors to your website is still through Google’s search, video, and display ads. Google’s advertising also serves as the first point of contact for lead nurturing strategies like retargeting, email marketing, and conversion optimization. By targeting people who specifically demonstrate an interest in what you’re selling, you can expand your reach even further.
Alternatives:
- Quantcast
- Basis
- AdRoll
Demandbase – Account-Based Marketing Platform
Demandbase gives businesses the ability to target specific individuals at specific businesses throughout the web with customized online ads while honing the content to try to convert them into customers. Let’s assume Joe is a Pfizer employee. Joe will receive personalized healthcare adverts via Demandbase’s digital marketing platform based on specified factors including revenue, industry, and prior purchasing behavior.
Alternatives:
- RollWorks
- Terminus
Unbounce – Your Landing Page Builder
One of the quickest ways to miss out on possible leads and sales prospects is to do this. Create stunning, personalized landing pages with Unbounce fast and effortlessly to increase the number of website visitors who become paying clients. The good news is that Unbounce makes it simple and quick to develop stunning personalized landing pages that increase website visitors’ likelihood of becoming buyers.
Alternatives:
- Knak
- GetResponse
- Instapage
WordPress – Content Management System (CMS)
The growth engine that drives a large portion of the marketing is its blog, which is powered by WordPress.WordPress acts as the content management system (CMS) for 0.43 part of all websites on the Internet. Yes, more than a quarter of the websites you visit likely utilize WordPress.
Bonus: WordPress makes it possible for anyone to create a website, even without programming knowledge. It provides users with access to hundreds of themes that they can use to create anything from blogs to complete websites. Besides, WordPress has a template system and a plugin architecture that helps you to personalize any website for your online store, blog, or business.
Alternatives:
- Squarespace
- Ghost
- Drupal
Sprout Social – Manage Your Social Media
You can manage your complete social media campaign with Sprout Social from one location. Moreover, you can draw in and interact with hundreds of thousands of clients and prospects. You can automate your publishing operations, schedule articles for the best times, and gain valuable insights from social media data with Sprout Social.
Alternatives:
- Hootsuite
- Later
- Sprinklr
- MeetEdgar
- Buffer
MadKudu – For Scoring Your Leads
The market’s most potent lead scoring tool, MadKudu, can help calculate a tonne of important data, the majority of which is hidden from your sales staff. MadKudu helps users to assess their company’s expected revenue, the size of individual teams, the tech stack and tools used, if a company’s solution is B2B or B2C, whether they have expanded venture money, and much more in addition to job titles and staff count.
Alternatives:
- Infer
- Salespanel
- ActiveCampaign
Uberflip –For Content Marketing
Even when your marketing team puts a lot of effort into producing content that is pertinent to your target consumers, what good is it if you can’t get it in front of the appropriate audience at the appropriate time? With Uberflip, you can gather all of your material into one location, including newsletters, blog posts, and videos.
Alternatives:
- Ion
- Outgrow
Ahrefs – For Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Ahrefs is a collection of SEO tools that enables websites, blogs, and businesses to increase their search traffic, thoroughly analyze their rivals, and keep track of their specialty. Would you like to increase the amount of organic traffic to your website? Here is a tried-and-true recipe:
- Choose a subject or keyword.
- Make a standout piece of content on that subject.
- Develop it. Construct links to it. List it.
Alternatives:
- Siteimprove
- Moz
- SEMrush
- Conductor
Wistia – For Video Marketing
With Wistia, manage and update existing videos as product and marketing change without having to change URLs or lose previous engagement information and priceless consumer insights. What the extra benefit is? Your website will receive excellent traffic and engagement since you may host your video there rather than on YouTube.
Alternatives:
- Vimeo
- Vidyard
Intercom – For Customer Engagement and Lead Generation
Intercom’s customer communications platform is the foundation of the Martech stack, offering end-to-end interaction throughout the full customer experience. You can use it for:
- Sending specific messages to website visitors.
