*The recent announcement that oracle is to acquire Eloqua in an $800 million deal further underlines the increasing role marketing technologies will play in 2013 and beyond.
Marketing technology was once a fragmented world with a myriad of products and vendors offering disjointed and disconnected solutions, and with no sense of leadership. But this looks set to change thanks to a cluster of globally-renowned vendors striving to become marketers’ technology champion. So who will win out? Claire Weekes reports
As technology becomes evermore sophisticated, so too does the opportunity for marketers to analyse customer data. Long gone are the days when a simple CRM system was all that was needed to keep on top of sales and leads – nowadays any one brand might find itself keeping track of web analytics, social media activity, content management and marketing automation – to name just a few disciplines. Never before has a marketer been so dependent on technology to manage the bottom line.
For this reason, the last few years have seen an explosion in the number of technology vendors all clamouring for business and fighting for a piece of a fragmented market. Think, for example, about the social media monitoring market and the thousands of vendors – from big players such as Google down to small start-ups – all claiming to do the best job.
For marketers tasked with finding the right marketing technology solutions, the picture can look complex. The sales department has CRM, the finance department has its accounting packages and HR departments have human capital management, making it simple for them to manage all of their activities through a single interface. The marketing department, however, appears to be left with a confused muddle of solutions from various providers that it must somehow interlock together.
A one-stop-shop
But its not all bad news. There appears to be a period of consolidation happening in the technology market making it increasingly easier for marketers to have all of their needs bolted together. What’s interesting about this new wave of solution is the different ways vendors are approaching this need to provide a ‘one stop service’. On the one hand, we are seeing marketing automation platforms such as Marketo and Eloqua partner up with third parties to offer customers the ability to create their very own bespoke marketing ecosystems. On the other hand, vendors such as Adobe and, more recently, Autonomy offer single solutions designed to solve all of a marketer’s complex digital business challenges under one roof.
Autonomy’s Marketing Performance Suite aims to provide CMOs, digital marketers and customer experience managers with a single solution that enables them to understand, engage and convert customers in real-time. The suite automatically recognises concepts, patterns and ideas in unstructured, human information, and enables businesses to deliver contextualised, multichannel experiences that result in increased customer engagement, conversions and revenue.
Adobe’s route has been to launch the Adobe Marketing Cloud. It’s marketed as a single service that provides a complete set of analytics – social, advertising, targeting and web experience management solutions, and a real-time dashboard that brings it all together.
“With customers today having access to multiple channels, the industry has seen an explosion of data that marketers need to make sense of, forcing them to rethink how they engage and compete for customers in the digital world. Having one solution that can bring different types of data from various areas of the business into one platform, analyse patterns, and provide insight that is actionable and all in real-time, is increasingly important,” explains Tresilian Segal, head of marketing for northern Europe, digital marketing at Adobe.
One for all, all for one?
But do solutions such as Adobe’s run the risk of putting too much power into the hands of one vendor? “It’s not so much about giving vendors control,” Segal adds. “Companies such as Adobe believe in putting data into the hands of marketers in a format that empowers them to make their own decisions, on what the data means and how to feed it into their marketing activities. Ultimately marketers are the ones that benefit from receiving a seamless end-to-end solution, allowing them to see trends, get key insights, and make strategic decisions that impact the bottom line.”
Gerry Brown, senior analyst in digital marketing and CRM at Bloor Research points out that the fact Adobe’s product is cloud-based – as so many solutions now are – is a reason for vendors to be kept on their toes and not let power go to their heads. “The adoption of cloud solutions over on-premise solutions reduces the level of account control and vendor lock-in due to the need to renew contracts annually. Vendors will need to provide excellent uptime and reliability, great customer service, innovative features and value for money to retain their customers from the incursions of aggressive ‘me-too’ competitors. Those that fail in these areas will be switched,” he says.
He agrees “a single, integrated solution should be preferred to cobbling together the best-of-breed applications from multiple suppliers,” and Segal, unsurprisingly, is also not a fan of the joined-up approach that some marketing automation vendors are gearing themselves towards. As she explains, each marketing discipline generates a massive amount of data that can be used to gain insight into which channels and platforms are right for the specific brand or offering.
Segal says, “The loop can be closed by tying this intelligence directly to business goals – whether that is tracking the number of sales leads generated or converted by a specific campaign or advert, or positive sentiment around your brand. In other words, allowing marketers to attribute real results to their efforts, measure what is and isn’t working and optimise accordingly. This would be extremely difficult to do if they were having to manage multiple solutions from multiple vendors.”
