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Customer Data Management Projects Vary by Company Type and Geography
We are almost there. I’ve done my 2022 Vendor Selection Matrix research on Customer Data Management, the survey has been analyzed, insights and trends have been written up and the vendor scorecards/profiles completed. The report is now with those vendors for fact checking and we expect to publish later in November.
Providing an optimal customer experience is impossible without having a unified Customer Data Management (CDM) process in place: a process that includes the consolidation and aggregation of all data collected in separate systems across the company. This is not an IT-centric data warehouse or data lakes approach, ideally it should be a Marketing-led CDM initiative, to ensure the data unification project is focused directly on marketing requirements.
The global market for customer data management platform software is rising dramatically as companies invest in their CDM process to ensure success in their digital marketing and digital selling. IDC has sized the CDP software market at $ 2.2 billion in 2021 with an annual growth of 62%. The vendor landscape is quite stable with several well-established independent CDP vendors who are now challenged not only by the expanded sales efforts of enterprise software vendors like Salesforce, Adobe, and Oracle, but also through increased competition from tools that enable in-house IT teams to build their own CDP equivalent.
Our survey of 1500 business professionals included this question, “Which of the following processes do you automate, or plan to, with your CDM platform?”. The top six processes named were:
- Customer profile resolution
- Digital experience personalization
- Business reporting and analytics
- Mkt. execution testing/optimization
- Market segmentation
- Cust. lifetime revenue calculation
- Channel optimization analysis
When asked, “Which anticipated top 3 benefits are driving your investment in customer data management automation in 2022?”, well over one third of companies cited content personalization. But that varies across the regions. Real-time personalization and measurement of intent are more important in North America while European respondents are still focused on getting to a single customer database and/or single source of truth, a more basic CDM initiative.
These are the 15 vendors that qualified for the Vendor Selection Matrix™ – Customer Data Management 2022 due to their scores in the survey and me (listed alphabetically):
ACTIONIQ, BLUECONIC, CALIBER MIND, CROSSENGAGE, EULERIAN, EVERGAGE, LEADSPACE, LYTICS, NGDATA, REDPOINT GLOBAL, SALESFORCE, SITECORE, TEALIUM, TERMINUS, and TWILIO
Although Evergage was acquired by Salesforce back in 2020, a significant number of respondents named and rated that brand unprompted. Indeed, the list above is a broad mix of vendors with a wide variety of claims: data consolidation, collecting entire clickstreams, creating a “golden record” through identity resolution, enabling intelligent engagement, and identity tagging, even ABM predictive analytics this time. The CDM challenge is different across the B2C and B2B spectrum. It also varies according to whether you are a medium-sized company or a large international enterprise.
Watch out for the final version of the report in full detail next month.
Always keeping you informed! Peter O’Neill
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Seismic Top Again in SEM
Sales Engagement Management (SEM) processes are transforming in most companies. B2B buyer behavior has evolved to become primarily digital, so traditional in-person selling is no longer the norm with 70% of business decision-makers now open to fully self-serve or remote purchases even if more than $ 50,000, according to McKinsey.
I’ve just published my 2022 Vendor Selection Matrixtm research on Sales Engagement Management which shows that increasing digital marketing and sales means that automated sales strategies and analytics have now joined the SEM process family. Indeed, in many companies, the sales organization includes a new generation of customer success managers, with different informational needs to the traditional salesperson. We estimate that 40-45% of companies have automated, or will be automating, parts of the SEM process in 2022.
Great SEM is now more important than ever.
The COVID-19 pandemic has set off a period of head-spinning change in many companies, even industries. Digital transformations are being realized faster than ever thought possible. Firms go digital in a matter of days, not years, and offer new services almost overnight. And one of the most drastic consequences of the move to digital marketing, selling, and buying, is on the role of that traditional salesperson (note that I co-wrote the Forrester report “Death of the B2B Salesman” back in 2015). Some of us analysts and vendors are starting to propose the broader descriptor Revenue Enablement or Revenue Management, where Revenue is an aggregation of sales and retention rate, most of which is automated and digital.
We asked why marketers need SEM.
