What eTail revealed about data fragmentation in marketing

I was already looking forward to the event. The fact that I’d be leaving a blizzard in Boston, and that eTail 2026 was being held in Palm Springs was something of a bonus!

Ahead of the event I’d been reading some thoughts from Scott Brinker, known to some as the ‘Godfather of MarTech’, in which he believes we’ve entered the 3rd age of marketing technology. In short, he believes that this era is defined by the unification of data, where the architecture is composable, rather than aligned to rigid technology stacks.

Given this thinking aligns well to our approach at imagino, I was interested to hear whether the retailers attending eTail Palm Springs agreed with Brinker’s theory.

Fragmentation is certainly the issue, so is unification the answer?

One clear message, as my colleagues attending other recent events have heard, is that data fragmentation remains a huge issue for marketing teams. An inability to quickly execute on relatively simple tasks – building audience segments, creating campaigns – is inhibiting agility in marketing.

One contact talked to me about “decision latency”. Good ideas have a half-life, and it can be just a few days, sometimes maybe hours. The longer it takes to access the data and build the customer segment, the less impactful the idea. Sometimes the delay means genuinely responsive campaigns, taking into account social, cultural, and environmental trends, just aren’t an option.

Throwing more tools at the problem isn’t working

The problem is well-recognised and understood. The path to solving it is less clear. Some have tried to counter the issue by adding more tools to their tech stack. But it’s often the case that the issue lies not in technology, but in the organisational structure, which can often create natural data siloes. 

On the surface, unification of data sounds like a logical response to the issue of data fragmentation. But the goal of bringing data together into a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is starting to look outdated.

The imagino approach – managing and activating data where it already exists – is a different way to frame the unification of data, activating the relevant data at the point at which it supports the compelling use case. This isn’t attempting to bring all of the data together into the same place, it’s about bringing the right data together at the right moment.

A tipping point for change

When introducing imagino to prospective clients, the lightbulb moment often comes when they see our solution working within an existing tech stack. It’s no exaggeration to say that this can come as a huge relief to someone who’s invested so much (often emotionally as well as financially) in their existing tech infrastructure. Seeing imagino working within this, as an accelerator to value and impact, is compelling.

AI, which was inevitably part of every conversation I had at the event, is another path to increased agility. Though there’s some fatigue around the subject, AI’s potential to give more direct control to marketers in managing, manipulating, and activating customer data is obvious.

Clarity over the entire customer relationship

These factors align to one ambition, common among everyone I talked to: the ability to see a full and comprehensive picture of every aspect of the customer relationship. 

A single view of the customer sounds like the goal. But if that single view only relates to their online activity, it’s too narrow. Knowing that a customer spends twice as much when they visit a store as they do when they visit the website is more valuable, but can only be seen if both sets of data are accessible by the Customer Engagement Platform (CEP). 

Whether we’ve entered the 3rd age of martech or not is probably for others to debate. But my experience of eTail Palm Springs is that there’s an appetite for a new approach. If it’s one that, initially at least, can leverage investments already made, then the future starts to look much sunnier.