In May, Gartner – the influential research and advisory firm– released the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs. The report “defines the multichannel marketing hub (MMH) as a technology that orchestrates a company’s communications with and offers to customer segments across multiple channels.” The Houston Chronicle says these are “efficient and productive systems used by businesses to reach potential customers.” Both are right.
But if you’re reading on PostFunnel.com – you must know what these are. Most likely, you’re using one.
- Optimove Named Challenger on Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs
- Download a complimentary copy of the full report, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs 2020, to learn more
As always, one of the most insightful parts of the research is the “Market Overview”. It’s especially useful for marketers who want to know more about the direction in which the field of marketing technologies for B2C companies is going.
The heart of that chapter is the Market Trends, where they clearly state that marketing leaders are after “MMH vendors that demonstrate understanding of their business needs and provide strategic partnership across the product life cycle, backed by best-in-class functionality and performance.”
In other words, if you consider yourself a marketing leader – or at least an aspiring one – you need to be on that wagon ASAP.
Mostly because, as the research is emphasizing, customers are increasingly reacting negatively to what they call “irrelevant, undifferentiated messaging.” Which is what marketing teams may be sending out, if they’re not utilizing any multichannel marketing technologies.
Just how important that is? A whopping “90% of consumers found personalization appealing,” writes Neil Patel on his blog post “Why Understanding Your Customers is the Only Marketing Strategy You Need”. He adds that “80% said they’d be more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized approaches.”
But, while it’s increasingly crucial to reach your customers with personalized communications, most marketers still struggle with it to some degree. According the research, 58% find the task of onboarding MMH technology to be “a moderate or significant challenge”.
Maybe that’s why only about 1 in 3 respondents to Gartner’s 2019 Multichannel Marketing Survey said they use both an MMH and a mobile marketing platform. It requires a mature marketing team to put such tech at the heart of your communication efforts. Fittingly, more than 50% of what Gartner categorized as advanced, data-centric marketers use both types of platform.
The benefit, though, was never clearer, as “marketers using MMH solutions stand to make better business decisions”, per the report.
You won’t be surprised to hear that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are playing an increasingly critical part in helping marketers manage these complex tasks, at scale.
How, exactly? Well, “by unifying and steadily feeding customer data into AI/ML algorithms and propensity models, marketers can refine their delivery of real-time content and offer recommendations, and optimize those recommendations over time,” per the research. These capabilities are the true difference maker here.
Lastly, with GDPR (effective since May 2018), CCPA (Jan 2020), and other privacy regulations that emerge around the world, marketers need some automated, at-scale help with making sure they collect, store and use customer data properly. Some MMHs are also doing that.
Overall, between the challenges marketers face from highly-sensitive customer expectations on one hand, modern data regulations on another hand, and the acute need to utilize AI/ML in orchestrating messaging across a multitude of channels – it’s clear why leading marketers and Gartner as one, are treating Multichannel Marketing Hubs as a fundamental backbone for any growth-seeking business.