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What will the marketing automation industry look like in 5 years?
What companies will still be around? What features and applications will be necessary?
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3 Answers
It will become more and more pervasive and cover more of the marketing work flow as the web plays an ever wider range of roles in most company's marketing processes and as those processes become more linked with each other. Today, marketing automation tends to be used most by companies who sell physical products over the web or web-based services, but in the next few years it will move to companies that only use the web for promotion and presence and want to track things like the behavioral trail generated by people who read bad/good customer comments in social networks, references in industry blogs, etc.
Hm, interesting question. Well, beyond my first reaction, which was "I have absolutely no idea," let me make a few guesses:
- Marketing automation will be built into every CRM system that you can get, particularly Salesforce.com.
- You will find it easier to track marketing activity to company revenue more easily than ever before.
- Still, few companies will do it, because marketing automation is more than technology -- it requires a rigorous process and the people who are willing to do the hard planning to make it work.
- There will be consolidation amongst the existing players, acquisitions, and a few prominent companies now will be out of business.
- There will be newer players, particularly those who can crack the nut of integration with social media channels.
I'll see you in five years and a day and you can laugh at my predictions, or buy me a drink for being so smart.
- Steve
A few predictions to make note of:
1. The number of marketing vendors will decrease dramatically. A lot of analysts like to use the phrase "consolidation", but this implies that vendors will merge and be acquired. I don't think that's what going to happen here. I believe that most vendors will either go out of business or be so small that they aren't worth keep tracking of.
2. One of the major software vendors will acquire either Eloqua or Marketo. A lot of industry insiders seem to think it will be Salesforce.com, but given their historical view of the marketing organization (there aren't many seats there), I view that as unlikely. It's worth adding SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft to the list of potential acquirers in the space.
3. Marketing automation will see strong adoption in two primary markets. First, large enterprises will make marketing automation a standard application much like CRM and ERP are today. Second, smaller businesses with engineering and IT resources will trial and in some, but not all cases roll marketing automation into production. A great example of this latter type of company is Silicon Valley start ups.
4. Vendors will need to solve some pressing challenges if they hope to grow marketing automation into the next great software market. A couple of examples here... First, whether the vendors like it or not, most end users view marketing automation as glorified email marketing. Second, usability is a real issue for most customers right now. Marketing departments simply aren't able to run nurturing campaigns without support from engineering and IT. That's a non-starter for most marketing departments.
5. The vendor that solves the two aforementioned challenges will win. And there will only be one winner in this market. It's not big enough to support any more than that.
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