Making Sense of Martech

"Suite Fatigue is the moment you realize you're paying more every year for less flexibility and less value." — Adam
 
Marketing was supposed to get simpler. Instead, it got more expensive, harder to operate, and increasingly rigid. Jacqueline sits down with Adam Greco (previously at Salesforce, Adobe, and Amplitude) to unpack the rise of "Suite Fatigue," the growing frustration with all-in-one marketing technology platforms that promised the world but delivered fragments.
 
They get into why this moment feels different, how renewal pressure and slow innovation are turning "one vendor" into a long-term liability, and why the data warehouse is increasingly becoming the backbone of modern marketing stacks. The big question underneath it all: if you were starting from scratch today, would you still choose the same suite?




Sponsor
Brought to you by Hightouch — Went all-in on a big marketing suite but still struggling to get value? You're not alone. Our sponsor, Hightouch, spoke with 50+ enterprise teams and found 79% are frustrated by high costs, slow innovation, and rising complexity, often needing specialized teams just to keep things running. They'll share the full findings in a live webinar on February 12, plus what they're seeing from organizations updating their Martech stacks. Get the report and register!



Timestamps


01:05 — Suite Fatigue defined: when the "simpler stack" turns into a tax
10:57 — What people admit out loud vs. what they only say off-record
15:54 — The core symptoms: lock-in, slow innovation, and forced migrations
18:12 — The Franken-suite reality: shallow integrations + pay-to-play support
27:33 — Why speed to activation breaks first in legacy stacks
43:02 — "Okay, boomer." Can suites make a comeback?
53:08 — What to do next when the math stops working



Connect & Subscribe



Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube.



Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions. We may feature you in an upcoming episode! Always feel free to email us at [email protected].

Questions
Confessions
Reddit

"We've seen companies locked into vendors for a decade with no way out." – Juan
 
Jacqueline and Juan kick off 2026 with a quick reality check: stepping away from screens feels great, but the Martech stack doesn't magically get simpler while you're gone. They get brutally practical, drawing on conversations with 300+ brand-side marketers to map the six biggest pain points emerging across enterprise teams right now.
 
They dig into why "Customer 360" is still mostly a fantasy, how integration complexity turns stacks into brittle Jenga towers, and why AI pressure is creating more chaos than value. From auto-renewal horror stories to redundant CDPs and initiatives chasing optics instead of ROI, the message is consistent: confidence comes from evidence, not experience bias — and the cost of getting it wrong has never been higher.
 
Sponsor
 
Brought to you by Hightouch — Went all-in on a big marketing suite but still struggling to get value? You're not alone. Our sponsor, Hightouch, spoke with 50+ enterprise teams and found 79% are frustrated by high costs, slow innovation, and rising complexity, often needing specialized teams just to keep things running. They'll share the full findings in a live webinar on February 12, plus what they're seeing from organizations updating their Martech stacks. Get the report and register!



Timestamps
 
02:10 — An exclusive announcement for listeners
03:50 — Why experience-based advice keeps failing enterprise teams
07:45 — Six themes from 300+ marketer conversations: what's breaking in enterprise
10:50 — Data fragmentation and the myth of Customer 360
15:00 — Why evidence-based decisions are the only way forward
18:20 — Integration complexity, legacy sprawl, and cross-team coordination failures
26:15 — AI pressure without value: herd mentality of GenAI, risk, and bad customer experiences
31:00 — Adoption and operating model problems: utilization dropping, skills gaps growing
36:00 — Measurement, attribution, and ROI proof gaps: why nobody trusts the numbers
41:30 — Scaling personalization and execution speed: the bottlenecks no tool can fix



Connect & Subscribe
 
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube.
 
Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions. We may feature you in an upcoming episode! Always feel free to email us at [email protected]. 
Questions 

Confessions 

Reddit

Email feels free, but the economics are brutal: zero-cost sending makes abuse infinitely scalable. 
 
In this episode, Jacqueline sits down with Mariska and Jakub to unpack the "bot layer" that's quietly wrecking modern email: security scanners, crawlers, and malicious automation that inflate clicks, poison dashboards, and trigger the wrong automations. They get specific about why bad actors iterate faster than platforms, why "heuristic guesswork" leads to painful false positives, and how beehiiv opted for radical transparency by showing verified clicks alongside raw data. The conversation also jumps channels: Jakub argues RCS could undercut SMS on price and become the next high-volume abuse playground.
 
This episode was recorded in October 2025. Any references to global events were included as illustrative context, not as commentary on current news.
 
Sponsor


Brought to you by Hightouch - the leading composable CDP and decisioning platform trusted by brands like Domino's, Chime, and Aritzia. 90% of customers have a real use case live within their first week, delivering world-class personalization at scale. Learn more at www.hightouch.com/msom.
 
Timestamps
 
01:20 – Worst unsubscribe nightmares, Roman aqueducts, and unexpected heroes
05:40 – Why "free" email creates systemic abuse (and why volume hides the bad actors)
08:06 – How threat actors bypass trust indicators
11:02 – The reality check: protection isn't getting easier, it's getting more complicated
19:02 – Defining non-human interactions (NHI) and bot detection
24:12 – Bot detection: definitive data vs heuristics, and why false positives hurt more
26:20 – Elevating verified human engagement at Beehiiv
33:13 – RCS vs SMS: the pricing lever that could supercharge abuse
46:14 - Global privacy legislation and the future of trust
 
Connect & Subscribe
 
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube. 
 
Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions. We may feature you in an upcoming episode!
 
Questions: https://themartechweekly.com/podcast/question/
Confessions: https://themartechweekly.com/podcast/confession-corner/ 
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MSoMPodcast/comments/1morng8/office_hours_questions/

Farewell, 2025 — what a year. 
 
It marked the revival of Making Sense of Martech, and we owe it all to you and the incredible guests who took a chance on us.
 
Here are a few standout moments. Wishing you happy holidays and a brilliant new year!
 
Connect & Subscribe
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube. Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions. We may feature you in an upcoming episode!
https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/question/ https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/confession-corner/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MSoMPodcast/comments/1morng8/office_hours_questions/

Merry everything and more. Here's your very own present from us to you!
 
Connect & Subscribe
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube. Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions. We may feature you in an upcoming episode!


https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/question/ https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/confession-corner/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MSoMPodcast/comments/1morng8/office_hours_questions/