Why running a martech architecture assessment
When I was a presales consultant at Adobe, one of the first skill I have acquired is to run an assessment of current martech ecosystem of my clients.
One of the key selling point is to show how a new solution can integrate to the customer current stack and architecture.
This assessment is also crucial to evaluate the gaps. This gives interesting insights to build a relevant pitch to show how your solution(s) could add value to them.
In this step-by-step guide, I will explain how to identity all martech solutions a specific customer is using : digital analytics / BI, TMS, consent management, advertising, VOC, marketing automation, A/B tasting and personalization, CMS and social media.
A global company has very often a different martech stack depending on the segment, the brand, the markets, and types of sites (B2B, B2C, corporate, ecommerce) so before running the assessment you have to prepare a comprehensive list of websites and urls used by the company for each segment, activity, brand and market.
I will also explain my recommendation to present the assessment to the customer.
Step 1 : Detect Analytics solutions
Use observepoint chrome extension – that will give you all the solutions plugged on their websites (making calls when the page is loaded). Load the page and check the list of tags in the Chrome Developer Tools.
Below is a non exhaustive list :
- VOC solutions : Medallia, Qualtrics, etc
- Analytics solutions : Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, AT Internet, etc
- A/B testing and personalization solutions : Adobe Target, Kameleon, A/B Tasty, relevance, Tinyclues, Optimizely, target2sell, Reelevant
- Tag Management solutions : Adobe Dynamic Tag management (Launch /DTM), Google Tag Management, Tag Commander, etc
- Customer Data platforms : Segment, Tealium, Leadspace, Bloomreach, Adobe Experience Platform, Acquia, etc
- Advertising solutions : Google Advertising, Sizmec , Trade doubler, etc
- Consent Management : oneTrust, Didomi, etc
You can also check directly the calls in the network tab of the Chrome developer tools.
For example , for Adobe Analytics you can filter by «ss», Adobe Tag Management by «dtm», Adobe Marketo by «munchkin».
Step 2 : Detect Content Management Systems
To check the Content Management System / Ecommerce solution on which the website is built I use BuildWith chrome plugin or the website https://whatcms.org. Just enter the url. You can also use any generative ai solution such as Gemini or Chatgpt.
Common ecommerce CMS are Magento, Shopify , Prestashop, WooCommerce.
Common CMS are Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful, WordPress.
Step 3 : Detect Campaign Tracking
To check which solution is used to track traffic sources and campaigns driving traffic to their websites, I click on any ad on Google or link on their Facebook account.
Tracking parameters can be found at the end of the url after « ? » :
- « UTM » parameters are the naming convention for Google Analytics.
- « CID » , «campaignid» are common parameters for Adobe Analytics but they can be customized.
- «xtor» is used for AT Internet.
Step 4 : Detect marketing automation solutions
For sms , I subscribe on the app or site to receive sms. Once I receive the sms I click on any link and check the url.
- Brz.ia stands for the solution Braze => Example : https://brz.ai/8yrkH
- spl.io stands for the solution Splio => Example : http://www.spl.io/Yhao6adA
You can also find the solution name inside the redirection.
=> Example 1 : this link https://monoprix.ly/nGplwl redirects to eulerian.Monoprix redirecting to the site monoprix.fr
=> Example 2 : http://bit.ly/3D7XYrA redirects to eulerian.fnac.
Regarding emails, you can apply the same method. Subscribe to their emails then check links on the email. Copy and paste the link to https://urlscan.io.
- «t.mid», «t.mail» relates to Adobe Campaign (previously neolane)
- «t.info», «eulerian.» relates to eulerian.
- Munchkin.marketo.net refers to Adobe Marketo.
- Click.email , click.news , click.mail refers to Salesforce
=> Example for Sarenza: http://t.info.sarenza.com/r/?id=hd062bdd6,4e5d9936,89e6371e
=> Example for Smallable : https://t.e-mail.smallable.com/l2/7fAbYKgyZ9/547311/1311060529.html?
=> Example for maison123 :
=> Example for Sezane :
=> Example for Accor :
Step 5 : Assess other potential solutions
For other channels such as social media , usually the tag is also implemented on the client website / app.
Have a look at articles on Google and LinkedIn to find announcement partnerships (press releases, use cases featured on the editor site, etc).
I also use the following sources : internal sharepoints, wikis, portals, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.
Step 6 : Presenting the martech assessment
To present the assessment I use 1 slide – 1 table with the following format :
Columns : Capabilities / Brand / Solutions Logos / Key takeaways / Recommendations
Rows :
- Marketing orchestration
- Social media
- Web analytics / BI
- Content
- Personnalisation
- CDP
- TMS
Usually you will see that brands use multiple solutions in the same category (at least 2) and use different CMS for their multiple sites (the corporate site, ecommerce, employee site, support center site, campaign micro sites, loyalty site, etc …). For most clients martech stack is still very much fragmented so there is a lot of room for improvement.
They may also use different solutions depending on the market and product range so it is worth checking it by top markets and top products categories.
