Marketers keep replacing major martech apps, integration #1 factor for replacements

My close friends at MarTech.org just lately introduced their most recent Martech Substitution Study 2022, wherever marketers shared which applications they’ve changed about the previous 18 months, what their primary inspiration was in undertaking so, and what were their most vital variables in selecting the substitution resolution.

Advertising automation (24%), CRM (23%), Web optimization (23%), email internet marketing (22%), and function/challenge management (19%) applications ended up the most usually changed.

As I highlighted in blue in the chart previously mentioned, the #1 most normally cited factor in deciding upon their replacement resolution was integration capabilities/open up API — chosen by 56% respondents, up 13% points from the very same study in 2021.

It’s a prime 5 theme of this ten years in martech: platforms, networks & marketplaces.

Of class, this isn’t to say that the other factors — value, aid, safety, and so forth. — weren’t crucial too. But the component that most entrepreneurs agreed on was integration. If it won’t combine with the rest of the tech stack, every little thing else is moot. It’s the tree that falls in the forest without having any one close to to listen to it.

The second most frequent factor was details centralization/information abilities (preferred by 50% of respondents), which is carefully tied to integration. After all, information is the foundational layer of integrations.

Tied in 2nd also with 50% was “ability to measure ROI” — which is going to be on the major of everyone’s minds in our tighter economy. But to evaluate ROI, you require the information. And to get the information, you need integrations. These three elements are certain collectively by atomic forces.

But what inspired entrepreneurs to seek out out a replacement option in the very first position?

When looking to exchange a commercial application (the study covers substitute of homegrown applications individually), the #1 motivation was improved features (53%). Of class, this makes perception. Marketers look to martech to give them the abilities required to complete in regularly shifting and evolving marketplaces. What you can do issues.

Nonetheless, I would have expected the #2 enthusiasm to be cost — trying to find an option resolution to lessen costs. That was the study result in 2021.

But in 2022, superior/a lot easier integration was the second most frequent drive (24%, up 5% factors from 2021) to find a substitution application. Basically, a drive for improved integration induced 1 out of every 4 martech application alternative jobs.

That’s really exceptional.

I have said this several times in advance of to martech solution teams: the current market is speaking to you with a great booming voice in the sky, “Treat integration as a initially-course aspect!”

Significantly, the martech sector — and the SaaS universe much more broadly — have taken this to coronary heart. A new investigate report from Pandium on the Point out of Integrations and APIs at 400 SaaS Organizations displays that 86% of the Top rated 100 SaaS companies in the world now have a general public integration marketplace. (73% of them have an in-application market.)

Which is amazing and a powerful testament to the importance of application ecosystems for significant SaaS providers.

But what is even much more telling is that 31% of seed-phase SaaS startups now element a public integration market also. Practically 1 out 3 SaaS startups — which are particularly strapped for time and methods, forced to make quite tough choices about what to prioritize — have decided on to prioritize producing both of those integrations and a marketplace to make it quick for prospects to discover and use them.

It is heartening to see martech customers and sellers concur: integration is crucial.

We however have even more to go on this journey of martech platforms and ecosystems. But as an industry, at least’s we’re all marching in the exact same route with a much far more seamlessly and powerfully built-in long run on the horizon forward.