Judged by frequence of replacing martech applications, COVID-19 mightiness not person been the accelerant for integer translation contempt wide assumptions to the contrary.

That’s 1 cardinal takeaway from the 2023 MarTech Replacement Survey. Other cardinal findings include:

• Marketing automation was the astir replaced martech exertion for the 3rd consecutive year.
• 38% of each replacements were aimed astatine improving the lawsuit experience.
• The increasing usage of commercialized applications is accelerating the complaint of replacement.

This is based connected implicit 400 participating respondents.

Did COVID-19 accelerate integer transformation?

It has been wide assumed that 1 effect of the pandemic — and particularly of the initial, wide lockdown — was to marque not lone consumers but besides B2B buyers reliant connected integer channels to probe and execute purchases.

As adjacent digitally immature businesses sought to rise their online profiles and boost their integer capabilities, caller concern successful the martech stack was beforehand of mind. That has been the presumption astatine slightest and it’s plausible enough.

However, looking backmost present implicit 4 years of data, determination is crushed to question that conclusion. Our 2020 survey, which asked astir replacements successful 2019 — i.e. pre-pandemic — shows a overmuch greater frequence of replacement crossed each large categories. The 2021 survey reflects a crisp alteration successful replacements and that slower complaint has been consistently reflected by the surveys for consequent years.

To instrumentality conscionable 2 examples:

• 41% of respondents reported replacing their CMS successful 2019 (as seen successful the 2020 survey), a fig that has steadily dwindled to conscionable 11% successful the caller survey.
• 40% of respondents reported replacing their selling automation solution successful 2019. The percent has been successful the debased twenties ever since.

Marketing automation remains the astir replaced

Although the percent of selling automation replacements has shrunk, it consistently remains the astir replaced solution — seemingly for a assortment of reasons. We asked selected survey respondents the crushed for the switch. Here are 2 wholly antithetic reasons, each of which marque sense:

“We were consolidating CRMs due to the fact that of a merger and the selling automation instrumentality we selected we felt would amended integrate [with our caller stack]. The large challenges were mapping fields to the caller instrumentality that we had successful the aged 1 and replicating the workflow to support selling programs running.”

“We outgrew our ESP wanting to physique much analyzable campaigns and integrate the assemblage selections with the campaigns. We wanted to way lawsuit behaviors connected and offline and physique campaigns astir the lawsuit alternatively than astir the product. We wanted to easy acceptable up cross-channel campaigns based connected lawsuit behaviors.”

Reasons for the replacements

This portion of the survey has remained mostly accordant implicit the years we’ve conducted it. Better features and amended integrations (at slightest for commercialized applications) stay cardinal drivers and, of course, outgo is simply a origin excessively — though it has ne'er been fig one.

It’s notable that commercialized applications replaced different commercialized applications 70% of the time. Very fewer respondents reported replacing a homegrown app with different homegrown app; adjacent less replaced a commercialized app with a homegrown app (6% and 5% respectively).

Among different things, this surely reflects a dependable migration from on-prem to SAAS solutions and the cloud.

We person answers to different questions too

Who champions martech replacements? Does replacing a solution entail replacing the squad that utilized the outgoing solution? How often are solutions replaced? We person answers to these and different questions and a wealthiness of information to dive into, positive firmographic information connected our respondents.

Get the afloat survey, escaped and ungated, right here.

2023 MarTech Replacement Survey Results

Find retired which martech solutions were being replaced implicit the past twelvemonth — and why.