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

My buddies at MarTech.org just lately unveiled their hottest Martech Alternative Study 2022, in which marketers shared which applications they’ve replaced above the earlier 18 months, what their primary inspiration was in accomplishing so, and what were being their most significant elements in deciding upon the substitute solution.

Advertising automation (24%), CRM (23%), Search engine optimisation (23%), email advertising (22%), and operate/challenge management (19%) applications were the most usually changed.

As I highlighted in blue in the chart earlier mentioned, the #1 most commonly cited issue in deciding upon their alternative alternative was integration abilities/open API — picked by 56% respondents, up 13% points from the identical survey in 2021.

It is a top 5 topic of this ten years in martech: platforms, networks & marketplaces.

Of training course, this is not to say that the other variables — cost, aid, stability, etc. — weren’t important far too. But the aspect that most marketers agreed on was integration. If it won’t combine with the relaxation of the tech stack, almost everything else is moot. It is the tree that falls in the forest without the need of anyone around to listen to it.

The second most common factor was facts centralization/data capabilities (chosen by 50% of respondents), which is intently tied to integration. Soon after all, info is the foundational layer of integrations.

Tied in second also with 50% was “ability to evaluate ROI” — which is heading to be on the best of everyone’s minds in our tighter economic climate. But to evaluate ROI, you need the data. And to get the facts, you require integrations. These 3 things are sure alongside one another by atomic forces.

But what inspired marketers to look for out a substitution answer in the to start with position?

When hunting to exchange a commercial application (the survey addresses alternative of homegrown applications separately), the #1 enthusiasm was much better characteristics (53%). Of course, this tends to make feeling. Entrepreneurs glimpse to martech to give them the capabilities essential to perform in continuously shifting and evolving markets. What you can do matters.

On the other hand, I would have expected the #2 enthusiasm to be price tag — trying to find an option solution to lessen charges. That was the study end result in 2021.

But in 2022, improved/much easier integration was the next most prevalent motivation (24%, up 5% factors from 2021) to find a alternative application. In essence, a desire for much better integration activated 1 out of just about every 4 martech app substitute tasks.

That is fairly impressive.

I’ve explained this a lot of situations prior to to martech merchandise groups: the industry is talking to you with a excellent booming voice in the sky, “Treat integration as a very first-class function!”

Increasingly, the martech business — and the SaaS universe a lot more broadly — have taken this to heart. A new research report from Pandium on the Condition of Integrations and APIs at 400 SaaS Firms demonstrates that 86% of the Major 100 SaaS providers in the planet now have a community integration marketplace. (73% of them have an in-application marketplace.)

Which is spectacular and a robust testomony to the value of app ecosystems for important SaaS businesses.

But what is even much more telling is that 31% of seed-stage SaaS startups now function a public integration marketplace far too. Just about 1 out 3 SaaS startups — which are specifically strapped for time and assets, forced to make incredibly challenging possibilities about what to prioritize — have preferred to prioritize creating each integrations and a marketplace to make it quick for clients to explore and use them.

It’s heartening to see martech customers and sellers concur: integration is critical.

We still have further more to go on this journey of martech platforms and ecosystems. But as an industry, at least’s we’re all marching in the same way with a significantly far more seamlessly and powerfully built-in long term on the horizon in advance.