Report:
Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs
How does Gartner define the Multichannel Marketing Hubs market in 2023?
Gartner defines the multichannel marketing hub (MMH) as a technology solution that orchestrates a company's communications and offers to customer segments across multiple channels. These channels include websites, mobile messaging, social, direct mail, call centers, paid media and email. MMH capabilities may also extend to integrating marketing offers/leads with sales for execution in both B2B and B2C environments. MMH capabilities include: demonstrated functionality and support for customer profile management, segmentation, campaign and message creation, campaign workflow, and message execution; basic multichannel marketing functionality supporting web, email, mobile, social marketing and programmatic advertising; advanced multichannel marketing functionality supporting personalization, content management, event triggering and real-time offer management; and advanced analytics functionality enabling customer-level data, analysis, experimentation and predictive analytics.
Key Facts for Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs in 2023
- Publication Date: 26 September 2023
- Document ID: G00776372
- Coverage: Global operations with focus on North America, EMEA, APAC, and Latin America
- Authors: Rob Brosnan, Benjamin Bloom, and 3 more
- Core Purpose: Digital marketing leaders use multichannel marketing hubs to deliver contextually relevant experiences on complex customer journeys. Unified customer profiles backed by predictive insights help orchestrate personalized, multichannel engagement. This research identifies suitable MMH solutions.
Strategic Planning Assumptions
No strategic planning assumptions provided.
How was the Multichannel Marketing Hubs market evolved in 2023?
- MMH market includes 15 vendors evaluated across Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players quadrants
- Adobe and Salesforce are positioned as Leaders with strong execution and vision
- Braze moved from Challenger to Leader based on growth and modern architecture
- Three vendors dropped from evaluation: MoEngage, Oracle, and Resulticks
- Market fragmentation into three submarkets: Large EAPs, emerging customer engagement specialists, and established campaign management providers
- Generative AI emerging as significant innovation trend, though not yet released by vendors at evaluation time
- MMH innovation slowing as vendors invest heavily in CDP capabilities
- Rising costs and complexity of suite solutions causing buyer anxiety over CDP pricing
- 81% of marketing organizations designate specific person to drive tool adoption, but only 16% use two-thirds or more of MMH capabilities
- Multichannel marketers use average of 9.1 channels to engage customers
- Support for scaling journey orchestration strengthening across vendors
- 76% of marketers rank customer understanding and insights as critical or high priority
- Market approaching consolidation by handful of enterprise providers
What product features are required to be included in this year's evaluation?
- Demonstrated functionality and support for customer profile management, segmentation, campaign and message creation, campaign workflow, and message execution
- Basic multichannel marketing functionality, as part of an integrated multichannel marketing solution, comprising support for the creation and execution of campaigns and communications via web and email marketing, mobile messaging and apps, social marketing, and programmatic advertising endpoints
- Advanced multichannel marketing functionality supporting personalization, content management, event triggering and real-time offer management in both inbound and outbound environments
- Advanced analytics functionality enabling customer-level data, analysis and experimentation (e.g., A/B testing) as well as use of data modeling to power predictive analytics and customer journey analytics
What are the common features of top products in the Multichannel Marketing Hubs space?
- A unified customer profile, which brings together attribute and event data from internal systems and data warehouses, point of sale, website, and other engagement data sources and attributes to enable segmentation and customer analytics and inform personalization
- Identity resolution capabilities to connect the activities of an individual customer or prospect across touchpoints, devices and channels. Keys and device identifiers can be explicitly supplied (deterministic) or inferred statistically from observable characteristics (probabilistic)
- Ability to onboard data and match first-party data with third-party audiences. Data collection capabilities may come through tags as well as through preconfigured integrations with common marketing point solutions, data partners and analytics tools
- Support for location targeting/geofencing
- Journey orchestration functionality that choreographs the work involved in planning, designing and executing customer journeys and campaigns
- Personalization involving segmentation and grouping of audiences based on different attributes and application of context to tailor messaging, content, offers and interactions
- Support for at least three basic channels (email, mobile, web, organic social, direct mail) and one advanced channel (programmatic advertising, consumer messaging apps, voice-enabled endpoints, video/interactive applications, in-store)
- Paid media management capabilities involving automation of ad buying and placement
- Marketing analytics providing ability to track, measure and report conversion and ROI data, with preconfigured reports and dashboards
- At least one advanced analytics functionality (customer journey analytics, predictive analytics/modeling, or attribution)
- Integration with adjacent solutions in minimum of two categories (CRM/SFA, digital commerce, content management, DAM or PIM, data-sharing services)
Scope Exclusions
- Vendors with less than 20 paying customers
- Vendors with fewer than 15 new customers successfully deployed in production in past 12 months
- Vendors with less than 70% of 2022 revenue from software
- Vendors with average revenue per customer below $50,000 in 2022
