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

One of the perennial criticisms of the martech landscape is that “most of these products all do the similar point.” Send an email. Render a web website page. Evaluate some data. This criticism has grown louder in proportion to the growth of the landscape.

With an ever more exasperated tone, persons ask, for case in point, “What’s the level of hundreds of CRMs or advertising automation instruments? They’re all just storing the very same customer fields and mail merging them into campaigns.”

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

To start with, I get a minor defensive and say, “Hey, there are authentic innovations that happen in martech all the time. For instance, you just can’t search at a merchandise like DALL-E 2, that magically generates pictures from any description you can categorical in text, and not appreciate that, wow, this genuinely is anything new underneath the sun.”

But not all improvements in martech are that extraordinary. Coming up with the 1st few reverse ETL applications to easily (re)hydrate details into your app stack from your facts warehouses was tremendous valuable. But it wasn’t deserving of a headline in The New York Periods.

So, my fallback reaction is to admit, “Yeah, I guess you’re suitable. All e-mail advertising resources kinda do the similar matter. But, hey, on the bright facet, that type of commoditized levels of competition among the suppliers really should be great for you as a marketer. Legal guidelines of economics: it really should drive down your price tag.”

That normally mollified these critics, who largely just required me to acquiesce to their gut-level belief that the martech landscape was all seem and fury signifying nothing. But it did not sit well with me. It didn’t seem to be to explain the sheer volume of variations of solutions in martech types nor the massive volume of mental capital that retained becoming invested in them.

3-Tier Architectures: Details, Decisions, Delivery

Let’s start off by recognizing that most program follows a sample of three tiers or layers:

• Information — at the base: information saved in a database
• Presentation — at the major: what seems on the display to end users
• Company Logic — in the middle: choices and movement between the other two levels

David Raab, the inventor of the CDP classification, mapped these to three phases of information, conclusions, and shipping. (I wrote an report final year riffing on that model called Facts, Decisioning, Supply & Design to distinguish CDPs from cloud data warehouses, CDWs.)

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

The info layer appears intuitive as the most straightforward layer. If you’re chatting about client records, these types of as in CRM, there are commonly a finite number of fields remaining stored. And the most vital fields are constantly the exact: identify, company, title, email, phone amount, handle, etcetera.

Of program, all client facts isn’t fully that homogenized. Diverse organizations acquire unique information around purchases, purchaser behaviors, demographic, firmographics, technographics, and so on. There can be relational facts connecting all those prospects with strategies, program, and associates.

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

What about the presentation or supply layer? Most people today — especially UX professionals — would say there is a ton much more scale and complexity here. It is every thing that anyone sees or hears!

Intuitively, there’s tremendous variation in presentation. Some interfaces are wonderful other individuals are unpleasant. Some show you specifically what you want, exactly where you want it other individuals are a incredibly hot mess that your eyes painfully bushwhack by to uncover the a single factor you were essentially hunting for.

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

Really, no.

Forgive me for obtaining a little bit philosophical right here, but belief me, there is a meaningful issue to it.

The technical layer of presentation is truly rather constrained. There are only so many pixels, of so a lot of hues, that you can place on a display screen. I’m not speaking about what those people pixels characterize — which is anything diverse, which we’ll get to in a moment. The raw pixels and their popular patterns veer to commodities.

For that issue, if we broaden further than just “presentation” to go over other aspects of “delivery” — how that presentation basically comes in entrance of somebody — that is very commoditized as well. The HTTPS protocol for internet pages. The SMTP protocol for e-mail. The SMPP protocol for textual content messages. These aren’t just commodities, they are criteria.

Now in advance of designers start out sending me anatomically unflattering wireframes of the place I can adhere this post, let me promptly adhere to up that design and style and UX are exceptionally advanced and critical facets of products and experiences that give huge possibility for differentiation. (Seem, I even set it in daring!)

But the magic and mastery of style and UX isn’t in the delivery. It’s in the selections about what to deliver — when, in which, how, to whom.

It’s the choices in UX that produce differentiation.

Conclusions Are the Wellspring of Differentiation

Most of software program is decisioning. All those recommendations operating by way of processors choosing if this, then that, thousands and thousands of times for each minute. The bulk of code in apps is “business logic”, a broad ocean amongst the seabed of typical data and the rather skinny waves of presentation delivered on the floor.

