Why there are 10,000 martech products that “kinda all do the same thing” (but not really)

One particular of the perennial criticisms of the martech landscape is that “most of these solutions all do the same issue.” Deliver an e mail. Render a web site. Assess some information. This criticism has grown louder in proportion to the advancement of the landscape.

With an more and more exasperated tone, men and women question, for case in point, “What’s the place of hundreds of CRMs or advertising and marketing automation resources? They’re all just storing the very same buyer fields and mail merging them into campaigns.”

I’ve normally had two reverse responses to that accusation.

Very first, I get a minimal defensive and say, “Hey, there are legitimate innovations that occur in martech all the time. For occasion, you just cannot appear at a product like DALL-E 2, that magically generates visuals from any description you can express in terms, and not enjoy that, wow, this really is one thing new underneath the sun.”

But not all innovations in martech are that extraordinary. Coming up with the very first handful of reverse ETL resources to very easily (re)hydrate facts into your app stack from your info warehouses was tremendous useful. But it wasn’t worthy of a headline in The New York Instances.

So, my fallback response is to confess, “Yeah, I guess you’re proper. All e-mail marketing and advertising equipment kinda do the identical point. But, hey, on the shiny facet, that type of commoditized levels of competition among suppliers need to be great for you as a marketer. Regulations of economics: it need to drive down your cost.”

That normally mollified those critics, who mainly just wished me to acquiesce to their intestine-level belief that the martech landscape was all seem and fury signifying practically nothing. But it did not sit well with me. It did not appear to be to describe the sheer volume of versions of merchandise in martech categories nor the enormous volume of mental capital that kept getting invested in them.

Three-Tier Architectures: Knowledge, Decisions, Supply

Let us start off by recognizing that most computer software follows a sample of 3 tiers or layers:

• Data — at the bottom: data stored in a databases
• Presentation — at the best: what appears on the display to end users
• Business Logic — in the center: conclusions and stream concerning the other two layers

David Raab, the inventor of the CDP group, mapped these to three phases of facts, choices, and supply. (I wrote an write-up very last yr riffing on that design called Facts, Decisioning, Delivery & Structure to distinguish CDPs from cloud knowledge warehouses, CDWs.)

But these 3 levels are not equivalent in scale or complexity.

The information layer looks intuitive as the most basic layer. If you’re speaking about buyer records, these kinds of as in CRM, there are typically a finite selection of fields getting stored. And the most essential fields are usually the very same: title, business, title, e mail, mobile phone quantity, deal with, and many others.

Of system, all shopper data is not fully that homogenized. Distinctive corporations gather different information and facts all around buys, customer behaviors, demographic, firmographics, technographics, and so on. There can be relational knowledge connecting people buyers with strategies, software, and partners.

Nonetheless, the amount and dispersion of variation is modest. In other phrases, the details layer is pretty prone to commoditization.

What about the presentation or delivery layer? Most men and women — specially UX experts — would say there’s a whole lot additional scale and complexity below. It is every little thing that all people sees or hears!

Intuitively, there is great variation in presentation. Some interfaces are attractive other individuals are unsightly. Some present you accurately what you want, exactly where you want it many others are a warm mess that your eyes painfully bushwhack by to come across the a person thing you ended up in fact wanting for.

So presentation is an region of differentiation, not commoditization, appropriate?

Actually, no.

Forgive me for having a bit philosophical right here, but trust me, there’s a significant issue to it.

The specialized layer of presentation is basically fairly constrained. There are only so a lot of pixels, of so numerous hues, that you can put on a display. I’m not chatting about what these pixels symbolize — that’s some thing diverse, which we’ll get to in a minute. The raw pixels and their popular designs veer toward commodities.

For that make a difference, if we expand further than just “presentation” to cover other facets of “delivery” — how that presentation essentially arrives in front of a person — which is really commoditized too. The HTTPS protocol for internet web pages. The SMTP protocol for email. The SMPP protocol for text messages. These are not just commodities, they are requirements.

Now prior to designers commence sending me anatomically unflattering wireframes of where I can adhere this write-up, permit me rapidly observe up that layout and UX are incredibly complex and important sides of merchandise and ordeals that offer large prospect for differentiation. (Look, I even place it in bold!)

But the magic and mastery of design and UX isn’t in the supply. It’s in the selections about what to produce — when, the place, how, to whom.

