As venture capitalists continue to invest heavily in MarTech, we see their viewpoints on this space in three different write-ups last week. Foundation Capital’s Ashu Garg recently released a whitepaper predicting the coming decade to be the Decade of the CMO with marketing technology spend increasing 10x to make MarTech a $120 billion industry in the next ten years. Ajay Agarwal of Bain Capital opines that while MarTech has yet to produce a $50 billion unicorn like Salesforce did for sales automation, he feels that the company that can create value by bringing together customer data, predictive learning, and mass personalization for B2C marketers will emerge as the MarTech winner. Infer CEO Vik Singh states that marketing automation giant Marketo is poised to dominate the martech space, and with its undervalued stock price, the company is a perfect acquisition target for Salesforce or a competitor. Here’s more on the latest marketing and ad technology stories of the week.
A Guide to Mobile Digital Marketing – Forbes
In this article, Forbes reporter Mike Templeman explains that in spite of increasing usage of smartphones and tablets, users still do not enjoy the same kind of user experience as they do while browsing on a computer. To help the companies address this pain point, Mike listed three important steps – a mobile friendly website, and scannable and concise content, that’ll help companies make their campaigns mobile friendly.
7 Digital-Marketing Predictions You Need to Keep Your Eye On – Entrepreneur
In this article, Entrepreneur reporter Samuel Edwards explains how digital marketing strategies are changing on a weekly basis and, in order to gain an advantage over competition, companies need to always be on the cutting edge. To maximize marketing efforts, he offers seven important digital-marketing predictions for 2016. Of the predictions mentioned, Edwards notes marketing automation and location-based marketing will grow in importance for marketers.
Want to compete with Salesforce? Buy Marketo – TechCrunch
According to the article, there are several enterprise players that want a share of Salesforce’s business, but just aren’t making headway by knuckling up against the company’s dominant, entrenched SaaS CRM offerings. Rather than competing head on, a smarter approach for these businesses is to “front door” Salesforce, instead. The majority of Marketo’s 4,000 customers also use Salesforce, but the marketing automation system has access to more data about the funnel than its CRM counterpart. Marketo can sync bi-directionally with Salesforce, capturing all the data stored there, while also holding top-of-the-funnel lead behavior data that doesn’t get stored in CRM. Hence, it has access to an invaluable superset of data about a company’s potential and existing customers.
Branding and Performance Intersect For Lexus – AdExchanger
In this article, AdExchanger reporter Kelly Liyakasa reports that in order to reach more mediums to improve marketing strategy, luxury automaker Lexus has invested in a data strategy with Oracle Marketing Cloud. Lexus is working with Oracle Marketing Cloud’s data management platform to optimize its performance based on where the customer is in the Lexus life cycle.
Building Blocks: Roland Smart, VP of Social & Community Marketing at Oracle Talks Marketing Tech – MarTech Advisor
In this article, MarTech Advisor’s Editor in Chief Ankush Gupta sits down with Roland Smart, VP of social and community marketing at Oracle, to discuss the company’s MarTech strategies. Smart explains that the company is utilizing marketing technologies to improve customer experience and to implement marketing practices that scale to a company of Oracle’s size.
Marketing Tech’s Bumpy Road: Consolidation, Growth and a New Frontier – TechCrunch
According to the article, marketing technology has become big business over the last five years, securing $134 billion in venture funding and spawning more than 2,000 new companies. And CMOs are buying — roughly $23 billion in 2015, according to IDC, and likely growing to $32.4 billion in 2018. Moving forward, it’s important to remember that martech is not monolithic. Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Cap Ventures sees a very different prospects and paths ahead for the three macro categories in martech: B2B marketing, B2C marketing and advertising technology. Each has a set of characteristics and verticals and needs that are distinct from each other — and while there may be some overlap, each will require a different “stack” of software.
3 Predictions on How Omnichannel Will Be Omnipotent in 2016 – Multichannel Merchant
In this article, Multichannel Merchant reporter Rob Gonzalez explains the importance of omnichannel and how it is allowing consumers to shop from any location or device, making the shopping experience more on-demand than ever before. To provide readers with further context, Gonzalez listed three predictions about what omnichannel will look like in 2016. Of the predictions listed, Gonzalez notes that although many brick-and-mortar businesses are turning online, many online-based marketplaces may be transitioning to opening brick-and-mortar establishments.