The scale of the choices layer in program is enormous. I’ve drawn it as 80%, relative to 10% for details and 10% for shipping, in my diagram. But it’s in all probability closer to 98% vs. 1% and 1% in most purposes.

It’s also complex. And I imply “complex” in the scientific perception of many interacting elements — and not just isolated in just that just one software by itself. The decisions a single program application tends to make are impacted by the selections other related software applications make. In a stack of dozens of apps, hundreds of details sources, and thousands or millions of customers, all feeding distinctive inputs into a program’s final decision-generating, you have an astronomical set of choices.

It’s in this complicated setting exactly where distinct software applications provide to bear diverse algorithms, frameworks, workflows, and designs to make selections in unique means.

There are a few significant factors about this selections layer:

1. It’s the biggest part of what composes a computer software app.
2. Collectively, there’s a around infinite range of different probable conclusions.
3. These choices can have important, product affect on organization results.

The last stage ought to be self-obvious. Firms contend on the selections they make. If you do not think you can make different — greater — conclusions than your opponents, you need to in all probability look at a occupation as a airtight monk. (Ironically, a really differentiated selection to make.)

The conclusions layer in software package is a enormous canvas for differentiation. And with its potential effect on results, it is a large canvas for significant differentiation.

Almost no two software apps — at least applications of any important dimensions — are the similar.

Martech: Commoditized and Differentiated

When you seem at the superior-amount groups of the martech landscape, these as a huge bucket for CRM, with hundreds of logos, it is reasonable to say that, absolutely sure, in some wide perception, all those apps are the exact. They are all for purchaser marriage administration.

You could also rightfully say that the knowledge stored in these CRMs are frequently very related also. As are the shipping and delivery channels in which they serve up presentation to personnel again-phase and prospects entrance-phase. By way of these lenses, they are commoditized merchandise.

But the gigantic mass of choices inside of each of these distinct CRMs differs tremendously.

Commit some time applying HubSpot (disclosure: wherever I perform), Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce, and you will enjoy just how distinct these CRMs are. Surely for your expertise as a consumer. But from the myriad of items that contribute to differentiated expertise for you in those people CRMs springs a fount of distinct organization selections and customer interactions.

Is a single clearly improved than the others? (I’ll resist my personal bias in answering that.) Presented the wide adoption of all 3, you have to conclude that the answer to that query is unique for diverse enterprises.

(Certainly, it’s a meta-final decision to make a decision which selections bundled in a CRM platform you choose, to aid you make much better choices for your prospects, to then assistance them make far better selections in their corporations, and so on. Turtles all the way down? Nope, it’s selections all the way down.)

And it’s not just those people three CRMs. It’s the hundreds of other people. Each and every one particular made by various men and women bringing distinct suggestions, philosophies, frameworks, and implementation choices to the big quantity of conclusions embedded in their item. All of which ripple into variances for how your business will essentially function in zillions of tiny ways… but which aggregate into not-so-little distinctions.

Much more colloquially, this is named opinionated program.

Now, not all all those variations will be superior types. It is a Darwinian current market for guaranteed. Some CRM platforms will thrive many others will go extinct. New CRM startups will sprout with new versions. Over time, there might be extra or much less. But there is space for various CRMs with different conclusion levels to legitimately exist, as lengthy as just about every one has a shopper foundation — even if, or perhaps in particular if, it is a niche — who want the one of a kind decisions of that vendor.

This dynamic is existing throughout all types in martech.

Incremental Innovation Is Nevertheless Innovation

Now, are the variances in the decisions layer among two martech items in the similar class breakthrough, leap-frogging improvements?

Admittedly, most of the time, no. They are additional typically “incremental innovation” — acquiring better strategies to do some thing, not so significantly generating totally new somethings. But it would be a error to disdain, “Pffft, that’s only incremental innovation.”

Incremental innovation is nevertheless innovation. It can meaningfully differentiate one vendor from yet another and supply terrific rewards to their clients.

This why martech has 10,000 solutions that all kinda do the similar issue — but not genuinely.