January 2022

Last year, I wrote about a pattern of aggregation platforms growing in martech stacks. The two key characteristics of an aggregation platform: It centralizes a cross-departmental capability (e.g., a cloud data warehouse). It grows in value as you connect more apps in your stack to it. That second point is important, and not only for the obvious network effects. To me, this triggered — or was triggered by — the recognition that tech stacks are …

Matrixed Tech Stacks with Both Horizontal and Vertical Aggregation Platforms Continue Reading »

Today, HubSpot announced a milestone of more than 1,000 integrated apps featured in the app marketplace for its CRM platform. The call to better integrate martech is being heard. As you may know, I joined HubSpot a little over four years ago to help grow its platform ecosystem. So I’m delighted to see this momentum build. And I feel like it’s still in the early stages of what it will become. A huge “thank you” …

The power of combinatorial innovation and 4 other lessons on the journey to 1,000 apps Continue Reading »

As an “armchair analyst” in martech, my favorite content comes from stack “aggregation” platform companies who publish the data of what their customers are actually doing. Unlike surveys that can be wildly biased and imprecise, aggregated usage data is empirical truth, straight up. Like the martech landscape, you can argue “why” and “where next,” but you can’t argue “what” the data is in the present. This week’s aggregated data gift is the 2022 SaaS Management …

SaaS stacks keep growing. Is there also a relationship between choice and utilization? Continue Reading »

Hello, 2022! Or document.write(“Hello, 2022!”) to those still in codeland. Following my wrap-up of martech from 2021 — tl;dr a year in digital marketing that was experienced like a Twitch stream at 1.5X speed — let’s jump in to the martech topics I expect will shape 2022. Now, it’s true, I’m generally quite skeptical of “predictions” and therefore reluctant to label this post as such. But since I spend my days deep in martech — long …

3 Big Martech Innovation Themes in 2022 Continue Reading »