- Building chatbots to automatically engage and qualify leads 24/7 on the website.
- Tracking client data to better understand your audience and provide them with relevant messages and content.
Alternatives: None
Clearbit – For Data Enrichment
Over 90% of the web traffic for many businesses is anonymous. De-anonymizing website traffic is made possible by Clearbit Reveal. When a potential customer visits your website, Clearbit analyses its IP address to learn more about its business, including its location, industry, and current technological stack. This allows you to speak to each person specifically and steer clear of the old spray-and-pray strategies.
Alternatives:
- Cognism
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- ZoomInfo
Zoom – Webinars
Zoom’s primary uses are one-on-one conversations and conference sessions, but it’s also an excellent tool for running webinars that can draw traffic to your website. Zoom gives top-notch user experience to businesses and participants of the webinars.
Alternatives:
- WebEx
- GoToMeeting
- Blue Jeans
Marketo – Marketing Automation
One of the most effective marketing technology products available is called Marketo. There’s a very good reason it was designated the second most popular product in B2B stacks in 2021 (only behind Google Analytics, in case you were curious) (just behind Google Analytics, in case you were wondering). Marketo enables users to automate their marketing procedures by developing scaleable, individualized campaigns, locating the best prospects, and establishing connections with the ideal clients.
Bonus: By developing scaleable, tailored campaigns, recognizing top prospects, and locating and engaging with the proper clients, Marketo enables users to automate their marketing procedures. For a small firm, it’s certainly overkill, but if you’re scaling up, Marketo is ideal for businesses wishing to expand and market to a sizable audience with a high level of segmentation.
Alternatives:
- Eloqua
- Pardot
Dotdigital – For Automating Marketing
Connecting with customers is more crucial than ever, but thanks to Dotdigital’s cross-channel marketing platform, it’s also simpler. You may personalize at every touchpoint with their data-driven offerings while also collecting valuable information. Among their tools integrated are:
- email advertising
- SMS advertising
- form landing pages
- search and social retargeting
- live chat
Alternatives:
- HubSpot
- Marketo Engage
ActiveCampaign – Customer Experience Automation
You can automate your follow-up and outreach plan using ActiveCampaign’s comprehensive customer experience automation platform, providing you the chance to customize each of the eight touchpoints that influence conversions. With a primary emphasis on email, it provides marketers with the tools to develop drip campaigns and split testing, promoting higher open rates and audience engagement.
Alternatives:
- Constant Contact
- Keap
HubSpot – For Marketing Automation
Similar to Marketo, HubSpot is now well-known (if your house is full of marketers). Its platform’s breadth is truly astounding, with tools covering the full spectrum of marketing, including blogging, SEO, email, social networking, call-to-actions, and more. It is especially well-liked by small firms, which cannot afford the variety of best-of-breed software solutions that more established organizations can, due to its low cost (and in some cases, free) platform.
Alternatives:
- Pardot
- Marketo
Knak – No-Code Email Design
The goal of Knak is to simplify life for marketers. Their no-code approach to email and landing page development puts creativity back in the hands of enterprise marketers, who up until now have had to rely on developers and agencies to get their emails out the door. With Knak, marketers can drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to create an email.
Alternatives:
- Moosend
- Stensul
Outreach – For Engagement of Sales
Teams who are serious about sales and marketing alignment will use outreach as a tactic. It keeps track of how your reps interact with prospects and customers and suggests predetermined communication sequences based on that. Better better, both departments can leverage Outreach dashboards and tools to ensure that no lead slips between the cracks, rather than marketing logging into one system and sales into another.
Alternatives:
- SalesLoft
Encharge – For Your CMS and Email Journeys
Encharge develops tailored email journeys for each group based on descriptive and behavioral data from your clients. It is the most cost-effective option for businesses that are still growing and don’t yet require a powerful email marketing automation platform. To produce hyper-customized messages that communicate to clients more directly, it effortlessly connects with customer data systems like Segment and Mixpanel. It includes other features like lead qualifying support.
