By acquiring ExactTarget, Salesforce
just entered an escalating battle for control of the marketing-services
field. Data fragmentation poses a great problem for marketers as new
technologies and data sources arise.
Over the next five years, dozens of tech titans, startups, and
traditional data managers will seek to become the dominant platform to
integrate data across all marketing channels. From this battle,
marketers will emerge with a unified view of their customers and
strategy from a social, mobile, email, display, search and direct-mail
standpoint.
While data-driven marketers will benefit massively from the
competition, the spoils will go most heavily to the company that wins
control of the cross-channel stack -- gaining a near-monopoly on
marketing budgets.
The Prize
Three trends have been redefining the marketing landscape, creating an
opportunity for major disruption in the industry and a lucrative prize
for the winner.
First, there is a shift of budget from offline channels to digital.
This trend is not new, nor is it surprising -- but it is accelerating
and it means a significant amount of money is in play.
The second trend is the growing significance of data in marketing.
Smart targeting, measurement and modeling techniques are redefining the
capability of marketers to reach the optimal audience and invest in the
highest-ROI campaigns.
The final trend is fragmentation. New marketing channels are emerging
much more quickly than the industry is catching up, spawning companies
focused on success within a particular channel. Within the last five
years alone, mobile and Facebook have grown from negligible channels to
key parts of a marketer's strategy. This means the typical CMO is now
inundated with dozens of different tools to manage their different
channels.
Herein lies the opportunity: The industry’s fragmentation is keeping
data siloed and preventing companies from using their data intelligently
across channels. If a company can successfully reverse this trend by
creating a single unified platform for all marketing, it can take
advantage of huge amounts of this untapped data that was previously
siloed.
The Players
This is where Salesforce’s acquisition of ExactTarget fits. Salesforce
is already managing CRM data for many companies. Between the Buddy Media
and ExactTarget acquisitions, it is now entering the marketing
execution space -- rather than just hosting data. The integration of CRM
data and email marketing can be much tighter than the integration of
CRM and social marketing, allowing Salesforce to more strategically
integrate data across channels.
In moving into cross-channel marketing execution, Salesforce’s vision
now directly competes with dozens of other companies. Let’s look at
the other major players:
Traditional data managers: Companies like Acxiom, Epsilon, Experian and Merkle
have traditionally managed CRM data for the largest marketers and also
made much of their money executing their campaigns in various offline
channels. Most of these companies have in-house email service
providers, direct-mail services and are increasingly moving into display
and digital channels with innovative cross-channel products. Salesforce
is now squarely competing with these companies for the future of data
management.
Online data management platforms: Online “DMPs” like BlueKai,
Turn and Adobe have the same vision as the traditional data managers,
but start by aggregating online data (such as display-ad performance,
online behavioral data, etc.) and executing in online channels. Over
the next few years, they will be moving across the stack to aggregate
data from offline channels, too.
Single-channel marketing solutions: As marketing changes, the
companies that dominate a particular channel are moving to integrate
into others. The most dramatic change will be among email service
providers. Even before the ExactTarget acquisition, leading ESPs like
Responsys and SilverPop have tried to pivot into cross-channel
solutions.
Giant tech companies: Like Salesforce, other tech titans such as IBM,
Adobe, Google and Oracle are eager to take advantage of their
relationships with marketers, their possession of customer data, and
their big data expertise to enter the battle.
The Battle
While these four categories compete very little today, their five-year
visions converge almost identically: Each company wants to own the
cross-channel marketing stack.
While the battle has been brewing for years, Salesforce’s acquisition
of ExactTarget has accelerated it significantly. Marketers will now be
torn between several platforms, each one competing to create an
exceptional cross-channel experience and to build the dominant platform.
Expect this acquisition to be the first of many as the battle unfolds.
Source : Adage.com
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