Easy breakdown of GTM tech platforms & responsibilities

Also - Your AI-powered email strategy is useless if you can’t reach the inbox

In this edition:

1. Easy breakdown of GTM tech responsibilities & teams

2. Your AI-powered email strategy is useless if you can’t reach the inbox (Guide to stay out of the promotions tab and podcast episode)

3. Exclusive For Paid Subscribers: How to Get Leadership Buy-In for Behind-The-Scenes Ops and Tech Projects

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Block off your calendar for May 9th at 12 pm EST. The first-ever Shark Tank-style martech spotlight session is happening! Brought to you by Humans of Martech.

We'll feature six badass martech products in a fast-paced session where Jacqueline, Justin, Phil, and I will help judge. Hear directly from the founders and marketers who understand your world.

Discover new ways to:
• Build better forms and surveys (Typeform)
• Plan, budget and forecast better (Uptempo)
• Uncover your incremental contribution (Paramark.com)
• Optimize lead routing and scheduling (RevenueHero)
• Identify warm prospects (Common Room)
• Increase your response rates (Sendoso)

Save your spot here!

*btw your email will NOT be shared with presenters and you won’t get added to any newsletters or drip campaigns.

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Easy Breakdown of GTM Tech Platforms and Responsibilities

There is a world of technology behind every successful GTM team.

And it takes tremendous skill, experience, and drive to orchestrate it effectively.

Here are the Core Components of Go-To-Market (GTM) Technology.

1 - MARKETING & ABM TECH (select examples)
Marketing Automation: Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud
DAM, Content, Social Platforms: WordPress, Contentful, Webflow, AEM, Hootsuite, Sprout Social
Webinars & Events: ON24, Zoom, Goldcast, Hopin
ABM & Intent: 6sense, Demandbase, ZoomInfo, RollWorks, Chili Piper
PM, Planning & Budgeting: Uptempo, Monday.com, Workfront, Asana, Smartsheet

2- SALES SYSTEMS & ENABLEMENT (select examples)
CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive
Sales Engagement & Outreach: Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo, Groove
Configure Price Quote (CPQ): Salesforce CPQ, DealHub, PandaDoc, Conga
Sales Enablement: Highspot, Seismic, Showpad, Paperflite
Forecasting & Revenue Intelligence: Clari, Gong, BoostUp, People.ai
Comp & Deal Desk Tools: Xactly, QuotaPath, CaptivateIQ

3 - CUSTOMER SUCCESS & RETENTION PLATFORMS (select examples)
Customer Success Platforms: Gainsight, Catalyst, Totango
Onboarding & Adoption: Userflow, Appcues, WalkMe
NPS & Surveys: Qualtrics, Delighted, Medallia, SurveyMonkey
Customer Health Scoring: ChurnZero, Vitally, Pendo, Amplitude
Knowledge Base & Self-Service: Zendesk, Intercom, Notion

4 - DATA, ANALYTICS, & REPORTING PLATFORMS (select examples)
Customer Data Platforms (CDP): Segment, mParticle, Tealium, RudderStack
Data Warehouse / Lake: Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks
ETL & Reverse ETL: Fivetran, Airbyte, Hightouch, Census
Attribution Modeling: Dreamdata, HockeyStack, Bizible (Adobe)
BI & Dashboards: Looker, Tableau, Power BI, ThoughtSpot
Data Governance: Collibra, Alation, Atlan

5 - AI, INTEGRATIONS, & GOVERNANCE (select examples)
Predictive Scoring: MadKudu, 6sense, Infer
GenAI & Content Automation: Jasper, Writer, Copy.ai, ChatGPT etc.
Integration Platforms (iPaaS): Workato, Tray.io, Zapier, Mulesoft
Privacy & Compliance: OneTrust, Ketch, Transcend
Experimentation & Innovation: Optimizely, Statsig, AB Tasty, LaunchDarkly

I want to thank the subject-matter experts Jessica Kao, Paul Wilson, and Josh Hill for their advice and direction on creating this diagram.

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Your AI-powered email strategy is useless if you can’t reach the inbox

The 3 most important tactics to improve deliverability—without guessing

There’s a lot of noise around AI personalization, segmentation, and campaign design. But here’s the truth:

If your emails land in spam, none of it matters.

I recently went deep on this episode with Ruari Baker, CEO of Allegrow—and it’s easily one of the best tactical breakdowns on email deliverability I’ve heard. Ruari makes a compelling case: your most creative campaigns, best data, and strongest offers—none of it will perform if your emails aren’t even getting seen.

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Let’s fix that.

Here are three things every team should be doing to protect deliverability and drive results.

1. Use multiple subdomains to isolate risk

Most teams use one sending domain for everything. Big mistake.

Separate out your traffic:

• Use one subdomain for lifecycle emails

• Another for outbound sales

• A third for newsletters or promos

When one stream gets flagged, it doesn’t take down your entire domain.

2. Stop relying on open rates

Apple’s iOS changes in 2021 broke tracking. Now open rates are inflated, unreliable, and misleading.
Instead:

• Use open rates as directional (not definitive)

• Track click-through and spam complaint data

• Use Google Postmaster Tools to monitor your actual domain reputation

If you don’t have Postmaster Tools set up, that’s your first task after reading this.

3. Implement contact-level risk scoring

Validation is no longer enough. You need a risk score for every email address you send to.

Modern tools (like Allegrow) check for:

• Email validity and bounce risk

• Spam trap likelihood

• Behavioral patterns across millions of inboxes

This helps you avoid sending to dangerous contacts and protects your domain before issues arise.

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HTML vs Plain Text: It depends (but you’re probably doing it wrong)

Plain text emails often land better. HTML emails often look better. You need to do both.

Use plain text when:

• You’re doing cold outbound

• You need inbox placement more than design

• You’re trying to reset engagement

Use HTML when:

• You’re sending to warm, opted-in audiences

• You need to show visuals, products, or brand elements

Pro tip: Mix in plain text sends even for your nurtured list. It improves inbox placement for all your future emails.

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Most marketers never build a sunset policy. That’s a problem.

Inactive subscribers drag down your performance and your domain reputation.

Here’s what to do:

• Identify your bottom 10–25% by engagement

• Build a final reactivation flow

• Remove the ones who don’t respond

This keeps your list clean and your engagement metrics healthy.

Check out the full podcast episode here.