Martech failures contribute to customer loss
Marketing tech isn’t optional anymore, it’s core to how companies connect with customers. But most companies aren’t getting it right. According to Intermedia Global’s recent survey, 24% of senior marketers in the UK said they lost customers in the last year because something in their martech stack failed. That’s not just disappointing, it’s avoidable.
When tech breaks down, it’s the customer who feels it first. Campaigns are delayed. Targeting becomes ineffective. Communications go out with errors. These issues don’t just cause operational setbacks, they hurt the brand. People stop trusting your outreach when it’s inconsistent, clumsy, or late. And once trust breaks, it’s hard to get it back.
Things like damaged client relationships or public complaints take time to recover from. No executive wants to be dealing with PR fallout over a broken tool. But that’s where poor martech systems tend to lead, bad press, unhappy customers, internal firefighting.
Executives ought to remember this: Martech is an investment that pays for itself when managed well. It’s also a liability when ignored. Brands aren’t just losing sales, they’re losing customer loyalty. And it’s happening because foundational systems aren’t doing what they were built to do. That deserves top-level attention, not delegation.
These aren’t isolated incidents. Intermedia Global noted that 97% of CMOs experienced at least one martech disruption in the last 12 months. This isn’t industry noise. It’s a signal that most companies still don’t have the basics right.
Poor implementation and integration as the core issue
The problem with martech isn’t the tech itself, it’s how it’s set up. When tools don’t talk to each other, you get data silos. When systems overlap without integration, you get confusion. And when marketers are expected to solve problems without real support, the whole structure breaks.
Many companies load their martech stacks with new solutions year after year, assuming more tools equal more results. But without clean integration, each added tool becomes an operational step backward. If you’re constantly switching platforms or manually fixing broken workflows, you’re not moving forward. You’re burning time.
Marketing teams aren’t tech support. Yet too often, they’re forced to act like it. Exhausted teams can’t innovate. Frustrated teams can’t focus on your growth strategy. Poor system setup eats up time and energy that should go toward strategy and execution. That’s not just inefficient, it’s damaging.
Karla Wentworth, Chief Strategy Officer at Intermedia Global, made a simple but critical point: “A badly-thought-out martech stack isn’t just a problem for the marketing and IT teams, it’s an existential threat to the entire brand.” She’s right. If your communications break down, your revenue will too.
What’s needed isn’t more tools, it’s working tools. Tools with clean data. Tools supported by solid, unified systems. Without that foundation, even the best marketing strategies grind to a halt. And when that happens, it’s not just a tech issue, it’s a leadership one. Leaders can’t afford to be hands-off with infrastructure anymore. The risks are too high, and the expectations from customers are rising fast.
Poorly integrated AI tools as a significant risk
AI is being bolted onto martech stacks at a rapid pace, but most companies are still not ready to handle it. According to Intermedia Global, 93% of CMOs experienced at least one customer-facing issue in the last year due to problems with newly added AI tools. Half of them dealt with these issues more than once. That’s not innovation, that’s friction.
AI can be powerful, no question. But when it’s rushed into systems that weren’t built to support it, it adds complexity without delivering value. Old frameworks aren’t made to handle today’s automation. If the integration is shallow or poorly managed, AI decisions start going out unchecked. That may show up as inaccurate targeting, confused personalization, or broken customer journeys.
Companies are moving fast to implement AI, but speed without direction leads to mistakes that customers notice. Introducing AI into your martech setup isn’t just about features. It’s about compatibility, clean data, and how well the tool works with what you already have. If that alignment is missing, the technology turns from an asset into a liability.
These missteps highlight something executives can’t ignore. Modern martech needs to be built for scale and adaptability. That applies doubly to AI, which depends on structured systems and reliable inputs. If your existing martech foundation is unstable, adding AI only accelerates the failure points.
This is where leadership comes in. When AI starts damaging the customer experience, it isn’t just a tech oversight, it’s a strategic failure. The long-term impact on your brand can outweigh any near-term wins from automating faster. AI needs to be deployed with focus, and it needs to work without causing downstream damage.