It is the selections in UX that make differentiation.

Choices Are the Wellspring of Differentiation

Most of application is decisioning. All those people guidelines managing via processors selecting if this, then that, tens of millions of occasions per moment. The vast majority of code in programs is “business logic”, a large ocean among the seabed of prevalent knowledge and the fairly slim waves of presentation sent on the surface area.

The scale of the choices layer in computer software is substantial. I’ve drawn it as 80%, relative to 10% for knowledge and 10% for shipping, in my diagram. But it is most likely closer to 98% vs. 1% and 1% in most apps.

It is also complicated. And I necessarily mean “complex” in the scientific perception of a lot of interacting sections — and not just isolated within that one particular software alone. The choices one particular software app will make are impacted by the choices other related program apps make. In a stack of dozens of applications, hundreds of facts resources, and hundreds or millions of users, all feeding different inputs into a program’s choice-producing, you have an astronomical established of options.

It is in this intricate environment where by distinct software apps bring to bear distinctive algorithms, frameworks, workflows, and styles to make conclusions in unique approaches.

There are 3 crucial points about this decisions layer:

1. It is the most significant portion of what composes a computer software application.
2. Collectively, there’s a in close proximity to infinite variety of unique attainable conclusions.
3. These decisions can have significant, substance impact on company results.

The previous point must be self-apparent. Companies compete on the decisions they make. If you really do not think you can make different — superior — decisions than your competitors, you really should probably consider a profession as a airtight monk. (Ironically, a incredibly differentiated determination to make.)

The decisions layer in program is a enormous canvas for differentiation. And with its likely impression on results, it is a large canvas for significant differentiation.

Pretty much no two software applications — at the very least apps of any sizeable measurement — are the similar.

Martech: Commoditized and Differentiated

When you search at the substantial-amount types of the martech landscape, such as a huge bucket for CRM, with hundreds of logos, it is good to say that, guaranteed, in some wide perception, all these applications are the identical. They are all for buyer relationship management.

You could also rightfully say that the information saved in people CRMs are normally really identical also. As are the supply channels in which they provide up presentation to workforce back-stage and prospects entrance-stage. As a result of those lenses, they are commoditized goods.

But the gigantic mass of selections within each of these different CRMs may differ immensely.

Commit some time making use of HubSpot (disclosure: where by I work), Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce, and you will take pleasure in just how various these CRMs are. Definitely for your knowledge as a user. But from the myriad of things that lead to differentiated experience for you in all those CRMs springs a fount of distinctive company decisions and consumer interactions.

Is a person obviously much better than the other people? (I’ll resist my particular bias in answering that.) Presented the large adoption of all a few, you have to conclude that the respond to to that issue is distinctive for distinct firms.

(Yes, it is a meta-selection to make your mind up which decisions bundled in a CRM platform you prefer, to aid you make better decisions for your customers, to then assistance them make better decisions in their businesses, and so on. Turtles all the way down? Nope, it’s decisions all the way down.)

And it’s not just those three CRMs. It is the hundreds of others. Each a person created by unique persons bringing diverse ideas, philosophies, frameworks, and implementation choices to the big number of selections embedded in their product. All of which ripple into distinctions for how your small business will basically function in zillions of very small ways… but which aggregate into not-so-small variances.

Additional colloquially, this is termed opinionated software program.

Now, not all all those variances will be very good kinds. It’s a Darwinian industry for certain. Some CRM platforms will prosper other individuals will go extinct. New CRM startups will sprout with new variations. In excess of time, there might be more or fewer. But there is house for distinct CRMs with distinctive final decision levels to legitimately exist, as prolonged as each and every a person has a customer base — even if, or it’s possible particularly if, it’s a specialized niche — who like the exceptional decisions of that seller.

This dynamic is existing throughout all categories in martech.

Incremental Innovation Is However Innovation

Now, are the variances in the choices layer among two martech products in the exact same group breakthrough, leap-frogging innovations?

Admittedly, most of the time, no. They’re more frequently “incremental innovation” — getting far better ways to do a little something, not so significantly generating solely new somethings. But it would be a blunder to disdain, “Pffft, that’s only incremental innovation.”

Incremental innovation is even now innovation. It can meaningfully differentiate a single vendor from an additional and produce great positive aspects to their clients.

This why martech has 10,000 products that all kinda do the very same thing — but not actually.