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M A R T E C H I N T EL L I G E N CE R E P O R T
MARKETING
AUTOMATION
PLATFORMS:
A MARKETER’S GUIDE
AI is marketers'  
#1 priority – and
challenge.
See how they’re making progress.
In the 9th State of Marketing Report, discover marketing’s
emerging trends — from AI use cases to shifting data strategies,
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M A R T E C H I N T E L L I G E N C E R E P O R T:
Marketing Automation Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide
Table of contents
Scope and methodology......................................................................................... 3 AI and machine learning...................................................................................13

AI-powered marketing automation overview............................................. 4 Choosing an AI-powered marketing automation platform................13
Figure 1: Marketing automation is on the rise, globally............... 4 The benefits of marketing automation ....................................................13
The replacement wave....................................................................................... 5 MAP pricing ................................................................................................................14
Figure 2: Martech replacements, 2020 to 2023............................. 5 Recommended steps to making an informed purchase........................14
The personalization imperative...................................................................... 6 Step one: Do you need a marketing automation platform? ............14
Figure 3: Buyers’ expectations are high.............................................. 6 Step two: Identify and contact appropriate vendors .........................16
Figure 4: How marketers are investing in the customer Step three: Scheduling the demo ................................................................16
experience........................................................................................................ 6 Step four: Check references, negotiate a contract .............................17
Marketing automation platforms for ABM............................................... 7 Conclusion...................................................................................................................18
The artificial intelligence and machine learning boom........................ 7 Vendor profiles..........................................................................................................19
Big mergers are done; integration continues............................................... 8 Acoustic...................................................................................................................19
AI-powered MAP capabilities overview........................................................ 9 Acquia.......................................................................................................................21
Capabilities.............................................................................................................. 9 ActiveCampaign..................................................................................................23
Dynamic content creation and delivery...................................................... 9 Act-On..................................................................................................................... 25
Lead management..............................................................................................10 Adobe Marketo Engage....................................................................................28
Predictive analytics............................................................................................10 Bloomreach............................................................................................................31
Mobile marketing ...............................................................................................11 Constant Contact.............................................................................................. 33
Account-based marketing...............................................................................11 Marigold..................................................................................................................35
Social/lead profile integration.......................................................................11 Oracle Marketing................................................................................................37
Native CRM integration...................................................................................11 Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement........................... 40
Third-party software connectivity.............................................................11 SugarCRM............................................................................................................. 43
Table 1: Select marketing automation platform features ............... 12
© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 2 https://martech.org

Scope and methodology

This report examines the current market for AI-powered marketing automation platforms (MAPs),
and the considerations involved in implementing marketing automation software. It addresses the
following questions:
• What factors are driving the use of AI-powered MAPs?

• What core capabilities do MAPs provide, and how are artificial intelligence and machine
learning enhancing the traditional features of MAPs?
• Does my company need an AI-powered marketing automation platform?
• Who are the leading players in AI-powered marketing automation?
• How do I evaluate which platform is best for my business?
If you are considering licensing an AI-powered MAP, this report will help you decide whether it
would be a beneficial investment. The report has been completely updated to include the latest
industry statistics, developing market trends and new vendor profiles and product updates.
(Going forward, we’ll use the acronym MAP to refer to these AI-powered tools, given that the
majority of marketing automation platforms on the market now feature AI and machine learning
capabilities.)
For the purposes of this report, a MAP is defined as follows: Software to execute, manage
and automate repetitive marketing tasks and processes — with the assistance of AI and
machine learning — to engage customers and prospects more effectively through multiple
channels (i.e., email, mobile, social media and websites). Marketing automation focuses on the
definition, scheduling, targeting and tracking of marketing campaigns, allowing marketing and
sales organizations to nurture leads with highly personalized content aimed at attracting and
retaining customers.
The vendors profiled in this report represent only some of the providers of these technologies;
this is not a comprehensive list. This report is not a recommendation of any platform or company
and is not meant to be an endorsement of any product, service or vendor.
This report was prepared by conducting in-depth interviews with leading vendors and industry
experts in the fourth quarter of 2023. These, in addition to third-party research, form the basis for
this report.
Editorial Adviser:
Kim Davis, Editor at Large, MarTech, Third Door Media
Writer, Editor and Analyst:

Pamela Parker, Research Director, Third Door Media

AI-powered marketing automation

overview Though MAPs
AI-powered MAPs help businesses identify potential customers and automate the process of
aren’t the
capturing leads and nurturing them to sales readiness using channels like email, social media, newest tools in
webpages and display ads. MAPs bring customers and prospects to customized landing pages and marketers’ tech
through other experiences designed to move them down the purchase funnel. These platforms stacks, they
integrate tightly with CRMs and CDPs, continuously collecting more data about leads to fuel are central to
insights and further personalization, with artificial intelligence and machine learning driving
aspects like segmentation, content creation and campaign optimization.
the business
strategies of
Though MAPs aren’t the newest tools in marketers’ tech stacks, they are central to the business both B2B and
strategies of both B2B and B2C companies, especially those in the ecommerce space. MAPs help B2C companies,
businesses automate and streamline their marketing efforts by providing a wide range of features especially those
and functionalities, such as automating repetitive tasks and workflows. For example, instead of
manually sending out individual emails to each lead, a MAP can automatically send personalized
in the ecommerce
emails based on predefined triggers and rules, as well as on insights generated through AI analysis. space.
This not only saves time but also ensures that the right message is delivered to the right person
at the right time based on the most current data available about that particular customer or
prospect.
The global marketing automation software market is expected to grow from $5.75 billion in 2023
to $13.48 billion by 2028, representing a compound annual growth rate of 18.58%, according to
ResearchandMarkets. (See Figure 1)
Figure 1: Marketing automation spend is on the rise, globally
Spending on software for marketing automation
$15B
$13.48B
$10B
$5B $5.75B
$0
2023 2028
Source: ResearchandMarkets

The replacement wave

Some of this growth will come from marketers replacing the technology they’ve been using for
marketing automation. For the third year in a row, marketing automation was the most frequently
replaced martech application, with nearly a quarter of respondents to MarTech’s annual
replacement survey reporting having replaced MAPs. (See Figure 2.)
Figure 2: Top five martech replacements
2020 2021 2022 2023
40%
Marketing automation 24%
23%
24%
41%
17%
CMS 13%
11%
37%
Email distribution 24%
21%
16%
36%
17%
Analytics/business intelligence 11%
15%
34%
22%
CRM 23%
17%
n 2023=294
Q: What application(s) did you replace?
Source: MarTech Replacement Survey 2023, conducted by Third Door Media
The personalization imperative

One reason AI-powered marketing automation platforms are in demand is that personalization
is an increasingly important part of marketing. A recent survey shows 73% of respondents –
both consumers and business buyers – expect companies to “understand my unique needs and
expectations,” while 62% expect companies to anticipate their needs, and 56% expect offers to
always be personalized, according to the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer report, 5th
edition. (See Figure 3)

Figure 3: Buyers’ expectations are high
Customers who agree with the following 2020 2022
The experience a company 80% I feel an emotional 53%

provides is as important as its connection to the brands
product or services 88% I buy from the most 62%
I expect companies to 66% I expect offers to 52%

understand my unique needs aways be personalized
and expectations 73% 56%
I expect companies to 56% Most companies treat 65%

anticipate my needs me as a number
62% 56%
Source: Salesforce State of the Connected Customer, 5th edition
As a consequence, marketers are using the tools at their disposal, including marketing automation
platforms, to deliver real-time, personalized, omnichannel experiences utilizing advanced
audience segmentation, with a survey of CMOs conducted by LXA finding that these are some of
marketers’ highest-priority initiatives (See Figure 4). One reason
AI-powered
Figure 4: How marketers are investing in the customer experience marketing
Which of the following customer experience initiatives are you
automation
focused on achieving in the next 12 months? platforms are in
demand is that
Delivering real-time experiences 53% personalization
is an increasingly
Personalization 44% important part of
marketing.
Provide connected physical
and digital experiences
40%
Advanced audience segmentation 33%
Orchestrating omnichannel
integrated marketing campaigns 23%
Rewarding customer
loyalty and advocacy 15%
Source: The State of CX 2022, LXA
Marketing automation platforms for ABM

In the B2B arena, where marketing automation originally established itself as a key technology,
marketers are increasingly adopting account-based marketing (ABM) practices, with 40 to 60%
of programs currently leveraging marketing automation platforms to further these strategies, a
survey conducted by Momentum ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance found.

“We’re in a phase now where companies see tech investment as a number-one priority,” said Will
Nicholls, Chief Customer Officer of Momentum ITSMA, in a podcast on the topic. “We’re seeing
more and more adding tools to automate and create greater leverage for existing platforms, in a
sensible way that still preserves the principles of ABM.” One of the
primary uses
The artificial intelligence and machine learning boom for AI among
marketing
While vendors in the marketing automation category have long utilized machine learning to
score leads, the boom in AI and ML is driving additional innovation among vendors. This, in turn, automation
is responsible for increased marketer interest in these solutions. In acknowledgment of the vendors is to
increased role of these technologies in digital marketing, we’ve evolved the title of this MIR to assist with the
include “AI-Powered,” and we’ll be exploring those capabilities in-depth throughout the report and automation of
vendor profiles.
customer journey
One of the primary uses for AI among marketing automation vendors is to assist with the orchestration,
automation of customer journey orchestration, including recommendations for next-best-channel, including
next-best-content and next-best-offer. Some vendors also offer dynamic personalization powered recommendations
by AI and segmentation fueled by AI, where the system can, for example, predict a contact’s for next-best-
likelihood to respond to a certain offer.
channel, next-
Generative AI, in which AI is used to generate text, images, video or other content, is also gaining a best-content and
place in marketing automation platforms, where it is assisting marketers to quickly create content next-best-offer.
for email campaigns, landing pages and other touchpoints. The use of tools like this is expected to
increase marketers’ ability to efficiently create many versions of their messages, with each version
tailored to the interests and needs of a particular segment.
We expect AI’s impact on marketing automation to only increase in the coming years.
Big mergers are done;

integration continues
The marketing automation market is dominated by a few cloud vendors, including Salesforce,
Oracle and Adobe. These players have made acquisitions to strengthen their positions in the
market and have successfully integrated them. After this start, we’ve seen consolidation as
companies in related spaces have joined forces, though financiers have continued to support
newer players, as well.
Some industry watchers, including Forrester Research and Gartner, expect the functionality of
marketing automation platforms and account-based marketing platforms to grow closer or even
unify over time. MAPs are expected to gain some ABM functions, such as orchestration, command
over additional channels and data management functions, while, at the same time, ABM platforms
add traditional MAP capabilities like outbound email management.

Figure 5: A timeline of developments in the MAP market
2012
• Oracle acquires Eloqua in December, making it the
2013 first vendor to offer marketing automation.
• Salesforce acquires ExactTarget, which had previously
purchased marketing automation vendor Pardot.
2018
• Adobe acquired rival MAP vendor Marketo.
2019
• IBM spins off Watson Marketing, establishing Acoustic
as an independent marketing cloud, also selling its
Unica MAP to HCL Technologies.
• Acquia purchased Mautic and Vista Partners later 2020
acquired Acquia. • CRM company Pipedrive purchased Mailigen in
• SugarCRM acquired Salesfusion and rebranded it as March.
Sugar Market. • In December, marketing automation / attribution
player Springbot acquired Matcha.
2021 • Thryv Holdings acquired Sensis in March 2020 and
rebranded it as Thryv in September 2021.
• Bloomreach raised $150 million and used some of it to
acquire Exponea.
• Maropost acquired ecommerce platform Neto and
renamed it Maropost Commerce Cloud.
• Constant Contact acquired SharpSpring to expand its
offerings SMBs.
• Intuit purchased Mailchimp in a blockbuster deal 2022
valued at $12 billion. • Thryv acquired Vivial Media for $21 million.
• Communications platform MessageBird acquired • ActiveCampaign purchased Postmark and DMARC
SparkPost in a $600 million transaction made possible Digest.
by an $800 million extension on its series C financing • Bloomreach secured $175 million in additional
round. funding for research, development, and expansion.
• Meanwhile, Act-On raised $20 million in financing and • CM Group merged with Cheetah Digital.
ActiveCampaign raised $240 million, while the smaller • Klaviyo received a $100 million investment in August.
Sendlane took in $20 million. • HubSpot invested an undisclosed amount in work
management platform ClickUp.
• Acoustic took in a strategic growth investment from
Francisco Partners in October but did not disclose the
2023 deal amount.
• MessageGears, a customer engagement platform,
acquired Swrve, a mobile app marketing platform.
• CM Group rebranded to Marigold with refreshed
product names. Marigold Engage became the master
brand for its email products.
• Keap acquired The Factory and launched
implementation services.
• Zeta Global acquired certain assets of WhatCounts for
an undisclosed amount. The primary purpose of this
acquisition was to acquire technology assets and
certain employees, with the goal of achieving
significant synergies by integrating their Email Service
Platform (ESP).

