Abstract
- Shift to business value for MACH. Conversations about composability and headless should be about business value, not geeky stuff. The evolution of MACH emphasizes a focus on solving real business problems, moving beyond technical functionality to practical applications in marketing.
- AI-powered marketing: Beyond the hype. AI in 2024 will be more than just a buzzword. Marketers are now leveraging AI to solve complex problems, demonstrating that marketing technology is moving from novelty to necessity.
- The dawn of true personalization. Personalization will reach new levels of sophistication in 2024. AI enables seamless and scalable personalization, significantly advancing the way marketers understand and meet the needs of individual customers.
This year is a pivotal year for marketing technology trends. Marketers must embrace these advances and strategically incorporate them into their marketing strategies. And with over 11,000 tools out there, you need to figure out how to get the most out of your marketing technology.
So what marketing technology trends are we talking about? This year's marketing technology trends are a mosaic of advanced tools and approaches that are reimagining how we interact and connect with our audiences.
Marketing technology experts highlighted the critical role of personalization, the emergence of AI-driven analytics, and the increased adoption of customer data platforms (CDPs) and other tools as key marketing technology trends. These are not just isolated tools. They are essential components of a complex marketing technology ecosystem. The challenge for marketers is to harmoniously integrate these trends to create a holistic and impactful marketing approach.
We are at a “serious inflection point” in marketing technology (martech), according to a Jan. 1 blog post by Scott Brinker, the “godfather of martech” who runs the Chief Marketing Technologist blog.
“Is this exponential increase in the complexity of martech systems a good thing?” asked Brinker. “Honestly, it's hard to predict. As I said, humans aren't very good at understanding exponential complexity. But I think the answer is: yes. why? Because customers and markets are complex. If our martech systems can adapt to that complexity with far greater fluidity than we previously dreamed of, we have the potential to dramatically improve marketing effectiveness and efficiency. ”
To help you lay the foundation for marketing technology in 2024, here are some of the top trends in marketing technology, as told by three industry experts we spoke to.
Evolution of MACH and its business value
According to Ian Truscott, independent marketing strategist at Rockstar CMO and CMSWire contributor, conversations around composability and headless need to be about business value, “not geeky stuff.” He highlights the changing value proposition of MACH (microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native SaaS, headless).
Although MACH has reached its peak as a differentiator, its role in solving real business problems remains critical. This trend represents a shift away from technical jargon to tangible business outcomes.
“This is the latest salvo in the Hundred Years' War over 'monolith' versus 'best,'” Truscott said. “The industry, especially the CMS industry, has been down this path historically with not only open source but also cloud solutions. We talked about true SaaS and cloud, and the market decided. If it had been that important to Drupal, Crown Peak would have taken control of this school 20 years ago, and companies would have needed Acquia to make a business case against open source Drupal. “Does anyone remember JSR170, the silo-breaking interoperable content standard, while riding around on the early hobby horses? No, I thought not.”
Related article: MACH architecture claims
AI-powered solutions that go beyond buzzwords
By 2024, AI will be more than just a buzzword. Truscott pointed to a line by Robert Rhodes on the podcast “This Old Marketing,” saying, “AI will 'earn that money.'”
The focus now is on how AI can solve complex marketing problems, from conversational advertising to behind-the-scenes marketing operations. This trend marks a shift from AI as a novelty to AI as an essential functional component in marketing technology.
“Being 'AI-powered' will suffer the same fate in 2024,” Truscott said. “It's not enough just to claim AI-powered to claim differentiating value.” . “Easy access to tools provided by big tech companies has made this popular, especially in the creation of synthetic content. What's even more interesting is how AI is being used to solve more difficult marketing problems. The question is, does it apply?”
Rose suggests conversational advertising and behind-the-scenes marketing efforts. Truscott agrees that there will be some very interesting use cases.
“My concern here is that this could give an advantage to larger vendors with larger datasets and development budgets, but with access to AI through services like OpenAI. “The democratization of martech will present opportunities for disruption to established martech categories and vendors. Of course, the opportunity to leverage AI to develop products faster will drive innovation,” he added. Ta.
Related article: Generative AI in Marketing: Smoothing your creative work
Enabling personalization
Personalization is set to reach new heights in 2024. Truscott pointed out, “I'm not talking about email blocking {first_name}. I'm talking about a seamless, at-scale service with an invisible content butler.” AI will play a pivotal role in enabling this sophisticated level of personalization, allowing marketers to better understand their content and audience needs.
