My close friends at MarTech.org not too long ago unveiled their hottest Martech Replacement Study 2022, wherever marketers shared which applications they’ve replaced around the past 18 months, what their main drive was in undertaking so, and what were being their most critical factors in picking the substitution resolution.
Marketing automation (24%), CRM (23%), Web optimization (23%), electronic mail advertising (22%), and perform/project management (19%) applications ended up the most often changed.
As I highlighted in blue in the chart higher than, the #1 most commonly cited variable in picking out their substitute resolution was integration capabilities/open API — picked by 56% respondents, up 13% points from the very same study in 2021.
It’s a prime 5 topic of this ten years in martech: platforms, networks & marketplaces.
Of system, this isn’t to say that the other components — expense, support, security, and so on. — weren’t important too. But the variable that most entrepreneurs agreed on was integration. If it will not integrate with the relaxation of the tech stack, everything else is moot. It is the tree that falls in the forest devoid of any individual all around to hear it.
The second most prevalent issue was knowledge centralization/information capabilities (decided on by 50% of respondents), which is carefully tied to integration. After all, knowledge is the foundational layer of integrations.
Tied in second also with 50% was “ability to evaluate ROI” — which is heading to be on the major of everyone’s minds in our tighter economic system. But to evaluate ROI, you will need the information. And to get the details, you will need integrations. These 3 factors are certain jointly by atomic forces.
But what enthusiastic entrepreneurs to request out a substitute resolution in the to start with put?
When seeking to replace a professional application (the survey covers replacement of homegrown applications separately), the #1 drive was far better features (53%). Of training course, this can make feeling. Marketers glance to martech to give them the abilities essential to execute in continually shifting and evolving marketplaces. What you can do matters.
On the other hand, I would have anticipated the #2 commitment to be price — looking for an choice answer to lower expenditures. That was the survey outcome in 2021.
But in 2022, much better/simpler integration was the next most widespread motivation (24%, up 5% details from 2021) to request a alternative application. Essentially, a wish for far better integration activated 1 out of every 4 martech application replacement initiatives.
That’s pretty impressive.
I’ve reported this a lot of situations prior to to martech product or service teams: the current market is speaking to you with a excellent booming voice in the sky, “Treat integration as a initial-class attribute!”
Significantly, the martech marketplace — and the SaaS universe more broadly — have taken this to heart. A new investigate report from Pandium on the Condition of Integrations and APIs at 400 SaaS Corporations demonstrates that 86% of the Prime 100 SaaS providers in the entire world now have a general public integration market. (73% of them have an in-application market.)
That’s spectacular and a sturdy testomony to the worth of application ecosystems for key SaaS corporations.
But what is even much more telling is that 31% of seed-stage SaaS startups now function a community integration marketplace too. Practically 1 out 3 SaaS startups — which are especially strapped for time and methods, compelled to make quite tough choices about what to prioritize — have picked to prioritize acquiring both integrations and a market to make it uncomplicated for prospects to uncover and use them.
It is heartening to see martech customers and sellers concur: integration is key.
We nonetheless have further more to go on this journey of martech platforms and ecosystems. But as an market, at least’s we’re all marching in the identical direction with a considerably much more seamlessly and powerfully integrated long run on the horizon in advance.