We asked, “Which of the following processes do you plan to automate with your SEM system?”, providing a list of 17 possible processes. The highest NEW interest is in improving Guided Selling and Pipeline Management, followed by support for Video Selling (aka remote selling). The next two priorities are being able to provide data and analytics (including alerts and recommendations) to salespeople.
SEM investment drivers depend on geography.
Overall, nearly one half of companies are focused on sales content management while 29% cite integrating to other marketing asset systems as important. One quarter value the opportunity to support social selling. However, these priorities vary across the regions. Social selling seems to be more important in Europe, as is Content control. More American companies are still working on providing relevant content assets to salespeople and to integrate to other systems while the more strategic benefit of improving revenue operations is recognized by four times as many European executives compared to North American.
SEM improvement has a “sense of urgency” due to eCommerce.
As cited above, eCommerce has affected the sales process in almost all B2B companies. A resounding 98% of respondents expect the share of their products/services sold online to increase dramatically, reducing the dependency on a field sales force. But the Inside Sales (BusDev) function requires more, but also different, SEM functions.
Pure-play SEM vendors may not be able to keep up.
As part of an overall trend towards adopting more capable revenue management technology, SEM vendors will be challenged by existing Account-Based Marketing and Customer Data Management vendors. Many of these vendors will already have a strategic supplier relationship and can provide “just-enough” SEM capabilities to lock out a pure-play SEM vendor.
But what is the market saying?
The clear #1 Global Leader, as scored by the survey and me, is the vendor Seismic, who have won this leadership position for three surveys now.
This is the full list of all Market Leaders (having both a Strategy and an Execution score of over 4 out of 5) in the Vendor Selection Matrix™ – Sales Engagement Management 2022 (listed alphabetically):
APPAROUND, BIGTINCAN, BRAINSHARK (now BIGTINCAN), CLEARSLIDE (now BIGTINCAN), HIGHSPOT, MEDIAFLY, PITCHER, SALESLOFT, SEISMIC, and SHOWPAD.
Note that the vendors BRAINSHARK and CLEARSLIDE were acquired by BIGTINCAN this year. However, the brands were named and scored, unprompted, in the survey.
The full list of vendor brands in the Top 15 vendors scored in the survey is completed by:
ACCENT TECHNOLOGIES, CLIENTPOINT, SALESPHERE, SAP, and PROLIFIQ
The link above connects you to the public version of the report, with the alphabetical list of market leaders and shorter vendor profiles. Watch out for several versions of report in full detail over the next months as several vendors distribute their licensed reprints.
Always keeping you informed! Peter O’Neill
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Sales is different now, so Sales Engagement Management must change too
We are almost there. I have now completed my 2022 Vendor Selection Matrix research on Sales Engagement Management, the survey has been analyzed, insights and trends have been written up and the vendor scorecards/profiles completed. The report is now with those vendors for fact checking and we expect to publish in October.
The need to automate elements of sales engagement management (SEM) was proposed many years ago (I would claim to be that analyst in question) but not readily adopted in all companies, especially those dominated by a Chief Sales Officer. But the COVID-19 pandemic has set off a period of head-spinning change in many companies, even industries. Digital transformations are being realized faster than ever thought possible. Firms go digital in a matter of days, not years, and offer new services almost overnight.
And one of the most drastic consequences of the move to digital marketing, selling, and buying, is on the role of that traditional salesperson (again, let me note that I co-wrote the Forrester report “Death of the B2B Salesman” back in 2015).
Our survey of 1500 business professionals on this topic shows the highest NEW interest in improving Guided Selling and Pipeline Management, followed by support for Video Selling.
The next two priorities are being able to provide data and analytics (including alerts and recommendations) to salespeople. SEM projects are mostly executed by more mature companies and based on our conversations with users and vendors, we estimate that 40-45% of companies have automated, or will be, their SEM process in 2022-23.
When we asked them about their 2022 SEM projects, nearly half of the companies were still focused on sales content management, the earliest implementation phase of SEM. Nearly a third say that integrating to other marketing asset systems is important, and a quarter value the opportunity to support social selling. However, these priorities vary across the regions which we explore in the report in more detail. The project drivers have also changed dramatically since our last survey in late 2020.