According to Truscott, 2024 could finally be the year of personalization, according to Truscott, if we look back further into the history of marketing and Peppers and Rogers' 1993 One to One Future.
“The challenge with personalization is always about more than just understanding your audience and their needs and wants,” Truscott said. “We have that. Once we understood our content and started carving out our audience into his one-on-one moments, it was important to create and reuse content at the scale we needed. .AI will give us this.”
According to Greg Kihlstrom, principal at The Agile Brand and CMSWire contributor, the growing maturity of generative AI capabilities in martech platforms and the increasing pressure on marketers to deliver a true omnichannel experience are driving Rization functionality is finally “mature”.
“We are looking at the convergence of big data, personalization, and now generative AI. This means that the year of real-world personalization is finally upon us,” Kielstrom said. . “Companies are leading the way here, but smaller brands will soon follow as generative AI tools become more sophisticated at businesses of all sizes.”
Reviving the basics of marketing
Truscott said that amid advances in technology, privacy concerns, changes in third-party cookies, restrictions on social media platforms, and big tech companies are increasing privacy and security to enhance their walled gardens. The core marketing fundamentals are being revived, depending on how we use the cookie change.
“Marketers will focus on their audiences, media and platforms,” he added. This trend highlights the growing importance of channels such as email, web experiences, customer relationship management (CRM), customer data platforms (CDP), and even print.
Related article: CDP vs. DMP: What's the difference? Which one is best for your business?
Blend online and offline experiences
The connection between digital and physical experiences is becoming increasingly important. Mr. Truscott discussed the need for technology to enable his events to be professional real-time hybrids, reflecting changes in the way physical and virtual experiences are integrated.
“We are seeing the end of Twitter as a community digital backchannel for physical events, and marketers are missing out on the value this adds to events,” he said. Ta. “While Twitter was ubiquitous, business social media has collapsed, and I think physical events, where the hashtag was almost the digital twin of the event, have become less valuable because they can’t generate buzz. Additionally, as the world changes and we become increasingly remote, I think we will see more and more adoption of technology that enables the production of professional, real-time, hybrid physical and virtual events.”
The Great Reconciliation in AI Tools
Kielstrom predicts significant consolidation in the martech space. “The great settlement is going to happen this year,” he said, referring to the convergence of standalone AI tools and established martech platforms. This trend suggests that a more streamlined and powerful toolset will emerge by the end of the year.
“This means a lot of M&A activity, and many startups will struggle to find their footing amid intense competition from traditional companies,” Kihlstrom said. “By the end of the year, we will see a more focused field of AI-specific tools emerge, and the platforms we have known and used for years will incorporate many of the features that emerging platforms have innovated and (in some cases) invented over the last year. It is expected.”
Data management is the main focus
Anita Brearton, founder and CEO of CabinetM and CMSWire contributor, emphasized the importance of data management. “Anything that helps businesses manage their data is going to be very important this year,” she says. Effective use of AI in marketing relies on clean and complete datasets, highlighting the need for robust data management practices.
“At a macro level, anything that helps businesses manage their data is going to be very important this year,” Blairton said. “This includes data acquisition, cleansing, compliance, analysis, rationalization, distribution, and activation. Rapidly evolving AI technologies are enabling micro-targeting and the creation of personalized customer journeys at scale. We have huge potential and are poised to fundamentally change the way we market to our prospects and customers.”
That said, Blairton cautioned that to be effective, it needs to leverage clean and complete data sets. “Companies that don't address the fundamentals of data management will quickly be left behind,” she said. I continue to be amazed at the number of companies that don't have documented data on their architecture and everything that goes with it. ”
Related article: Key marketing trends to watch in 2024
Leveraging 2024 Marketing Technology Trends: Innovating for Growth and Engagement
As we conclude our journey through marketing technology trends for 2024, it's clear that the synergy of tools like AI, personalization, and CDP in these trends offers marketers the opportunity to explore new frontiers in audience engagement. However, the real test lies in navigating the vast ocean of marketing technologies available.
This year feels like a year of “returning to basics'' in a sense. In another sense, it's all about new and exciting tools like generative AI. The intersection of these two power relationships seems to be the key to success for marketers.
Marketers need to evolve from adopters to innovators in this space. The goal is to balance the ingenuity of human creativity with the precision of technological advancement. By incorporating these marketing technology trends into their strategies, marketers can not only improve the customer experience, but also gain deeper insights, optimize operations, and drive significant growth. .
