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

My pals at MarTech.org just lately launched their most recent Martech Substitution Study 2022, where by marketers shared which apps they’ve replaced about the past 18 months, what their principal motivation was in executing so, and what have been their most essential aspects in choosing the substitute answer.

Promoting automation (24%), CRM (23%), Search engine marketing (23%), email advertising (22%), and work/project administration (19%) applications were the most regularly replaced.

As I highlighted in blue in the chart previously mentioned, the #1 most usually cited element in picking out their substitution option was integration capabilities/open up API — chosen by 56% respondents, up 13% details from the identical study in 2021.

It is a best 5 topic of this 10 years in martech: platforms, networks & marketplaces.

Of study course, this isn’t to say that the other things — value, help, protection, and so on. — weren’t important also. But the factor that most entrepreneurs agreed on was integration. If it will not integrate with the relaxation of the tech stack, anything else is moot. It is the tree that falls in the forest without having any person all around to hear it.

The 2nd most common issue was info centralization/data capabilities (preferred by 50% of respondents), which is closely tied to integration. Just after all, info is the foundational layer of integrations.

Tied in next also with 50% was “ability to measure ROI” — which is heading to be on the top of everyone’s minds in our tighter economy. But to measure ROI, you have to have the knowledge. And to get the data, you want integrations. These 3 elements are bound with each other by atomic forces.

But what enthusiastic entrepreneurs to search for out a alternative resolution in the very first location?

When seeking to substitute a industrial app (the survey addresses alternative of homegrown apps individually), the #1 motivation was superior attributes (53%). Of training course, this can make sense. Marketers seem to martech to give them the abilities important to carry out in continuously shifting and evolving markets. What you can do matters.

Even so, I would have expected the #2 commitment to be expense — seeking an alternative alternative to decrease charges. That was the survey result in 2021.

But in 2022, improved/much easier integration was the 2nd most typical drive (24%, up 5% points from 2021) to look for a replacement app. Basically, a motivation for much better integration activated 1 out of every 4 martech application alternative projects.

Which is really impressive.

I have explained this quite a few times before to martech product or service groups: the marketplace is talking to you with a great booming voice in the sky, “Treat integration as a initially-class attribute!”

Significantly, the martech industry — and the SaaS universe additional broadly — have taken this to coronary heart. A new research report from Pandium on the Condition of Integrations and APIs at 400 SaaS Firms reveals that 86% of the Leading 100 SaaS firms in the globe now have a public integration marketplace. (73% of them have an in-application market.)

That is remarkable and a potent testament to the worth of application ecosystems for important SaaS organizations.

But what is even more telling is that 31% of seed-phase SaaS startups now aspect a community integration market too. Virtually 1 out 3 SaaS startups — which are in particular strapped for time and resources, pressured to make very tricky choices about what to prioritize — have decided on to prioritize establishing both equally integrations and a marketplace to make it straightforward for shoppers to discover and use them.

It’s heartening to see martech prospective buyers and sellers concur: integration is important.

We even now have even further to go on this journey of martech platforms and ecosystems. But as an sector, at least’s we’re all marching in the similar direction with a significantly far more seamlessly and powerfully integrated future on the horizon forward.