AI-powered MAP overview

As basic functions of marketing automation become somewhat commoditized, platform vendors Whatever their
try to differentiate on the ability to scale (especially to new marketing channels), usability, ease of
implementation, customer experience features and the integration of artificial intelligence and
uses, today’s
machine learning capabilities. MAPs offer open
architectures that
Vendors continue to expand training programs, as well as add-on professional services, to improve make it easier to
platform use. Online communities — for both customers and developers — are also increasingly integrate with the
important to strengthen platform support, advocacy and market penetration.
other parts of a
Many MAP vendors have roots in email marketing, which continues to be a core function and is martech stack.
often the only function customers use. However, many platforms offer an evolving range of email
marketing features, including advanced lead management, ABM tools and predictive analytics.
Though the space has long been oriented toward B2B marketing, providers increasingly offer
functionality tailored to B2C use cases, especially in ecommerce and for high-consideration
purchases, with some vendors specializing in working with this type of client.
Whatever their uses, today’s MAPs offer open architectures that make it easier to integrate with
the other parts of a martech stack. (See Table 1 for vendor capability comparisons.)
Capabilities
Every solution in this report comes with tools for email campaign development and execution
(including landing pages), as well as lead capture, scoring and nurturing. They also typically provide
centralized marketing databases and a basic level of reporting on web traffic, visitor behavior and
campaign results. Additionally, native CRM integrations are included, as are app marketplaces or
APIs to enable faster connections with other technologies.
The market is quickly evolving, as marketers demand integrated marketing functionality and
MAP vendors expand to B2C and DTC use cases. Vendors continue to add features for building,
tracking and managing campaigns across channels and/or devices, and monitoring the flow of
leads as they move from marketing to sales. Many vendors see marketing automation as just one
element of a larger platform focused on customer engagement.
These more advanced features include, but are not limited to:
• Dynamic content generation (email, SMS, landing pages and/or website);

• Email deliverability tools;
• Account-based marketing (ABM) features;
• Mobile marketing, including SMS;
• AI-based predictive analytics; and
• Social/lead profile integration.
The following section discusses these core and advanced marketing automation capabilities in
more depth.
Dynamic content creation and delivery, sometimes powered by AI

Virtually all MAPs let users create, send and measure personalized email campaigns. Where they
differ is in how email, landing page and website content are created and personalized. Some offer
wizard-based campaign design or content templates, while others provide a more customized
approach. More recently, vendors have begun to offer generative AI capabilities for content

creation, building in tools that create text and images for their messaging — typically through
integrations with providers like OpenAI or others.
There are also differences in static vs. dynamically generated content, which adjusts on-the-fly as Virtually all the
prospects interact with a website or form. Progressive profiling is often offered to pre-populate MAPs in this
forms with known data and to capture additional prospect information each time individuals report provide
interact with campaigns.
a standard set
Message deliverability is also an important factor to consider. Some B2B marketing automation of analytics
vendors offer dedicated IP addresses to improve deliverability, and/or monitor deliverability by that track
including their own email deliverability services or those from partners. quantifiable data
such as website
Email and landing page previewing have become more important as marketers seek to reach
visitor activity,
their audience through mobile devices and to see what their message will look like on a variety of
different screens. pages viewed,
time spent on
Lead management, possibly augmented by AI site, emails
opened, content
Lead management comprises three functions: lead capture, lead scoring and lead nurturing.
downloaded
Leads are captured from the various sources feeding the marketing automation database. and campaign
These include but are not limited to website visitors, social media, paid digital campaigns, email responses
marketing respondents, trade show attendees and purchased third-party lists. The ease with
which additional lead sources can be captured, such as through an open API, and whether the
platform offers landing page optimization, will differ among platforms.
Lead nurturing is the process of keeping prospects engaged through periodic, personalized
communications or campaigns until they are ready to buy. MAPs may offer pre-built nurturing
steps or actions, as well as allow users to customize their content and process. When done right,
customization can build a relationship between the brand and its prospects, and drive interaction
with sales when the prospect is ready. This capability is also augmented with artificial intelligence
and machine learning technologies, which can analyze vast amounts of data to suggest the next
best action for engagement for each lead.
Lead scoring assigns a value to each lead based on a predetermined set of rules or criteria.
Traditional lead scoring models are generally based on two sets of data values: behavior (i.e.,
site purchases, browsing, social posts) and demographics/firmographics. Many MAPs now
offer predictive scoring driven by AI and machine learning, which can incorporate hundreds of
data points by sourcing websites, social networks and internal systems — such as the CRM and
marketing database itself — to calculate scores.
Predictive analytics driven by AI and ML

Virtually all the MAPs in this report provide a standard set of analytics that track quantifiable
data such as website visitor activity, pages viewed, time spent on site, emails opened, content
downloaded and campaign responses. More vendors are offering predictive analytics and models
based on machine learning. This uses algorithms to process data and surface trends or insights
that enable marketers to customize visitor experiences and marketing campaigns.
Several platforms have invested in AI to go a step beyond machine learning. This uses technology to
mimic human intelligence and recommend marketing actions or outcomes. These may include highly
personalized website content or product recommendations based on analyses of consumption
trends, on-site behavior, firmographics and CRM data. Other vendors rely on plug-and-play
integration with predictive analytics tools to offer greater analytics and personalization capabilities.

Mobile marketing
Creating an engaging experience for mobile prospects and customers is a must-have capability. As
a result, many MAPs include responsive templates for email, landing pages and web forms. Several With more
vendors integrate with email testing tools such as Litmus, which allow users to preview email businesses
messages across clients and devices.
seeking to align
More advanced mobile marketing features include SMS/texting, in-app marketing and remote marketing with
platform management from mobile devices. In-app marketing features can include push sales, native or
notifications or ads based on geography (i.e., geo-fencing or beaconing) or during events. out-of-the-box
Marketing automation vendors have also expanded platform access to mobile users, moving integration with
beyond automated alerts and remote data collection to full platform management.
CRM systems has
become a critical
Account-based marketing
feature for MAPs.
Aligning marketing initiatives with sales teams is a top ABM priority for marketers. The goal
of ABM is to target marketing programs to prospect or customer buying teams, rather than
individuals. The larger the purchase, the more people and departments are involved. MAP
vendors continue to add new ABM features to enable marketers to address the buying group in
addition to individual members, achieving this through enhanced account nurturing and predictive
scoring capabilities.
Social/lead profile integration

Most of the MAPs in this report provide some level of social media publishing, sharing and
tracking within the platform for networks such as Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly known as
Twitter) and LinkedIn. Some provide more advanced tools to monitor social posts and add social
behavior to lead profiles, often using social engagement as a scoring factor. Other platforms
enable the use of social media sign-on to capture social profile data and build lead profiles.
Native CRM integration

With more businesses seeking to align marketing with sales, native or out-of-the-box integration
with CRM systems has become a critical feature for MAPs. Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365,
Oracle NetSuite and SugarCRM are some of the most commonly available connectors.
Data is synchronized between the two systems and shared in both directions at frequent
intervals. For example, data that is added by a sales rep to an account record in the CRM will be
automatically added to the record in the MAP so marketers can use it too.
Third-party software connectivity

Vendors develop APIs and foster relationships with external developers via app marketplaces
as a way for customers to access an expansive array of third-party software systems. The app
marketplaces provide faster “plug-and-play” access between the systems, although there may be
additional fees.
If a preferred app is not available on a vendor’s marketplace it doesn’t mean the two systems won’t
connect — just that some customization will be required. API use may incur additional charges,
generally on a per-call basis for each data download
App marketplaces can be an important area of differentiation for vendors. Cultivating

relationships with developers who create add-ons and integration tools adds to the software’s
utility without requiring the vendor to develop those integrations. If you’re considering licensing a
MAP, be sure to assess potential partners’ efforts in this arena.

Table 1: Select marketing automation platform features

MAP capablities
Account-Based Integration of social data into A mobile app enabling
Lead Customer App marketplace
Vendor management
Marketing
journey analytics
lead profiles (a lead’s LinkedIn API access
for integrations
users to perform tasks
functionality profile, for example). while on the go.
Acoustic 4 8 4 4 4 4 8
Acquia 4 4 4 4 4 4 8
Act-On 4 8 4 4 4 8 8
ActiveCampaign 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
Constant Contact 4 4 4 8 4 4 4
Salesforce 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
Marigold 4 4 4 8 4 4 4
Lead management capabilities

Lead management workflows
Lead capture through the creation of Lead scoring/qualification using Lead scoring/qualification using AI and visualizations to manage the
Vendor landing pages and forms business rules and/or machine learning customer relationship through the
entire life cycle
Acoustic 4 4 8 4
Acquia 4 4 8 4
Act-On 4 8 4 4
ActiveCampaign 4 4 4 4
Constant Contact 4 4 8 4
Salesforce 4 4 4 4
Marigold 4 4 4 4
Campaign channel capabilities
Social media advertising/
Vendor Email SMS Display advertising
marketing
Other channels
Acoustic 4 4 8 4 MMS, WhatsApp, mobile push, web forms
Acquia 4 4 8 4 push notificiations, landing pages, web push

and personalization, ad tech, direct mail
Act-On 4 8 4 4 webinars
ActiveCampaign 4 4 4 4 landing pages
Constant Contact 4 4 8 4
Salesforce 4 4 4 4
Marigold 4 4 4 4 MMS, LINE, WhatsApp, mobile push, web forms, landing
pages, direct mail
Dynamic content capabilities

Website
Social media
Website personalization Mobile Display ad SMS In-app mobile
Vendor Email
landing pages (more extensive than apps campaigns messaging
advertising or
notifications
Other Channels
organic content
landing pages)
Acoustic 4 4 8 4 8 4 8 4 WhatsApp
Acquia 4 4 8 8 4 8 8 8
Act-On 4 8 8 4 8 4 8 4 Webinars
ActiveCampaign 4 4 8 8 8 4 4 8
Constant Contact 4 4 8 8 4 4 4 8
Salesforce 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 8
Marigold 4 4 4 4 8 4 4 4 Google Ads

AI and machine learning

Users will experience the influence of AI’s development throughout advanced marketing
automation platforms, where it’s being integrated to improve the performance of traditional The proliferation
functions, as described above. However, some platforms may offer users or administrators the of channels and
option to customize the data “ingredients” used to formulate solutions or the weights given to the
devices makes
various inputs. Others may be more of a “black box,” where users don’t necessarily know how the
technology has arrived at a certain conclusion or recommendation. it difficult to
target prospects
with the right
Choosing an AI-powered marketing messages, on the
right devices, at
automation platform the right times.
The benefits of marketing automation

The proliferation of channels and devices makes it difficult to target prospects with the right
messages, on the right devices, at the right times. The rapid shift to all-online interactions sparked
by the COVID pandemic also raised the level of competition in the inbox, so relevant messaging is
more important than ever.
In the B2B arena, prospects are managing more of the buying process themselves. They are creating
short lists of vendors by researching brand websites and social channels without ever speaking to
a sales rep. Being effective in this environment means marketers must be creative, targeted and
aligned with sales goals; they must also have visibility into buyer attributes and behaviors.
Challenging market dynamics and increased ROI pressure make these potential benefits of a MAP
more attractive than ever:
• Increased marketing efficiency. Automating time-consuming, manual tasks around content

creation, management and personalization; campaign scheduling and execution; data hygiene
(i.e. duplicate or inconsistent data residing in various silos); communication with sales; and
lead nurturing saves time and improves productivity. The incorporation of AI and machine
learning — which we expect to grow dramatically in the coming years — will drive even more
efficiency, as these tools become more sophisticated and are able to pick up more and more of
the weight of repetitive tasks. One especially promising area is the potential for AI-generating
personalized content for messaging, landing pages and campaign creative, with the technology
determining how audiences should be segmented and who should receive what version.
• Enhanced ability to generate more and better-qualified leads. Marketing automation can
combine multiple criteria, including demographic, firmographic and behavioral data with a
lead-scoring system to generate and identify sales-qualified leads. The addition of AI and
machine learning makes this process even more effective, as the tools can bring together a
large amount of data and may pick up on patterns missed by humans.
• A multichannel view of prospect behavior. Today’s MAPs integrate multiple channels and
devices — including social media and mobile — to create more comprehensive prospect profiles
and holistic views of prospect behavior. Platforms with strong ABM capabilities let marketers
see the behavior of a buying group, as well as learn the interests of each individual in it.
• Better alignment of sales and marketing goals. MAPs can help align sales and marketing
efforts to ensure that sales reps are working with sales-ready leads. By jointly setting scoring
parameters and defining qualified leads, sales and marketing work better together. Marketing
focuses on building relationships with early-stage leads, which lets sales work on closing the
most highly qualified prospects.

