The hidden fees in your martech stack

It starts with excitement and promise. A company invests in a martech platform that appears to be a great fit for its cross-channel marketing needs. At first, everything seems well enough – teams are excited by the platform’s potential, the features look promising, and there’s a sense of confidence that they’ve made the right choice.

But then, the honeymoon period ends, and reality sets in. Despite the vendor’s promises, the marketing, data, and IT teams start facing a series of unexpected obstacles. It might be a longer and messier onboarding period than expected, service and support that suddenly becomes hands off now that the sales process is finished, or the sudden need for expensive add-ons to unlock features that seemed to be part of the original package. In other cases, key functionalities are just missing altogether, with no easy workaround in sight.

These setbacks are more than just annoying — they can derail your entire martech strategy and turn what seemed like a wise strategic investment into a sunk cost. The underlying problem is that many martech providers aren’t transparent about the extra costs that will surface after you’ve signed the contract. And these costs add up quickly, jeopardizing your budget and objectives.

To help you navigate this tricky terrain, let’s explore some of the most common hidden fees associated with martech tools and platforms and discuss how to spot them before you commit.

The hidden costs of data storage

Martech platforms like CDPs and ESPs rely heavily on data to function effectively – it drives insights, fuels marketing campaigns, and informs strategic decisions. This data encompasses everything from customer profiles and interaction histories to communication logs and more. While most platforms include a baseline level of data storage in their standard packages, it’s the hidden costs related to additional data storage that can catch you off guard.

These extra fees can have a ripple effect, impacting not only your team’s operating expenses but also your ability to scale marketing and data strategies. In some cases, data teams are forced to limit data collection or even delete valuable data points to avoid the extra costs.

The challenge is that many platforms impose a cap on the amount of data you can store in them without triggering additional charges. Once you exceed this limit, the extra fees accumulate rapidly, creating a variable expense that’s hard to predict and manage.

Duplicate data

One of the more frustrating aspects of traditional martech platforms is their requirement for brands to store their data within their platform, even when brands already maintain their own data warehouse or centralized repository elsewhere. This redundancy leads to brands paying twice for the same data storage: once for their internal infrastructure and again within their customer engagement platform.

Platform limitations

But why does this happen? Brands are ultimately paying for the technical limitations due to how they manage and store customer data. Because they lack the infrastructure to directly access the data stored in a company’s data warehouse, they require you to import data into their ecosystem.

This forces brands to unnecessarily move, copy, and store their data outside of the secure environment of their data warehouse. Not only does this incur additional costs, but it results in data inaccuracies, duplication, and security compromisations.

💡 Solving for data storage costs

Suddenly, a platform that seemed affordable initially becomes a source of unexpected expenses, forcing brands to scale back and rethink their customer data strategies.

The good news is that knowing about these hidden costs means you can take proactive steps to avoid them. When considering a updated martech stack look for a solution that won’t restrict how you use your data. MessageGears, for example, connects directly to your data warehouse, eliminating the need to copy or move your data at all. MessageGears never stores your data, so you don’t need to worry about extra add-on charges as your data grows in volume or complexity.

Bolt-on solutions

Traditional platforms require bolt-on solutions and additional technology to get the most out of the platform, access your data, and accommodate real-time personalization. Bolt-on solutions are extra modules, tools, or services that aren’t included in the basic package of your customer engagement platform. They range from additional analytics tools, advanced segmentation capabilities, integration with other software, or extra communication channels. Essentially, they’re features you might expect to be included, but require additional payment to access.

Missing capabilities

A common example, especially for enterprise brands, is when a platform or tool lacks seamless integration with the data warehouse. Many large consumer brands use a data warehouse to centralize customer information, ensuring all data remains accurate, reliable, secure, and actionable. When a vendor can’t integrate directly with the data warehouse, it limits the platform’s capabilities, requiring even more tools to bridge the gap.

To address this limitation, brands often turn to a data activation platform to connect their data warehouse so they can activate their data for advanced personalization and analytics. While this can solve the immediate problem, it introduces new ones: yet another costly platform and added data complexity.

Many brands accept these bolt-on solutions as the norm, believing it’s the only way to get the functionality they need. But there is a better way.

💡 Solving for bolt-on solutions

Solving for bolt-on solutions starts by acknowledging the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach many platforms take.

Rather than relying on bolt-ons to reach your desired capabilities, choose a platform that aligns with your infrastructure and can connect directly to your data warehouse without needing additional tools.

MessageGears, for instance, eliminates the need for data activation bolt-on solutions by connecting directly to your data warehouse. By choosing a platform that doesn’t rely on additional technology to achieve its full capabilities, you can focus on using the full potential of your data without worrying about hidden costs or complex integrations.

Avoiding hidden martech costs