29 visually striking martech stack illustrations from the 2021 Stackie Awards

Every year, when the entries to the Stackie Awards flow in, I feel like the kid in A Christmas Story, excitedly opening up that present he’d be dreaming of. I am always delighted and inspired by the creative ways marketing teams visually represent their stacks — and so immensely grateful that they were willing to share them with our community. This...

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Join us at MarTech next week, online and for free, and catch my keynote: From Big Data to Big Ops

Join us next Tuesday and Wednesday, September 14-15, for the latest MarTech Conference event — online and completely free to attend. With over 75 sessions, over 100 expert speakers, and more than 50 terrific solution providers, it’s going to be a jam-packed couple of days. Join us live for virtual ambiance — or, if you can’t squeeze it all into your...

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47 new martech companies from latest Y Combinator cohort — the counter-consolidation narrative lives on

Last week, Y Combinator held their Demo Day(s) for their Summer 2021 cohort. This was a massive graduating class: 377 startups from 47 countries. You can read a quick overview of all 377 (!) on TechCrunch, split across part one and part two. I read through all 377 and discovered 47 that I would put on the martech landscape. Here’s the list: Cococart...

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Aggregation and integration: why 67% of marketers replaced a martech tool in the past year

My friends over at MarTech just released their 2021 Martech Replacement Survey, revealing insights into what and why companies switch from one martech application to another. The top-line finding: there’s a ton of martech swapping happening! 67% of the 374 marketers they surveyed, from SMBs to large enterprises, reported replacing a marketing technology...

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Follow the money: CMO budgets for martech and marketing operations

As with crime and politics, if you want to reveal the real plot in marketing’s evolution, follow where the money is going. Hmm. That’s probably not the most flattering of metaphors. Okay, scratch that image. But it is why I always look forward to Gartner’s annual CMO Spend Survey report. Allocation of budget is a CMO’s way of “voting with their wallet”...

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What are we automating in marketing and sales? A lot

Surveys are nice, but they have their limitations. They’re swayed by who participates (selection bias) and the way those participants interpret your questions in their own minds — which varies wildly for reasons a psychologist would be best suited to explain. The results can be directionally useful, but they’re not “facts.” The ground truth is what...

Aug 2021

35 of the Forbes Cloud 100 companies are in martech

Last week, Forbes published the 2021 edition of The Cloud 100 — their “definitive ranking of the best, brightest, most valuable private companies in the cloud.” The selection process involved an unpublished editorial formula that considered growth, sales, valuation, culture, and a “reputation score derived in consultation with 34 CEO judges and executives...

Aug 2021

The State of Marketing Operations or Can’t Find a Better Martech

The good folks at BrandMaker recently released a study of CMOs and their perceptions of The State of Marketing Operations. In short, marketing operations has risen from being “an overshadowed marketing function that worked in the background to solve internal pains” to “an integral part of the marketing organization.” (And there was much rejoicing.)...

Aug 2021

The Quest for the Holy Grail: Martech Edition

There’s a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where God appears in the clouds — in delightfully unsubtle Monty Python fashion — and commands Arthur and his knights to seek the Holy Grail. (Arthur: “Good idea, O Lord!” God: “‘Course it’s a good idea!”) I was reminded of that scene when reading the new Marketing Technology Overload? report released...

Jul 2021

Should you build or buy martech? Yes

“Homegrown martech is like homemade pizza.” That’s the kind of quip I might have likely shot back a couple of years ago if someone asked me, “Should we build our own martech software or buy a packaged app from a martech vendor?” It’s not that you can’t make your own pizza at home. Anyone can. I have. But making great pizza at home? Eh. You need a...

Jul 2021