• Improved lead conversion and ROI. Numerous studies have found that using a marketing
automation system can increase conversions. Forrester found that B2B marketers who
implement marketing automation have a 10% increase in their sales-pipeline contribution.
It can also result in a 15% increase in sales productivity and a 12% decrease in marketing Virtually all MAPs
overhead, according to tech research firm Nucleus Research. offer SaaS-based
pricing, meaning
software is
MAP pricing licensed by the
customer and
Virtually all MAPs offer SaaS-based pricing, meaning software is licensed by the customer and hosted by the
hosted by the vendor. Some vendors targeting the enterprise market also offer on-site installation
vendor.
and implementation services.
Pricing is often based on the number of contacts in the marketing database, the number of email
marketing messages sent each month and/or the number of users. Many vendors require annual
contracts (although some offer month-to-month pricing) and may offer discounts in exchange for
longer-term commitments.
Many vendors don’t disclose specific pricing but it can range from $350/year for a “lite” plan at a
provider focused on small businesses to $180,000/year or more for a full-featured subscription
from an enterprise vendor.
Recommended steps to making an

informed purchase
When you’re considering adopting a MAP or switching to a different vendor, it’s important to
understand your current marketing processes, decide on how to measure success and identify
where you’re looking for improvements.
The following section outlines four steps to help your organization begin that process and choose
the MAP that is the right fit for your business.
Step one: Do you need a marketing automation platform?

Deciding whether your company needs a MAP requires the same evaluative steps involved in
any software adoption. These include a comprehensive self-assessment of your organization’s
business needs, staff capabilities, management support and financial resources.
Use the following questions as a guideline to determine the answer.
• Have we outgrown our current marketing system? Marketing automation is often a solution
for rapidly growing companies that need to scale their efforts. If you have data in multiple
databases that cannot be consolidated or are using an email system that can’t deliver the level
of behavioral targeting you need, it may be time for marketing automation. Consider, also, how
much time your staff is spending on repetitive tasks that could be sped up or eliminated by a
marketing automation system.
• What marketing automation capabilities are most critical to our business? Identify and
prioritize your software requirements and the key capabilities you’ll need. Do your sales
reps need real-time access to marketing data? Then native CRM integration is a must-have.
Do you have a sophisticated social media presence? Then social marketing management and

integration will be important. Knowing all this puts you in a better position to control the
selection process and choose the platform best for your organization.
• What kind of MAP do we need? Marketing automation is not a one-size-fits-all solution. You need to
Nearly all companies offer the same basic capabilities for email, website tracking and a identify all the
marketing database. Additional capabilities vary, however, so it’s important to identify what tools you already
you need. Is inbound marketing (social media, blogging, SEO) more important than outbound
have so you can
(email)? Are reporting and analytics the key features you need? Is lead scoring a crucial part
of your marketing program? Do you need greater capabilities in audience segmentation and ask the marketing
personalization? automation
vendor about
• What are our goals? It is critical to know your goals for the marketing automation system. Do integration.
you want to improve the quality of leads handed off by marketing to sales? Or grow revenue
by increasing conversion at key stages in the buying cycle? Do you want to improve visibility
into the buying and sales cycles to optimize marketing engagement? Or do you want to reach
the growing portion of your leads that are mobile users? Bring key stakeholders together to
establish the organization’s goals.
• How will it integrate with our existing tech stack? You need to identify all the tools you already
have so you can ask the marketing automation vendor about integration. Many vendors offer app
marketplaces, which provide faster access to the participating systems. Virtually all marketing
automation vendors offer APIs, but they may be an add-on to the price of the platform.
• Does management support this purchase? Every marketer should have an executive sponsor
to secure support at the C-level. If you are not the ultimate decision maker for this purchase,
you will need management to buy into the idea before going any further. Present a compelling
case that the benefits of new software vastly outweigh the costs. These benefits could include
converting more leads, making sales more efficient and improving campaign ROI.
• Do we have the internal skill sets and staff we need? To maximize your ROI, staff will need
training and a willingness to develop and execute new business processes. You may also need
to consider several new hires. If your marketing and sales organizations have been operating
in silos, they will need to work more cooperatively on lead scoring and routing systems,
lead qualification definitions and more effective marketing collateral and communications.
Identify someone who will be using the system once it has been adopted to take the lead in the
selection process.
• How will we measure success? This is one of the toughest questions, and ties in directly to
understanding why you are adopting a MAP. If your goal is to increase conversions, you’ll
need to know what your conversion rate is before automation to measure its impact. If it’s to
improve email efficiency, be prepared with metrics on open rates, clicks, etc. In addition to
measuring against your marketing goals, it’s wise to measure the depth and breadth of platform
usage. Many marketers only use basic email capabilities within their marketing automation
platform, meaning they’re paying for features that aren’t being utilized.
• Have we realistically assessed the cost? Some MAPs are all-inclusive, while others feature
add-on tools and services that can significantly increase costs. In addition to the cost of the
software license itself, consider the costs of ongoing services and training, as well as the
indirect costs associated with getting staff up and running on the new system (i.e., more
cooperation and data sharing between marketing and sales). If you don’t have your own IT
or design staff, be sure to ask questions about what these services cost on an hourly basis.
For example, if the platform offers templates, find out how many, and how much it costs to
customize template design.

Step two: Identify and contact appropriate vendors

Once you have determined that marketing automation software makes sense, research individual
vendors and their capabilities. The most
effective RFPs
• Make a list of all the marketing automation capabilities you currently have (i.e., email
only request
campaign sending), those you would like to have (i.e., predictive scoring or recommendations)
and those you can’t live without (i.e., plug-and-play CRM integration). This last category is relevant
critical and could help you avoid a costly mistake. information from
the vendors and
• Research vendors using that list to see which ones can meet your needs. Then send them the provide ample
list of what you need and set a timeframe for them to reply.
information about
• Decide whether you need to engage in a formal RFI/RFP process. This is an individual your business and
preference but be sure to give the same list of capabilities to each vendor to facilitate its needs.
comparison.
The most effective RFPs only request relevant information from the vendors and provide
ample information about your business and its needs. Let the vendor know how you plan to
use marketing automation, including your high-level strategic goals and KPIs and how you will
evaluate the success of your marketing automation efforts. Include details about timelines and the
existing digital technology you have deployed.
When written properly, an RFP will facilitate the sales process and ensure both sides come to
a shared understanding of the purpose, requirements, scope and structure of the intended
purchase. From the RFP responses, you should be able to narrow your list down to three or four
platforms to demo.
Step three: Scheduling the demo

Set up demos within a relatively short time frame after receiving the RFP responses to help make
relevant comparisons. Make sure that all potential internal users are on the demo call or at the in-
person meeting, and pay attention to the following:
• How easy is the platform to use?

• Does the vendor seem to understand our business and our marketing needs?
• Are they showing us our “must-have” features?
• If we ask a specific question, can they demonstrate the answer on the call?
Other questions to ask each vendor include:
4 How easy is it to integrate this software into my organization?

4 What is the onboarding process?
4 How long does implementation take?
4 What kind of support and training are included in the base price?
4 What does your partner and developer community look like?
4 How can I maximize adoption in my organization?
4 Will we have a dedicated account rep available to us?
4 Do current customers utilize the full functionality?
4 What new features are you focusing on for the coming year?
4 Can we do a test run for a few days on our own (i.e., a free trial)?

4 How do you protect and secure customer data? Do you have a roadmap for what you would
do in the event of a hack or denial-of-service attack?
Don’t hesitate to ask for a demonstration of the specific capabilities that you have identified in Before deciding
your RFI/RFP. Consider requesting product demos showing basic tasks and demonstrating core on a vendor,
reports such as: check out its
online community
4 Create and edit a new email from scratch.
and review
4 Import and segment data, using any AI or machine-learning capabilities available.
sites, and speak
4 Base data management, cleansing and enrichment options.
with one or
4 Create and edit a new landing page from scratch.
two customer
4 Execute a simple campaign with an email, mailing list and landing page.
references,
4 See a report showing email opens, clickthroughs and landing page conversions.
preferably
4 See a report showing web traffic and/or specific leads from an email campaign.
someone in a
4 ROI dashboards and reports at the organization and campaign levels.
business like
4 Campaign attribution options and capabilities.
yours.
This is an ongoing relationship — it’s important to feel that your questions are being answered.
Step four: Check references, negotiate a contract

Before deciding on a vendor, check out its online community and review sites, and speak with
one or two customer references, preferably someone in a business like yours. The vendor should
be able to supply you with references, but you should also ask around in professional discussion
forums or at industry conferences (in-person or virtual) and networking events.
Use this opportunity to ask any additional questions, and to find out more about questions
that weren’t answered during the demo. Make sure that the person you’ve been referred to is a
primary user of the platform. Ask the people working with this vendor these basic questions:
4 Why did you license a marketing automation platform?

4 Did you migrate to this platform from another? If so, how was the conversion process?
4 Why did you select this platform over others?
4 How long did the system take to implement?
4 Has this platform lived up to your expectations?
4 Did you receive the level of support you needed?
4 What CRM system is this platform integrated with? Are you pleased with that integration?
4 Were there any surprises that you wish you’d known about beforehand?
4 Where have you seen the most success? The biggest challenges?
4 How are you measuring your own success?
4 How responsive is customer service?
4 Has there been any down time?
4 What is the most useful, actionable (favorite) report the platform generates?
4 What do you wish they did differently?
4 Why would you recommend this platform?