- Vendors with less than 60% of 2022 revenue from North America and EMEA combined
- Vendors without presence in minimum of two of four global regions
- Vendors without coverage of three of seven specified industries
- Vendors not meeting minimum viability thresholds ($40M revenue OR $30M revenue with 20+ new customers)
- Vendors unable to demonstrate core MMH functionality across all required areas
Inclusion Criteria
Vendors must, among other requirements:
- Proven ability to deliver MMH functionality as defined in the Functionality section
- At least 20 paying customers using the vendor's MMH solution(s)
- A minimum of 15 new customers successfully deployed in production within the past 12 months
- At least 70% of 2022 calendar-year revenue for MMH attributable to software (SaaS/subscription or on-premises)
- Average total MMH revenue per customer exceeding $50,000 in 2022
- At least 60% of 2022 revenue from customers in North America and EMEA (combined)
- Sales and customer support presence in minimum of two of four regions (North America, Latin America, EMEA, Asia/Pacific)
- Regional coverage for minimum of three of seven specified industries
- Demonstrated business viability (minimum $40M in 2022 revenue OR $30M revenue with 20+ new customers and sufficient cash reserves)
Ability to Execute — Relative Weighting
- Product or Service - High
- Overall Viability - High
- Sales Execution/Pricing - Medium
- Market Responsiveness/Record - High
- Marketing Execution - Low
- Customer Experience - Medium
- Operations - Low
Completeness of Vision — Relative Weighting
- Market Understanding - High
- Marketing Strategy - Low
- Sales Strategy - Low
- Offering (Product) Strategy - High
- Business Model - High
- Vertical/Industry Strategy - Medium
- Innovation - High
- Geographic Strategy - High
FAQs
Q: What does this research cover?
A: This research evaluates 15 multichannel marketing hub (MMH) vendors based on their Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. It covers vendors' capabilities in customer profile management, journey orchestration, personalization, multichannel marketing, paid media management, marketing analytics, and integration with other applications. The evaluation includes detailed vendor strengths and cautions, market trends including generative AI adoption, and analysis of three market submarkets: large enterprise application providers, emerging customer engagement specialists, and established campaign management providers.
Q: Who should use this research?
A: Digital marketing leaders responsible for multichannel marketing initiatives should use this research to identify suitable MMH solutions for their organizations. Users should study the evaluation criteria for Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision, evaluate vendor strengths and cautions, assess vendors across all four quadrants focusing on those that align with their requirements, and use this research in conjunction with the companion Critical Capabilities for Multichannel Marketing Hubs research and other multichannel marketing best practices publications. Prospects should factor in time, cost, and complexity of integrating MMH with other organizational and martech systems when building business cases.
Q: What are the mandatory features of vendors included in this market?
A: Mandatory features for vendors included in this market include: (1) Demonstrated functionality for customer profile management, segmentation, campaign/message creation, workflow and execution; (2) Basic multichannel marketing functionality covering at least three basic channels (web, email, mobile, social, direct mail); (3) Advanced multichannel marketing functionality including personalization, content management, event triggering and real-time offer management; (4) Advanced analytics with customer-level data, experimentation (A/B testing) and predictive analytics capabilities; (5) Support for at least one advanced channel beyond basic channels; (6) Marketing analytics with preconfigured reports and dashboards; (7) Integration capabilities with at least two categories of adjacent solutions (CRM/SFA, digital commerce, content management, DAM/PIM, or data-sharing services).
Q: What are some reasons for not being included in this report?
A:
- Insufficient customer base (fewer than 20 paying customers)
- Limited new customer acquisition (fewer than 15 new deployments in past 12 months)
- Revenue composition doesn't meet software threshold (less than 70% from software)
- Low average customer value (less than $50,000 per customer)
- Geographic concentration outside target markets (less than 60% revenue from North America/EMEA)
- Limited regional presence (coverage in fewer than two of four regions)
- Narrow industry focus (coverage of fewer than three of seven specified industries)
- Financial viability concerns (not meeting minimum revenue or cash reserve requirements)
- Incomplete MMH functionality (unable to demonstrate all required capabilities)
- Lack of multichannel support (insufficient basic or advanced channel coverage)
- Missing core capabilities in orchestration, analytics, or integration
Q: What differentiates Ability to Execute vs. Completeness of Vision?
A: Ability to Execute evaluates vendors on the quality and efficacy of their current processes, systems, methods and procedures that enable competitive, efficient and effective performance. It focuses on present capabilities including product quality, viability, sales execution, market responsiveness, marketing execution, customer experience and operations. Completeness of Vision evaluates vendors on their ability to articulate logical statements about current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs and competitive forces. It assesses forward-looking capabilities including market understanding, strategic planning (marketing, sales, product, business model), vertical/industry strategy, innovation and geographic strategy. Essentially, Ability to Execute measures current execution and delivery, while Completeness of Vision measures strategic direction and future potential.
Reference
- Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs, 26 September 2023, ID G00776372
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