Why there are 10,000 martech products that “kinda all do the same thing” (but not really)
1 of the perennial criticisms of the martech landscape is that “most of these goods all do the same thing.” Deliver an e mail. Render a web web site. Review some data. This criticism has grown louder in proportion to the growth of the landscape.
With an progressively exasperated tone, folks question, for case in point, “What’s the position of hundreds of CRMs or advertising automation applications? They are all just storing the similar client fields and mail merging them into campaigns.”
I have typically experienced two reverse responses to that accusation.
1st, I get a tiny defensive and say, “Hey, there are authentic improvements that materialize in martech all the time. For instance, you can’t glimpse at a item like DALL-E 2, that magically generates photos from any description you can convey in phrases, and not appreciate that, wow, this truly is a little something new under the sunlight.”
But not all improvements in martech are that extraordinary. Coming up with the initial couple reverse ETL resources to very easily (re)hydrate knowledge into your app stack from your info warehouses was tremendous beneficial. But it was not worthy of a headline in The New York Times.
So, my fallback reaction is to acknowledge, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. All email promoting instruments kinda do the very same point. But, hey, on the vibrant side, that kind of commoditized opposition among suppliers need to be wonderful for you as a marketer. Rules of economics: it need to travel down your price tag.”
That often mollified people critics, who mostly just needed me to acquiesce to their gut-level belief that the martech landscape was all seem and fury signifying nothing at all. But it did not sit perfectly with me. It did not appear to be to reveal the sheer volume of versions of goods in martech groups nor the huge amount of intellectual capital that kept staying invested in them.
A few-Tier Architectures: Details, Selections, Shipping and delivery
Let us begin by recognizing that most software program follows a sample of a few tiers or levels:
- Facts — at the base: information saved in a database
- Presentation — at the top rated: what seems on the screen to people
- Business Logic — in the center: selections and move involving the other two levels
David Raab, the inventor of the CDP classification, mapped these to three levels of details, conclusions, and supply. (I wrote an report last yr riffing on that design known as Details, Decisioning, Shipping and delivery & Style and design to distinguish CDPs from cloud data warehouses, CDWs.)
But these 3 levels are not equal in scale or complexity.
The data layer appears intuitive as the easiest layer. If you are chatting about consumer documents, these kinds of as in CRM, there are commonly a finite selection of fields remaining saved. And the most critical fields are usually the exact same: title, firm, title, e mail, telephone range, address, and so on.
Of class, all purchaser facts isn’t solely that homogenized. Different businesses collect unique information all over buys, customer behaviors, demographic, firmographics, technographics, and so on. There can be relational facts connecting people consumers with campaigns, application, and associates.
However, the quantity and dispersion of variation is modest. In other words and phrases, the information layer is rather vulnerable to commoditization.
What about the presentation or delivery layer? Most folks — primarily UX professionals — would say there is a lot far more scale and complexity here. It’s anything that every person sees or hears!
Intuitively, there’s tremendous variation in presentation. Some interfaces are wonderful many others are ugly. Some clearly show you precisely what you want, in which you want it other individuals are a sizzling mess that your eyes painfully bushwhack by means of to discover the 1 thing you ended up basically looking for.
So presentation is an spot of differentiation, not commoditization, right?
Really, no.
Forgive me for finding a bit philosophical below, but believe in me, there is a significant issue to it.
The technological layer of presentation is actually relatively constrained. There are only so numerous pixels, of so a lot of shades, that you can place on a display screen. I’m not talking about what these pixels represent — that’s some thing various, which we’ll get to in a moment. The raw pixels and their frequent styles veer in the direction of commodities.
For that issue, if we grow beyond just “presentation” to protect other facets of “delivery” — how that presentation truly arrives in front of someone — that’s really commoditized also. The HTTPS protocol for website internet pages. The SMTP protocol for email. The SMPP protocol for text messages. These aren’t just commodities, they’re specifications.
Now prior to designers get started sending me anatomically unflattering wireframes of in which I can stick this publish, enable me quickly comply with up that style and design and UX are extremely sophisticated and critical sides of goods and experiences that supply huge option for differentiation. (Appear, I even put it in bold!)
But the magic and mastery of style and UX is not in the delivery. It is in the decisions about what to provide — when, the place, how, to whom.
It is the selections in UX that build differentiation.