Although not all vendors require an annual contract, many do. Once you’ve selected a vendor, be
sure to get in writing a list of what features and support are covered in the contract. A few things
to ask about include the following:
With martech
• What kinds of additional fees might come up? budgets under
• Are there charges for custom design, and, if so, how much? greater scrutiny
• What is the hourly charge for engineering services, and is there a minimum?
in the current
• What partner organizations are available to install and integrate the platform?
• If we need you to train a new hire mid-year, what will that cost? economic
environment,
Obtaining the answers up front — and having them in writing — will ensure fewer surprises or marketing leaders
additional costs down the road. are expected
to be able to
demonstrate
Conclusion ROI for any
new technology
With martech budgets under greater scrutiny in the current economic environment, marketing
investment.
leaders are expected to be able to demonstrate ROI for any new technology investment. MAPs
are critical for many businesses, offering numerous benefits by streamlining manual tasks
including lead management, campaign development and landing page creation. As marketers
and vendors continue to explore how AI and machine learning can smooth workflows, automate
processes and offer insights, these solutions are likely to provide even more utility.
These platforms offer a wide range of advanced features, including AI-based predictive lead
scoring and product recommendations, ABM and social media campaign integration. They also
integrate seamlessly with many third-party CRM and other point solutions to offer extended
capabilities, with many vendors beginning to see themselves as the center of the customer
experience.
The key to ensuring ROI is to make sure the platform is easy to use and scale, and is suited to
your organization’s goals. Vendors offer extensive training programs, online communities and
strategic consulting services to encourage more comprehensive use and create a higher return on
marketing automation investments.
To identify the MAP vendor that is the right fit for your organization, it is imperative you
understand your current marketing processes, recognize where you need to improve and know
how you will measure success. By performing your due diligence in researching and interviewing
marketing automation vendors, your search can come to a successful conclusion and result in
greater long-term ROI and business productivity. n

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• Acoustic supports B2C mid-market and enterprise brands across retail, financial
services, insurance, tech and telecom, travel and hospitality, and more.
Acoustic
1125 Oak St., Ste 201, Company overview
Conway, AR 72032
T: (866) 820-5136 • Founded in 2019.
acoustic.com • 600 employees.
• Acoustic most recently received a strategic growth investment from Francisco Partners
Key customers in October 2022. Existing investor Centerbridge Partners remains the primary equity
holder in the company.
Air France • Acoustic’s diverse range of solutions includes unified marketing and digital customer
Cuisinart experience insights, campaign execution, behavioral experience analytics and optimized
IDP Connect pricing, promotion, markdown and collaboration technology.
PayPal • Acoustic is headquartered in Conway, AR, and has a global presence across the United
Pura States, Canada, England, Poland, China, Japan, India, Australia and Chile.
Ticketmaster
Product overview
Key executives
• Acoustic Connect is a B2C customer engagement platform designed with journey
Mark Cattini, orchestration at its core. It allows brands to send personalized messages across email,
Chief Executive Officer mobile and more. The platform is able to capture customer signals and turn cues like
Elmer Lai, Chief Financial Officer intent, propensity to purchase or churn into insights that feed journey optimization
strategies, unlock segmentation possibilities and allow brands to personalize messages.
Scott Opiela,
Chief Marketing Officer
Use cases
Chris Lanaux,
Chief Product Officer By providing marketers with real-time visibility into the customer journey, Acoustic
Connect supports a range of use cases including multi-step journey orchestration, intent-
based personalized content creation, cart abandonment workflows, welcome sequences,
and re-engagement campaigns.
• Multi-step journey orchestration: Users can plan, coordinate, and automate customer
interactions via various touchpoints to create a complete multichannel journey.
• Multichannel marketing: Marketers can independently create hyper-personalized
multichannel campaigns across email, SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, mobile push, and more
without relying on coding or developer support.
• Customer signals: Users can leverage customer signals collected from the website
or app to trigger journeys, to personalize content, and to create segments based on
experience or behavior.
• Acoustic also supports specific use cases such as cart abandonment workflows,
welcome sequences and re-engagement campaigns – all of which leverage customer
signals and behavioral insights to elevate the customer experience.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning

Acoustic employs AI and ML for the following applications:
• To suggest content personalization.
• For send time optimization.
• For anomaly detection.
• For customizable scoring.

VENDOR PROFILES
Analytics and reporting • In addition to APIs, Acoustic Connect

offers a modern cloud connection, data-
Acoustic Connect offers several dashboards streaming options for CDP integrations
Acoustic including: as well as traditional batch and
1125 Oak St., Ste 201, • An Executive Dashboard that scheduled data processing options.
Conway, AR 72032 summarizes everything a CMO needs to
T: (866) 820-5136 know. Pricing and support
acoustic.com • An Experience Analytics Dashboard • An annual contract is required.
with information about the customer • No free trial or other pre-purchase
experience aimed at increasing testing is available.
conversions. • Acoustic Connect supports upper mid-
• Channel-based dashboards, such as market to low-mid enterprise companies,
those for email, SMS, WhatsApp, and with contracts that typically run over
more. a single year. Audience size, channel
Dashboards are designed to help marketers volume, number of data connections,
understand the data, optimize campaign and automated strategies typically
performance and explain ROI to the contribute to contract size, allowing
executive team. for an extensive use of enterprise-
grade processing, delivery, and send
Collaboration and workflow capabilities.
• As part of the standard subscription
• Acoustic Connect offers user
fees, Acoustic provides provisioning,
permissions, roles, and approval groups
deliverability, and support. Every
to effectively manage workflow.
Acoustic customer has access to a
• Users can easily collaborate within the
Customer Success Manager, trainings
same content, segments, or strategies
and resources through Acoustic
to produce a campaign or implement an
Academy, and 24x7x365 service for any
automation.
product-related issues at no additional
• By providing a single source of truth
cost.
around campaign performance and
• Premium support is available for
customer engagement, Acoustic
purchase. Acoustic’s premium level of
Connect allows marketers and CX
support includes a dedicated Technical
leaders to leverage the same data and
Account Manager, health checks and
insights to create optimized customer
assessments to prevent problems
interactions.
and faster resolution/response times.
Premium support also includes 24 - 60
Third-party integrations hours of professional services annually
(depending on the tier) that can be used
• Acoustic Connect is an open platform
to assist with special requests such
with a set of APIs leveraged by iPaaS
as deliverability workshops, strategic
vendors, martech and adtech solution
assessments or best practice delivery, all
providers (e.g., personalization, survey,
provided by an in-house set of industry
call center, CRM, ecommerce and
and channel experts.
real-time content vendors), Acoustic
customers and any integration that
either needs to get data into or from
Acoustic Connect.

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• Mid-market and enterprise businesses.
Acquia Company overview

53 State St. 10th Fl
Boston MA, 02109 • Founded in 2007.
T: (888) 922-7842 • 1,200 employees.
acquia.com • Acquia was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in September 2019.
• Acquia acquired Widen in September 2021 to build out its digital asset management
(DAM) and product information management (PIM) offerings. The company’s marketing
automation product, Acquia Campaign Studio, is based on the open-source Mautic
Key customers platform, which the company acquired in 2019.
Applause • Acquia empowers brands to create digital customer experiences that matter. With
Asana Rebel open-source Drupal at its core, the Acquia Digital Experience Platform (DXP) enables
EAB marketers, developers and IT operations teams to rapidly compose and deploy digital
products and services that leverage their content and data assets to engage customers
personally and at scale.
Key executives • Acquia has offices in Boston, MA, and Tokyo, Japan.
Stephen Reny, President
and Chief Executive Officer Product overview
Dries Buytaert, Co-Founder, • Acquia Campaign Studio, based on open-source Mautic, is a marketing automation
Chief Technology Officer, platform that allows organizations to create, orchestrate and deploy customer
Chief Strategy Officer experiences across all channels.
Jennifer Griffin Smith,
Chief Market Officer Use cases
Mark Picone, SVP and GM,
• Campaign Studio offers a drag-and-drop journey builder tool that allows marketers
Marketing Cloud
to orchestrate multi-step customer journeys by defining different paths that respond
to what customers are doing in real time. This includes cross-channel, multi-touch and
multi-step campaigns.
• Marketers can build individually personalized content quickly through a drag-and-drop
email builder, from scratch or from a template, execute and monitor all aspects of their
campaign directly; helping boost engagement, loyalty and customer lifetime value.
• Campaign Studio empowers marketers to launch campaigns quickly through content
creation, customer journey optimization and segmentation.
• Marketers can deliver personalized and multi-channel customer journeys with Acquia’s
visual journey builder, automating coordinated touch points across email, mobile and
web.
• Marketers can increase customer engagement through A/B testing and data-driven
optimization.
• Campaign Studio enables marketers to scale campaigns across multiple regions,
languages, and customer segments through Acquia’s multi-tenant marketing solution,
Acquia Campaign Factory.
• Acquia Campaign Studio helps customers to be fully compliant with GDPR, CASL and
has received EU Privacy Shield certification.

VENDOR PROFILES
Artificial intelligence and work across regions and business units

machine learning to leverage a unified experience, while
the data still lives in individual instances.
• Acquia has not yet incorporated AI
Acquia or machine learning capabilities into Third-party integrations
53 State St. 10th Fl Campaign Studio.
Boston MA, 02109 • Campaign Studio is natively integrated
T: (888) 922-7842 Analytics and reporting with the Acquia CDP, which enables
acquia.com marketers to use real-time insights
• Acquia Campaign Studio offers detailed to create relevant cross-channel
analytics and reporting capabilities, from experiences while also augmenting the
quick-view dashboards personalized by customer profile with interaction data
user to deep dive read-outs on the real- from the campaigns.
time performance of any campaign or • Acquia Campaign Studio also provides
individual marketing element (e.g. email, real-time integrations to third-party
landing page, form, etc.). systems via plug-ins and custom
• Journey analytics and optimization: integrations to support inbound and
Users can receive real-time insights and outbound data flow.
testing and adjust on the fly to deliver
the most compelling experiences for Pricing and support
every individual at any given moment in
any given channel. • An annual contract is required.
• A free trial or other pre-purchase testing
Collaboration and workflow is available.
• Acquia does not disclose its pricing.
• Campaign Studio’s Campaign Factory • Consultative services and dedicated
allows users to multiple teams, geos account managers are made available.
or business units with a multi-tenant
marketing automation solution.
Campaign Factory allows users who

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• SMBs to enterprises in all industries across B2B, B2C and ecommerce.
ActiveCampaign
1 North Dearborn St., 5th Fl.
Chicago, IL, 60602 Company overview
T: (800) 357-0402
• Founded in 2003.
activecampaign.com
• 900 employees.
• ActiveCampaign acquired Postmark, a transactional email platform, in 2022, and
OneSend, an email company focused on franchises, multi-location businesses and
Key customers resellers, in 2023. The company raised $240M in venture capital in 2021.
• ActiveCampaign provides marketing automation, email marketing and CRM software to
Hipcooks
businesses of all sizes and in a variety of industries.
Iconosquare
Koia
McCrindle Product overview
Party Headphones
• ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation platform helps businesses of all sizes with
Thinkific
its mix of pre-built automations and integrations to power personalized marketing,
transactional emails and one-to-one interactions throughout the customer lifecycle.
Key executives
Jason VandeBoom, Founder Use cases
and Chief Executive Officer
Marketing and sales teams can leverage the platform to improve communication and
Kelly O’Connell, engagement across the customer lifecycle. Use cases include:
Chief Product Officer • Automating sales lead qualification.
Shay Howe, • Managing and viewing the entire sales pipeline.
Chief Marketing Officer • Connecting to CRM and leveraging customer data from marketing and success
interactions to personalized emails and SMS messages.
• Nurturing leads via different automation routes based on their interactions.
• Setting up dynamic email flows depending on interests, demographic data and behavior.
• Customizing emails with product information directly from an online store to promote
new launches, cross-sell and upsell.
• Leveraging pre-built automation that combines CRM, advanced segmentation and
email marketing to orchestrate personalized automations for a connected customer
experience.

ActiveCampaign employs AI and ML for the following applications:
• To suggest next-best actions.
• To suggest customer journey design.
• For automatic campaign optimization.
• For lead and account scoring/prioritization.
• To generate content for marketing campaigns.
• To generate content for automated 1:1 sales emails, saved responses and direct email.