These are the 15 vendors that qualify for the Vendor Selection Matrix™ – Sales Engagement Management 2022 due to their scores in the survey and me (listed alphabetically):
ACCENT TECHNOLOGIES, APPAROUND, BIGTINCAN, BRAINSHARK, CLEARSLIDE, CLIENTPOINT, HIGHSPOT, MEDIAFLY, PITCHER, PROLIFIQ, SALESLOFT, SALESPHERE, SAP, SEISMIC, and SHOWPAD
Watch out for the final version of the report in full detail next month.
Always keeping you informed! Peter O’Neill
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MRM Earns a Boost of Interest, but is About to Change
I hope you had a great summer break. I was away for a few weeks myself and have returned to my desk refreshed and ready for more work as Research Director for Research In Action, Lead Analyst at B2B Marketing, as well as several individual client projects.
Earlier this month, I completed my 2022 Vendor Selection Matrix research on Marketing Resource Management and can report that there is clear increased interest in establishing a such a system to help marketing executives to plan, monitor, and control the usage of their most important resources: money, people, content assets, projects, and brand.
Marketing financials and calendars are the most popular processes being automated, closely followed by marketing performance management. Based on our conversations with users and vendors, we estimate that 55-60% of companies have automated, or will be automating, parts of the MRM process in 2022.
When we asked 1500 business professionals about their 2022 MRM projects, well-over one third of companies cited the need for data on marketing performance or return-on-investment as their major reason for MRM investment. Just over one third see it as a method to reduce overall costs and a significant 26% consider improved brand management as a priority.
The need for such a Marketing Resource Management process was proposed some years ago (I could probably claim to be that analyst) but not readily accepted by the user community. Now, the need for MRM is perhaps clearer, but the modern marketing executive wants more than just an asset management system.
They need a more dynamic solution that enables them to forecast, measure, model, analyze and even predict all their business numbers – to be fully empowered with control over their marketing processes and outcomes.
I anticipate the process name itself to mature in the next years. It will be interesting to see what thought leadership campaigns come out of the vendors and how quickly the user community can tune in to the new terminology.
These are the Market Leaders (having both a Strategy and an Execution score of over 4 out of 5) in the Vendor Selection Matrix™ – Marketing Resource Management 2022 as scored by the survey and myself (listed alphabetically):
ALLOCADIA, APRIMO, BRANDMAKER, BRANDSYSTEMS, CONTENTSERV, LYTHO, MARMIND, PERCOLATE, SITECORE, WEDIA, OPTIMIZELY (WELCOME), and WORKFRONT (ADOBE)
These are the vendor brands named spontaneously by the survey respondents. Some of the brands are part of larger vendor organizations (such as Welcome being part of Optimizely and Workfront part of Adobe). Also, BrandMaker acquired Allocadia earlier this year and have now rebranded completely to Uptempo.
Some of the marketers we surveyed saw MRM as just content or even digital asset management and so named and scored their vendors. Both Contentserv and Percolate (Seismic) have stated that they appreciate the great feedback from the survey but no longer promote their solution as an MRM solution and should be applauded for their honesty.
The link above connects you to the public version of the report, with the alphabetical list of market leaders and shorter vendor profiles. Watch out for several versions of report in full detail over the next months as several vendors distribute their licensed reprints.
Always keeping you informed! Peter
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The Future of Marketing Events
We are about to publish my next B2B Marketing Propolis Premium Report, titled The Future of B2B events: Strategic Importance of Events Elevated by Two Years of Crisis
I enjoyed working with Steve Kimish, Propolis Hive expert, Execution & Campaigns, while the interviews were with senior executives in/around the B2B marketing event industry, to collect an appropriately deep insight into the topic.
Within the report I also cite from my Vendor Selection Matrix research on the same topic and list out the most significant Marketing Event Management platforms that we discovered in the survey.
Here is my final chapter entitled simply; “Recommendations”.
“Planning a marketing event calendar for fiscal or calendar 2023 is probably going to be one of the more strategic programmes for many B2B CMOs and marketing directors over the next months. Many in marketing used to see events as nice-to-have vanity driven exercises of corporate PR. In future, it will be an integral part of an overall customer engagement strategy.
