Marketing Software

As Forrest Gump might say, “Platform is as platform does.” Pandium, a fascinating kind of app-marketplace-as-a-service company, released a State of Product Integrations at the SaaS 1000 report this week. They examined integrations, public APIs, and “app centers” offered by the 1,000 fastest growing SaaS companies from 2019. Their analysis provides empirical evidence for two truths: Nearly every SaaS company now integrates with other SaaS companies in the cloud. For the SaaS 1000, the median …

Proof of platform: SaaS companies have a median of 15 integrations each — app platforms have 500+ Continue Reading »

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about 3 Trends Driving the Second Golden Age of Martech: Ecosystems, Experts, and (Citizen) Engineers. These are the big themes that I believe will shape the next decade of marketing technology: Ecosystems — instead of marketing cloud suites vs. best-of-breed point solutions, we will have the best of both: open platforms that serve as stable foundations, augmented by large ecosystems of specialized third-party apps that are …

How platform dynamics explain The Second Golden Age of Martech Continue Reading »

Last month, I published the latest marketing technology landscape. It grew yet again, defying many a pundit’s prior prediction, swelling to 8,000 martech solutions. Upon its release, two things immediately happened: A bunch of people insisted it would consolidate dramatically. A bunch of companies emailed me to complain they weren’t included. The irony of those two competing narratives flooding my inbox at the same time — which I’ve witnessed every year for the past decade …

Platform dynamics driving martech app expansion and consolidation explained in one (relatively) simple model Continue Reading »

Okay, there aren’t really going to be 500 million martech apps by 2023. And if there were, we certainly wouldn’t attempt to map them in a martech landscape. (Crikey, that’s a nightmare that will haunt me in the dark of night.) But according to IDC in their IT Industry 2020 Predictions, “over 500 million digital apps and services will be developed and deployed using cloud native approaches” by 2023. 500 million. Let that sink in. …

Forget the Martech 5000. Try the Martech 500 Million. Continue Reading »

Spring is one of my favorite times of year in the martech industry. We release the latest marketing technology landscape. We share the latest data on martech careers and job responsibilities. We — in normal times — run the MarTech Conference in the Bay Area. And at that conference, we announce the winners of The Stackies: Marketing Stack Awards and share dozens of amazing stack illustrations from startups through Fortune 500 brands. (Check out the …

7 amazing marketing stacks from Cisco, Infutor, Juniper Networks, Philips, Poly, Sargento, and USPS Continue Reading »

Welcome to the 2020 edition of the marketing technology landscape. Yes, it grew once again, by 13.6%, up to a total of 8,000 martech solutions. That’s after 615 from the 2019 landscape went away, either consolidated with another martech company or simply gone defunct. If you were predicting consolidation, an 8.7% churn rate from one year to the next is pretty significant attrition to support that narrative. But the rate of new venture creation — …

Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2020): Martech 5000 — really 8,000, but who’s counting? Continue Reading »

Early in March, Blissfully released their 2020 SaaS Trends Report. As with previous data they’ve shared, the report is full of highly interesting findings based on actual SaaS usage — not just what people claim they’re using when asked (which is usually underreported by half). I was just getting ready to excitedly write a story about it when, well, the coronavirus pandemic escalated. The whole world started falling apart. Suddenly, a report on year-over-year growth …

SaaS adoption trends at the start of 2020 (yes, before all hell broke loose) Continue Reading »

TL;DR If you think the world of martech software has shrunk, take a tour of Europe. Everybody needs a hobby. Golf. Fishing. Home brewing. For some of us, it’s collecting logos of martech companies and carefully categorizing them into little boxes on slides, to the delight or dismay of marketers at conferences worldwide. I say “us,” not in the editorial “we” sense, but as a legitimate plurality. There’s a bunch of us, following in the …

An epic landscape of 2,427 European martech solutions Continue Reading »

I’m used to getting a lot ribbing pushback on the scale of the marketing technology landscape. “7,000 martech vendors is way too much!” My gut-level, defensive reaction is to reply, “Hey, it’s not my fault. I’m just counting them.” Of course, one could argue with the work I do with HubSpot’s platform ecosystem, we are enabling and encouraging more martech ecosystem entrepreneurs. Which is true (see the 4 layers of app integrations with SaaS platforms). …

The average enterprise uses 1,295 cloud services Continue Reading »

The good folks at Ascend2, a marketing industry research firm, recently released a study on Martech Stack Optimization. It’s the kind of report that I open with the enthusiasm of that kid from the movie A Christmas Story opening the present of his dreams. (I’ll try not to shoot my eye out.) Lots of good data points, such as 71% of participants report that they will continue to invest moderately to significantly in their martech …

The top 3 things marketers want martech vendors to improve Continue Reading »