How USPS, Sargento, Poly and more organize their martech stacks
The submission deadline for the 2020 Stackie Awards has been extended to September 18.
Sophisticated martech stacks are usually associated with progressive, often tech-centered companies, but it turns out one of the oldest businesses in the U.S. has developed a complex martech stack with multiple layers.
The United States Post Office, which predates even the U.S. Constitution and has been in the news lately as the COVID-19 crisis threatens its financial status, has organized a marketing technology stack that combines everything from media and website management tools to marketing automation platforms, sales tech and more.
The United States Government Accountability Office recently reported that the USPS’ financial condition, “Is deteriorating and unsustainable” with debt currently doubling what it receives in revenue. The situation is dour, but one look at the organization’s martech stack shows it is doing all it can on the technology side, building a comprehensive, state-of-the-art marketing technology system.
The company shared the graphic for this year’s Stackie Awards. It shows how the institution leverages stalwarts brands itself, including Aprimo for its marketing operations, Google Marketing Platform and Salesforce for data admin and sales management needs and Salesforce Marketing Cloud for automation.
MarTech programming chair Scott Brinker showed off the USPS entry in his closing keynote for our Discover MarTech virtual event on Thursday. Below are a few more entries that he shared.
Related: Watch replays from Discover MarTech
Poly
Last year, Poly’s former senior manager of marketing technology Zack Alves was part of a MarTech Conference “When stacks collide” panel — a session that offered guidance when having to bring two or more stacks together after a company acquisition or merger.
“It felt like Christmas morning at first,” said Alves discussing what it was like when he was given access to a whole new martech stack after an acquisition, but then reality sets in, “You have a bunch of different toys from different play sets.” (Poly was formerly Planetronics, but changed its name to Poly following its acquisition of Polycom in 2018.)
From the looks of Poly’s Stackie Awards entry, the company has successfully wed the two marketing stacks from its 2018 acquisition and created an entire universe of marketing technology, with the customer at the center.
Sargento
Sargento is a returning Stackie Awards winner. The company was one of five winners named during the 2019 Stackie Awards event. At the time, Sargento’s Senior Marketing Manager Cami Schenck said the slide her team submitted had become a valuable tool and that they had begun using it as a reference point to talk about the company’s ongoing data strategy.
Comparing last year’s submission to this year, Sargento has given their slide a more “authentic” treatment that aligns with their overall brand. There is also something new on this one — the “Share” tools (Amazon, Instagram and Famebit) have been added since last year.
Infutor
Infutor’s 2020 entry brings to life a topic that is top of mind for many martech teams right now: Centralization versus decentralization. The company’s entry visualizes how its marketing technology tools and platforms are connected within its martech ecosystem. It then adds another layer of detail by differentiating its more manual tools from the automation tools using a purple and orange color scheme.
What makes Infutor’s submission even more unique is that it has added avatars of team members to represent the estimated usage of various solutions.
The 2020 Stackie Awards deadline has been extended to September 18. Not only are we extending the deadline, but we will be announcing a total of ten winners: Five winners from the entries submitted by the original March deadline and another five winners from the entries submitted between now and September. For each Stackie Award submission received, we will make a $100 donation to Girls Who Code, a nonprofit organization supporting women in computer sciences.
We plan to celebrate the winners at the upcoming MarTech Conference, which is scheduled for October 6 – 8 in Boston. Visit our Stackie Awards entry form to submit your slide.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech Today. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