Future marketing plans will include both physical and digital events as standard in customer engagement programs; to collect market/customer insights at scale and to maintain a buyer/customer relationship over a longer period than just a buying cycle. A B2B CMO I’ve met recently talked about plans as more of a ‘media strategy’ than a marketing strategy.
I know of several large tech vendors that already have concrete plans into 2024 for large scale, multi-media, highly branded events accommodating thousands of delegates and providing an outstanding conference, networking and banqueting experience for business partners and customers alike.
Virtual marketing events will become part of a new marketing channel, scheduled, and atomised across the whole calendar and much more numerous, impactful, and measurable than before.
The interviews documented in the body of this report contain a series of recommendations for you to take note of, but I would like to add a couple more strategic thoughts as a recommendation. You may not need to do it this year, or even next, but I suggest that you should be at least considering the following initiatives over the next two to five years:
- Recruiting media talent. The largest B2B companies will be creating their own ‘Netflix’ websites with full presentations and atomised videos of the speakers who have featured in recent marketing events, plus further thought leadership and educational content. Over time, the expectation among all B2B buyers will be to enjoy the same type of experience. So, when further recruiting content marketing staff, you should be looking for people with video management and editing skills or providing training for these capabilities.
- Configure event data into your customer data management strategy. As you extend your customer data management (CDM) processes and strategy, ensure that the CDM team can collect and collate event engagement data as well. This requires process design and ensuring that the selection criteria for new event platform software include this requirement.
- Don’t neglect the content expectations of your ecosystem members. While the intent to provide an entertainment and memorable experience in future marketing events is understandable, savvy marketing executives will also continue to generate content that provides deeper information to technical buyers and product or service user/consumer-personas.
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The report will publish to B2B Marketing Propolis clients next month and a shortened version to the non-premium members later in the year. Contact me if you would like to get more details.
Always keeping you informed! Peter
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Marketers Need to Manage All Their Resources
You may have noticed: when I do market research on software vendors and products, I always approach my topics from the business point of view – not a technology category/label only familiar to product managers in software companies, or analysts at Gartner or Forrester. I name a business process (or family of processes) that I know marketers are thinking about. After all, marketing executives don’t buy software because they are collectors, they want to make their processes more efficient and expect an automation project will help.
Over the years, their list of processes to be automated has become longer but also more business centric. Way back when, marketing was only about sales support, lead generation and literature. Now, thankfully, modern CMOs or Marketing Directors are now responsible for a more extensive operation, some of them even measured on revenue contribution. And so, as with any business executive, they have full responsibility for the planning and effectiveness of all their business resources.
For a marketing executive, those resources fall into these categories: money, people, content assets and brand. And the process to manage these resources is therefore being called “Marketing Resource Management” (MRM).
I would propose that now the time has come for many more CMOs and Marketing Directors to acquire their own “ERP system” and implement a serious MRM project, taking full control over what can make a marketing organization successful – especially the financials.
Content and brand resources are already marketing-specific and many CMS and Brand Content Management systems include resource management for those resource types. Digital assets are managed in DAM and PIM systems. But using the corporate ERP software to manage people resources is not good enough as a typical CMO-led organization increasingly includes external contributors (agencies, freelancers, analysts), all to be accounted for as an ongoing marketing-people resource. Lastly, the spending of marketing budgets is now so dynamic and digital that executives can no longer rely on monthly or quarterly batched financial reports with historical data – if anything, they need a dashboard that forecasts, predicts and recommends.
By definition, the MRM system should be marketing-centric – one that has the right language or terminology, reporting structure and cadence. Marketers think in terms of campaigns, not financial quarters, and they need a planning calendar. It should provide marketing professionals at all levels in the hierarchy with an ideal experience and support decisions about marketing investments. For that reason, the ideal solution would often be one that is grown out of an existing management system used within marketing.
But a relevant MRM must be more than just a planning/budgeting system: database plus reporting. It needs to able to be state of the art in that it can:
- Take inputs from all players in the marketing ecosystem – for many companies this can include geographic entities or subsidiaries and even business partners
- Collect live data in real-time to support decision-making
- Provide recommendations and insights based on AI.