Decisions Are the Wellspring of Differentiation
Most of software is decisioning. All those instructions managing by way of processors deciding if this, then that, millions of occasions for every minute. The bulk of code in programs is “business logic”, a vast ocean among the seabed of common info and the somewhat skinny waves of presentation delivered on the floor.
The scale of the choices layer in software is significant. I’ve drawn it as 80%, relative to 10% for facts and 10% for supply, in my diagram. But it is likely nearer to 98% vs. 1% and 1% in most programs.
It’s also advanced. And I suggest “complex” in the scientific feeling of numerous interacting parts — and not just isolated within just that one particular software itself. The decisions one particular software package app will make are influenced by the conclusions other related software package applications make. In a stack of dozens of apps, hundreds of facts sources, and 1000’s or millions of customers, all feeding various inputs into a program’s determination-generating, you have an astronomical set of prospects.
It is in this complex ecosystem wherever different software package applications deliver to bear different algorithms, frameworks, workflows, and designs to make selections in distinctive means.
There are 3 vital points about this conclusions layer:
- It’s the most significant portion of what composes a computer software app.
- Collectively, there’s a around infinite quantity of diverse achievable decisions.
- These decisions can have substantial, materials affect on business outcomes.
The previous issue really should be self-evident. Companies contend on the selections they make. If you really do not believe you can make distinctive — better — choices than your competition, you should almost certainly consider a career as a airtight monk. (Ironically, a pretty differentiated choice to make.)
The conclusions layer in computer software is a significant canvas for differentiation. And with its likely influence on results, it’s a enormous canvas for significant differentiation.
Pretty much no two application apps — at least applications of any sizeable dimensions — are the similar.
Martech: Commoditized and Differentiated
When you glance at the large-degree types of the martech landscape, these kinds of as a big bucket for CRM, with hundreds of logos, it is fair to say that, sure, in some broad sense, all these apps are the same. They are all for shopper partnership administration.
You could also rightfully say that the information stored in people CRMs are frequently rather similar way too. As are the shipping and delivery channels in which they serve up presentation to workforce back-stage and shoppers entrance-phase. By means of these lenses, they are commoditized solutions.
But the gigantic mass of choices in each of these diverse CRMs differs greatly.
Commit some time utilizing HubSpot (disclosure: where by I function), Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce, and you will recognize just how various these CRMs are. Surely for your practical experience as a consumer. But from the myriad of things that lead to differentiated knowledge for you in people CRMs springs a fount of different enterprise selections and client interactions.
Is just one obviously far better than the others? (I’ll resist my individual bias in answering that.) Presented the huge adoption of all 3, you have to conclude that the reply to that dilemma is distinct for unique firms.
(Indeed, it is a meta-decision to make a decision which selections bundled in a CRM platform you want, to aid you make superior conclusions for your clients, to then help them make far better conclusions in their enterprises, and so on. Turtles all the way down? Nope, it’s choices all the way down.)
And it’s not just those people a few CRMs. It’s the hundreds of many others. Every single one particular produced by distinct persons bringing distinct tips, philosophies, frameworks, and implementation possibilities to the enormous amount of choices embedded in their product or service. All of which ripple into discrepancies for how your enterprise will in fact function in zillions of tiny ways… but which combination into not-so-very small distinctions.
Additional colloquially, this is referred to as opinionated computer software.
Now, not all those people variations will be fantastic ones. It’s a Darwinian industry for sure. Some CRM platforms will prosper some others will go extinct. New CRM startups will sprout with new versions. More than time, there may possibly be a lot more or much less. But there is space for diverse CRMs with diverse final decision levels to legitimately exist, as extended as just about every a person has a consumer base — even if, or it’s possible in particular if, it’s a niche — who prefer the distinctive decisions of that seller.
This dynamic is existing throughout all classes in martech.
Incremental Innovation Is Continue to Innovation
Now, are the discrepancies in the conclusions layer involving two martech products in the exact same class breakthrough, leap-frogging innovations?
Admittedly, most of the time, no. They are additional often “incremental innovation” — acquiring superior strategies to do one thing, not so a lot making entirely new somethings. But it would be a error to disdain, “Pffft, which is only incremental innovation.”
Incremental innovation is even now innovation. It can meaningfully differentiate a person seller from yet another and produce fantastic advantages to their consumers.
This why martech has 10,000 solutions that all kinda do the similar thing — but not seriously.