VENDOR PROFILES
Analytics and reporting Third-party integrations

• Reports help customers identify trends • ActiveCampaign integrates with more
ActiveCampaign
across emails, automations, sales than 900 third-party apps, including
1 North Dearborn St., 5th Fl.
pipelines and more. Examples include: direct, two-way integrations with tools
Chicago, IL, 60602
• Deal reports that can help sales like Shopify, Salesforce, WordPress,
T: (800) 357-0402
managers forecast and track a sales WooCommerce, Facebook Custom
activecampaign.com
rep’s success. Audiences, Google Analytics and PayPal.
• Conversion attribution reports to • Native integration with Microsoft
help identify which touchpoints are Dynamics 365, Pipedrive, Salesforce,
not delivering and discover new SugarCRM and Zoho.
trends or opportunities. • Custom objects give users a complete
• Reports to track the success of an view of every customer and their
automation to optimize workflow touchpoints by unifying data from the
and provide an optimal customer apps they use the most.
experience. • The company manages an AppStudio
• Chat performance reports to see the and developer fund to support and
origination URL of conversations, allow developers to build connections
number of contacts acquired, and tools that integrate directly into the
average response times and more. ActiveCampaign platform.
• Enterprise customers have access to
custom reporting that allows them to Pricing and support
build dashboards and reports based on
specific team needs. • No annual contract is required.
• A free trial or other pre-purchase testing
Collaboration and workflow is available.
• ActiveCampaign’s email and marketing
management
automation solutions start at $29/
ActiveCampaign says it offers an month, paid annually, and range up
automation-first approach to streamlining to $149/month for the professional
communications and tasks. Sales and plan. The company also works with
marketing teams can automate their enterprises to develop custom packages.
processes to drive efficiency and enhanced See the company’s pricing page for
collaboration between teams. Capabilities bundles that include other solutions
include: from the company’s offerings.
• Notifications and tags to update the • ActiveCampaign provides free
contact field based on an action and implementation, accelerated onboarding
steps to begin another information and training, along with 900+ pre-built
workflow once a goal is reached. automation recipes.
• Automation workflows to loop in data • Customers can also access free ongoing
from the integration of third-party tools training including study halls, webinars,
and apps to import key data into contact consultative sessions and strategy
records or manage personalization workshops with ActiveCampaign
within emails. support teams.
• Integrations with Slack, Google Sheets,
Asana and Monday.com to better
collaborate and stay on top of data and
tasks that can drive efficiency.

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• Act-On Software serves marketers across all levels of business. Clients include SMBs,
midsize companies and multibillion dollar enterprise businesses.
Company overview
Act-On
121 SW Morrison St #1600 • Founded in 2008.
Portland, OR 97204 • 172 employees.
T: (877) 530-1555 • Act-On Software’s most recent round of funding came in March 2021 via $20 million of
act-on.com growth financing.
• Since its inception, Act-On has focused on empowering marketers to establish stronger
connections with customers. Since then, it has continually enhanced and expanded its
Key customers platform to meet marketer’s ever-evolving needs, including the incorporation of artificial
intelligence tools.
Sharp
AutoZone Product overview
Hitachi
Best Buy • Act-On provides a comprehensive marketing automation solution that helps marketing
Oregon State University teams scale and more effectively reach their target audience with a modern UI, native
Progressive artificial intelligence and a low total cost of ownership.
Key executives Use cases

Kate Johnson, Act-On Software provides a solution for marketing teams, big or small, to do the work of
Chief Executive Officer many more people through the power of automation. Features include:
Roger Rowe, • Lead scoring and segmentation.
Chief Financial Officer • Email automation.
• Marketing attribution and reporting.
Syed Mohtashim Ahmed, • Automated nurturing programs.
SVP of Engineering and Ops • Email and SMS marketing.
Jeff Day, SVP of Marketing • Multichannel lead generation.
• Customer insights to power sales.

Act-On employs AI and ML for the following applications:
Analytics and reporting

• Standard performance reporting across all marketing channels includes campaigns,
email, landing pages, website, forms, SMS and social. Users can track and improve
performance over time by measuring emails received/opened, click rate, specific links
clicked, etc. Users outside the MA team can receive updates on critical marketing
performance and sales notifications. Performance reporting is also available across
other channels.
• Users can download data from reports, save a report, share a report, set up report
alerts or automatically send a report at specific times. Users can create dashboards by
“pinning” report graphics to a dashboard and saving them.

VENDOR PROFILES
• Act-On Business Analytics provides Third-party integrations

more sophisticated reporting on
marketing funnel performance, • Act-On integrates natively with these
including CRM integration, complex CRMs: Salesforce, Zendesk Sell,
cohort analysis, attribution reporting Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM and
across channel and lead sources, and NetSuite. These integrations sync data
Act-On
revenue impact reports to analyze which in both directions, ensuring sales reps
121 SW Morrison St #1600
campaigns and programs drive the most are updated with the latest marketing
Portland, OR 97204
revenue. intelligence (qualified leads) and
T: (877) 530-1555
• Act-On also offers a comprehensive marketing teams can access the latest
act-on.com
analytics engine assisted by AI, that lets sales data.
users analyze any data set in the system, • Act-On offers integrations with
set custom filters, cross-segment with webinar platforms (Zoom, WebEx,
other data, and control the time period. and GoToWebinar), social media tools
(Oktopost, Twitter/X, Linkedin), Google
Collaboration and workflow Ads for metrics, and Litmus for email
rendering preview. The company says it
Features aimed at improving collaboration is working to expand native integrations
and streamlining workflow include: with market-leading ABM solutions and
• The ability to send draft emails to data enrichment providers.
another user for review and launch • The company’s solution is designed with
approval. This feature set enables a flexible data approach through native
separation of roles between content functionality (e.g. CRM integrations),
creators and campaign approvers. extensive APIs (e.g. event-triggered
Additionally, each account has a emails), custom extension lists and
marketing calendar, which automatically custom touchpoints to provide
adds scheduled messaging and allows customers flexibility for their specific
marketers to add internal events or sync needs.
to an external calendar. • Act-On has released a webhooks
• In Act-On’s multi-instance configuration, capability and is already included in more
companies can segregate different than a dozen iPaaS providers such as
business units or marketing regions Zapier, Cazoomi SyncApps and tray.io.
through the marketing network, allowing
corporate oversight and minimizing Pricing and support
individual access. Assets (any content
template) can be shared between • An annual contract is required.
instances and modified to each business • No free trial or other pre-purchase
unit/partner/brand’s need. testing is available.
• Act-On’s Sales Seat (sales access through • Pricing packages vary on a number of
native CRM integrations) and the Act- factors, including the number of active
On Anywhere Sales enablement tool contacts, number of marketing and
enables marketers to provide templates sales users, and other add-on modules
and assets such as forms and landing customers choose to purchase.
pages to sales teams to quickly and • Pricing typically starts at $1,000 per
effectively build personalized email month, and the average Act-On contract
communications with prospects. runs $3,000 per month.
• The Act-On template library provides • Act-On provides the following offerings
a centralized source for individual to all customers at no additional cost:
campaign creators to jumpstart creation • Customer Success Manager.
of email, form, landing page and • Technical support, offered from 9
automated journey content. a.m. GMT to 5 p.m. PST.
• Online training and product
documentation.

VENDOR PROFILES
• Office hours and ongoing product • Act-On has two standard

training. implementation packages.
• Customer-focused webinars and • Fast Track helps smaller teams get
workshops. set up quickly (over 6 weeks). This
• Access to a library of online training runs $5000.
Act-On content including videos and written • Premium Onboarding package is
121 SW Morrison St #1600 guides. for marketing teams looking for
Portland, OR 97204 • Act-On also offers the following services more help to get up and running.
T: (877) 530-1555 for additional fees: It involves a series of strategy
act-on.com • Deliverability consulting. sessions, after which Act-On
• Technical consulting. takes the lead for building out
• Content creation and design or migrating required segments,
services. programs, customized subscription
• Automated program design and management tools, webinar
implementation. integrations and reporting. This lists
• Priority “Premium” support offering for $20,000.
faster responses and more support
channels (chat, phone, scheduled
Zoom calls).

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• SMB to enterprise-level B2B marketers and B2C considered-purchase marketers in
a variety of industries, including technology, business services, healthcare, financial
services, education, manufacturing and telco.
Company overview
• Parent company Adobe (ADBE:NASDAQ) was founded in 1982.
Adobe Marketo Engage • 29,000+ employees worldwide.
345 Park Avenue • Adobe acquired Marketo in October 2018.
San Jose, CA 95110 • Adobe maintains more than 50 offices around the world including in San Jose, San
T: 408-536-6000 Francisco, Lehi (Utah), Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, Portland, Dublin, London, Paris, Tel Aviv,
adobe.com Tokyo and Sydney.
Key customers Product overview

Charles Schwab • Adobe Marketo Engage is a marketing automation platform that lets users streamline,
GE automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows so they can increase operational
Panasonic efficiency and grow revenue more quickly.
Lumen
RingCentral Use cases
Roche
• Adobe Marketo Engage includes capabilities such as content personalization, cross-
channel segments, lead management and nurturing, sales partnership, and marketing
Key executives
impact analytics. These allow users to:
Shantanu Narayan, Chairman, • Create, automate, and measure campaigns across channels including email, mobile
President and Chief Executive and social media.
Officer, Adobe • Deliver targeted, personalized display ads.
• Dynamic interactions with customers on a website.
Venu Tavisala, Senior Director,
• Analyze performance to prove and improve business impact.
Product Management, Adobe
• Use predictive content functionality to ensure best-fit assets are presented.
Marketo Engage
• Create landing pages and progressive forms.
Amit Ahuja, SVP, Adobe • Develop and qualify potential buyers with personalized nurturing campaigns and
Experience Cloud, Platform and scoring capabilities.
Products • Prioritize the best leads with quality and urgency ratings as well as account
Brian Glover, Senior Director, engagement scores. .
Product Marketing, B2B • Perform basic data cleansing natively. The data deduplication feature finds and
Customer Journeys merges duplicate users in the database. Users can set up automated workflows
for data normalization. More advanced data deduplication and data cleansing are
enabled through turnkey integrations with a number of partners.
• Use account-based marketing (ABM) capabilities to unify lead and account-based
strategies. This includes account insights and profiling to identify the right target
accounts using data and AI. Account Smart Lists leverage AI and predictive scoring to
reveal best-fit accounts with or without contacts for campaign activation (e.g. activate
accounts with no contacts on LinkedIn for paid media campaigns). Personalized
experiences are automated across accounts with intelligent account nurturing.
Account-based insights delivered to sales offering full visibility across the buying team.
• Partner with sales by sharing customer intelligence across every touch of the buyer
journey. Multi-attribute lead scoring across sales and marketing touches is available.
The system also performs real-time data capture and bi-directional data integration
sync with CRM. It can power multiple sales engagement capabilities and digital sales
playbooks.

VENDOR PROFILES
Artificial intelligence and Collaboration and workflow

machine learning
• Integration with Adobe Workfront for
Adobe Marketo Engage uses AI and ML for collaboration and task management.
the following purposes: • Flexible and customized access, users,
• For content personalization in emails and roles, and permissions across the user
website experiences. base.
• To help marketers discover new unique • Workspaces can be segmented or shared
audiences and prospects. based on programs, databases, and
Adobe Marketo Engage
• For creating chatbots powered by instances for segmented teams.
345 Park Avenue
generative AI that can answer customer • Task management for Sales is included
San Jose, CA 95110
questions in a contextual way reflecting natively from within the application
T: 408-536-6000
a brand’s personality and tone. Command Center or from the Tasks
adobe.com
• To generate conversation summaries and section of the Live Feed.
a chat interface to prepare salespeople • Tasks can also be managed from within
for conversations and meetings with CRM systems.
customers and prospects. • Marketing and sales coordination
via lead and account intelligence and
Analytics and reporting engagement blueprints.
• ROI reports include multi-touch Third-party integrations

attribution and the aggregate impact
of marketing on the revenue cycle over • Native integration with Microsoft
time, including conversion rates plus flow Dynamics 365, Salesforce and
and velocity through the funnel. Veeva CRM. Supports two-way
• Executive dashboards feature revenue synchronization. With CRM credentials,
cycle analytics identifying real-time custom objects and fields can be synched
metrics and trends. automatically. Additions/deletions to
• Marketo Measure (formerly CRM framework such as fields or objects
Bizible) offers complete attribution are automatically updated in Marketo
across every marketing and sales Engage.
touchpoint, a variety of attribution • Turn-key integrations are available for
models, and connectors to paid Oracle NetSuite, SugarCRM, Zoho and
media channels. others provided by Vertify and sold by
• Performance Insights identifies Adobe with Marketo Engage.
programs and channels that deliver • Partner ecosystem of data integrators
the highest marketing ROI. and digital agencies includes Accenture
• Success Path Analyzer monitors key Digital, Deloitte Digital, DigitasLBi,
performance metrics for each stage Informatica, Mulesoft, Talend, and
of the customer journey. Software AG.
• The Revenue Modeler defines • Partners can also be found through
customer journey stages and Adobe Exchange and Experience Cloud.
monitors how potential customers • Additional integrations are available
move through the funnel. through Webhooks, and REST APIs.
• Advanced Journey Analytics features
a pivot-table UI for ad hoc reporting on Pricing and support
channel and campaign performance,
including attribution and ROI. • Annual contract required.
• Opportunity Influence Analyzer • Pricing is based on the size of the
demonstrates cross-channel marketing marketing database, plus any additional
activities that influence deals to infrastructure requested, such as
understand each marketing touchpoint’s advanced security, high-volume APIs,
influence. high-volume email infrastructure, or
advanced database features.

