Do people bring their tools with them?
Measurably, yes — but selectively. Among the people Alium has interviewed at two different companies, the software discussed at the second company shares more than twice as many tools with the first as it does for other buyers in the same job function at companies of a similar size. Some of them say outright that they did it: “another one of the new tools that I brought in,” one digital marketing director says of the email platform, describing how “I moved us over to Klaviyo for email and SMS” in the first month, at the end of the incumbent's contract. A retention leader puts it more simply: “So actually I brought Klaviyo on shortly after I started.”
The overlap is real but partial. Averaged across movers, about one tool in six from the old company comes up again at the new one. The analysis measures repeated mentions of software across interviews, not implementations a mover is verified to have started: some buyers say they brought a tool in, and for the others the overlap shows familiarity and presence, not necessarily influence over the purchase. When the same person is interviewed twice at the same company, more than half the tools they discuss repeat, so most of a mover's stack does change. What carries over is not a random slice of it.
Which tools travel, and which stay behind
Sort the tools a mover used before by what kind of tool they are, and the pattern is sharp. Email, SMS and lifecycle platforms appear at movers' next companies much more often than the matched-peer comparison would predict. Commerce platforms and testing tools show little or no difference from that baseline, while analytics and data tools show a smaller gap.
Share of the tools movers used at their previous companies that also come up at their next ones, pooled across all movers by kind of tool, against the share expected from other buyers in the same job function at companies of a similar size. Rows are rounded and each rests on a few dozen tools, so read the gaps rather than the decimals.
Email, SMS and lifecycle platforms are the most likely to appear again when the same buyer is interviewed at a new company. Klaviyo, Attentive and Bluecore reappear most often, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Iterable reappear too. These are tools a marketing leader chooses and runs day to day; some buyers describe choosing them again at the next company, and for the rest the interviews show the platform present at both.
| Platform | Avg rating | Seen at both companies |
|---|---|---|
| 7.7 | Most often of any platform; one mover replaced the incumbent with it in their first month. | |
| 7.8 | Nearly as often as Klaviyo. | |
| 6.7 | Often, for a platform with a narrower base — despite a lower rating. | |
| 6.8 | Several times, also despite a lower rating. | |
| 7.1 | A few times. |
The platforms that reappear are not simply the best-rated ones. Bluecore and Salesforce Marketing Cloud rate well below Klaviyo and Attentive and still reappear with the same buyers, which fits the reading below: what people carry is what they know how to run, not necessarily what scores best.
The commerce platform stays with the company. A mover's previous ecommerce platform turns up at the next company about as often as it would for anyone else in the same job. Analytics and data-warehouse tools sit between the two: 24% of previously used tools reappear, against 17% for matched peers. That difference is smaller than for email and SMS, and the sample is too limited to establish how reliable it is.
Why the line falls there is a reading, not a finding. The interviews measure which tools turn up again; they do not ask why. Our reading, not something buyers state, is that the line follows who owns the decision. An email or SMS platform sits inside a marketing leader's own remit and can be replaced at the end of a contract, sometimes within weeks of arriving. A commerce platform is the company's infrastructure, chosen once and changed rarely, and an analytics stack is usually shared with other teams. That would explain the pattern; the data only shows it.
The counter-current: a familiar tool is a candidate, not a default
Movers also describe the tools they knew losing out. One digital commerce leader who had used a search tool at a previous company compared it at the new one and chose a much cheaper alternative instead; the same buyer had moved a previous company to a reviews tool they liked, and has not brought one in at the new company, where the built-in reviews cost nothing. Another doubted whether a tool they had used before would work with the new company's CRM: “at my previous job we were on Shopify, we weren't on Salesforce,” they explain, and the company had already chosen something else. A third had used Optimizely in previous roles and does not use it now. Familiarity gets a tool onto the list; budget, the existing platforms and timing decide whether it stays there.
What not to read into this
Two inferences go further than the data. The first is that the tools which travel are better: the interviews show a mover choosing a familiar platform again, not whether the second deployment went better than an alternative would have. The second is that a tool absent from the second company was dropped: the comparison is of the software each interview discussed, so a tool that did not come up may still be there. The overlap is measured against peers precisely so that tools every buyer in a role mentions do not count as having travelled.
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Our recommendations, not practices buyers describe: treat the email or SMS platform you know as one candidate in an evaluation rather than the default, and check it against the new company's commerce platform, CRM and data before proposing it, since those are the parts of the stack you are least likely to change. And if your company has hired a new marketing or lifecycle leader, email and SMS are worth paying attention to: these are the categories where the interviews show the strongest association with a leader's previous tools. That does not mean the new leader will replace them, but familiar platforms may be among the options they consider when contracts or business needs change.
For how the stack changes with company size, see how company size shapes the stack; for why email platforms get replaced in the first place, why companies switch email platforms; and for the pressure to run fewer tools, the great consolidation.
Common questions
Do people bring their marketing tools to a new job?
Some of them, measurably. Among people Alium interviewed at two different companies, the software discussed at the second company overlaps with the first by more than twice as much as it does for other buyers in the same job function at companies of a similar size. Most of the stack still changes: on average about one tool in six carries over, against more than half when the same person is interviewed twice at the same company. And some movers describe bringing a tool in themselves, such as replacing the incumbent email platform with the one they used before.
Which marketing tools are most likely to follow someone to a new company?
Email, SMS and lifecycle platforms are the most likely to appear again when the same buyer is interviewed at a new company. In these interviews a mover's previous email or SMS platform turns up at their next company about four times in ten, against roughly one and a half times in ten for comparable peers. Klaviyo, Attentive and Bluecore are the platforms that reappear most often. Analytics and data-warehouse tools show a smaller gap over matched peers, and commerce platforms and testing or personalization tools show little or none.
Why don't ecommerce platforms follow people to new jobs?
In these interviews a mover's previous commerce platform turns up at their next company about as often as it does for other buyers in similar roles at similarly sized companies. The interviews do not test why. Our reading, not something buyers state, is that a commerce platform is the company's infrastructure, chosen once and changed rarely, while an email or SMS platform is a tool a marketing leader can choose and replace within their own remit, sometimes within weeks of arriving.
Should you bring your old tools to a new company?
The interviews show it happening, not whether it works out better. Movers also describe familiar tools losing out: one chose a much cheaper search tool over the one they knew, and another doubted a tool they had used before would work with the new company's CRM. Our recommendation, not a practice buyers describe, is to treat a tool you already know as one candidate in the evaluation rather than the default, and to check it against the new company's platforms, budget and data before proposing it.
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