Digital marketing is a dynamic landscape, constantly reshaped by new technologies, strategies, and evolving consumer behaviors. Keeping pace with these rapid shifts and anticipating future innovations can be a significant challenge for marketers.
To gain a deeper understanding of the transformation within MarTech and marketing, we consulted 10 leading experts. They shared their invaluable perspectives on the upcoming technologies and strategic imperatives shaping the industry.
Embrace New Behaviors and Technology for Transformative Experiences
For marketing technology to truly deliver transformative experiences, the industry must look forward, embracing disruption rather than simply trying to digest change. This future, though challenging, requires us to harness the power of new behaviors, technology, and opportunities.
API’vertising: Ads as Data Constructions
Traditional ads are often static images. However, what if an ad were a series of instructions pulling you through content in real-time? Tom Goodwin suggests that ads can be formed by API (application programming interface) instructions, serving personal, context-specific, real-time messages. For instance, if trains are running late, an ad could instantly suggest trying Uber. This paradigm shift means thinking of ads as constructions of data, not just “ad copy.”
The Ubiquitous Storefront: One-Click Purchase Everywhere
The internet is evolving, moving towards a future where every digital interaction is just one click away from a purchase. With banking and credit card details, shipping addresses, and even fingerprints embedded in phones and computers, buying from ads, social content, and TV shows will become frictionless. This change will fundamentally alter how advertising is perceived and functions.
Flow Advertising: Building Stories Across Screens
In a world of digital screens, static advertising seems outdated. Our dwindling attention spans also call for much shorter ads. Flow advertising introduces a new approach to message building, allowing stories to unfold sequentially across various screens and devices. Messaging can guide individuals from brand awareness to product consideration and ultimately to purchase over days or even years.
Automation 2.0: A Network of Growth-Hacking Automations
We’ve entered the era of Automation 2.0, where marketing automation platforms are no longer the sole locus of automation. Mathew Sweezey highlights how modern organizations leverage a distributed approach:
- Utilizing multiple tools to source individual and behavioral data.
- Employing various middle-layer applications to execute logic.
- Automating the delivery of experiences across a web of interconnected applications.
In this framework, the marketing automation platform becomes just one node in a larger network, rather than the central processor. For example, AdRoll adopted this network approach, resulting in a 13% increase in sales team appointments.
Leading marketing organizations now use an average of 14 tools. Crafting cohesive customer experiences demands integration and automation across a multitude of channels, datasets, and applications. Experiences, not just messages, define the future of marketing, with growth hacking providing the discipline to create optimal experiences through data and testing. Given the diversity in tools, data structures, and workflows, an Automation 2.0 framework – a web of interconnected data and tools – is essential to support this future. While Marketing Automation 1.0 served demand-gen experts, the Automation 2.0 environment, with its network of data and connected tools, is the preferred choice for growth hackers.
Technology Changes Us: Behavior Shifts & New Economies
When discussing digitization and the internet, we often focus on emerging technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), or self-driving cars. However, Bart de Waele points out that the true impact lies not in the technology itself, but in how it reshapes human behavior.
First We Change Technology, Then Technology Changes Us
Consider the GPS in our cars. In the 1990s, preparing for a trip involved researching directions and printing them. Today, we simply type an address, and GPS provides real-time guidance. This shift illustrates how technology has fundamentally altered our preparation and decision-making processes, making information available precisely when needed, effortlessly.
The frictionless availability of digital information has profoundly changed how people make decisions. Consumers now seek information proactively before engaging with any supplier. Marketers must therefore be present early and effectively within this evolving decision-making journey, focusing on helping people buy rather than simply selling to them.
The Rise of the Subscription Economy
A significant trend, particularly in Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), is the move from impulse purchases to subscription models. Examples abound:
- Surprise boxes for makeup
- Economical razor blade subscriptions
- Various clothing items, including socks
- Food subscriptions for ingredients or meal kits, like Smartmat or Hellofresh
Frictionless Everyday Goods Through IoT
Shopping for everyday essentials is becoming nearly interface-free and incredibly frictionless. The next step involves manufacturers embedding these controls directly into domestic appliances and electronics. A prime example is Poppy, a coffee machine that detects low coffee bean levels and automatically reorders them through Amazon.
