Marketing Software

This is the 6th year that we have run The Stackies as an awards contest that invites marketers to send in a single slide illustrating their marketing stack — the collection of martech tools they use and the way they conceptualize them together as a whole. Although we award trophies for a few winning entries for the ideas they shared, any stack that works for the team who uses it is a winner where it …

51 martech stacks shared in the 2020 Stackie Awards, beautifully illustrated examples of modern marketing toolsets Continue Reading »

The CDP Institute released their latest State of Customer Data report last week, and it revealed an important milestone in the martech industry: For the first time ever, the majority of participants (52%) described their martech stack as an integrated, multi-system architecture. In others words, most marketers reported having a best-of-breed stack — with many products from many different vendors — but an integrated stack, so that these different apps were sharing data with a …

Integration is by far the most important criteria when selecting martech — and it’s changing the industry Continue Reading »

I’ve been on the trail of “no code” martech these past couple of weeks, covering event-triggered marketing automation as a no code programming paradigm and mapping a partial taxonomy of over 75 no code tools. I also ran an impromptu survey of no code usage with readers, the results of which I’m sharing here. Given that my audience is mostly marketing operations and martech pros — and the savvy CMOs who love them — the …

How marketing operations and martech professionals use “no code” tools Continue Reading »

I’ve been fascinated with the rise of citizen developers in marketing empowered by a rapidly expanding landscape of “no code” tools for several years now. Momentum is growing, and while there’s some philosophical debate to be had around what is or isn’t a “no code” tool — versus any app that lets you create things without breaking into raw JavaScript or HTML5 — there’s no denying that the capabilities that marketers have at their fingertips …

3 overlapping patterns of “no code” martech and the rise of marketing makers Continue Reading »

Last week, I shared some interesting stats on trigger-based marketing from a benchmark report by Blueshift. A couple of eye-popping, high-level findings: Email triggers are 497% more effective than batch emails Mobile push triggers are 1,490% more effective than batch push notifications Directionally, this isn’t surprising, although the magnitude of the difference is remarkable. Marketing messages that are “triggered” by a prospect/customer’s actions — or a specific milestone they’ve crossed — are focused, relevant, and …

Trigger-based marketing = event-driven programming with “no code” martech in every stack Continue Reading »

After three and a half months of working out of my basement, I was in desperate need of a change of scenery. Preferably somewhere with a lot of outdoor space for hiking and frisbee throwing (a lost art!). No crowds. Lots of nature. Fresh air. The answer? Renting a small cottage on the sparsely populated mid-coast of Maine. I took the photo above from our porch one evening. Definitely a way better view than my …

What the coastline paradox reveals about infinite software specialization (in martech and other fields) Continue Reading »

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 »