Are Marketing Technology Solutions Meeting Buyers’ Expectations?

July 5, 2016

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Customer Engagement | Digital | Marketing Budgets

CMOCouncilSAPHybris-Senior-Marketer-Views-Tech-Investments-Jul2016Marketing and commerce technology solutions have most impacted businesses in two ways: by increasing the ability to measure and track the real-time performance of campaigns and engagement, improving individual efforts in real-time; and by increasing engagement through the customer’s journey. Those, at least, are the views of 170-odd senior marketing leaders contained in a report [download page] from the CMO Council and SAP Hybris.

But with marketing spending technology rising – with Gartner famously predicting that CMOs will outspend CIOs by next year [pdf] – are these solutions meeting expectations? The report, “Context, Commerce and Customer,” asked senior marketers to rate the investments they’ve made to date, with some interesting conclusions.

The good news is that these investments have been failures for very few (would they admit it?). Just 1% said that their marketing and commerce technology solutions have failed to meet expectations or live up to any of the promises made by the vendor. And only 4% said that the technologies have been complicated to the point of paralysis.

While there have been few abject failures, there are likewise few instances of overwhelmingly positive feedback, per the survey. Only 5% said that their investments had exceeded expectations and opened doors to new opportunities. An additional 12% reported that they were well worth the budget, meeting all expectations and promises. While those outweigh the negative responses, that’s still less than 1 in 5 reporting that the technology solutions have met or outperformed expectations.

The most common answer, cited by 40% of respondents? That technology had met expectations in some areas, but let buyers down in others. Another 29% said that it’s too soon to tell, but that they’re hopeful.

Either way, it seems, spending on marketing technology should continue to rise for the foreseeable future.

For more on marketing technology, see these articles:

About the Data: The CMO Council report was based on a survey of more than 170 marketing leaders across the globe, 40% of whom are based in the Asia-Pacific region and 32% in North America. A majority (56%) have annual revenues of more than $500 million. Respondents were twice as likely to focus on B2B (42%) than B2C (21%), though the remaining 37% are a hybrid of B2B and B2C.

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