VENDOR PROFILES
• Four pre-built bundles based on digital • All Marketo subscriptions include access
marketing maturity, including a newly to customer success managers.
added Growth package for small teams. • All customers receive global phone
• All solutions include a Marketing support and 24/7 web portal support,
Data Environment, which including chat.
integrates profiles and engagement • Professional services packages are
history to help marketers build available for implementation and
customer relationships by enabling consulting services.
Adobe Marketo Engage personalized interactions. • Premium-priced support services
345 Park Avenue • Any product/module not packaged include access to named support
San Jose, CA 95110 in the solution can be purchased as professionals, accelerated service-level
T: 408-536-6000 an add-on. response, and sessions for proactive
adobe.com • Products/modules are typically priced mentoring and business review.
on a single scaling factor, such as
database size, number of marketing
users, number of mobile activities, or
number of website visitors.

VENDOR PROFILES
Target audience
• B2C mid-market and enterprise in the retail/e-commerce space, including fashion,
lifestyle and home goods, furniture, grocery and restaurant verticals.
Bloomreach
82 Pioneer Way Company overview
Mountain View, CA 94041
T: 650-943-6169 • Founded in 2009.
bloomreach.com • 900 employees.
• Acquired Exponea, a data-enriched mail provider, in January 2021.
Key customers • Bloomreach offers multiple solutions to help brands deliver highly personalized
commerce experiences. The company’s suite of ecommerce personalization solutions
Boohoo encompasses three distinct toolsets:
Pandora • Discovery, which offers AI-driven personalized search and merchandising solutions.
Next • Content, a headless CMS for commerce.
Olukai • Engagement, a customer data platform with built-in email capabilities that delivers
PrettyLittleThing highly personalized emails.
Altar’d State
Product overview
Key executives
• Bloomreach offers a marketing automation platform that includes advanced targeting
Raj De Datta, and AI-powered personalization. It helps brands build and maintain audiences based on
Chief Executive Officer real-time customer behavior data.
Brian Walker,
Chief Strategy Officer Use cases
Rob Rosenthal, • Data ingestion, unification and identity resolution. Combines customer data from all
Chief Revenue Officer touchpoints and disparate sources into a single marketing view of the customer to create
Amanda Elam, user profiles for both anonymous users and identified customers. Bloomreach can help
Chief Marketing Officer brands build audience segments that update in real time as user behavior and purchase
habits change.
• Web personalization and optimization. Enables the use of first-party data to display
personalized content like countdown banners and product recommendations on the
website. Marketers and digital teams can also A/B test and experiment with different
visual appearances and leverage contextual personalization using AI to find the right
variant for every customer.
• AI/ML and marketing intelligence. Rule- and AI-based recommendations can be used to
create customer content.
• Campaign orchestration and execution. Zero- and first-party customer data captured
with Bloomreach Engagement can orchestrate and execute personalized marketing
campaigns via multiple channels from a single platform.
• Email design and creation. Marketers can create emails with a drag-and-drop editor or
design their own emails with Bloomreach’s HTML builder.

Bloomreach’s solution uses AI and ML to:
• Optimize send time and best channel.
• Generate content for email, SMS and push notifications.
• Personalize messaging.
• Predict suitability of individual profiles for campaigns, such as excluding customers with
high return rates from certain campaigns.

VENDOR PROFILES
Analytics and reporting • Other: Amazon Alexa (API), Zapier (API),

Custom HTTPS Webhook presets (API).
• Analyzes all email KPIs, including revenue • Sales/CRM: Pipedrive, SalesForce CRM,
and orders, with out-of-the-box visual Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Bloomreach dashboards. Bloomreach can also build • Mobile App/Messaging: WhatsApp,
82 Pioneer Way advanced reports to track custom metrics. Facebook Messenger.
Mountain View, CA 94041 • Campaign and program reporting. • Services: Freshdesk, Trello, Slack.
T: 650-943-6169 • Cohort analysis.
bloomreach.com • Retention analysis. Pricing and support
• Trend reporting.
• Specific pricing isn’t publicly disclosed
Collaboration and workflow but pricing is based on product packages
tailored to clients’ needs. Clients can
• A shared campaign calendar offers an choose from three product packages: CDP,
overview of finished, ongoing or planned Campaigns or CDXP. Each is available in
campaigns across different channels. Grow, Scale or Enterprise bundles.
• Tabs can be switched for seamless • Annual contracts are required.
connection between planning and • Typical onboarding time is one to three
execution. months, according to independent
• The software includes an array of out-of- review site G2Crowd.
the-box roles to restrict/enable access, • New clients are provided with training
a role hierarchy, combinations for more from the Academy program to
granularity, and splitting into Instance, understand the solution, ensure smooth
Account and Project levels. In addition, data ingestion, and support the building
clients can define more granular custom of in-depth analyses and automated
access roles for their users, specifically campaigns. An experienced project team
in the Campaigns module. Roles are is assigned to each client.
managed via SSO IAM. • Bloomreach offers a free set of services
• Bloomreach offers taxonomy management (with a predefined scope and cost) and
through tags, labels and initiatives (folders) assistance in selecting and implementing
for internal organization. professionally designed plug-and-play
use cases to accelerate adoption and
Third party integrations decrease time-to-value.
• Post-implementation, Bloomreach’s
• Imports and data: Microsoft SQL customer service team guides clients
database and Azure SQL (native), through the growth and expansion phases
Postgre SQL and Amazon Redshift and focuses on ongoing fast time to value,
database (native); MySQL database team enablement, success partnership built
(native), Google Bigquery (native), through business reviews, status meetings
Google Cloud Storage (native), Amazon and management of the success plan, value
S3 file storage (native), SF TP file server measurement and thought leadership.
(native), HTTPS web server (native). • Free online chat support.
• Email providers: Mailgun (API), Mailjet • Support via Helpdesk/Intercom for
(API), Mandrill (API), Sendsay (API), technical issues is offered to all clients
Unisender (API), Sendinblue, Mailchimp, during business hours.
Emaillabs, Unione. • Add-on professional services include
• SMS & MMS providers: CM Telecom dedicated support, a dedicated consultant
SMS (API), Sinch SMS & MMS. for a predetermined number of hours to
• E-commerce: Shopify (native and assist with campaign creation, analytics,
connected integration), Magento reporting, training and other tasks, or
• Adtech (custom audiences): Adform a value delivery manager to help with
(API), Facebook Ads (API), Google projects and tasks, ensure on-time delivery
Ads (API), Facebook Conversions API, and allocate resources appropriately.
Facebook Lead Ads.

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• Small to medium-sized organizations across a variety of industries, and organizations
Constant Contact with multiple locations, departments, or users, franchises, member-based associations
1601 Trapelo Rd, 3rd Floor and agency partners.
Waltham, MA 02451
constantcontact.com Company overview
• 1,000 employees.
Key customers
• Constant Contact acquired SharpSpring in September of 2021. The company also
Not disclosed acquired the Australian SMS and email platform Vision6 in January of 2022.
• Constant Contact offers digital marketing tools designed to simplify online marketing
Key executives for small businesses and nonprofits.
Frank Vella, Product overview

Chief Executive Officer
• Constant Contact’s Lead Gen and CRM product is designed for sales and marketing
Laura Goldberg,
directors who need to align their teams, convert their leads and demonstrate ROI.
Russ Morton, Use cases
Chief Product Officer
Eric Raab, Applications for Constant Contact’s software include:
Chief Technology Officer • Cookie-based web tracking • Sales pipeline and deal flow
• Landing page design • Lead Conversion Tracking
• Lead capture through forms • Account management
• Contact management and CRM • Reporting and Analytics
• Marketing automation • Embeddable web chatbot
• Email marketing • Sales engagement
• Behavior-based automation • Sales intelligence
• Sales team management • Marketing agency and multi-tenant
• Sales team task management management

Constant Contact’s platform utilizes machine learning and AI for the following applications:
• To assist or write copy for campaigns.
Analytics and reporting

• Constant Contact brings marketing and sales data together in comprehensive reporting
and analytics. There are specific reports for different areas, and there are custom
reports where users can create their own dashboards.

VENDOR PROFILES
Collaboration and workflow Pricing and support

• No annual contract is required.
• Constant Contact offers automated • No free trial or pre-purchase testing is
task management systems for individual offered.
Constant Contact
users and teams. Users can see all tasks • Pricing for Constant Contact’s Lead Gen
1601 Trapelo Rd, 3rd Floor
assigned to them, and manage them and CRM product starts at $449/month.
Waltham, MA 02451
as they need. Managers can assign • Constant Contact offers onboarding
constantcontact.com
tasks manually or automatically using for customers to get them ramped up
automation tools. on the platform and ongoing support
beyond that. Additionally, customers can
Third-party integrations utilize professional services for specific
marketing needs.
• Constant Contact integrates with
CRMs, social and other platforms. For
CRMs, the system syncs data between
common objects like contacts, accounts
and opportunities (deals). For social, the
software allows for posting and listening
for Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• Marigold works with SMBs, mid-market and enterprise companies in verticals like
Marigold agencies, CPG, financial services, franchises, higher education, media and publishing,
11 Lea Ave. non-profits, professional services, restaurants, retail, and travel and hospitality.
Nashville, TN 37210
meetmarigold.com Company overview
Key customers
• 1,000 employees.
American Airlines • In early 2023, the previously combined Cheetah Digital and CM Group (made of
Cigna Selligent, Sailthru, Emma, Campaign Monitor, Liveclicker and Vuture) rebranded to
Focus Brands become Marigold. Later in 2023, Marigold announced new solution names within the
LeMonde Relationship Marketing offering: Marigold Engage+, Marigold Engage, Marigold Engage
University of Notre Dame Express (including Emma by Marigold and Campaign Monitor by Marigold), Marigold
Vans Grow, Marigold Loyalty and Marigold LiveContent powered by Liveclicker.
• Marigold offers a variety of solutions tailored to companies of different sizes, industries
Key executives and levels of maturity.
Wellford Dillard, Product overview

Marigold Engage, which encompasses the company’s marketing automation solutions,
Desta Price,
includes Marigold Engage+, Marigold Engage and Marigold Engage Express.
Chief Product Officer
• Marigold Engage+ is an enterprise-class omnichannel messaging platform. It is highly
John Gregitis, configurable and supported by a services organization with deep industry, use case and
Chief Revenue Officer campaign execution expertise.
Wendy Werve, • Marigold Engage is an omnichannel messaging platform built for marketers and
Chief Marketing Officer designed to activate marketing-focused growth plans.
• Marigold Engage Express offers intuitive, out-of-the-box, omnichannel solutions, purpose-
built for specific verticals and use cases, including SMBs, agencies, higher ed, non-profit
and franchises. It is ideal for organizations looking for a turnkey solution. Marigold Engage
Express includes Emma by Marigold and Campaign Monitor by Marigold.
Use cases
Marketers turn to Marigold to help them meet consumer needs across all channels and
touchpoints. Common use cases include:
• Acquisition: Marketers can engage consumers through interactive experiences such as
surveys, polls, giveaways and games that ask for and directly receive zero-party data
from the customer.
• Engagement: Users can deliver intelligent cross-channel messaging and meet customers
in the right moment and channel by sending relevant, contextual communications across
email, mobile, social and beyond. Marketers can personalize content to unique customer
needs and preferences as well as design and deploy agile real-time customer journeys with
value-added offers.
• Loyalty: Marketers can use enterprise loyalty management tools to create emotionally
engaging interactions to drive visit recency, frequency and spend, as well as encourage
customer advocacy.