Alternatives:
- Omnisend
- MailChimp
Aircall – Cloud Calling
Almost all of the top software programs, including Intercom, Slack, HubSpot, and others, allow you to immediately initiate a phone call via Aircall. The sales cycle can be significantly accelerated by automatically setting up visitors from chat into a face-to-face demo.
Alternatives:
- Talkdesk
- Dialpad
Tableau – For BI (Business intelligence) Reports
For data analysis that relies on visualization, Tableau is regarded as the best of the best. Its data visualization is far superior to what is provided by conventional BI companies. To save your team time fumbling around with SQL, you can execute very complex data visualization in a very straightforward, drag-and-drop manner.
Alternatives:
- Microsoft BI
- Looker
- Domo
Google Analytics – For Web Analytics
Google Analytics is so trustworthy that recent estimates for the number of businesses utilizing it range from 30 to 57 million. Four things make it excellent:
- knowing the source of the traffic to your website
- what led them to you
- What materials they watched
- how long they spent on various pages of your website
All of this offers limitless data and infinite insight into your buyer personas-backed optimization options to increase the efficiency of your promotion.
Alternatives:
- Heap
- Firebase
Optimizely – Digital Experience Platform
With A/B, multi-page, or multivariate tests, Optimizely enables you to design variations of your current website and then monitors how users react to the various iterations. With this tool, you may modify your website without knowing any coding. If you don’t have a full-time development team at your disposal, Optimizely’s visual editor, which lets you make changes by clicking rather than by writing code, is ideal.
Alternatives:
- Instapage
- Unbounce
Capturly– Improve Conversion Rate
Capturly is a comprehensive online analytics platform for your online business, focusing on the two primary driving forces: conversion and retention. We give you all the necessary facts to make the best business decisions possible simply and understandably. Capturly not only shows where your visitors get stopped, but also repeats their detailed actions. It is a unique blend of standard statistics, session replays, and heatmaps.
Alternatives:
- FullStory
- Crazy Egg
Heap – For Product Analytics
Heap is a potent analytics solution that makes use of behavioral analytics to contextualize user behavior and enable teams to make better decisions. The simplicity of this software’s no-code setup makes it ideal for busy marketers. Without getting bogged down in event monitoring code, you can begin to gather the metrics that are most important to your business in a couple of minutes.
Alternatives:
- Adobe Analytics
- Google Analytics
Segment – Customer Data Infrastructure
The goal of every firm in the customer information sector is to have a single perspective of the client. Segment does this by collecting all the data about a customer from various sources, such as your CRM tool, customer care application, and website. Consider it your entire company’s data hub.
Alternatives:
- mParticle
- Tealium
LeanData – For Management of Lead
LeanData integrates with your CRM tool to give your team the most precise, channel-by-channel view of campaign effectiveness so that money is spent in the most efficient ways. In addition, it offers fully customized attribution models that may be precisely tailored to your company’s needs because different marketing attribution models may be appropriate for various business purposes based on the complexity and length of the purchasing process.
Alternatives:
- Terminus
- Bizible
Bottom Line
- We’ve seen that many e-commerce store owners choose to prioritize their sales and marketing tools — after all, many of the other solutions on our list won’t offer much value if your site can’t handle payments or draw in consumers. The top tier of a user analytics tool or premium page themes are examples of large-scale solutions or add-ons that can be added later.
- It takes a lot of work to build a Martech stack that supports the delivery of genuine business value. Your team will work more productively with the right tools. So don’t be reluctant to explore other options. However, consider how a tool can address the problems facing your business before using it. You won’t always require a tool. Start exploring. Boost your marketing infrastructure.
- Whatever technologies you decide to include in your marketing stack, keep in mind that your strategy should drive the technology you select, not the other way around.
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