B2BMXperts Share What They Are Thankful For In Their Tech Stacks

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Thanksgiving has come and gone, but there is still a lot to be thankful for as we move into the holiday season and prep for the New Year. Tech stacks, in particular, have been the saving grace for many B2B marketers — positioning them to automate aspects of their buyer’s journey, personalize engagement and scale their teams’ efforts.

Our exclusive B2BMXpert community had a lot to be thankful for this year. This includes everything from end-to-end marketing tools to specific intelligence and business analytics. We asked the B2BMXperts to share the technology that they are most thankful for to plan, execute and measure their go-to-market initiatives. Here are a few of our members’ responses:

Tiffany Sasser, Marketing Manager, Gordian

As far as our martech stack goes, I am most thankful for:

1. Asana — I seriously would not be able to keep track of all my projects and the tasks/teams needed to get them to the finish line without the help of Asana. It used to be one of the most frustrating systems we used until our team realized it was not set up correctly. After we readjusted the way we were using it, it has been extremely helpful in project management.
2. SalesLoft — Prior to our sales team’s implementation of SalesLoft, we did not have confidence that our sales reps were following up with the leads we were providing them. Sales was also frustrated about trying to balance the volume of leads they received (we have a lower priced product that functions more like a B2C product vs. B2B). SalesLoft helps provide confidence that our leads are followed up with in a timely manner and allows us to assess sales rep performance.
3. Marketo — I just set up my first ever nurture program in Marketo this year and have been extremely impressed with the results thus far. Marketo made it pretty simple to get up and running and provided a ton of resources to help me be successful.
4. Power BI — We hired a new analyst this year that has built a ton of dashboards in Power BI to help us understand how we are doing from a marketing perspective. I can now feel more confident in my performance and how it is contributing to the bottom line, as well as be able to report up to my leadership team.

Masha Finkelstein, Growth Marketing Manager, Devices And Mobility, Google Cloud

I wrote an article some time ago about my favorite martech tools, but that was more of a wish list rather than which tech I was thankful for … I can’t disclose what we are currently using at Google for confidentiality reasons, but I’ll share what I would be most thankful for if I could use any vendor in the world…

1. Lead to account mapping and lead routing: LeanData. I had the pleasure of using LeanData multiple times in my career, and their lead to account matching functionality opened all kinds of magical doors, like marketing attribution and revenue influence tracking on an account level, seeing ALL the individual activity on an account level and clean routing.
2. Account targeted ads: Terminus + LinkedIn + BrightFunnel. Conveniently, all three of these can now be managed through one platform: Terminus. In addition, Bombora intent data can be used to target ads and surface accounts for out-bounding within the Terminus platform as well. Talk about smart ABM, heh?
3. Direct mail: Sendoso. Awesome tech with my favorite feature — automated hand-written notes integrated with Salesforce.com.

JD Nelson, Marketing Operations Manager, Spigit

1. From my Sales Ops job function, I’m most thankful for lead to account mapping. L2A, especially when done in conjunction with lead enrichment (for us, it’s the same vendor performed in succession), gets us away from having to convert leads to contacts in Salesforce. It’s a timesaver for everyone.
2. From my Program Management job function, my Zapier integration with Asana is a huge time-saver. With growth and expansion, planning and prioritization are key. Asana has helped keep us accountable. But without my Zapier integration adding due dates and assigning people [tasks], it would require much more time and attention. Now, anyone can launch a project and not have to worry too much about communication or knowing who does what task.
3. For end-to-end Marketing, Marketo is the winner. Every engagement touches Marketo, every channel. It’s by far the most valuable piece of martech.

Nina Kuhlman, Marketing Communications Manager, The Mx Group

Here at The Mx Group, Marketo is one of the major marketing automation platforms we use for clients and internally. Here are the five things I am thankful for when it comes to this particular martech tool:

1. Insights — Ability to see what campaigns each individual has engaged with and how they’ve interacted with our emails, websites, journeys and webinars.
2. Forms — Our team can create new landing pages with forms quickly, and ensure we are GDPR compliant everywhere.
3. Automated Journeys — Marketo offers many ways for people to enter/exit journeys.
4. Limits — The ability to ensure that no one receives X number of communications per week. I mean, we have some interesting things to say but we don’t want to flood anyone’s inbox!
5. Ease Of Use — Some of the templated emails we do are easy enough for anyone to enter basic information, schedule and send out an email. You don’t necessarily need to be a MAP expert!

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