Why you need to align your IT and Marketing teams

MarTech (the blending of marketing and technology) should be at the heart of your marketing strategy. Every day, MarTech is increasing in momentum in the marketing world. In this digital era, marketing can no longer function without technology. It has overtaken our global culture and is reshaping the entire business landscape. Your customers and competitors use technology throughout the entire day to analyse behaviour, play out dynamic content, offer real time products services, engage on target with key prospects and build a much more detailed and efficient sales cycle, therefore your business must stay up to speed.

As budgets increase and technology develops, marketers need to be ahead of the game, boosting their technology to ensure that their MarTech implementations are aligning their creative and marketing strategies. The key to successful MarTech solutions, is a partnership between IT and Marketing departments. Marketing technology is the place for IT and marketers to combine their skills, build joint infrastructure, and to learn about business and technology purposes. 

However, many marketers are struggling to implement MarTech because of alignment issues with their IT counterparts.. For many organisations, there is still a huge gap between marketing and IT teams. 

Why the divide?

Both teams are heading towards a common goal. However, marketing teams tend to be aiming for more leads, customers and profit. While the IT department typically focuses on implementing the right technology and keeping expenses low. There are conflicting views on one side focusing on the emotions of the customers (building creative campaigns) and the other focusing on the data, which can create a back and forth battle between the teams if they don’t understand each others mission.

Building the bridge

The key to success is to become the bridge builders and create a new partnership between the two teams. What drives all departments are company goals. To build a relationship the IT and Marketing goals, need to align. Both teams need to be aware and involved in each process of the project. These roles and aims need to be clarified from the get-go.

Benefits

Research firm McKinsey found that companies whose CMOs are “integrators” working with their It departments to achieve company goals, are more successful than those who don’t work together. Higher performing companies are the ones that use ‘dynamic creative optimisation’ (highly personalised online advertising) which requires both creative and analytical skills.

How to build bridges

1. Marketers and technologists* need to understand business strategies. All parties need to be aware of what drives the agenda of the company and ultimately the agenda for the two teams, understanding the standpoint from both marketing and IT.
2. Show transparency of your processes and efforts. IT teams need to be included in the creative marketing processes from the beginning. The same accounts for the IT requirements or technology building processes, marketers need to be included into the way technology is built, how it works and the consequences that will occur from that.
3. Build mixed teams. In an agile set up marketers should always be part of the team, if developing martech technologies. It is important to ensure that the teams are collaborating and bonding before a project has started. 
4. Dedicated community management. Establish a community manager, if teams have a huge gap in culture, in the working environment. It can sometimes be hard to manage two teams, if they are far apart in personalities and ideologies. A neutral community manager can help to ensure effective communication and resolve any issues that arise without creating tension between the teams. 

If you want more information on Martech solutions or IT and marketing alignment. Get in touch