Each solution within your marketing tech stack can have a significant impact—positive or negative—on your brand’s relationship with your audience. But it’s the way that these technologies interact (or, frankly, don’t) that can have the greatest impact on the brand experience your company is providing. Learn about the dangers of disconnected technologies with our vertical engagement stack content series.

Having the right technology isn’t a panacea—after all, you still need access to the right data and have the right approach to teamwork to reach your customer engagement goals—but it’s a necessary first step. Without a built-for-purpose vertical engagement stack, executing on your marketing strategy and meeting today’s consumer expectations will be a struggle at best.

Today’s brands are living in an in-the-moment, technology-driven, mobile-first world—and so are all their customers. To break out of old habits and transform the way you’re speaking to your customers, you need to take a hard look at the technologies supporting your customer engagement efforts.

The value of highly relevant messages has been documented: When it comes to generating conversions, they’re 600 to 700% more effective than generic messages. And if you think customers don’t spot inconsistencies across channels, think again. A majority—70% of consumer—react negatively when they receive disjointed cross-channel communications from brands. So how do brands take advantage of this knowledge?

While first-party data can feel like priceless currency, its value drops the longer it takes your brand to listen, understand, and act upon it. That’s why brands need a streaming ecosystem capable of asking your customers what they want and giving it to them when it matters most.

More than 10 years ago, Facebook created the very first growth team. At the time of the team’s inception, Facebook had about 50M Monthly Active Users (MAU) and relatively flat growth. Not only did this move help turn Facebook into the giant we know today—with over 2 billion MAUs—but it pioneered the rise of a focused growth team.