Marigold Engage utilizes AI and ML for the following purposes:

VENDOR PROFILES
• To suggest content personalization. governance rules. This enables global

• For automatic campaign optimization. marketing leaders to allow and restrict
• To generate creative for email changes as desired and provides the
Marigold campaigns. ability to set parameters for scheduling,
11 Lea Ave. • To personalize landing pages on the fly. delivery, and other variables to ensure
Nashville, TN 37210 • For send time optimization. regional locations and small franchises
meetmarigold.com are afforded enterprise-grade
Analytics and reporting deliverability and performance.
• Marigold Engage includes a selection of Third-party integration

out-of-the-box campaign-level reports,
which provide marketers with a detailed • Marigold offers a variety of connection
view of metrics, including standard options including assistance with
disposition data, heat maps, detailed integrations to Snowflake, Salesforce
analysis of Apple MPP, bot mitigation CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM,
and location. SugarCRM, Shopify, Magento, or any
• More advanced marketing intelligence other system — from CRM to POS,
toolsets let users build dynamic reports inventory to analytics.
and dashboards to reveal campaign
summary details, mobile response, Pricing and support
domain delivery and email performance.
• An annual contract is not required.
Collaboration and workflow • A free trial or other pre-purchase testing
is available.
• Customers can use an agency account • Depending upon customer needs
structure (multiple sub-accounts under including send volumes, solution add-
one administrative account) which helps ons, customized setup, and professional
customers collaborate on campaigns services, annual costs can range from
across teams and clients, while still just over $100 to more than $10M.
maintaining control over account Marigold Engage can serve businesses
activity. of all sizes. Marigold Engage Express is
• Users can also set granular permissions fit for the SMB market while Marigold
for different users in their accounts, Engage and Engage+ are made for the
share templates between sub-accounts, global enterprise.
and lock elements of their email • Marigold provides a base level of
templates to maintain brand control if support for free, with costs increasing
needed. for support packages to meet more
• Permission-based access governs what comprehensive needs. Online help
is assigned to the marketer; corporate centers, in-app support options, and
is set with an admin level so they have Marigold’s support team are available
full control. When content is created, it around the clock and around the globe to
can be assigned to one or more locations answer customer inquiries.
which restricts access. When corporate • Marigold operates a Global Strategy and
creates a campaign or offer, franchisees Services team that can help customers
can opt in or out of that promotion. with strategic and technical advisory,
• The tool provides a one-click template creative and design, assessments, audits
section with a preview area, responsive and roadmaps, loyalty program design,
templates for mobile and multiple analytics and insights and more. Several
languages. It features a centralized support packages are available along
repository of templates, mailing with dedicated options.
schedules, and access to all appropriate
first-party data with associated

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• Enterprise, mid-market or small businesses in B2B or B2B2C that require nurturing /
Oracle Marketing lead scoring for large considered purchases or long sales cycles.
2300 Oracle Way • Sales and/or marketing departments looking to align internally and personalize the
Austin, TX 78741 digital customer experience.
T: 737-867-1000 • Industries include, but are not limited to tech, manufacturing, financial services and
www.oracle.com/cx/marketing/ insurance, travel and transportation, consumer packaged goods, and media and
automation communication.
Key customers Company overview

Aon Cisco • Founded in 1977.
Dow Jones • 135,000 employees.
Mazda • Publicly traded (NYSE: ORCL).
Paciolan • Oracle acquired Eloqua in December 2012.
Swisscom • Oracle offers suites of integrated applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in
Vertiv the Oracle Cloud.
Key executives Product overview

Rob Tarkoff, Executive Vice • Oracle Eloqua is a marketing automation solution for cross-channel campaign
President, and General Manager, orchestration that nurtures leads across each stage of the buying process.
Oracle Advertising and CX
Rob Pinkerton, Senior Vice Use cases
President, Marketing, Oracle
Advertising and CX • Campaign orchestration to create dynamic campaigns that intrigue buyers and adapt
the multi-touch experience based on a buyer’s real-time activities. Marketers can create
Srishti Sofat, Senior Vice
optimized, personalized campaigns across email, display search, web, video, SMS, and
President, Oracle Advertising
mobile.
and CX
• Targeting and segmentation capabilities allow users to create rich customer profiles
Katrina Gosek, Vice President, and target the right individuals with the most relevant information throughout the sales
Product Management, Oracle cycle.
Advertising and CX • Customizable lead management capabilities enable marketers to leverage relevant data
for powerful real-time automated lead scoring and routing across multiple campaigns
and business lines.
• Achieving sales and marketing alignment with unified buyer intelligence to identify,
prioritize, and track high-valued opportunities and top-tier accounts across the sales
cycle. Oracle Eloqua natively supports ABM, allowing marketers to better understand
and identify accounts, expand their footprint within those accounts, engage relevantly
with the right stakeholders and grow advocates for repeat sales.
• Data management and activation allow marketers to take the next best action with a
contact based on real-time digital behaviors.
• Asset management for design and repurposing compelling emails, landing pages and
content blocks that engage customers and efficiently manage assets across teams and
campaigns.
• Marketing measurement and insights through flexible and powerful out-of-the-box
reporting and detailed dashboards.
• Advanced intelligence capabilities that apply data science to observed behaviors and
adapt experiences to the learned preferences of each individual.
• Oracle Eloqua’s data management capabilities allow for data deduplication,
normalization, and augmentation to keep data clean and updated. Eloqua enables
integration with dozens of third parties to complete account and contact data ensuring
it’s up to date in the system.

VENDOR PROFILES
Artificial intelligence and in contact information such as lead score,

machine learning and take different actions based on
whether the lead exists already in
Oracle Marketing • Oracle Eloqua employs AI and ML for the • the CRM, including updating the lead
2300 Oracle Way following applications: score, creating the lead in the CRM and
Austin, TX 78741 • To suggest next-best actions. routing the lead to sales with a task to
T: 737-867-1000 • To suggest content personalization offer a Demo. The Program Canvas not
www.oracle.com/cx/marketing/ • For automatic campaign only manages tasks to route leads but also
automation optimization enables marketers to create lead-scoring
• For lead and account scoring/ models that will manage the criteria that
prioritization qualify a lead. This automates the task
of qualifying leads based on sales input
Analytics and reporting regarding the leads they want to follow up
with or track closely.
• Oracle Eloqua’s marketing measurement • Oracle Eloqua’s sales tools bring
capabilities bring powerful out-of-the- marketing and sales closer together,
box and custom analytics and reporting, allowing for unified buyer intelligence to
powered by Oracle Business Intelligence, identify, prioritize and track high-valued
to help marketers accurately track and opportunities across the engagement cycle.
measure business impact. • Deploy detailed information about
• Eloqua’s Account Engagement Dashboard a prospect – including web activity,
enables marketers to identify, target and email opens, form submissions and
grow the most engaged accounts, with social activity – providing sales with
insights into products of interest and level a more complete customer view and
of account engagement. making it easier to prioritize potential
• Closed-loop reporting lets marketing opportunities and buyer interests.
teams see how sales opportunity
revenue is attributed to marketing Third-party integrations
campaigns, enabling users to analyze
overall campaign revenue performance • Oracle Eloqua supports native bi-
(ROI) to identify the best and worst- directional integrations with Oracle
performing campaigns. Sales, Oracle CRM On Demand,
Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics
Collaboration and workflow • 365. Additional integrations are available
through a partner or Oracle Integration
• Oracle Eloqua’s asset creation and Cloud Service for NetSuite, SugarCRM,
management capabilities give marketers SAP CRM and Infor. In addition, REST
the ability to create compelling emails, API is available to integrate with other
landing pages, and forms, and manage enterprise systems such as ERP, content
those assets across their lifecycle. With management and data warehouses.
reusable content blocks in the landing • The Oracle AppCloud provides access
page and email editors, marketers can to 500-plus app partners with over
recycle marketing and brand-approved 700 integrations, including LinkedIn
elements to power their scaled content Sales Navigator, Microsoft Outlook for
needs. Managers and admins simply Sales Tools, WeChat, AddThis, Cvent,
create approved content blocks, and Certain, Demandbase, Lattice, WebEx,
using permission settings, they can GoToWebinar, CloudWords, Pinterest,
restrict who can edit and what can be LookBook HQ, SnapApp and LinkedIn.
edited for each block. • Marketers can also leverage the Oracle
• Oracle Eloqua’s Program Canvas powers AppCloud Development Framework
lead management, including lead routing to create apps to access third-party
and lead scoring. Program data and content sources across the
• “Listener Steps” can decision on changes enterprise.

VENDOR PROFILES
Pricing and support • Add-on professional services are

available for companies that need
• Annual contract not required. Monthly additional help onboarding or
Oracle Marketing contracts offered. customizing the software for their
2300 Oracle Way • Oracle offers three pricing tiers based business needs.
Austin, TX 78741 on the number of users and database
T: 737-867-1000 contacts: Basic, Standard and Enterprise.
www.oracle.com/cx/marketing/ Specific pricing models are not publicly
automation disclosed.

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• High-growth companies to enterprise-level organizations across all industries, market
segments, and geographies.
Company overview
Marketing Cloud • Founded in 1999.
Account Engagement • 50,000+ employees.
(formerly Salesforce Pardot) • Salesforce was founded in 1999; Marketing Cloud Account Engagement was founded
415 Mission Street in 2007 and acquired by Salesforce in 2013. Salesforce acquired Evergage Marketing
San Francisco, CA 94105 Cloud Personalization in February 2020.
T: 800-NO-SOFTWARE • Salesforce Customer 360 is the company’s vision for helping customers with their digital
Salesforce.com transformations. With Customer 360, all teams — marketing, sales, service, commerce,
IT, and analytics — have a single view of customer data on an integrated CRM platform
Key customers powered by AI.
• Salesforce has offices in more than 30 countries.
Grammarly
McAfee Product overview
NBC Universal
Mastercard • Marketing Cloud Account Engagement aligns marketing, sales, and service teams with a
NI single source of truth, and can scale as the business grows.
Sika • Account Engagement allows organizations to build scalable demand-generation
programs and get started with account-based marketing. With a native Data Cloud
Key executives integration, data can be harmonized for any source and audiences can be segmented
into opportunities, accounts and activities.
Stephen Hammond, EVP and GM, • With new Einstein Generative AI, marketers can create email body content, forms and
Marketing Cloud landing pages, and campaigns in record time. Predictive AI features take the manual
Nathan Maphet, VP Product work out of scoring and grading, and help marketers optimize email send times.” Make
Management this the second bullet point.
• The seamless integration and visibility of data enriched by AI across marketing and sales
Bobby Jania, SVP, Marketing
create a frictionless customer experience between digital and human touchpoints.
Cloud, Product Marketing
David Schmaier, President, Chief Use cases
Product Officer
• Marketing, sales and service alignment.
• Sales email and alerts: Empower sales and service with alerts, actions, and
personalized emails powered by marketing-delivered templates.
• Engagement history dashboards: Align marketing and sales on a common set of
analytics to understand buyer behavior and needs.
• Marketing content and campaigns for sales.
• Sales insights and analytics.
• Lead management with Einstein Artificial Intelligence: Use intelligent scoring models
to convert key leads faster by focusing on leads with the highest propensity to buy,
engaging them at the right time, and identifying the marketing efforts that resulted in
the highest ROI.
• Account-Based Marketing: Use artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to identify
accounts with a high propensity to buy. Then use buyer and account data to identify key
account pipelines and focus teams on delivering 1:1 personalized experiences for high-
value segments.
• Demand generation campaigns and journeys.
• Lifecycle Marketing (upsell/cross-sell).
• Adoption marketing.

