The State of Martech Report 2024

Now in its fifth year, The State of Martech research is still the only dedicated study into the Martech industry that is carried out in partnership between a commercial practitioner, Clevertouch Consulting, and an academic research body, the University of Southampton Business School, for increased reliability and validity in both design and insights.

This year's report has been structured into seven sections that emerged from the survey data:

  • Budgets & Growth: Strong investment ambitions meet a focus on optimisation
  • Martech Migrations: The pace of platform migration and the drivers for doing so
  • Love it or Loathe it: Martech's value felt far and wide
  • Operating Models: Internal conundrums and the e(x)ternal search for the right external partner
  • Hyper-personalisation: Closing the gap on personalisation aspirations and reality
  • Revenue Rules: The rise of revenue-centric marketing
  • Mission Critical Martech: A strategic business asset 

Within each topic area we have compiled the key findings, headline statistics and strategic implications for your Martech strategy.

Download The State of Martech 2024 Report

Leading research into how marketers are using Martech

Love it or Loathe it

How satisfied are organisations with their martech? This section illustrates how martech platform owners and wider business stakeholders feel about martech. It also takes a look at the perceived benefits of marketing technology and what these perceptions mean for your marketing strategy.

 

 

Martech Migrations

Martech migrations are when organisations choose to move from one platform to another. The survey revealed a whole range of data points illustrating different migration tendencies, including over the last three years and plans for the next three years, and this section explores whether companies are accelerating or slowing down their migration plans.

Hyper-personalisation

One key aim of the survey was to discover the most popular ways campaigns are being carried out by marketers. Hyper-personalisation is an industry aspiration, but has remained out of reach for many. Has the market moved towards it? Or are companies still relying on or sticking to traditional campaigns?

Operating Models

For martech to achieve its purpose, it needs to have operational and financial support. This section focuses on the operational side and asks how organisations are using, or not using, internal and external resources. How confident are marketers in their team's ability to use martech? And when it comes to using a quality external partner, how easy are they to find?

Revenue Rules

In the past, marketing has often been separated from revenue-centric practices and KPIs, instead focusing on traditional lead generation. Is this changing? Here, the data paints a picture of how marketing is viewed in relation to being a strategic function to drive revenue.

Mission Critical Martech

As martech evolves, it is spreading across business operations and beyond just marketing. For this final section, the report brings together the survey data to ask whether martech has become a mission-critical business component. This includes showing how other departments are supported by the technology and where budgetary control rests.

Budgets & Growth

The last year has been a tough economic climate for businesses. In such environments, marketing budgets can often take a hit, despite the department’s importance for growth. In this section, the survey uncovers whether marketers are expecting investment increases on their 2023 level and in what areas: services, software and people. How does financial support compare to operational support?

"In our third year participating in the State of Martech annual report, our primary focus has remained steadfast: ensuring the reliability and validity of the data derived from its core source – the questionnaire. And the results do not disappoint either. Notable findings include the fact that we are in the era of Martech utility effectiveness with acquisitions of technology slowing down, coupled with a shift towards ‘capability to deploy’."

Professor Rob Angell, Director of the Southampton MBA

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