MRM is still in its adoption infancy. Capterra has some 50 MRM Software offerings in its directory. And my esteemed ex-colleagues at Forrester produced a NowTech report on MRM in Q1 this year that focused on the needs of enterprise B2C organizations above $1 billion in revenue and identified 28 vendors.
But what is the market saying?
Well, I have now fielded my 2022 global survey of marketers’ experience with MRM solutions and am talking to the vendors to complete my research. This is the list of the Top 15 vendors from the survey (in alphabetical order).
ALLOCADIA, APRIMO, BRANDMAKER, BRANDMASTER, BRANDSYSTEMS, CONTENTSERV, ELATERAL, INFOR, LYTHO, MARMIND, PERCOLATE, SITECORE, WEDIA, WELCOME, WORKFRONT
Curiously, a significant number of vendors who marketers cite as their MRM solution are telling me that they do not want to “position the offering as MRM”. Who says that the customer is always right?
Always keeping you informed! Peter O’Neill
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Design Thinking in The Vendor Selection Process
Many years ago, working at HP, I quickly learned to schedule my vacations according to the marketplace. Common practice was, when customers (well, prospects) went on their vacation, they first dumped some work on my colleagues and myself, sending us a thick envelope (no Email in those days) containing a “Request for Proposal” or even worse (sounds so uncommitted!) a “Request for Information” — long, detailed documents laying out a series of specifications and functions that they wanted to see in our product.
We’d be expected to process/answer many detailed questions and submit a response when they came back from vacation. Most RFPs were issued, especially here in Germany, during the summer and just before Christmas.
I got the impression that creating these RFP documents, and then processing the vendor replies, was the main event for many buyers. It wasn’t necessarily about picking the right solution. The later stages (presentation, demo, negotiation, sales) seemed to happen very quickly afterwards.
Further work experience also taught me that the famous adage that “70% of IT projects fail” is very true and continues to be so. I would suggest that one reason for this is the above process. Many companies assume that the most important component of any process automation project is the Vendor Selection Process (VSP). Once that’s done, it is easy sailing – just install it, configure it, (perhaps) train the users and run the system.
Well, I’ve now assisted many a client through their VSP and sat in on their meetings with potential suppliers to provide my input as “an outsider”. I trust that my assessment of the vendors’ offerings and potential to fit into their planned technical architecture was useful. But still, I’ve often left the meetings with the feeling that the client wasn’t really prepared for the full project. I would notice that many aspects of the project were not yet thought through. There were often:
- No sample business workflows (much of which is outside the software they’ll buy)
- No profile of their potential users (devices, competencies, preferences)
- No sample reports or dashboards designed
- No prioritization in their list of requirements – all was equally important.
Process automation projects fail because of a bad fit between project solution and requirements. And when I say “project” I mean much more than the software product. The solution must cover the complete business scenario to be improved, which is usually only partly through technology – process and organization always needs to be tuned as well.
I suggest that it is now time to reconsider the role of the VSP – it should not be “the means to an end” – better to turn it into the kick-off for a process transformation project.
In 2009, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford came up with the concept of “design thinking” which has been adopted by many IT organizations and software vendors as the basis for their development projects. The associated meeting/communications method, SCRUM, has now even been adopted by modern marketing departments. The Stanford School process proposes these steps in a project:
Empathize – Define – Ideate – Prototype – Test.
So here is what I envisage in a modern marketing process automation project:
Empathize. Collect and describe the requirements based not on technical specifications but by describing real business scenarios – improved workflows that marketers care about. Include persona profiles and the desired “usage tone” (marketing- or IT-centric, advanced or casual user, terminology known or not, device preferred, location of task, reporting requirements, millennials!). A scenario documentation should resemble the briefings given to marketing agencies – not an RFP spreadsheet.
Define. Based on the make-up of the user-team and other requirements such as integrations and services, you should be able to easily segment the vendors and arrive at a shortlist. Provide the scenario documentation to those vendors and gather their responses as a first selection phase. Allow them to be creative – they may even be able to propose process improvements that you had not yet identified.
Ideate. Invest time here to engage with three to five vendors to explore how they would help you to automate the scenarios. If you want to restrict this phase, limit how many scenarios each vendor works on – one will probably suffice for you to form an impression of the vendor’s suitability as a business partner.