VENDOR PROFILES
Artificial intelligence and across leads, contacts, accounts, and

machine learning opportunities, ensuring that sales teams
never miss an opportunity.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement • Marketing teams also have access to
allows marketers to to leverage predictive the same visibility, allowing them to
AI in the following ways: target key accounts for cross-selling or
• Generative AI. upselling opportunities based on the
Marketing Cloud Account • Create email body copy and subject lines. deals and purchase history.
Engagement • Create forms and landing pages.
415 Mission Street • Create intelligent campaigns. Collaboration and workflow
San Francisco, CA 94105 • Predictive AI.
T: 800-NO-SOFTWARE • Lead/account scoring. • The Customer 360 Platform helps B2B
Salesforce.com • Automatic campaign optimization. teams capture leads, track activities and
• Send time optimization. behavior, nurture and qualify leads, and
• Understand the frequency with which work as a more aligned marketing and
prospects are being emailed. sales team.
• Create predictive reporting models. • Account Engagement’s Slack app
promotes transparency across teams by
Analytics and reporting allowing marketing to quickly notify sales
and service when prospects interact
• The Salesforce Customer 360 platform with high-value content and provide next
provides a comprehensive view of the best actions.
customer, enabling marketing and sales • With Engagement Studio, marketers have
teams to drive demand. access to a simple and intuitive canvas
• With the help of Einstein for Marketing, to build out automated and intelligent
sales teams can leverage scores nurturing programs that adjust based
and insights to personalize their on who a prospect is, the actions they
conversations and focus on the products perform, and the likelihood to convert
that customers are most likely to and purchase.
purchase. • Users can quickly respond to change and
• With Salesforce Account Engagement’s efficiently make adjustments to their
B2B Marketing Analytics, teams can marketing workflows and assets.
analyze customer engagement through • This solution is fully integrated with
pre-built dashboards that measure Salesforce CRM workflows, allowing the
engagement patterns, pipeline growth marketing and sales team to work in
and return on investment for marketing • tandem to convert leads and accounts to
initiatives. These insights help teams customers.
understand how their engagement
strategy, content, and collaboration are Third-party integrations
resonating with both new prospects and
existing customers. • AppExchange is an enterprise cloud
• By using the B2BMA Account-Based marketplace that offers ready-to-
Marketing dashboard, marketers can install apps, solutions, and consultants
identify and target key accounts, both to extend Salesforce into various
existing and new, based on their ideal departments.
customer profile. This allows them to • Important partners include Zoom
prioritize campaigns and segments for for integrating webinars, 6Sense and
demand generation. Demandbase for ABM capabilities,
• The Engagement History dashboards, Cvent for event management, and
integrated within the CRM, provide sales Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn for lead
teams with valuable insights to identify generation.
buying signals and tailor their outreach • Account Engagement admins can set up
accordingly. These insights are available a Marketing App Extension for third-

VENDOR PROFILES
party apps to collect prospect data and • Premium: $15000 USD/month

specify the activity type to capture. • Help and Training Portal: Customers
• Salesforce has a large ecosystem of have access to knowledge articles,
partners, including agencies, service guided automated journeys, and online
providers and software developers, who webinars that can be accessed on
deliver services and custom solutions. demand.
• Account Engagement APIs allow users • The Trailhead platform helps customers
Marketing Cloud Account to extend functionality and automate learn in-demand skills and earn resume-
Engagement workflows, including working with worthy credentials. Certifications are
415 Mission Street objects like campaigns, opportunities, also available at an additional cost.
San Francisco, CA 94105 and prospects, and importing and • The Trailblazer Community consists of
T: 800-NO-SOFTWARE exporting large amounts of data. over 11 million customer Trailblazers
Salesforce.com and 1,300 community groups across 90
Pricing and support countries.
• All customers have access to Success
• Customers must commit to an annual Plans. The Standard Success Plan is
contract. included with all Salesforce products and
• Four editions are available: Account provides self-guided resources to help
Engagement Growth, Account customers achieve their goals. Premier
Engagement Plus, Account Engagement Support is included with the Account
Advanced, and Account Engagement Engagement Premium edition and can
Premium. Base editions include 10,000 be added at an additional cost for other
or 75,000 contacts (depending on the editions. Premier Support includes
edition) and more contacts are available expert coaching, specialized guidance,
at an additional cost. 24/7 technical phone support and
• Growth Edition: $1250 USD/month business value/technical health reviews.
• Plus: $2750 USD/month
• Advanced: $4400 USD/month

VENDOR PROFILES
Target customer
• Small to medium-sized enterprises, typically with a headcount between 100 and 2,500
full-time employees and a marketing organization of 5 to 15 people. Serving primarily
SugarCRM
B2B customers across a variety of industries with strong experience in software,
548 Market St PMB 59423
manufacturing, professional and financial services and recruitment.
San Francisco, CA 94104-5401
T: (877) 842-7276
sugarcrm.com Company overview
• 500+ employees.
Key customers • Founded in 2004.
• SugarCRM Inc. acquired Salesfusion in May 2019, which was rebranded as Sugar
Moorepay
Market, the integrated marketing automation solution part of the SugarCRM platform.
Ogilvy
• SugarCRM acquired Node Inc. in August 2020 to gain predictive customer intelligence
Seco Tools
to democratize AI, creating a new brand, SugarPredict. Deal terms weren’t disclosed.
SiteLock
• Office locations include Cupertino, CA; Denver, CO; Raleigh, NC; London, England;
The Adecco Group
Munich, Germany; Craiova, Romania; Novi Sad, Serbia; and Sydney, Australia.
The Home Store
Product overview
Key executives
• Sugar Market is a multichannel marketing automation platform that allows users
Craig Charlton,
to connect and engage with customers wherever they happen to be. A cloud-based
solution, it is pre-integrated into nine leading sales automation solutions, including Sugar
Clare Dorrian, Serve, Sugar Sell, Advanced, Premier and Enterprise.
Christian Wettre, Use cases
SVP and GM, Sugar Platform
• Develop landing pages and forms: Inbound marketing tools include page and form
Clint Oram, Chief Strategy
builders with templates based on best practices. Website SEO auditing tools can
Officer and Co-Founder
compare users’ websites to their competition.
• Deliver typical drip and nurture campaigns or take actions based on a prospect’s
behavior or actions. Market supports conditional logic, including the ability to jump
steps between nurture campaigns or within a campaign.
• Lead scoring: Measure engagement and prioritize sales outreach with lead intelligence
scoring based on demographics and engagement data. Scoring can be based on any
behavior tracked by Market, as well as any data field replicated from the CRM.
• Lead predictive scoring: Market features an embedded AI engine that offers lead scoring
predictions based on historical lead and contact analysis.
• Account-based marketing: Includes account scoring, account engagement and reporting.
• Email: Market offers templates, drag-and-drop builders, or a code-your-own option that
offers lots of flexibility. Use sender reputation management and deliverability testing
features to ensure it’s being received.
• Events: Create and manage both online and offline events on the same platform. The
events management module integrates with the leading virtual webinar platforms:
WebEx and Go-To-Webinar.
• Social media: Social media management capabilities to schedule posts, manage accounts
and monitor brand reputation across social media platforms.

Sugar Market uses AI and ML for the following purposes:

VENDOR PROFILES
Analytics and reporting sales via CRM integrations. Sales reps

• Customizable report writer provides can be alerted to nurture steps and then
the most highly-requested reports as collaborate with marketing from within
SugarCRM standard. the Market integrated view within their
548 Market St PMB 59423 • Interactive dashboards allow users to CRM lead record.
San Francisco, CA 94104-5401 build and source data from marketing • Market’s integration with all major CRMs
T: (877) 842-7276 initiatives. Colorful charts and a wide via an open API gives sales one-click
www.sugarcrm.com array of filters offer flexibility to create access to all relevant lead information, as
optimal viewing experiences to review well as the ability to route leads back to
data more easily. All dashboards are marketing if they aren’t ready to convert.
mobile responsive. Sales can also select pre-built campaign
• Pull from any data set — marketing emails within Market from the CRM and
campaigns, forms, lead scores, and CRM send them to their contacts.
value — to track ROI and success metrics
specific to business objectives. Third-party integrations
• Market has a Mass Update Contacts • Native, bi-directional integration with
function that references reports, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365,
allowing customers to use complex Infor CRM, Oracle NetSuite, Sugar
criteria when segmenting their contacts Sell, Sugar Enterprise, Sage CRM and
to perform mass updates. All new Bullhorn.
Market customers have their database • Market also comes with embedded
automatically verified via third-party productivity and data quality tools
validation tools which removes any including BriteVerify, Litmus, Unsplash,
mistyped or invalid email addresses. WebEx, and Go-to-Meeting.
• Actionable insights are accessible to the • Also offers Oktopost for social media
entire organization and enable users to: management and amplification for an
• Monitor trends through custom additional cost.
interactive dashboards.
• Reveal new depths of data by slicing Pricing and support
and dicing reports. • An annual contract is required.
• Utilize the visualization engine to • A free trial is available.
create sharable charts, dashboards • Pricing is based on the number of
and reports across the organization. contacts and starts at $1,000/month for
10k contacts. Additional contacts are
Collaboration and workflow available starting at $150/month per 10k
management contacts.
• Both predictive and traditional lead • Sugar Market Services packages provide
scoring allow users to automatically onboarding and ongoing monthly
assign scores to leads based on actions support at one affordable fee. Three
that are valuable to business goals. packages are available at Advisor,
Market’s lead scoring capabilities Partnership, and Strategic levels to fit
allow for unlimited scoring profiles varying company needs and start at
and indefinite scoring time frames, $4,500 per year.
including firmographic and demographic • Additional services, including a
information, purchase details, intent and dedicated IP and email deliverability
more. services, as well as project-based
• As prospects are acquired, users can options, are also available upon request.
gauge their readiness to buy based on
their score and pass prioritized leads to

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M A R T E C H I N T EL L I G E N CE R E P O R T

Get the report

Scope and methodology......................................................................................... 3 AI and machine learning...................................................................................13

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 2 https://martech.org

Scope and methodology

• What factors are driving the use of AI-powered MAPs?

Writer, Editor and Analyst:

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 3 https://martech.org

AI-powered marketing automation

Spending on software for marketing automation

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 4 https://martech.org

The replacement wave

Figure 2: Top five martech replacements

2020 2021 2022 2023

Source: MarTech Replacement Survey 2023, conducted by Third Door Media

The personalization imperative

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 5 https://martech.org

Figure 3: Buyers’ expectations are high

Customers who agree with the following 2020 2022

The experience a company 80% I feel an emotional 53%

I expect companies to 66% I expect oﬀers to 52%

I expect companies to 56% Most companies treat 65%

Source: Salesforce State of the Connected Customer, 5th edition

Advanced audience segmentation 33%

Source: The State of CX 2022, LXA

Marketing automation platforms for ABM

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 6 https://martech.org

Big mergers are done;

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 7 https://martech.org

Figure 5: A timeline of developments in the MAP market

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 8 https://martech.org

AI-powered MAP overview

• Dynamic content generation (email, SMS, landing pages and/or website);

Dynamic content creation and delivery, sometimes powered by AI

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 9 https://martech.org

Predictive analytics driven by AI and ML

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 10 https://martech.org

Social/lead profile integration

Native CRM integration

Third-party software connectivity

App marketplaces can be an important area of differentiation for vendors. Cultivating

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 11 https://martech.org

Table 1: Select marketing automation platform features

Lead management capabilities

Acoustic 4 4 8 4 MMS, WhatsApp, mobile push, web forms

Acquia 4 4 8 4 push notificiations, landing pages, web push

ActiveCampaign 4 4 4 4 landing pages

Dynamic content capabilities

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 12 https://martech.org

AI and machine learning

The benefits of marketing automation

• Increased marketing efficiency. Automating time-consuming, manual tasks around content

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 13 https://martech.org

Recommended steps to making an

Step one: Do you need a marketing automation platform?

Use the following questions as a guideline to determine the answer.

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 14 https://martech.org

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 15 https://martech.org

Step two: Identify and contact appropriate vendors

Step three: Scheduling the demo

• How easy is the platform to use?

Other questions to ask each vendor include:

4 How easy is it to integrate this software into my organization?

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. 16 https://martech.org