MarTech Replacement Survey finds marketing transformation is accelerating

Ever since we coined the phrase “MarTech is marketing” in 2019, it has only become clearer to us that the art of building brand, prospects and customers today cannot be separated from the tools we use to power those activities. But it’s also clear that the pace of transformation is leading marketers to continually evaluate their tech stacks as platforms add features and new tools emerge that enable marketers to create, integrate and orchestrate better than before.

The first MarTech Replacement Survey in 2019 showed just how frequently marketing organizations replaced technology. The survey found homegrown platforms were often displaced by commercial, out-of-the-box applications. This had a direct effect on hiring, as most respondents said they had recruited new teams to run the platforms they were installing.

Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has gripped the world, forcing us more closely to embrace digital operations. We know that many digital-first businesses thrived during the pandemic, but questions remained about how the disruption of the past year-and-a-half affected marketing technology decisions.

This year’s report, the result of a survey fielded through April and May of 2021, answers several of those questions.

Of the 374 marketers who answered our survey, 252 told us they replaced a marketing technology application in the past year, representing 67% of respondents. For the most part, organizations were upgrading from one commercial solution to another — and the upgraded solutions were exactly the kinds of technologies you’d expect given how digital transformation picked up during the pandemic.

This year’s MarTech Replacement Survey found that marketers and their organizations:

• Replaced a wide range of marketing tools
• Sought technology with better features and lower costs
• Looked to improve their data management capabilities
• Saw replacement decisions championed by senior and executive leadership
• Retained and retrained talent to manage these new tools

In the past 18 months, marketers also invested in exactly those tools which support digital engagement with prospects and customers. And when asked if the marketing replacements were driven by pandemic-related considerations, the response was divided.

More on marketing transformation

The data highlighted in this report show that the pace of technology-driven transformation was not slowed by the pandemic. If anything, it picked up speed.

About The Author

Kim Davis

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.