Prototype. The people at Stanford would love you to be putting Post-It notes on the wall in this phase, but you should probably expect your vendors to be able to demonstrate how they would support your scenarios with their software. You should now be down to one or perhaps two vendors. As well as checking whether they have realistic expectations, also use this phase to observe how the project members will work together – vendor people with your colleagues but perhaps you are also bringing together colleagues who are strange to each other. Create a conflict situation by changing a scenario and see how all players react.
Test. After selecting your technology provider, you now move into the project roll-out phase, which is usually focused on just one team, location, or business area to generate success and then a more expansive roll-out. Continue to expect the vendor to treat you as a business partner and working to ensure your success.
The test phase should never end. Wise project managers will maintain a running, live doc of the business requirements, because they’ll change over time. Display it in a flexible and editable spot to allow you to constantly re-check what you need, and the costs associated with it. Also, ask yourself periodically what can you cut? Or what hasn’t been used in months? Who is now using the software – is that different than initially assumed?
Something to think about the next time you plan an automation project.
Always keeping you informed! Peter O’Neill
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Some Background to my Vendor Research
If you are reading this, then I assume that you’ve looked at a couple of my Vendor Selection Matrixtm reports and are thinking … they look like magic quadrants or waves but they seem to be different… Well, they certainly are – in more ways than one !
I do this work with my business partner Research In Action and mine are written for marketing software buyers who need to automate one or more important marketing processes and are researching which vendors COULD provide the software their business will require for optimal functionality and strategy.
They’re likely to be calling the project something close to the process(es) being automated and improved, but there is no guarantee that the vendors will be using that terminology when describing their products.
I design my projects around the process name I think Marketers would use and survey businesses on their experience. Often, that collects a landscape of vendors using different technology labels but that is the reality.
All in all, there is a multitude of vendor report types out there. On one end of the spectrum, you have the Analyst Reports with industry analyst expertise and in-depth research. On the other end, we have Crowd-Sourced Reports in which rankings are driven by the quality and quantity of user reviews.
Analyst Reports
Pros: The “Tier One” industry analysts doing this work are experts in their field and seriously know their stuff. They sit through strategy and product presentations/demos and some even get feedback from referenced customers. Vendors must invest days of time and resources to provide the right information to the analyst. Of course, many also sign up as clients and engage with the analyst on an ongoing basis to optimize the relationship.
Spoiler Alert: In my time as Research Director at Forrester, I had an analyst in my team who consulted specifically on how to execute the process of Analyst Relations (it’s part of B2B Marketing after all) – including how to get yourself placed in an optimal position in a quadrant or wave analysis.
Cons: The Analyst Report is written for the research firm’s clients, usually large enterprises – which influences the list of vendors include, of course. These are smaller audiences than is often assumed. Usually, the readership of each report behind their paywall is perhaps in the hundreds – one vendor client told me that the latest two reports where his product was featured had 480 and just 58 views on the research website.
That can be a little depressing not only for the vendor but also for the analyst – all that work and so little attention! Of course, the brand power, and resulting product-marketing ego, of being in a “Magic Quadrant” or “Forrester Wave” means that some vendors buy reprint-licenses and offer a download of the report through their website. And they book the analyst to make speeches/webinars about the research – a little show business that compensates for the initial disappointment perhaps.
Crowd-Sourced Reports
Pros: It’s always helpful to seek out feedback from other users; peers who share the good, bad, and the ugly about a product. There are several such feedback websites now up and running for all types of software applications, including marketing.
Cons: Have you ever looked up your favourite restaurant on Yelp, noticed a few one-star reviews, and wondered how they could come to such contrasting conclusions? A single review (good or bad) shouldn’t dictate your software-buying decision, just like with any other product. Remember: User opinions have varying levels of actual marketing automation understanding – just because someone writes a review does not make them an expert in the field.
Additionally, report rankings are driven by the quality and quantity of user reviews. If a company has a few hundred reviews with a high rating average, and another has a few thousand reviews with above-average ratings, it is likely the latter will position better in the report due to the sheer number of reviews. This is a huge advantage for larger vendors that have been on the market for a long time, and it’s likely they have review incentive programs to boost their ranking.
