On-Demand Is In Demand within Gartner Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management

Research firm Gartner has released its 2009 Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management (MCM), a market that has seen growth this year, aided by a more demanding economy. More and more marketers are moving beyond one-channel, one-way, mass-marketed campaigns, to a multichannel strategy. However, marketing today is still largely unautomated and therefore, riddled with inefficiencies, says Adam Sarner, research director at Gartner and author of the report. "There's still clunkiness out there for campaign management," he says. Because of that, growth in the space mostly comes from the midmarket, on-demand players that are focused on, as Sarner describes, the "consumerization of IT," which focuses on accessibility to the math, affordability, ease of use, and improved user interfaces, including better visualization technology.

Despite the economic downturn, Sarner says multichannel campaign management is here to stay. "There's been a mantra for the past three years about showing the value of marketing costs," he says. "There's been a lot of waste, there's been a lot of ‘I have no idea.' if this isn't working." What the MCM vendors are offering is the ability to provide hard metrics in a fraction of the time. With the increasing acceptability of the software-as-a-service model, marketers can swipe a credit card, minimize potentially confusing discussions with the technology department and get started. "It's much better than Excel, guessing and throwing things over the wall and seeing if sales bites," Sarner says.

For the most part, no surprises or big leaps occurred this year, primarily because, Sarner explains, development in this space is inclined toward a natural progression. Oracle PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) were the only two vendors to drop off this year's quadrant, having not met the minimum criteria to be included. Marketo was a new addition to the list. Sarner anticipates continued growth, with expectations that Portrait Software, with its strong focus on analytics, and Microsoft's efforts in enhancing marketing functionality in its CRM offerings, put these two vendors as strong contenders for next year's Magic Quadrant.

The shift toward a more "friendly" software has become apparent. Established vendors like SAP are exploring new, sexier applications of their technology, Sarner says. The company is exploring with more dashboards, widgets, even integrating games like putting PacMan. "The access to the complexity is something they all know they need to work on because that's very much a part of the selection process."

Leaders:
Consistently better in overall campaign management performance, Gartner says, the same four leaders continue to dominate the space. However, vendors are feeling the pressure from niche players that offer more tempting value propositions with lower costs, growing capabilities, and on-demand solutions.

• Oracle (Siebel);
• Teradata;
• SAS; and
• Unica.

Challengers:
Challengers are enhancing their campaign management capabilities as they build off of their existing focus on business applications. Campaign management, Gartner says, is an "opportunity to increase revenue and retention in their installed bases." They are responding to the customer's demands, rather than leading the space with visionary technology.

• Aprimo; and
• SAP.

Visionaries:
As the category suggests, visionaries lead the campaign management market in advanced and emerging technologies. While their forward-looking roadmap shows excellent promise, Gartner is concerned that they may lack the necessary resources to support the vision in the short term.

• ATG

Niche Players:
These vendors address specific functionalities, processes, geographies, or industries. Because of this, they may lack certain critical campaign management capabilities, namely advanced analytics or sufficient resources to support a robust marketing strategy.

• Alterian;
• Eloqua;
• Responsys;
• Infor CRM Epiphany (moved from Challenger position in the 2008 Magic Quadrant);
• Market2Lead;
• Marketo;
• Neolane;
• RightNow; and
• SmartFocus.

Sarner is confident that the MCCM market will continue to grow regardless of whether the economy is good or bad. With reduced budgets, companies aren't scrapping the marketing process, rather, they're being smarter and demanding applications to get them there. "I expect more dots next year," Sarner says. "This is not a mature market. The new infusion of growth [will be from] these online channels and capabilities."

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