My mates at MarTech.org recently unveiled their latest Martech Substitute Study 2022, the place entrepreneurs shared which apps they’ve changed around the past 18 months, what their key motivation was in accomplishing so, and what had been their most essential factors in selecting the replacement remedy.
Marketing automation (24%), CRM (23%), Web optimization (23%), e-mail promoting (22%), and work/project management (19%) applications were being the most often changed.
As I highlighted in blue in the chart higher than, the #1 most frequently cited component in choosing their replacement answer was integration capabilities/open API — selected by 56% respondents, up 13% details from the very same survey in 2021.
It’s a top 5 theme of this decade in martech: platforms, networks & marketplaces.
Of training course, this isn’t to say that the other components — value, help, security, and so forth. — weren’t significant far too. But the factor that most marketers agreed on was integration. If it will not integrate with the relaxation of the tech stack, every little thing else is moot. It is the tree that falls in the forest with no anyone about to listen to it.
The second most prevalent aspect was data centralization/information abilities (preferred by 50% of respondents), which is carefully tied to integration. Right after all, facts is the foundational layer of integrations.
Tied in 2nd also with 50% was “ability to evaluate ROI” — which is heading to be on the top of everyone’s minds in our tighter economic system. But to evaluate ROI, you need to have the info. And to get the knowledge, you need to have integrations. These a few components are bound with each other by atomic forces.
But what determined marketers to look for out a alternative option in the first place?
When hunting to exchange a commercial application (the survey covers substitute of homegrown apps separately), the #1 determination was improved options (53%). Of training course, this would make perception. Entrepreneurs glimpse to martech to give them the capabilities essential to complete in continuously shifting and evolving markets. What you can do issues.
However, I would have envisioned the #2 inspiration to be price tag — in search of an choice remedy to minimize prices. That was the study result in 2021.
But in 2022, greater/easier integration was the second most widespread commitment (24%, up 5% factors from 2021) to seek a substitute application. Fundamentally, a need for much better integration brought on 1 out of every 4 martech app substitute projects.
That’s rather extraordinary.
I’ve stated this many periods right before to martech products groups: the market place is talking to you with a fantastic booming voice in the sky, “Treat integration as a initially-course function!”
More and more, the martech industry — and the SaaS universe much more broadly — have taken this to coronary heart. A new exploration report from Pandium on the Point out of Integrations and APIs at 400 SaaS Firms exhibits that 86% of the Top 100 SaaS firms in the environment now have a public integration marketplace. (73% of them have an in-application marketplace.)
That is outstanding and a robust testomony to the great importance of app ecosystems for major SaaS providers.
But what is even additional telling is that 31% of seed-phase SaaS startups now function a public integration market too. Approximately 1 out 3 SaaS startups — which are specifically strapped for time and assets, compelled to make pretty hard selections about what to prioritize — have preferred to prioritize acquiring the two integrations and a market to make it uncomplicated for consumers to learn and use them.
It’s heartening to see martech consumers and sellers concur: integration is essential.
We continue to have even more to go on this journey of martech platforms and ecosystems. But as an field, at least’s we’re all marching in the exact same path with a considerably a lot more seamlessly and powerfully built-in upcoming on the horizon in advance.
About the Author
