Best of LinkedIn: MarTech Insights CW 22/ 23

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about MarTech from calendar weeks twenty-two to twenty three.

00:00:08: Frenness, a BtoB market research company that supports enterprise marketing teams in unlocking full potential of their customer data with the help of AI.

00:00:16: You can find more info in description

00:00:18: Right so let's just get into it.

00:00:20: Yeah lets dive.

00:00:22: Because what if I told you that like, ninety-five percent of your marketing technology budget is currently pointed in the exact wrong direction?

00:00:29: Oh

00:00:29: man.

00:00:30: That's a terrifying thought!

00:00:31: Right?

00:00:31: or...or that the CRM you've spent literally a decade meticulously building is actually the bottleneck holding your entire go to market strategy back?

00:00:40: Welcome to the deep dive, everyone.

00:00:43: If you're building or managing a B-to-B tech stack right now You know how incredibly noisy it gets out there?

00:00:47: It's so noisy?

00:00:48: I mean you log on to LinkedIn and your immediately Bombarded with like a thousand different ways you supposedly need to run your operations.

00:00:56: So our mission today is just cut through all that fluff.

00:00:59: exactly no abstract theory today

00:01:02: Right?

00:01:03: We've curated the absolute top Martek trends buzzing across the feeds of actual B to be marketing professionals from the past two weeks.

00:01:11: We're looking at what top operators are actually building right now and We've broken this down into four interconnected themes to make sense of it

00:01:19: all.

00:01:20: Yeah, we're gonna hit AI agents and workflow automation customer data an identity Composable Martek architecture And finally marketing ops in the buyer experience.

00:01:30: Okay Let's unpacked his first theme a I agents and work flow automation.

00:01:33: This is a huge one.

00:01:34: It is and the conversation on LinkedIn has totally shifted.

00:01:37: like for the last year AI In marketing felt kind of like a parlor trick you know but now its actual boots-on-the-ground execution?

00:01:45: Oh completely.

00:01:46: We're seeing teams deploy AI to solve very specific mechanical bottlenecks.

00:01:51: A perfect example of this comes from Sarah McNamara, she just laid out four AI playbooks you can build this week using a tool like Clike.

00:01:58: and what's so cool is that we aren't talking about generative AI writing texts anymore.

00:02:03: We are talking functional agents who call APIs in make logical decisions.

00:02:07: Yeah her persona classifier really stood up for me.

00:02:11: Mechanically it takes an inbound lead, pings external databases to figure out company size cross references job titles with your internal matrix and then applies a tag all in millisecond.

00:02:23: Right

00:02:23: so you're automated.

00:02:24: nurture tracks actually route the right person instead of dumping a CFO and a junior dev into the exact same email sequence.

00:02:32: Exactly, she also detailed this account research agent that does heavy lifting for account-based marketing like before sales rep even opens their laptop.

00:02:41: This agent scrapes target accounts recent news or hiring signals and drafts personalized outreach emails based on real world events.

00:02:49: Oh,

00:02:49: wow!

00:02:49: Yeah and my favorite part she highlighted a surprise-and-delight physical note card center.

00:02:54: Wait

00:02:54: really?

00:02:55: A physical note cards?

00:02:56: yeah

00:02:56: The AI finds the closest corporate office for target marketing leader And automatically tees up a physical mail or via direct mail API.

00:03:03: That is brilliant using hyper modern digital infrastructure to create a totally analog human touch point.

00:03:11: And you know, Mark Killens actually pointed out a similar leap with conversions new agents.

00:03:15: They can build out entire marketing ops architectures nurture sequences scoring models SLA flows in a fraction of the usual time

00:03:22: which is just a massive paradigm shift.

00:03:25: Yeah.

00:03:25: But um I know you had some thoughts on this.

00:03:27: yeah i have to push back A little here like are we Just replacing manual chaos With automated Chaos?

00:03:33: I mean it sounds Like hiring a fleet Of super interns.

00:03:36: they work at The speed of light but If you don't tell them exactly what good looks like, they'll just make mistakes thousands of times a minute.

00:03:44: Yeah

00:03:44: no your spot on and that's the exact danger top operators are warning about.

00:03:48: Alberto Farinato shared a breakdown of his team real world deployment of lead scoring agent using Claude HubSpot & Clay.

00:03:56: Oh I saw he didn't sugarcoat it at all!

00:03:59: Not At All.

00:04:00: He emphasized three critical hurdles to stop those super interns from wreaking havoc.

00:04:05: First was calibration.

00:04:07: You have to mathematically define what hot actually means for your sales funnel, you teach the AI about time velocity and signal decay.