There is evidence to suggest the technology vendor market is consolidating, with some of the biggest players in the space eating each other up (e.g Microsoft Dynamics has acquired Marketing Pilot, Exact Target bought out Pardot). But not everybody believes a single solution is, in our highly innovative and diverse tech market, the best answer.
“A single solution does sound ideal but will it ever be the reality in today’s modern world? Realistically, what you need to aim at is one system that has the majority of functionality for core communications and data, and then experiment with new tools until they are proven and can be built into your main system,” suggests Bill Lyle, managing director at Target360.
James Trezona, managing director at Mason Zimbler agrees. “In the immediate future, we are unlikely to see a single piece of enterprise-level software that can manage all marketing requirements. In the absence of a single software solution, many B2B organisations are looking for a single point of contact. In other words, an external partner that understands the business and the way its different components could interlock and weave together. A specialist that can de-silo and rationalise information derived from technologies such as marketing automation and web analytics, then provide a framework for more effective communications throughout the customer lifecycle”. This is the model the likes of Marketo and Eloqua are working towards.
The battle of bolt-on solutions
Eloqua offers the core marketing automation solution that customers can ‘bolt on’ to software applications from third-party partners that specialise in different disciplines such as social media measurement. The organisation has invested heavily in its AppCloud. “We believe rather than trying to pick a marketing automation vendor that tries to be everything, we’re seeing buyers wanting to pick a marketing automation solution that is amazing at the core of what it does and has the best ecosystem in place for snapping all of the additional needs together,” says Eloqua’s chief technology officer, Steve Woods.
Marketo adopts a similar framework. “If a company wants to generate, nurture and close more leads, they will look to us for that core solution – that’s what marketing automation does. If they want add-on expertise – whether that be in the field of webinar technology or content management and so on, our partners can complement that,” explains Fergus Gloster, managing director for UK & Ireland.
Consolidation will come
One thing is for sure, whether the marketing technology arena moves towards a ‘one-stop shop’ offering, or whether the more hybrid offerings from the likes of Marketo and Eloqua attract the most kudos, it can only be good news to know that both approaches are geared towards giving the marketer a single point of contact from which to manage all of their functions. This, of course, makes it essential the correct vendor is chosen to oversee everything.
“It’s definitely a challenge – we use a multi-prong approach,” explains Belinda Hudmon, senior director of digital strategy at Motorola Solutions. “First we reach out to innovative peer companies to understand what they are doing in a specific space. Then we listen to analysts at Forrester, Gartner and Sirius Decisions to help us understand the vendor landscape in emerging spaces. Next, we look at what industry thought leaders, such as marketing tech bloggers and journalists are saying about vendors. Then, of course, we do our own thorough analysis of the top firms identified to help with our specific need,” she says.
In order to make the most of the digital technology revolution and how it can boost its marketing strategy, Motorola in the US has subordinated its web development team to the marketing team – a move we may see more brands make as digital channels become the main area of focus. In fact, argues Segal, “The discussion about technology procurement is wider than even marketing and web development – it works its way through to IT, business intelligence, customer service, sales – even finance.”
What seems clear for now is that as the digital landscape fragments and becomes more complex, so the technology vendor space is slowly beginning to consolidate in order to address these challenges.
However, muses Hudmon, we will not get to one platform that does everything for marketers any time soon. She concludes, “Right now we are seeing the exact opposite where there are specialty companies emerging to address specific niche needs or opportunities.
“As a technology market matures we typically see consolidation to a few key vendors. For example, we are seeing this with collaboration platforms. But the pace of innovation is not slowing. New innovations are emerging daily. And as those areas mature over time, then we see the consolidation.”
How to choose a provider
Four key considerations by Gerry Brown, senior analyst of digital marketing and CRM at Bloor Research
1. Define a strategy. Ensure the marketing technology aligns with your overarching corporate business goals.
2. Choose strategic suppliers. Not all suppliers will survive in the longer term. Recent acquisitions have seen more than 20 marketing tech vendors absorbed into larger vendors. This can slow product innovation, create integration challenges and make strategic product and service direction uncertain from the customer perspective.
3. Align skills. Find the right skills and knowledge to get the best out of the technologies. Currently there is a lack of skilled people with the right marketing and tech skills mix.
4. Collaborate with the web development team. Marketing should not try to ‘go it alone’. It needs to build bridges with IT in order to ensure the right technology is chosen and skilled technical support and training is available. Website management and web data analysis are integral to an integrated marketing system and should not be managed as a separate entity. Circumventing IT may quicken up the procurement process, but it also exposes marketers to risks including data security.
