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

My mates at MarTech.org lately unveiled their hottest Martech Replacement Study 2022, wherever entrepreneurs shared which applications they’ve replaced in excess of the previous 18 months, what their principal enthusiasm was in executing so, and what have been their most critical things in deciding on the substitution alternative.
Marketing and advertising automation (24%), CRM (23%), Search engine optimisation (23%), e-mail advertising (22%), and perform/venture administration (19%) apps ended up the most often replaced.
As I highlighted in blue in the chart earlier mentioned, the #1 most generally cited aspect in picking out their alternative remedy was integration abilities/open API — selected by 56% respondents, up 13% points from the same study in 2021.
It is a leading 5 topic of this 10 years in martech: platforms, networks & marketplaces.
Of program, this isn’t to say that the other things — price tag, aid, security, and so on. — weren’t critical also. But the aspect that most marketers agreed on was integration. If it won’t combine with the rest of the tech stack, anything else is moot. It’s the tree that falls in the forest with out everyone all-around to hear it.
The 2nd most widespread component was information centralization/details capabilities (picked by 50% of respondents), which is carefully tied to integration. Right after all, info is the foundational layer of integrations.
Tied in 2nd also with 50% was “ability to evaluate ROI” — which is going to be on the major of everyone’s minds in our tighter economy. But to measure ROI, you need to have the info. And to get the info, you require integrations. These three variables are bound alongside one another by atomic forces.
But what inspired entrepreneurs to find out a substitution alternative in the initial location?

When searching to exchange a business application (the study covers substitute of homegrown applications separately), the #1 enthusiasm was improved capabilities (53%). Of training course, this makes perception. Marketers search to martech to give them the abilities vital to accomplish in regularly shifting and evolving marketplaces. What you can do matters.
Having said that, I would have predicted the #2 motivation to be value — in search of an substitute option to reduce expenses. That was the study final result in 2021.
But in 2022, greater/simpler integration was the second most typical enthusiasm (24%, up 5% points from 2021) to search for a alternative application. Effectively, a wish for greater integration triggered 1 out of each 4 martech app replacement initiatives.
That is fairly extraordinary.
I have mentioned this many instances ahead of to martech product or service teams: the market is talking to you with a fantastic booming voice in the sky, “Treat integration as a 1st-course element!”
Progressively, the martech business — and the SaaS universe more broadly — have taken this to heart. A new analysis report from Pandium on the Condition of Integrations and APIs at 400 SaaS Corporations shows that 86% of the Top rated 100 SaaS firms in the entire world now have a public integration market. (73% of them have an in-application market.)

Which is amazing and a potent testament to the relevance of application ecosystems for significant SaaS corporations.
But what’s even much more telling is that 31% of seed-stage SaaS startups now attribute a community integration marketplace much too. Almost 1 out 3 SaaS startups — which are specifically strapped for time and methods, compelled to make pretty challenging alternatives about what to prioritize — have chosen to prioritize building both equally integrations and a marketplace to make it straightforward for shoppers to uncover and use them.
It is heartening to see martech consumers and sellers agree: integration is vital.
We however have more to go on this journey of martech platforms and ecosystems. But as an business, at least’s we’re all marching in the identical direction with a considerably extra seamlessly and powerfully built-in potential on the horizon in advance.