00:04:15: Right because downloading a highly technical white paper today is a massive signal.

00:04:20: But if they did that six months ago And haven't clicked an email since that signal has decayed.

00:04:25: If the AI doesn't understand Time it scores them both as hot leads

00:04:29: Precisely.

00:04:30: The second hurdle Farinato highlighted Was token economics.

00:04:33: Every time an AI model reads data or generates a response, it consumes tokens.

00:04:38: Those cost fractions of a cent.

00:04:39: but if you run a massive model on fifty thousand leads in real-time... You

00:04:42: just burn through your entire budget in a week!

00:04:44: Exactly so they had to triage deciding what runs in real time versus what gets batched overnight to save money.

00:04:51: and the third hurdle was business logic getting those unwritten rules out at people's heads and actually down on paper

00:04:56: because The AI can't read your mind right?

00:04:59: What's fascinating here is how this connects to what Jenny Garthul was saying.

00:05:02: She argued that we are completely done with random acts of AI.

00:05:07: The missing layer in RevOps right now is orchestration tools like Zapier.

00:05:12: Yeah, Phil Gamash added a great insight there too about fighting context rot.

00:05:17: He mentioned using a weekly decision log agent to capture fast-moving contexts so human operators and AI agents actually stay on the exact same page...

00:05:25: So crucial!

00:05:25: But

00:05:26: you know all these brilliant AI agents will just fail spectacularly if they are reading bad information which smoothly pivots us to our second theme customer data and identity.

00:05:37: Oh, the unglamorous data plumbing?

00:05:39: Yeah!

00:05:39: I mean, the shiny AI tools get all of budget but database architecture actually does work.

00:05:43: Exactly And Kita Wonkeady shared this viral five-step blueprint for building a MarTech stack in twenty twenty six.

00:05:49: The takeaway was basically solve Identity first fix your data foundation pick a core platform add journey orchestration Add AI.

00:05:57: last yes she had great quote.

00:05:59: oh i loved it.

00:05:59: She said A shiny CDP sitting on top of dirty Data is just expensive garbage.

00:06:04: It's brutal, but it's the truth.

00:06:07: And interestingly where we store that foundational data is shifting.

00:06:11: Taft Love noted a massive architectural shift.

00:06:14: He argued The CRM Is No Longer The Source Of Truth.

00:06:17: Here's what gets really interesting for me.

00:06:19: For A Decade Vendors Told Us The CRm Was The Absolute Center of The Universe Right?

00:06:24: Now We're Basically Saying The CR-M Is Just Another Satellite Orbiting The Data Warehouse.

00:06:28: Yeah

00:06:28: Because CRMs Are Prefab They Just Can't Handle Complex BI Queries.

00:06:33: the cloud data warehouse is taking over.

00:06:35: Adam Greco actually argued that a lot of companies are wildly overpaying for licensed customer-data platforms when their own Cloud Data Warehouse already has everything they need.

00:06:44: They just needed a lightweight activation layer sitting on top

00:06:47: Right, and Tony Byrne validated this too.

00:06:49: He pointed out that identity resolution or IDR Is currently the absolute hardest problem in MarTech

00:06:54: Because BWB buyers act like consumers now?

00:06:57: Exactly!

00:06:57: They research on their phone at night Download a white paper on work laptop the next day, and sign up for trial using personal Gmail to avoid sales spam.

00:07:06: Untangling those multiple trial accounts.

00:07:08: that identity problem is visible symptom of much deeper infrastructure challenge AI about to totally expose.

00:07:15: Yeah this realization data warehouse real core forcing companies completely rethink how they buy and assemble software which brings us theme three Composable Martek architecture.

00:07:28: Right,

00:07:28: moving away from those monolithic one-size fits all suites

00:07:31: Exactly connecting best fit capabilities via APIs.

00:07:35: instead Desmond Fua and Nikki Clark both argued that composability is no longer just an IT decision It's an operating model decisions.

00:07:42: Yes assembling capabilities around business outcomes rather than them being tied down by a single vendor.

00:07:47: But it's huge landscape to navigate.

00:07:49: Oh

00:07:49: totally Scott Brinker and Franz Hermersma just dropped that state of Mar-Tek twenty, twenty six report.

00:07:55: The landscape has flat lined at around fifteen thousand five hundred and five products.

00:07:59: but underneath it the churn is massive.

00:08:01: It's a violent churn And Reimersma had brilliant critique here.

00:08:05: He said millions of dollars disappear because CEOs evaluate stacks through an IT lens.

00:08:10: so engineering quality instead of marketing lens which focuses on revenue growth.

