My mates at MarTech.org lately launched their hottest Martech Alternative Survey 2022, exactly where entrepreneurs shared which applications they’ve replaced in excess of the past 18 months, what their primary commitment was in carrying out so, and what ended up their most crucial things in picking the substitution resolution.
Advertising and marketing automation (24%), CRM (23%), Website positioning (23%), e-mail advertising and marketing (22%), and get the job done/job administration (19%) apps were being the most frequently changed.
As I highlighted in blue in the chart previously mentioned, the #1 most frequently cited factor in selecting their replacement resolution was integration abilities/open API — selected by 56% respondents, up 13% points from the similar study in 2021.
It’s a best 5 topic of this decade in martech: platforms, networks & marketplaces.
Of study course, this isn’t to say that the other aspects — price, aid, safety, and many others. — weren’t critical also. But the issue that most entrepreneurs agreed on was integration. If it will not combine with the relaxation of the tech stack, almost everything else is moot. It’s the tree that falls in the forest with no anybody about to listen to it.
The second most common factor was knowledge centralization/information abilities (picked by 50% of respondents), which is carefully tied to integration. Just after all, knowledge is the foundational layer of integrations.
Tied in next also with 50% was “ability to measure ROI” — which is going to be on the best of everyone’s minds in our tighter overall economy. But to measure ROI, you need the information. And to get the info, you have to have integrations. These three components are bound with each other by atomic forces.
But what motivated entrepreneurs to seek out out a alternative answer in the very first put?
When seeking to substitute a professional application (the study addresses substitution of homegrown apps individually), the #1 determination was superior capabilities (53%). Of class, this can make perception. Entrepreneurs appear to martech to give them the capabilities necessary to carry out in frequently shifting and evolving markets. What you can do matters.
Nonetheless, I would have expected the #2 drive to be expense — trying to get an option alternative to minimize expenses. That was the study end result in 2021.
But in 2022, greater/a lot easier integration was the next most widespread inspiration (24%, up 5% factors from 2021) to seek out a substitute application. Essentially, a drive for much better integration activated 1 out of just about every 4 martech application substitution assignments.
That’s fairly exceptional.
I’ve explained this lots of periods prior to to martech products teams: the marketplace is talking to you with a excellent booming voice in the sky, “Treat integration as a initially-class attribute!”
Significantly, the martech marketplace — and the SaaS universe a lot more broadly — have taken this to heart. A new investigation report from Pandium on the Point out of Integrations and APIs at 400 SaaS Companies reveals that 86% of the Leading 100 SaaS providers in the environment now have a community integration marketplace. (73% of them have an in-app marketplace.)
That is amazing and a robust testament to the relevance of app ecosystems for key SaaS firms.
But what’s even far more telling is that 31% of seed-stage SaaS startups now element a community integration market also. Approximately 1 out 3 SaaS startups — which are specially strapped for time and sources, forced to make extremely tough possibilities about what to prioritize — have picked to prioritize acquiring both equally integrations and a market to make it simple for prospects to discover and use them.
It’s heartening to see martech consumers and sellers agree: integration is essential.
We nonetheless have even further to go on this journey of martech platforms and ecosystems. But as an business, at least’s we’re all marching in the identical route with a much a lot more seamlessly and powerfully built-in long term on the horizon forward.
