The highly anticipated Forrester Wave Email Service Providers report, Q1 2022, offers an invaluable perspective on the dynamic landscape of email marketing. This comprehensive report meticulously evaluates email marketing service providers within the crucial Enterprise B2C marketing segment, comparing them against industry benchmarks and each other. The analysis culminates in a strategic placement of these providers into four distinct categories, based on a rigorous assessment of their Offering and Strategy.
Forrester Email Wave Research Methodology
Forrester’s methodology for compiling the Email Wave report is exhaustive and precise. Email service providers undergo a multi-faceted evaluation process that includes billing scrutiny, in-depth interrogations, extensive surveys, live demonstrations, and detailed scoring. This rigorous assessment ultimately determines their placement within the final Wave, which is renowned for its insightful graphical representation and dedicated vendor paragraphs offering essential background information.
Forrester Wave Email Marketing Service Providers 2022 Overview
The 2022 Forrester Wave report categorizes vendors into “Leaders,” “Strong Performers,” “Contenders,” or “Challengers.” These designations are direct reflections of the outcomes from the ESP scorecard, visually charted onto the distinctive Wave graph.
The scoring of email marketing software providers is based on three high-level categories: Current Offering, Strategy, and Market Presence. These are further broken down into 24 specific criteria to provide a granular evaluation.
1. Current Offering / Features
A vendor’s vertical position on the Forrester Wave graphic is determined by the strength of their current offering. This category encompasses a range of critical features and capabilities, including:
- Campaign management
- Dynamic content
- Reporting and analytics
- Data capabilities
- Privacy features
- Security protocols
- Support for distributed business models
- Artificial intelligence integration
- Full-service support offerings
Key Observations:
- Privacy and Security: These are now distinct, separately scored criteria, underscoring their growing importance and making logical sense as two separate items.
- Vertical Capabilities: The scoring of “vertical capabilities” has been removed from this year’s assessment.
- Full-Service Capabilities: A new 15% score is now allocated for full-service capabilities. This partially credits providers for offering technical services and awards full points for those also providing agency services.
2. Strategy and Vision
The horizontal axis of the Wave chart evaluates vendors based on their Strategy and Vision. This category comprises several vital sub-criteria:
- Product vision
- Innovation roadmap
- Market approach
- Performance
- Partner ecosystem
- Commercial model
Key Observations:
- Partner Ecosystem: This is a new scoring criterion, reflecting the industry’s shift towards ecosystem-like models that include “hubs,” “tools marketplaces,” and “agency partner expert directories.”
- Market Approach: Another new addition to the strategy and vision category, indicating its increased relevance in vendor evaluation.
3. Market Presence
The size of the circles on the Wave graph signifies the relative scale of each vendor’s Market Presence. This is determined by factors such as:
- Email marketing revenue
- Globalization efforts
- Number of email employees (dedicated to the email product)
Email Service Providers Included in the Forrester Wave 2022
Forrester’s Q1 2022 report focused exclusively on enterprise-level email marketing vendors, featuring 13 prominent email marketing software solutions:
- Acoustic – Acoustic Marketing Cloud
- Adobe – Adobe Journey Optimizer
- Braze – Braze Customer Engagement Platform
- Cheetah Digital – Cheetah Customer Engagement Suite
- Cordial – Cordial
- Emarsys – Emarsys Customer Engagement Platform
- Epsilon – Epsilon PeopleCloud
- Iterable – Iterable
- MessageGears – Messagegears Customer Marketing Platform
- Netcore – Netcore Cloud
- Oracle – Oracle Responsys
- Salesforce – Salesforce Marketing Cloud (focusing specifically on Marketing Cloud, not Sales or Service Clouds)
- Zeta Global – ZMP: Zeta Marketing Platform
Notably, Acoustic was the only vendor designated as a “Challenger” in the 2022 Wave report, listed as a non-participating vendor. They are reportedly retooling their platform from the ground up, a significant undertaking for the platform formerly known as IBM Watson, Watson Campaign, and Silverpop. Despite this, all participating vendors can largely be content with their positions on the graph.
Notable Changes in Included Email Providers
Forrester’s Email Wave report is released biennially. While other reports cover adjacent areas like Cross-Channel Campaign Management and Enterprise Marketing Software Suites, specific changes in the included vendors for this report warrant attention:
- Newcomers: The 2022 report welcomes MessageGears, NetcoreCloud, and Emarsys to its evaluation.
- No Longer Included: Bluecore, Dotdigital, and Exponea are not featured in this edition.
- Exclusion Reasons (Enterprise Focus): Dotdigital was explicitly mentioned for exclusion due to having less than a 25% emphasis on the enterprise segment. For the same reason, iPost and Selligent were also noted.
- Exclusion Reasons (Vertical Specialization): Bluecore was cited for exclusion because of its vertical specialization.
Comparing Previous Forrester Wave Email Marketing Vendor Reports
For historical context and to observe trends, here are visuals from the last three Forrester Waves Email Marketing Services reports:
Download the Forrester Wave Email Service Providers, Q1 2022 Report
To access and download the complete Forrester Wave Email Marketing Service Providers 2022 report for yourself, you can do so via the following pages (registration is typically required):
- Courtesy of Epsilon
- Courtesy of Iterable
- Courtesy of MessageGears