The Product Becomes the Channel
This evolution has a serious impact on how companies communicate with consumers. For brands, it demands a new way of thinking: marketing with technology where the products and appliances in our surroundings become the channels. This necessitates a complete overhaul of messaging and MarTech strategies to accommodate this shift.
No More BYOMT: The Return of the CTO
The era of “Bring Your Own Marketing Technology” (BYOMT) is drawing to a close. Benoît De Nayer contends that Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) will reclaim a central role in selecting marketing technologies. While analysts once suggested CMOs wielded more organizational power, they overlooked the escalating complexity of marketing automation. This complexity primarily revolves around data: its availability, standardization, comprehension, and protection. These are areas where marketers often lack the specialized education and empathy, underscoring the necessity of CTO involvement.
Marketing Becomes Agile or Stagnates
Working effectively in marketing and technology demands a structured and planned approach that simultaneously fosters creative freedom. Rikke Thomsen shares that implementing Scrum within their marketing department at Sleeknote led to a significant increase in efficiency and output. Many companies are poised to adopt similar agile methodologies.
Agile frameworks empower teams to quickly run new marketing experiments, gather real-time feedback on their effectiveness, and iteratively move closer to their goals. Scrum, as a delivery framework, helps teams “get the right things done.” Iterating in short sprints is far more effective than relying solely on yearly plans or goals, though these can be successfully combined with Scrum in MarTech.
How to Implement Scrum in Marketing and MarTech
The Scrum methodology begins with a project backlog—a list of marketing tasks developed by the team to achieve specific marketing goals. During a sprint planning meeting, the team reviews this backlog and agrees on the tasks to be completed during the current sprint. Progress is then tracked by a Scrum master, often through online applications, weekly Scrum meetings, and, if using Slack, weekly stand-ups via tools like Geekbot.
Here are four critical steps for implementing Scrum in marketing:
- Choose an application for task management.
- Plan your sprint, defining tasks and objectives.
- Add sprints to your chosen application for tracking.
- Decide on the frequency of team meetings.
For larger MarTech projects, such as implementing new tools, launching extensive automation campaigns, or continuous conversion optimization, Scrum is highly recommended. It helps prevent teams from feeling overwhelmed, providing a clear mechanism to review sprints and adjust future plans to manage workload effectively.
Fear the FrankenStack! Navigating MarTech Complexity
In the early 2000s, tools and channels were simple, even email was a straightforward subscribe-and-send process. However, marketing rapidly grew in complexity, making it challenging to manage paid search, SEO, email, and content. The introduction of marketing automation platforms like Marketo, Pardot, and Act-On promised “all-in-one” solutions, but the landscape continues to evolve, as Ed Fry explains.
Marketers today face an exacerbated challenge:
- **More Channels Than Ever:** From live chat and bots to web personalization and diverse ad platforms, the number of channels demanding attention has exploded.
- **Less Low-Hanging Fruit:** Key traffic sources are increasingly becoming “pay-to-play” walled gardens.
- **No Room for Mediocrity:** Precision is paramount when every marketing move involves significant investment.
To combat this overwhelming complexity, marketers often adopt an ever-increasing number of tools, leading to the “MarTech 5000” phenomenon. Instead of streamlining, many marketers find themselves drowning, entangled in what should be their marketing stacks.
It’s Not a Marketing Stack, It’s a FrankenStack.
As Ed Fry aptly puts it, what marketers often end up with is a “fRaNKeNsTaCk.” Few teams have successfully orchestrated their tools, teams, and data across the entire customer lifecycle. While some take steps in the right direction, a unified, optimized stack remains elusive for many.
The critical takeaway is that marketing must take ownership of this challenge. Marketing departments possess the broad reach and interaction across the entire customer lifecycle, positioning them uniquely to address this problem. Furthermore, the growth of MarTech means marketing often has the necessary budget to invest in solutions. This, Fry concludes, is the challenge of our age: Fear the FrankenStack!