00:08:15: Right they buy a secure bank vault when actually needed to store front.

00:08:19: So Uh, what does this all mean?

00:08:21: We used to buy the fully furnished move-in ready house.

00:08:24: Now we're buying a massive box of Lego bricks.

00:08:26: It gives us ultimate freedom But it means someone in the organization actually has to be a master builder.

00:08:31: right?

00:08:32: that is The perfect analogy.

00:08:34: and Andrews Buren Strange posted about this classic friction between the CMO And the cio.

00:08:39: the Cmo wants commercial momentum They want to build a race car out at those Legos Right now

00:08:44: And the CIO wants governance and scalability.

00:08:46: They want to make sure that wheels don't fall off?

00:08:48: Right, so... The organizations that win this Lego building phase will be ones who create a single aligned picture between those two leaders.

00:08:56: Yeah because all of these talks about data architecture or orchestration is useless if it doesn't actually result in revenue.

00:09:02: Which brings us into our fourth and final theme Marketing ops & buyer experience.

00:09:07: This where rubber meets road It IS!

00:09:09: We have talk about humans running machines and human buying products.

00:09:14: Darrell Alfonso shared a shocking stat.

00:09:16: Without strong marketing operations, only thirty five percent of the go-to market strategy actually survives to the

00:09:22: pipeline."

00:09:28: evaporates into the ether because of broken forms or mis-routed leads.

00:09:31: Exactly,

00:09:32: and Mike Rizzo made such a great point about this.

00:09:34: he said success in ops is silent but failure is visible within an hour.

00:09:39: Oh

00:09:39: that is so true.

00:09:40: when campaigns launch smoothly nobody notices.

00:09:44: But if one API sync fails The whole executive team is suddenly breathing down your neck

00:09:49: right?

00:09:50: It's like being the offensive line in American football.

00:09:52: You only get your name called by the announcer When you get a penalty never when you throw the perfect block.

00:09:57: That's a great way to put it.

00:09:59: And Rizzo advocates for a monthly ops scorecard, too.

00:10:02: make those invisible wins visible the leadership so teams can actually stop having to defend their budgets?

00:10:08: Yeah.

00:10:08: and if we well...actually you had a thought on bigger picture here!

00:10:12: If we connect this to the bigger picture Bill Buechler hit us with a really harsh truth.

00:10:17: Ninety-five percent of btb martech spend is pointed inward at the seller.

00:10:21: Wow ninety five percent.

00:10:23: yeah

00:10:24: Buyers never see your CRM, you're forecasting tools.

00:10:27: Your sales engagement platforms.

00:10:30: over fifteen years our tools grew a hundred X but B to be buying actually got measurably harder

00:10:35: because we're prioritizing.

00:10:37: are internal dashboards over their experience.

00:10:39: Robin Hatfield echoed this when she talked about attribution.

00:10:42: She pointed out that attribution often devolves into these internal turf wars over who gets credit

00:10:47: for a deal.

00:10:48: Oh, the classic marketing versus sales fight-for-sourced pipeline?

00:10:51: Exactly!

00:10:51: Well, the buyer just wants a frictionless experience.

00:10:54: so to you The Listener if you are building a stack Are You Building it To track your internal scoreboards or are you actually using It to make Your customers life

00:11:02: easier?

00:11:03: that is the question you have to ask yourself and you know.

00:11:05: to leave you with A final slightly provocative thought on Stephanie Jenner & Scott Brinker both touched On a concept That Is wild to think about regarding who that customer actually is.

00:11:15: Oh, the agentic AI stuff?

00:11:17: Yes!

00:11:18: As AI Search and Agentic AI grow your website's primary audience might soon be other AI agents researching on behalf of human buyers.

00:11:27: That completely flips the script Right.

00:11:30: If an AI agent is evaluating you're B-to-B software against a competitor does your beautifully designed, human centric web site even matter anymore?

00:11:39: Are we entering an era where we have to market machines first?

00:11:42: Oh

00:11:43: man, ensuring our data is perfectly structured for AI to read via API long before a human ever sees our brand colors.

00:11:50: That's the whole new frontier!

00:11:52: It

00:11:52: really is.

00:11:53: If you enjoyed this episode New episodes drop every two weeks.

00:11:56: Also check out other editions on account based marketing field marketing channel marketing AI and BtoB Marketing go-to-market and social selling.

00:12:03: Yeah

00:12:03: thanks so much everyone

00:12:04: Absolutely.

00:12:05: Thank you for diving deep with us, don't forget to subscribe and until next time keep questioning your stack.