Research In Action Reports Have Both Perspectives
The methodology at Research In Action is that we first survey 1,500 practitioners about THEIR view of automating the process(es) in questions. And then we ask them to name one or two vendors they associate with the project and give us feedback on the vendor’s product, service, value-for-money, and ability to innovate. The vendors who score highly enough in the survey get into the Vendor Selection Matrixtm report in the first place (usually 15 to 20 vendors).
Then, that curated market feedback is seasoned with a touch of industry analyst’s (that’s me) expertise to provide a more well-rounded recipe for successful vendor selection. In fact, much more than the quadrant or wave reports, these reports are embellished with several pages of trends insights that inform both buyers and vendors alike about what is most important when investing in the upcoming project.
Research In Action Reports are Widely Read
When Research In Action publishes its reports, they are made available to several communities:
- Survey respondents. The 1,500 marketing software decision-makers who answered the survey questions are provided with the full report as feedback
- Survey panel. Research In Action maintains an active survey panel on a global basis with contact details and topics of interest: a current total of 125,000 IT Automation decision-makers and 90,000 Marketing Automation decision-makers. These panel members are informed of the report and can download it if desired
- Website visitors. Any viewers of the Research In Action website sees a “public version” without the exact scores and matrix placements of each vendor (to save their embarrassment) but with all insights and the most important facts on each vendor.
- Vendor reprints. Research In Action does also license reprints, where a vendor can distribute a copy of the report, with their detailed profile, to interested parties.
On average, each report gets tens of thousands of clicks on our website. Personally, I am quite proud that so many people now get to see my work. And, when I am booked to do speeches and webinars, I know they are booking me personally, not the brand power.
Our work really does fill that gap between an industry analyst report focused on large enterprise needs, and the “trip-advisor” type of review websites. They also reach and assist a broader community of software buyers. Lastly, the community reading the reports is probably a whole order of magnitude higher than the audience able to access the “Tier One” research reports. Here is our latest Market Impact statistics chart.
Always keeping you informed! Peter
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MAP Research Nearly There
I am almost finished with my next Vendor Selection Matrixtm on Marketing Automation Platforms (MAP) – the draft is with the vendors for fact checking. Here are some highlights that will, hopefully, make you more curious about the full report.
Our method of asking business managers to name software vendor(s) they associate with a certain topic collects the list of all vendors that are currently top of mind on the practitioner side. In this case we provided a definition and asked about their “Marketing Automation Platform” and the vendor landscape discovered will surprise some people and vendor staff will see new competitors they had not yet considered. Perception is reality. Most vendors were also scored highly, a sign of a mature market, but the survey results also
make it clear that expectations from marketing executives of MAP vendors have now changed dramatically.
More and more companies are now focusing on digital marketing programs as society and business reacts to the COVID-19 crisis. In parallel, the focus of digital marketing itself is moving from the simple realization of new business leads to a more engaging and relationship model, raising questions on MAP functions now needed, questions such as: is lead management or engagement management the main function required now?
Nearly three quarters of companies are using the MAP more than previously with over half of those companies are leveraging it for more products and services than before and/or for greater market coverage. The crisis has accelerated the inevitable and the increased dependency on digital marketing has exposed weaknesses in many MAP installations. So, it is no surprise that our survey found that 83% of the companies who have a MAP are actively reassessing the suitability of their current installation. 11% are already replacing their MAP. Another 24% of the respondents know they must migrate to something new and 50% know this will be the case for them soon.
63% claim that they are not getting the promised return from their MAP (46% citing that as a BIG problem). 91% have issues integrating the MAP to other systems with, again, the share citing that issue as a BIG challenge is well over 40%.
The re-assessment wave varies across the key regions of the world with North American enterprises already well into the replacement phase. Although there are 12 market leaders, ONLY 13% of companies are satisfied with their current MAP functionality – or just 10% in North America and in Europe.
Two thirds of companies lack the time/resources to use their MAP effectively while a similar proportion complain about lack of support, or over-promising, from the vendors (40% call this is a BIG challenge).
So, watch this space at the end of this month for more data and insights.
Always keeping you informed! Peter