Marketing Software

Thanks to The New York Times article yesterday — What Did Microsoft and Adobe Chiefs Talk About? — there are a lot of rumors flying about a potential merger between the two. Although the hubbub surrounding this possibility is mostly about (1) the two teaming up to compete with Apple, particularly in the mobile space, and (2) the potential synergies between thousands of Microsoft .NET developers and thousands of Adobe Creative Suite users, I’m more …

If Microsoft acquires Adobe for online marketing Continue Reading »

Tomorrow (Tuesday, August 31) at 2pm Eastern, I’ll be presenting a MarketingProfs webinar, “Marketing in the Cloud.” Sponsored by Citrix, it’s an updated take on my post about marketing in the cloud from a couple of years ago. I’m writing this last minute, but if you catch this in time, you can join the event for free by registering here. Since my original post, marketing in the cloud has come a lot more down to …

Marketing in the Cloud Webinar Continue Reading »

You are what you eat. You are the company you keep. And now a new maxim: You are the software you use. Like all great maxims, of course, that’s more than a little overstated. But now that software and technology underlie almost everything we do — inside our our organizations, as well as in the media and vehicles we use to engage with prospects and customers in the outside world — it’s important to appreciate …

Marketers: you are the software you use Continue Reading »

I have a non-green confession to make: I love paper plates. Paper plates, paper napkins, plastic forks and knives. They’re always fresh and clean. Bring them outdoors on a picnic, no worries of losing or breaking anything. Blithely sully them with cheeseburger and chili dog, potato salad and watermelon — and then simply throw them away. No cleaning, no optimizing the dishwasher. It’s an absolute miracle of modern living. Now, while I’ve curbed my desire …

The Age of Disposable Software Continue Reading »

My friends, marketing software has officially become Big Business. Last Friday, IBM announced its acquisition of enterprise marketing software company Unica for $480 million. Combined with their August 2 acquisition of web analytics leader Coremetrics (for an undisclosed metric ton) and their May 24 announcement to acquire Sterling Commerce (for $1.4 billion) — along with its own WebSphere web application software — IBM has quite quickly assembled a premier enterprise marketing management (EMM) software portfolio. …

Adobe, IBM and the big business of marketing software Continue Reading »

To say that there are a lot of marketing technology companies out there is a major understatement. To help picture the scale of this expanding universe, here’s just a sample of the players in the field: These are merely a fraction of the firms offering marketing automation, web analytics, campaign management, conversion optimization, email marketing, bid management, keyword research, attribution management, behavioral targeting, digital asset management, marketing resource management, social media monitoring — and I’ve …

A perfect storm for marketing technology Continue Reading »

Yesterday, I had lunch with Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of Hubspot and a friend of mine from MIT. Since we both run software-as-a-service (SaaS) start-ups in the marketing space, I always enjoy catching up with him because, even though we’re pursuing different product visions, there’s a lot of overlap in the challenges and opportunities we face in the market. One of the observations that struck me in our latest discussion is how different software …

The greenfield of marketing software Continue Reading »

As a shorter and more light-hearted post for the holiday weekend, here are five truisms about technology in the marketing world that I’ve found as good rules of thumb — somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely: 1. The Great Paradox Software developers are usually bad at creative marketing. Creative marketers are usually bad at software development. Excellent digital marketing requires both. 2. The Shoemaker’s Children? If you’re considering buying online marketing software or services from a …

5 marketing technology truisms Continue Reading »

A couple of major trends in software development — in particular, open source collaboration and the design of social network/user-generated content platforms — may provide useful insight for the future of marketing management. After all, the increasing number of marketing channels and the increasing granularity of initiatives in them combine to form ultra-large-scale marketing environments that share similar properties to ultra-large-scale (ULS) software systems. It’s not coincidental that many of the leading web sites whose …

Ultra-large-scale marketing operations Continue Reading »

Two powerful and parallel trends are underway in marketing. First, marketing is becoming more human. This is the social media revolution. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn groups, etc., are thriving with real dialogues, between real people in organizations and real constituents in the market. This pushes marketing as a whole to be more real — customers aren’t abstract models on a whiteboard, but splendidly diverse individuals with emotions, opinions, and microphones. What used to be a …

Marketing more human, more computerized Continue Reading »