Build vs Buy: The cost of building your own marketing data pipeline

When calculating the cost of building out API integrations for your own marketing data pipeline, it’s important to consider not only the upfront investment in engineering resources.

But also the continued cost of maintenance, the opportunity cost of what your engineers were not building while busy with this project, and the lost ROI while your marketing team uses stale, or error-prone data to optimize campaigns.

It can be a complex math equation to understand the true cost of this endeavor, so let’s break it down.

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Table of contents

• The upfront investment
• Maintenance
• Opportunity cost
• Impact on ROI
• 3 hidden risks when you build instead of buy
• Why you should buy, not build, your marketing data pipeline