Artificial Intelligence Takes the Manager Position
David Raab envisions a future where artificial intelligence manages core marketing systems, including customer data platforms and budget allocations. This represents a significant shift from current AI applications, which primarily focus on narrow problems like chatbots or content optimization. While these applications are valuable, they depend on a robust core infrastructure.
The underlying infrastructure has traditionally been built and managed manually, creating a significant bottleneck. However, AI will soon be capable of automating tasks such as connecting new data sources and adjusting customer databases to incorporate that data. This will remove the manual bottleneck, enabling specialized AI applications to fully leverage new channels, data sources, and opportunities.
This future requires more powerful AI and strong governance processes to prevent errors. It also necessitates long-term performance measures, like algorithmic attribution, to guide the master AI system in its decisions. Raab likens this to a robot supervising other robots; until this level of autonomous management is achieved, human oversight will continue to limit the speed and effectiveness of AI systems.
Democratization of Data and Distributed Smart Functions
The future of MarTech will be defined by campaign orchestration, insightful analytics, and profound relevance in the age of artificial intelligence. René Kulka anticipates that many Marketing Tech providers will capitalize on the AI hype cycle by offering enhanced machine learning services. This means expecting an increase in features like behavioral product recommendations and optimized send-time for emails.
Advertisers are striving for one-to-one personalization, requiring scalable software solutions. On the outbound side, this translates to broader use of automation, real-time recommendation engines, and individualized newsletter send times. For inbound strategies, there’s curiosity about whether chatbots will extend their reach into email management, potentially alleviating customer care burdens.
Beyond the hype, numerous genuine AI opportunities exist. MarTech will empower marketers to more accurately attribute success to specific channels and refine segmentation through capabilities such as:
- Finding look-alike audiences.
- Advanced lead scoring.
- Predicting gender and age.
- Forecasting churn or customer lifetime values.
Kulka does not foresee a single MarTech company covering all these functionalities. Instead, massive open online courses and data science platforms will continue to advance the democratization of data, making sophisticated insights accessible to a broader audience.
Account-Based Marketing Integrates into B2B Platforms
As the distinctions between various types of marketing technology blur, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is making its way into marketing automation platforms, particularly those catering to B2B audiences. Jordie van Rijn notes that this trend is understandable, given the popularization of ABM over recent years, leading B2B marketers and sales teams to demand specific ABM functionalities within their platforms.
New Approaches Needed in Email Technology
The core principle of email marketing—delivering relevance to every audience member—remains constant. However, the MarTech enabling these strategies continues to evolve. Email automation, which complements rather than replaces broadcast email, and behaviorally driven email content are current best practices, as Tim Watson observes.
So, what comes next? How should technology and processes be reimagined for the next evolution of email marketing?
Consider current technologies for predictive and AI-driven content. These create highly targeted content based on individual behavior, inserting products or content into emails based on what a contact has browsed or purchased. The technical solution often involves using linked images to display personalized pictures and text. This approach is intelligent, as the only practical way to achieve relevance at scale, given vast diversity, is for computers to build emails individually for each person.
For example, eBay uses automatically created and personalized emails with varied subject lines:
- Selections for you!
- Tim, we’ve gathered some of your favourites together.
- Your own private shopping store.
- All the deals you want Tim!
- Tim, fancy finding something new?
- Shhh, don’t tell: We’re completely serious, enjoy ALL these…
- 😉 To: you, from: eBay – We picked you for something brilliant
- Tim, got deals on your mind?
- To: Tim, From: Us—still haven’t found what you’re looking for?
- Fancy finding yourself a gift, Tim?
- To: Tim, a little something from us! Guess what’s flying off our shelves….
Notice that these subject lines are often generic, designed to fit unknown body contents. The subject line is generated entirely independently of what is placed in the email body, creating a disconnect between the two. While eBay‘s teasing subject lines are inspiring and varied (and usable for any deal email), they highlight a current limitation: a significant “wall” between email subject lines and body content.
To achieve higher performance than current technology allows, we need both great email body personalization AND great subject lines that work in concert. This demands new approaches in email technology. The question remains: which technology vendor will be the first to deliver such a integrated solution?