Inadequate vendor support across martech solutions
Vendors are failing to keep pace with the demands of marketing departments, and CMOs are losing patience. In Intermedia Global’s survey, fewer than 30% of martech vendors were rated as helpful across key categories like CRM, analytics, and website tools. The worst feedback came for email marketing and automation vendors, where almost 30% of CMOs said the providers were difficult to work with.
This isn’t about feature sets or UI updates. It’s about service, reliability, and accountability. When vendors don’t step up, marketing teams are left troubleshooting their own platforms. That drains both time and morale. And when the people responsible for growth have to spend hours just keeping basic systems functional, it slows everything down.
Many vendors are quick to sell capabilities but slow to support them. That gap is becoming more expensive for companies to tolerate. Problems don’t stop at IT, they hit the brand, the campaigns, and most of all, the customer experience. Marketing can’t function as a force-multiplier if it’s bogged down in support tickets and inconsistent service levels.
Executives should factor vendor support performance into every renewal, RFP, or procurement decision. The operational drag from bad support erodes your return on investment and blocks strategic progress. Better vendor relationships aren’t a nice-to-have, they are essential infrastructure.
Karla Wentworth, Chief Strategy Officer at Intermedia Global, put the problem in clear terms: “If marketing departments are spending all their time troubleshooting their tech because they can’t rely on the vendors, where is the time for creativity and innovation?” She’s right. Execution suffers when your teams are too busy fixing issues that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Good systems need good support. Without it, growth slows, even if the tech looks modern on paper.
Shared accountability between IT and marketing departments
When martech breaks down, it’s not always clear who owns the failure, but that’s exactly the problem. According to Intermedia Global’s survey, one-third of CMOs pointed to IT as the source of customer-facing tech issues, while nearly as many acknowledged their own marketing departments played a role. This split responsibility reflects a structural disconnect that slows progress and impacts customer experience.
Marketing and IT often operate on different timelines and priorities. One builds the tech; the other depends on it to deliver results. When communication between these functions breaks down, the technology doesn’t just underperform, it becomes unstable. Systems aren’t monitored properly. Integrations fall apart. When a campaign fails or a customer receives the wrong message, both departments start pointing fingers rather than fixing the system.
This doesn’t mean both sides aren’t trying, it means they aren’t synchronized. For executives, this is a leadership issue, not just an operational gap. Poor collaboration between IT and marketing amplifies risk and forces teams into reactive mode. Fixing these issues only after customer damage is done is too late. The cost is already paid in trust, time, and results.
Executives need to build internal accountability across departments while also aligning objectives. When both IT and marketing understand the end-to-end customer journey, and how their work contributes to it, problems get resolved faster, and fewer of them occur in the first place. This requires clarity, shared KPIs, and active oversight.
Martech is no longer a back-office set of tools. It sits at the center of customer engagement. That means technical performance must meet the same performance standards as your front-line operations. Without that alignment between departments, the foundation for delivering reliable customer experiences can’t hold.
If issues continue to show up in public-facing campaigns and digital touchpoints, the brand perception suffers, regardless of who was technically responsible. This makes cross-functional collaboration not just an operational necessity, but a brand safeguard. Leadership must make it a priority.
Key highlights
- Customer loss tied directly to martech failures: Leaders must treat martech stability as a revenue safeguard, 24% of UK marketers lost customers due to martech breakdowns, with 97% of CMOs experiencing disruption in the past year.
- Implementation and integration are the real problems: Instead of adding more tools, executives should focus on clean integration, system alignment, and practical support to optimize performance and reduce marketing burnout.
- AI introduces risk without proper foundations: C-suite teams should slow AI adoption until supporting systems, data infrastructure, and integration maturity are in place, 93% of CMOs saw AI-related issues impact customers, often more than once.
- Vendors are underdelivering when support matters most: Executive oversight is needed in vendor selection and accountability, fewer than 30% of vendors are considered helpful, especially in email and automation platforms.
- Internal misalignment exacerbates tech failures: IT and marketing must share accountability for martech performance, joint ownership and aligned KPIs are key to protecting brand experience and ensuring customer-facing stability.
