The answer to your martech problem depends on the problem

Buying more, improving how teams use what they have, and cutting the stack can all work — but not for the same reasons.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

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Pop quiz: Which of these will improve marketing performance?

1. Adding to the martech stack.
2. Getting better at using what’s in it.
3. Cutting the martech stack.
4. All of the above.
5. None of the above.

The answer, according to a new report from the CMO Council and MartechTribe, is all of those. 

“The Apex Martech Matrix 2026” found that companies with higher revenue per employee did not consistently have more sophisticated technology or greater expertise using it. Some had broader functionality, some greater operational maturity, some both, and some neither.

That’s based on an analysis of 988 martech stacks across seven industries and 49 categories. Researchers compared the breadth of technology capabilities and the maturity of the people and processes using them, defining outperformers as the top 30% in revenue per employee within each industry. 

The problem isn’t always the technology

Marketing automation and email show how differently martech investments can behave.

Across all industries, the best performers had broader functionality in their marketing automation platforms. But in six of the seven, they had equal or lower organizational maturity. The differentiator was what their technology could do, not greater proficiency using it.

Email produced the reverse. The best performers had greater maturity across all the industries despite using less sophisticated feature sets. The difference: Stronger execution around practices such as deliverability, authentication, list hygiene, bounce management, and sender reputation.

CRM shows a third pattern. In six of seven industries, the best performers had both broader functionality and greater maturity. Dashboards and collaboration technology showed a similar relationship between capabilities and their use.

A marketing automation team may need access to capabilities it doesn’t have. An email team may get more from improving how it operates. A CRM team may need investment in both. Treating all three as generic “martech adoption” problems will mean spending money without solving your problem.

More CDP investment didn’t bring in more money

CDPs produced the study’s most counterintuitive result. Across all industries, top performers had less CDP functionality and lower maturity than lower-performing companies.

That doesn’t mean spending less on CDP improves business performance. It means that companies with more CDP functionality and maturity didn’t out perform other companies.

That may be because of changes in the CDP market. Customer data warehouses are now handling more data management functions. At the same time, many CDPs are shifting toward activation and engagement. That changes what companies need from a standalone CDP. 

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The same was true for programmatic advertising and governance and privacy tools, where the higher-performing companies didn’t have more features or use the technology more effectively.

Adding more features and capabilities to every part of the stack can mean spending money where it won’t improve performance. A mature organization using a feature-rich platform is valuable only when that additional capability and proficiency serve a business need.

Some of the best investments may already be paid for

There are a lot of places to improve marketing performance without buying more technology, according to the report.

Marketing automation, customer data warehouses, ecommerce platforms, and audience marketing are areas where marketers can look for quick wins. In all of these, companies were able to use more of their existing capabilities without needing more sophisticated processes or a team with greater expertise.

So, before buying a new solution, check the ones you have for un- or under-used capabilities that can solve your problem.

MarTech is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.

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