Adobe Acquires Marketo for Martech Consolidation

3 thoughts on Adobe acquiring Marketo for $4.75 billion and what it means for martech

The deal was announced yesterday afternoon: Adobe is acquiring Marketo for $4.75 billion. (As fate would have it, it was just a few hours before I was speaking at a MOCCA marketing operations event in New York on the topic of martech industry trends — to be followed by a Q&A with Sarah Kennedy Ellis, […]

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The HubSpot Customer Code

Martech companies talk customer-centricity, but can they be customer-centric?

A ton of marketing technology is sold today as the solution to delivering better customer experiences. Of course, martech doesn’t automagically create great customer experiences any more than a food processor automagically makes you a great chef. It depends on how you wield it. And, frankly, the most important elements of customer experience have nothing

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CMO Council Martech Interview

The CMO Council asked 8 good, hard questions about marketing technology management

The following interview was originally published by the CMO Council in the August 2018 edition of their Marketing Magnified e-journal. They asked me eight great questions about martech for marketing executives. These are my suggestions in reply. 1. How would you characterize the state of marketing technology discovery, qualification, implementation and use in global enterprises

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UK Marketing Technology Landscape

Martech Olympics: Even just the UK Marketing Technology Landscape has 417 companies

In the beginning, there was the first marketing technology landscape. And then it grew. And grew. And grew. And grew. And grew. And, yes, this year it grew again. To be honest, there were a number of things about this slightly obsessive exercise of mine that surprised me over the years. For instance: I was

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4 Forces of Marketing Operations and Technology

The 4 Forces of Marketing Operations & Technology

As I’ve been preparing for the upcoming MarTech conference in Boston, I have been thinking about the fundamental forces that marketing technology and operation professionals wrangle in their work. I believe there are two overarching challenges in marketing operations today: Our environment is continuously changing, often quite rapidly. We have to gracefully balance opposing concepts

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MarTech East 2018 Agenda

The next level of marketing maturity on stage at MarTech this October

I’m going to declare that, as of August 2018, martech has crossed a threshold in maturity. And by martech, I mean the grand view of martech, the convergence of marketing, technology, and management practices across industries — and the hybrid marketing leaders who are driving the strategy and operations of that convergence. Sure, the marketing

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Chatbot Hell

Bots and automation don’t automagically create a great customer experience

The alliterated alternate title for this post could be: Tickets, Tools, and Taylor Swift — One Father’s Afternoon in Automated Customer Experience Purgatory. Subtitle: a small case study of anti-patterns for customer experience bots and automation. My daughter turned 10 this year. As a present, my wife and I agreed to take her to her

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MarTech East 2018 Keynotes

Last week to get MarTech tickets at the lowest rate for an awesome conference in Boston

Want to attend MarTech in Boston this fall, October 1-3? (If you’re a hybrid marketing technologist — or a marketing executive who depends on them — the answer should be, “Of course!”) Then this is the last week to get tickets at the lowest “alpha” rate — prices go up on Sunday, July 29. Since

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