Mobility, flexibility, variability … these are the needs that are driving innovation in the marketing technology space. Over the past five years demand has continued to increase for solutions that help consumers receive—and marketers deliver—any information, any time, on any device via the marketing cloud.
As marketing operations consultants who frequently select and implement marketing technology on behalf of clients, Zee Jay Digital is following market trends closely—particularly those related to recent industry consolidation. To capitalize on demand, the world’s largest software companies have been quick to acquire marketing technology capabilities (or affiliate with marketing technology providers) to incorporate into their platforms: Oracle/Eloqua; IBM/Silverpop; SAP/Adobe; Salesforce.com/ExactTarget and Microsoft Dynamics/Marketing Pilot are a few of the relatively new marketplace pairings.
Whether the acquired capability is multi-channel campaign management (which it usually is), marketing resource management, or digital asset management, the marketing asset management strategy among these giants is similar: Leverage existing, complementary platforms to relatively easily increase subscriber bases.
When we use the word “easily” we mean that most enterprises are apt to opt for a bundled offering. For example, a CEO using Dynamics CRM, the second largest provider of CRM solutions in the world, will likely default to Dynamics Marketing (formerly Marketing Pilot) when deciding which marketing technology to deploy.
Is all this consolidation good or bad for marketing leaders? It depends on your perspective.
Join the conversation: Which marketing technology is most essential to efficient marketing operations and why?
