The martech landscape keeps expanding at breakneck speed, with new AI-powered tools emerging faster than most companies can absorb them. 

Yet most organizations use only a fraction of what they buy. 

​

Frans Riemersma, founder of MartechTribe, argued in Helsinki that the real problem is not a lack of innovation but a lack of integration. Stop implementing software. Start implementing business cases,” he said. 

​

Riemersma’s message resonated in a room full of CMOs facing bloated tech stacks and tighter budgets. His advice: link every tool directly to measurable value. 

​

Skill 1: Hack — experiment fast and prove the concept

Start small. Build a stand-alone “hack” version of a solution to test if it technically works and whether customers actually like it. 

This step is not about perfection — it’s about finding out if the idea creates value at all.  As Riemersma noted: “Markets, companies and individuals each have their own learning curves. Steepen the learning curve — flatten the hype.” 

 ​

Skill 2: Pack — simplify and standardize what works 

Once traction is proven, clean up the prototype. Leave out everything unnecessary — extra data flows, redundant content, complex integrations.  This makes the process repeatable and ready for automation. 

Anything that can be standardized, he said, can eventually be automated. 

​

Skill 3: Stack — integrate and scale for growth 

Only after proving and simplifying should marketers integrate the tool into the company’s full ecosystem. 
At this stage, technology becomes part of the business — measurable, maintainable and scalable. Riemersma calls this process productizing marketing: turning ad-hoc projects into reusable assets. 

It’s how companies move from “martech-assisted” to “martech-embedded” growth. 

​

Link tech maturity to company value 

MartechTribe’s benchmark of more than 11 000 stacks shows a clear correlation between customer-technology maturity and revenue per employee. 

In one case, a financial-services company earned €16 for every €1 invested after aligning martech with business goals — proof that focus beats scale. 

​

Watch the full keynote here: