Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing

Hubs
Published: 18 April 2019 ID: G00361358

Analyst(s): Noah Elkin, Adam Sarner, Benjamin Bloom, Joseph Enever, Colin Reid

Marketers see personalization as key to multichannel marketing success. In

response, MMH vendors are facilitating unified customer profiles,
strengthening machine learning and delivering insights to drive relevant
interactions in real time. Use this research to evaluate effective MMH
solutions.

Market Definition/Description
Gartner defines the multichannel marketing hub (MMH) as a technology that orchestrates a
company’s communications with and offers to customer segments across multiple channels. These
include websites, mobile, social, direct mail, call centers, paid media and email. MMH capabilities
also may extend to integrating marketing offers/leads with sales for execution in both B2B and B2C
environments.

Further defined:

■ Basic multichannel marketing includes functionality for segmentation, campaign and message
creation, campaign workflow, and campaign and message execution.
■ Advanced analytics functionality enables customer-level data and analysis as well as
modeling such as predictive analytics, journey analytics and customer profile management.
■ Advanced execution functionality includes personalization, content management, event
triggering and real-time offer management in both inbound and outbound environments.
■ Digital marketing capability, as part of an integrated multichannel marketing solution, includes
functionality for programmatic advertising, mobile and social marketing, and web and email
marketing. Digital marketing extends the marketing process through channels such as the web,
email, video, mobile and social applications, point-of-sale terminals, digital signage, kiosks, and
the Internet of Things (IoT).
 Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs

Source: Gartner (April 2019)

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Adobe
Adobe is in the Leaders quadrant. The company offers a broad suite of marketing applications in
Adobe Campaign, its cloud-based multichannel marketing hub solution. Adobe Campaign unites

Page 2 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 content creation and data analytics with cross-channel execution capabilities. It leverages access to
a common set of audience data that users can share and enrich across other Adobe applications
within Adobe Experience Cloud. It attracts global enterprises and upper-midmarket organizations
across a range of industries. B2C marketers seeking a marketing hub that includes native
integration with analytics, advertising and creative applications should consider Adobe.

Strengths

■ Comprehensive suite: By itself, Adobe Campaign provides robust capabilities in an intuitive

interface that enables marketers to orchestrate complex programs across channels. Its value
deepens when integrated with other Adobe products, including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target,
Adobe Advertising Cloud and Adobe Experience Manager.
■ Embedded intelligence: Sensei, Adobe’s array of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and services, is
embedded across its product line, from smart content tagging to media budget optimization.
Sensei powers churn predictions, attribution, predictive email imagery and predictive subject
line optimization within Campaign. Features such as predictive email send times and predictive
list fatigue are on the 2019 roadmap.
■ Data flexibility: Adobe continues to expand support for appending external data to customer
profiles for more effective targeting and engagement. Efforts like Adobe’s Experience Data
Model (XDM) and its Open Data Initiative alliance with Microsoft and SAP underscore the
company’s drive toward enterprise data interoperability.

Cautions

■ Cost and complexity: Although Adobe’s offering is comprehensive, several references noted
that Adobe deployments can be expensive relative to those of its competitors. Implementation
complexity is another related challenge, often requiring customers to leverage professional
services teams to support an implementation — further raising costs.
■ Version disparities: Clients note growing disparities between Adobe’s client/server Campaign
Classic solution and its cloud-based Campaign Standard. Buyers should work closely with
Adobe to determine the best version for their requirements as well as any recommended
upgrade paths.
■ Portfolio rationalization: In 2018, Adobe made two major acquisitions — marketing
automation provider Marketo and digital commerce platform Magento — that expand its
Experience Cloud portfolio. Positioning and use cases are still coming into focus as Adobe
integrates these solutions. Buyers with B2B sales requirements should be vigilant about
determining the right fit for their needs.

AgilOne
AgilOne is in the Niche Players quadrant. Its solution supports B2C marketers with mandates to
unify omnichannel data into a single customer view via robust identity resolution, analytics and
machine learning (ML). The company positions its multichannel marketing hub as a customer data

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 3 of 35

 platform (CDP) capable of delivering against diverse sets of customer interactions, enabling
audience insight and orchestrating engagement for marketing and customer-facing teams. Key
analytics improvements planned for 2019 include cohort analysis and deeper visualizations in
Metrics+ reporting, plus offline conversion connectors to Facebook, Google and other systems, to
improve attribution analyses and model accuracy. B2C marketers, particularly in retail, with robust
first-party data seeking to create and connect unified profiles, decisions and engagements should
consider AgilOne.

Strengths

■ Customer profile management: AgilOne’s improved UI, deeper machine learning capabilities
and enhanced identity resolution power its 360 Profile module to deliver greater access to
multichannel customer attributes and behaviors. Client references find substantial value in these
capabilities, citing an ability to segment, score and execute campaigns using first-party data by
connecting AgilOne into their retail point of sale (POS), customer service and call center
datasets.
■ Predictive capabilities: AgilOne creates segments, serves up content and recommends offers
based on machine learning algorithms that predict which customers are likely to respond or
churn. AgilOne customers give the company high marks for these predictive strengths,
including attribution. AgilOne plans to expand the systems that can leverage customer
attributes and events. For example, marketers today can use AgilOne data in external real-time
campaign management and execution solutions, and AgilOne will continue to increase the
reach and utility of the platform and its predictive capabilities.
■ Advanced analytics: AgilOne’s CDP helps marketers leverage out-of-the-box
recommendations, clustering and predictive modeling. It also offers support for business
intelligence and data science teams to create and operationalize their own models within the
platform.

Cautions

■ Reliance on partner integrations: AgilOne is heavily dependent on partner integrations and

API connectors for the execution of personalization and testing. Marketers with complex cross-
channel A/B/n testing needs reported using other solutions in conjunction with AgilOne.
■ B2C emphasis: AgilOne pursues a variety of industries as clients. However, its use cases and
functionalities to address marketer needs beyond direct-to-consumer businesses are still
advancing. AgilOne has developed prebuilt data models, event categories and customer
attributes that support a growing range of industries out of the box, including retail, travel and
subscription-based B2C companies.
■ Customer service: Client references gave AgilOne’s implementation experiences and customer
success teams mixed reviews. Whereas some references were pleased with the partnership
from AgilOne’s customer success and account teams, others felt underprepared for
deployment, considering the complexity of adopting AgilOne. Once up and running, they noted
unreliable timing of product updates and a desire for client-facing services teams to be more
proactive.

Page 4 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 Cheetah Digital
Cheetah Digital is in the Niche Players quadrant. The company’s 2018 acquisition of Stellar Loyalty,
a SaaS-based loyalty solution now rebranded as Cheetah Loyalty, yielded enhancements to its
Marketing Suite offering, including its big data architecture and real-time customer data
management capabilities. It also brought the addition of mobile wallet and native mobile app
development functionality. The acquisition lays a strong foundation for making a CDP core to
Cheetah Digital’s offering. Enterprise B2C marketers in the retail, media and financial services
verticals seeking to unify customer data for cross-channel execution should consider Cheetah
Digital’s Marketing Suite.

Strengths

■ Data management capabilities: Cheetah Digital’s Marketing Suite is fueled by a customer data
profile that combines demographic, transactional and customer event data. The addition of
Stellar Loyalty brought enhanced customer profile management and data ingestion capabilities,
enabling sophisticated real-time customer segmentation, such as the identification of lookalike
customers, and individualized campaign execution.
■ Extensive professional services: Nearly half of Cheetah Digital’s staff is dedicated to
professional services, a unique emphasis in this market. References cited the company’s
breadth of services and its dedication to customer success as key reasons for selecting
Cheetah Digital.
■ Ease of use: The latest version of Marketing Suite earned positive comments from references
for ease of use. They noted a straightforward process to maximize segmentation and
automation capabilities, accelerating time to value.

Cautions

■ Platform in transition: Cheetah Digital has a new executive team with a fresh vision for the
company. However, many of the most promising campaign workflow, reporting and automation
capabilities, and machine learning functionality remain on the roadmap for release later this
year.
■ Lagging reporting capabilities: Cheetah Digital invested in reporting dashboard upgrades, and
the Stellar Loyalty acquisition supports more advanced platform analytics. However, the impact
of these improvements is minimal, as references continued to express a desire for more robust
reporting and dashboarding functionality.
■ Market fit: Cheetah Digital continues to derive marketplace visibility from the company’s roots
in email marketing rather than from broader multichannel capabilities in its Marketing Suite.
Marketers considering Cheetah Digital should examine the full breadth of the company’s
offering and roadmap against their own multichannel marketing needs.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 5 of 35

 Emarsys
Emarsys is in the Visionaries quadrant. A common data, analytics and omnichannel platform
developed in-house at Emarsys provides the foundation for the company’s Marketing Platform. Its
suite offers email, web, mobile, SMS, social and direct mail personalization capabilities, and
activates CRM audiences for targeting on Facebook and Google. The company targets enterprise
and midmarket organizations across retail, e-commerce, and travel and hospitality verticals.
Marketing leaders seeking strong, vertical-specific expertise and personalization capabilities for
email, web and mobile marketing initiatives should consider Emarsys.

Strengths

■ Autogenerating campaigns: In October 2018, Emarsys launched a new capability that

automatically generates multistep, multiwave journey flows based on defined business
objectives. Marketers can generate new campaigns from recommended tactics, such as cart
abandonment or back-in-stock messaging, reducing setup time and increasing time to value.
■ Dynamic content: Dynamic content blocks support Emarsys’ personalization templates,
enabling greater automation and on-the-fly content delivery across channels. This capability is
ideal for marketers seeking to streamline productivity when creating personalized marketing
campaigns.
■ Independence: Whereas many multichannel marketing hub providers built their solutions by
way of acquisitions, the Emarsys platform is largely engineered from the ground up, potentially
reducing technical debt and architectural discrepancies.

Cautions

■ Mobile limitations: While Emarsys excels at email marketing and continues to expand its web
capabilities, its mobile marketing capabilities are immature. Marketers considering Emarsys
should carefully evaluate the company’s ability to meet their mobile marketing needs, especially
given mobile’s continued importance as a connective channel across online and offline
interactions.
■ Limited industry scope: Emarsys has limited visibility outside its target vertical markets,
ranking in the bottom half of vendors in terms of overall consideration by all clients surveyed.
Brands in industries outside retail, digital commerce, and travel and hospitality considering
Emarsys should exercise additional scrutiny of the company’s capabilities.
■ Vendor responsiveness: Some Gartner clients noted gaps in communication from Emarsys
and expressed a wish for greater responsiveness around problem-solving support.

Emarsys did not respond to requests for supplemental information. Therefore, Gartner analysis is
based on other credible sources, including public information and discussions with Gartner clients
that use Emarsys products/solutions.

Page 6 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 Episerver
Episerver is in the Niche Players quadrant. The Episerver Digital Experience Cloud provides all-in-
one digital commerce, content management and AI-driven multichannel marketing capabilities.
Episerver serves organizations across multiple verticals including retail, healthcare, IT services and
software, financial services, and utilities. In September 2018, Insight Venture Partners, a global
private equity firm that focuses on high-growth technology sector investments, acquired Episerver.
Marketers in midsize to large businesses seeking a unified customer view and proficient solution for
personalized campaign management, and first-party data collection and activation should consider
Episerver.

Strengths

■ Personalization: Episerver’s Intelligent Campaigns solution allows personalized multichannel

marketing campaigns and event-based triggers driven by comprehensive first-party data
collected from on-site behaviors. Its multichannel campaign manager offers the ability to push
lists to third-party applications, such as direct mail or social advertising.
■ Machine learning product recommendations: Episerver Reach, launched in 2018, drives real-
time product recommendations using machine learning to personalize email messages.
Dynamic content within customer emails can update in real time, driven by customer signals at
the individual level.
■ Data and analytics: References praised Episerver’s data and analytics capabilities, particularly
the company’s intelligence analytics, which deliver granular tracking, advanced segmentation
and enrichment of visitor profiles with third-party data sources. Episerver customers also gave
its attribution and predictive modeling capabilities above-average scores.

Cautions

■ Configuration challenges: Intelligent Campaigns’ internal integration capabilities lag, with

references citing a complex process for configuring campaigns, recommendations and
Episerver CMS. Clients reported technical support lags that can exacerbate configuration
issues.
■ Omnichannel activation: Intelligent Campaigns requires list downloads for direct mail services
and Facebook ads, affecting automation and workflow. The company plans to further develop
its social platform connectivity in 2019, replacing Intelligent Campaigns’ list exports with native
integrations to Facebook Audience Manager. It also plans to offer WhatsApp Messenger and
web push channels, as well as connections to Facebook Leads.
■ Reporting: References indicated a desire for stronger base-level reporting, noting that
advanced reporting requires custom project work. References gave Episerver below-average
ratings for its marketing dashboard functionality, which Episerver hopes to mitigate with its
investment in Power BI-powered dashboards.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 7 of 35

 Evergage
Evergage is in the Visionaries quadrant. The company delivers personalized content across
marketing, digital commerce and customer experience use cases for B2C and B2B clients.
Evergage 1, its multichannel marketing hub solution, creates unified visitor, customer and account
profiles. Evergage’s customer data platform manages these profiles, enriching them by collecting
and analyzing first- and third-party data, including granular engagement and behavioral metrics. The
company primarily serves retail, technology and financial services brands. Marketing leaders with a
mandate to unify customer data and personalize customer interactions should consider Evergage.

Strengths

■ Personalization depth: At the heart of Evergage 1 is a decision engine that enables a mix of
rule-based and algorithmic options for testing and targeting, as well as product and content
recommendations. Marketers have extensive options to mix and match rules, algorithms, tactics
and channels to deliver relevant campaigns across channels.
■ Intuitive user experience: Evergage is easy for end users without technical expertise to use, a
characteristic client references cited as enabling greater adaptability to customer needs.
■ Responsive approach: References praised Evergage’s customer service and support. They
described the company as a responsive, strategic partner that helps them maximize the
solution’s capabilities.

Cautions

■ Nontraditional campaign design: Evergage designs multistep, multiwave campaigns using

parameterization, an approach that differs starkly from the journey design canvasses utilized by
most other vendors in the market. Marketers must evaluate whether Evergage’s unique
approach aligns with their multichannel marketing hub needs and expectations.
■ Best-of-breed orientation: Evergage typically executes email and other digital marketing
channels through integration with existing tools. Marketers should examine the capabilities of
the Evergage Gears integration framework and evaluate how the offering aligns with their
martech strategy.
■ Growing pains: Some client reference cited the rollout of new features without adequate
documentation as a symptom of the company’s growing pains.

IBM
IBM is in the Leaders quadrant, strengthened by the breadth of its Watson Marketing portfolio.
Watson Campaign Automation (WCA) is IBM’s primary solution for multichannel campaign
orchestration. It includes lead management and scoring capabilities designed for B2B marketing
use cases. WCA offers a growing array of AI-enabled capabilities, from personalized content
recommendations to identification of best-performing journeys. In December 2018, IBM announced
its plan to focus exclusively on SaaS delivery and sell IBM Campaign, its on-premises marketing
automation solution, to HCL Technologies. Enterprise B2B and B2C marketers seeking strong

Page 8 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 customer segmentation, extensive marketing functionality and AI-driven insights should consider
IBM.

Strengths

■ Extensive AI functionality: IBM’s embedded AI capabilities help surface customer insights,

make content and next-best-action recommendations, and pinpoint customer experience (CX)
breakdowns. Its 2019 roadmap includes significant AI investments for multichannel marketing,
including AI-powered anomaly detection, ad bid optimization and additional personalization
functionality.
■ Reporting and analytics: IBM WCA offers extensive reporting options, including the ability to
use voice-based queries to Watson to retrieve results. Client references linked WCA’s
performance insights to measurably improved scores for IBM’s web analytics capabilities. In
2019, IBM plans enhancements to Watson Marketing’s customer journey analytics capabilities
with predictive journeys.
■ Platform flexibility: IBM’s solution supports both B2C and B2B use cases, enabling B2B
marketers to score leads from an extensive set of variables, including behavioral data drawn
from its Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX). It offers a large library of out-of-the-box triggers
across email, web, mobile and social channels, as well as triggers driven by customer profile
changes. All triggers can operate in real time or on a preset delay.

Cautions

■ Portfolio complexity: IBM’s multichannel marketing offerings span multiple products, including
Watson Content Hub, Watson Customer Experience Analytics, Media Optimizer and Weather
Company Data Packages, which can cause confusion with prospects and customers. Marketing
buyers should seek clarity on IBM’s exact solution set that meets their needs.
■ Deployment: Client references report long deployment times and below-average ease of
deployment. They also noted complicated solution updates, particularly with larger
implementations.
■ Integration challenges: Despite the addition of at least 40 new endpoints in IBM’s UBX in
2018, client references reported below-average ease in integrating IBM’s solution with other
components in their technology stack.

In April 2019, IBM announced that it intends to sell its Watson Campaign Automation platform and
other SaaS-based marketing assets to Centerbridge Partners, a private equity firm.

Listrak
Listrak is in the Niche Players quadrant. Its solution offers multichannel marketing capabilities
centered on leveraging data and insights to enable campaign orchestration, personalized
engagement and revenue optimization. The Listrak platform consists of a customer profile
management module, personalization engine, cross-channel orchestration, conversion rate

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 9 of 35

 optimization and analytics. Listrak enables data-driven insights about audience behavior and
preferences to drive dynamic content and personalized offers across channels. The company
primarily serves the retail, e-commerce and direct-to-consumer brand industries. B2C marketers
seeking a multichannel marketing hub focused on customer segmentation and conversion should
consider Listrak.

Strengths

■ Personalization focus: Listrak excels with personalized content by analyzing individual-level

consumer behaviors and purchase history to select and deliver relevant offers. By evaluating
affinities-based transactions, previous marketing engagements and profile attributes, Listrak
enables marketing teams to improve the relevance of messages and landing pages with rule-
based and algorithmic approaches.
■ Audience exploration: Listrak CRM supports brands that lack a unified customer database or
analytics platform. The solution enables multidimensional segmentation, predictive analytics
and data exploration to analyze behaviors for optimized audience selection and prediction
delivery that maximizes lifetime value.
■ Implementation and support: Client references praised Listrak’s proactive account
management and customer success approach as driving easy platform deployment and the
company’s reputation as a valued partner.

Cautions

■ Focus on planned orchestration: Despite application of AI in some parts of the product,

Listrak’s offering is better-suited to rule-based orchestration targeting a specific audience
segment. Listrak lacks the capability to automatically select the optimal channel for a message.
■ Analytics and reporting: Client references rated Listrak’s attribution capabilities below average
compared with other vendors evaluated in this research. Although references also found key
metrics challenging to access from a single screen, clients using ListrakCRM have access to
data visualizations, reporting and custom analysis in a more concise interface.
■ Advertising support: Listrak’s native capabilities in advertising are best-suited for marketers
leveraging the Listrak Exchange module to activate Facebook, Twitter and Instagram audiences.
Listrak’s roadmap includes a programmatic direct mail offering that will give marketers a
broader opportunity to engage offline audiences and measure campaign lift.

Marketo
Marketo is in the Leaders quadrant. It delivers strong multichannel demand generation, account-
based marketing and event-triggering capabilities for B2B marketing organizations. Acquired by
Adobe in October 2018, its solution is part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Marketo’s 2018
acquisition of Bizible and new Vibes partnership added attribution and mobile marketing execution
capabilities, respectively. In 2019, Marketo plans to expand integrations with other Adobe Marketing
Cloud applications, including sharing of segments and audiences for activation purposes, sharing of
attribution data for B2B analytics use cases and enhanced asset management. B2B marketers and

Page 10 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 those managing complex customer life cycles, particularly in the high-tech and financial services
industries, should consider Marketo’s multichannel marketing hub.

Strengths

■ Integrations: Marketo added 60 integrations to its network of more than 500 partners,
extending the platform’s native functionality. Client references rated Marketo positively for ease
of integration with other martech stack components and pointed to operational efficiencies
achieved from their Marketo implementation.
■ Attribution capabilities: Marketo’s Bizible acquisition bolstered the company’s web, mobile,
and customer journey analytics and attribution capabilities, with reference clients giving strong
scores to Marketo’s rule-based and attribution capabilities and predictive modeling. Client
references also gave the Marketo Performance Insights marketing dashboard positive scores.
■ Robust platform: Client references cited the flexibility of Marketo’s multichannel marketing hub
solution, noting its adaptability across use cases regardless of organization size. It received
above-average scores from client references for lead management, offer management and
content management, and channel optimization capabilities.

Cautions

■ Roadmap timeline: Marketo Sky, the company’s new, platformwide user experience mentioned
in last year’s Magic Quadrant, remains largely on the roadmap. It promises an updated design
language as well as new personalization and collaboration tools. Elongated timelines in key
innovation projects such as Sky contributed to declines in Marketo’s Ability to Execute.
■ Customer experience: Reference customers rated Marketo’s sales and contract negotiation
process below the cross-vendor average. Pricing terms and total cost of ownership also
received below-average scores, reflecting rising renewal costs and reduced pricing
transparency in contracts.
■ Data management: Reference customers reported challenges around the flexibility of
Marketo’s data management capabilities, noting difficulties in combining and deduplicating
records. Notwithstanding Marketo’s addition of account hierarchies and selection functionality,
some references perceived a contact-centric bias in the company’s profile management
capabilities.

Optimove
Optimove is in the Niche Players quadrant. Its solution applies algorithmic optimization on top of
unified customer data to autonomously improve multichannel campaigns. The company’s core
competencies include user-friendly, multidimensional segmentation and predictive analytics. These
were furthered in 2018 by the acquisition of DynamicMail, which strengthened Optimove’s ability to
deliver real-time email content personalization. Optimove is best-suited to B2C retail, digital
commerce and financial services brands seeking a unified approach to customer data, analytics and
optimized multichannel marketing campaigns.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 11 of 35

 Strengths

■ Smart execution: Client references praised Optimove’s algorithmic testing approach,

particularly its next-best-offer and channel optimization capabilities. Optimove plans to further
enhance these capabilities in 2019 with self-optimizing customer journeys and improved insight
cards that predict the ROI of recommended engagements.
■ Focused measurement: Optimove’s customer journey analytics and attribution help marketers
separate effective engagements from ineffective ones at scale. References noted the strength of
these offerings for driving successful campaign optimization.
■ Strong growth: Optimove’s consistently strong investments in the product and its services
teams enable client success. Recently formed partnerships and integrations with Criteo and
LiveRamp give marketing teams options and flexibility.

Cautions

■ Data preparation: Some clients report difficulty in making customer data available to the
Optimove platform during initial onboarding. Marketing teams lacking data management
capabilities should consult with Optimove’s in-house services teams for support in organizing
data to be loaded into Optimove to power the hub’s predictive capabilities.
■ Mobile app challenges: Optimove’s mobile push marketing campaign execution and mobile
app measurement capabilities lag other offerings evaluated in this research. Client references
reported supplementing Optimove’s capabilities with other vendor solutions to meet their
mobile marketing needs.
■ In-house integration: Reference customers reported difficulties connecting Optimove to their
external email service provider or martech solutions during platform onboarding. Optimove
plans a greater library of martech integrations and improved API access in late 2019; however,
marketing leaders should confirm which of their required solutions are already integrated with
Optimove versus those that would require custom development.

Oracle
Oracle is in the Leaders quadrant. Its multichannel marketing hub provides B2B and B2C marketing
orchestration within Oracle’s CX Cloud. Oracle aims to help marketers manage the customer
experience across the enterprise. It does so with cross-channel segmentation capabilities, the
integration of web behavior and the announced CX Unity, a unified profile that integrates first-,
second- and third-party data from many sources, including Oracle Data Cloud. Oracle’s CX offering
supports enterprise marketers by enabling tailored interactions to consumers across channels,
using a combination of cross-channel audience management and channel-specific optimization.
B2B and B2C marketers seeking deep customer centricity (especially those with an existing Oracle
CX investment, such as sales, commerce or service) should consider Oracle’s solution.

Page 12 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 Strengths

■ Campaign execution: Oracle splits its multichannel marketing hub functions to focus on the
specialized needs of marketers in B2B (Oracle Eloqua) and B2C (Oracle Responsys), and
references for each product gave high marks to its segmentation and execution strength. The
connected assets of the Oracle Marketing Cloud enable horizontal integration into other
offerings such as Oracle BlueKai, Oracle Maxymiser and Oracle Infinity Analytics.
■ Modular AI: Powerful segmentation and decisioning are available from the combination of
Adaptive Intelligent Apps (Oracle’s artificial intelligence applications suite) and CX Audience, its
cross-cloud segmentation application. In 2018, Oracle improved its machine learning
capabilities to produce relevant customer insights and recommended actions.
■ Profile management vision: Oracle’s vision for data unification and profile management is
ambitious. In 2018, Oracle announced CX Unity, a cross-cloud customer intelligence solution
that aims to unify customer data from within and outside of Oracle Marketing Cloud. CX Unity
enables a persistent view of customer attributes, enabling marketers to push actions and data
to other applications.

Cautions

■ Dissonant responses: Client references rated Oracle’s product capabilities higher than they do
the company itself. They noted frustrations with implementation, contracting and integration,
despite a firm belief in the capabilities of the company’s multichannel hub.
■ Blurred lines: Oracle has increased the breadth of CX Cloud product features available across
CX Cloud apps, but not all of these are purpose-built for multichannel marketing. Oracle’s
emphasis could mean that an investment in the multichannel marketing hub results in unused
capabilities. For example, some Oracle Infinity Analytics data collection and visualization
capabilities are bundled with Oracle’s multichannel marketing hub, which could be duplicative
of web analytics and tag management tools already in a marketer’s portfolio.
■ Lower utilization of advertising capabilities: Despite increasing the number of product
integrations between Responsys/Eloqua and digital advertising platforms through the Oracle
Data Cloud, references noted choosing other vendors for data management platform (DMP) and
paid media capabilities.

Pegasystems
Pegasystems (Pega) is in the Visionaries quadrant. Its Customer Decision Hub solution focuses on
AI-driven, next-best-action calculations that integrate across marketing, sales and customer service
functions. It attracts marketers in the financial services, healthcare, government, manufacturing, and
energy and utilities industries, as well as communications service providers. B2C and B2B
marketers seeking a multichannel marketing hub that can integrate customer interactions across the
customer life cycle should consider Pega.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 13 of 35

 Strengths

■ Decision management: With the ability to source customer data attributes from multiple
channels and derive customer insights, Pega excels at real-time enterprise decision
management across channels and business contexts at scale. These capabilities enable
marketers to develop personalized relationships with customers that extend beyond
promotional messaging.
■ Self-optimizing campaigns: Autonomous campaign optimization is a significant innovation
focus for Pega. It enables marketers to identify engagement criteria, select offers, define
audiences and choose a time frame. The system selects the number of waves and automatically
optimizes numerous campaign attributes based on defined outcomes such as increasing
conversion rates or net revenue.
■ Cross-enterprise integration: Marketers recognize Pega for its support of industry-specific
use cases, business process management support beyond the marketing function and
automation capabilities. References praised Pega’s versatility, especially its ability to support
the needs of large, complex organizations.

Cautions

■ Complexity: Pega requires a comprehensive approach to adoption that is not well-suited to

deployments of limited scope. Additionally, references noted that implementation generally
requires extensive involvement of IT resources or system integrators to realize the full benefit of
its deep architectural approach.
■ Web analytics and testing gaps: Pega gets below-average ratings from reference clients for
web analytics, as well as its A/B and multivariate testing capabilities.
■ Resource requirements: Several references noted that technical, highly skilled resources are
required to operate Pega’s solution. References also cited a desire for more best-practice
guidance and operational resources to use the solution more effectively once implemented.

RedPoint Global
RedPoint Global is in the Challengers quadrant. An extensible customer data platform drives
RedPoint Global’s solution. It connects to multiple third-party data sources and execution tools,
enabling marketing orchestration. The incorporation of AI and an improved product user interface
and marketing strategy — particularly the launch of vertical solutions for retail and banking — help
broaden the accessibility of the RedPoint Global platform to nontechnical marketers. B2C marketers
in the retail, financial services and insurance, and healthcare industries seeking customer data and
profile management and a multichannel orchestration engine should consider RedPoint Global’s
multichannel marketing hub.

Strengths

■ Customer data and profile management: RedPoint Global provides marketers with easy
access to multiple data sources and the ability to apply data to a broad range of execution

Page 14 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 endpoints. Its 2018 partnership with PossibleNOW provides a consent management overlay to
support RedPoint Global’s native data governance capabilities.
■ Market responsiveness: RedPoint Global offers packaged vertical solutions of critical
multichannel marketing tools to growing organizations with limited marketing resources and
maturity. It addressed implementation gaps by adding new partners in 2018, such as Accenture,
Genpact and SapientNitro. RedPoint Global offers an improved user experience for campaign
planning and orchestration, and plans to bolster reporting for 2019.
■ Accessible AI: RedPoint Global added RedPoint AI Studio in 2018, which brings dynamic path-
to-purchase automation and optimization to individual customer journeys, informed by
customer preferences and brand engagement goals. It offers a marketer-friendly interface with
limited adjustable parameters as well as an analytical environment for data scientists.

Cautions

■ Solution complexity: Reference customers noted that using RedPoint Global entails an often-
steep learning curve out of the box. The solution fits best with marketing teams that have
advanced data and analytics maturity. To maximize the platform’s potential, marketers need to
develop a strong understanding of their data. They should ensure they have the right mix of
marketing and data science skills and personnel.
■ Reporting: RedPoint Global’s Customer Engagement Hub features standard reports and
marketing dashboards. Client references expressed a desire for more comprehensive reporting.
■ Geographic presence: RedPoint Global lacks the same level of sales and support resources
outside of North America that vendors in the Leaders quadrant exhibit.

Resulticks
Resulticks is in the Niche Players quadrant. It offers a solution with robust data management and
decisioning capabilities. Resulticks mCloud platform ingests data from enterprise systems and
martech platforms, unifies profiles, and then executes decisions through its own capabilities or
other solutions, such as lead management or demand-side platforms. Resulticks Smart Link
enables resilient cross-channel measurement of individual user engagements across channels and
tracks the resulting contribution to marketing performance. With a strong APAC and growing U.S.
customer base, and local points of support in both regions, Resulticks is building its global
presence. The company primarily serves consumer electronics, financial services, healthcare, retail,
travel and hospitality, and telecommunications organizations. Marketers seeking offer management,
cross-channel optimization and strong integration capabilities should consider Resulticks.

Strengths

■ Depth and breadth: Resulticks’ mCloud solution features an audience data management
module, campaign orchestration and analytics platform. Resulticks tracks and segments both
known and anonymous users, performing scoring and propensity modeling, and managing real-
time offers.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 15 of 35

 ■ Predictive analytics: Resulticks integrates attribution and response prediction data into
campaign creation to enable scenario-based exploration. Marketers can use these insights to
support channel decisions, given a targeted response rate or revenue goal.
■ Winning marketers: Resulticks received above-average scores from client references across
every major capability compared with other vendors evaluated in this research. References cited
strong value and ROI from the solution.

Cautions

■ Customer mix: Approximately 75% of Resulticks clients are B2C. The company has native lead
management and B2B2C capability support, but it’s less aggressive about pursuing this
business. mCloud may not be an ideal fit for advanced B2B marketers seeking a dedicated B2B
marketing solution.
■ Partnership strategy: As Resulticks broadens its pursuit beyond regional to global enterprises,
the value of its Microsoft partnership will be tested by Microsoft’s deepening alliance with
Adobe. Marketers considering Resulticks should evaluate where it differentiates versus Adobe.
■ Customer support: Some client references reported a need for more available support from
Resulticks, along with a more concerted effort for support teams to understand their clients’
businesses.

Sailthru
Sailthru is in the Niche Players quadrant. The CM Group, the owner of SMB-focused email
marketing provider Campaign Monitor, acquired Sailthru in December 2018 to expand its marketing
technology portfolio toward the enterprise market. Coordinated personalization across email, mobile
and web channels is a core strength of Sailthru, and its solution features sophisticated event-
triggering and personalization capabilities. The company primarily supports organizations across the
retail and digital commerce, entertainment, media and publishing, and travel and hospitality sectors.
Marketers prioritizing personalized email, mobile and web marketing experiences should consider
Sailthru.

Strengths

■ Multichannel personalization: Coordinated personalization across email, mobile and web

channels is a core strength of Sailthru. A partnership with Inkit, announced in April 2018,
extended personalization capabilities to direct mail. In 2019, the company plans to introduce
capabilities that make it easier for marketers to align personalized website modals with email
marketing messages to attain greater consistency across engagements.
■ Embedded optimization: Lifecycle Optimizer, Sailthru’s interface for designing campaigns, now
integrates predictive analytics to support send-time and channel optimization. In addition, the
company launched email subject line scoring with industry-specific and custom models, with
the goal of improving email open rates.

Page 16 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 ■ Flexibility: References praised Sailthru’s overall flexibility, including the ability to integrate with
other technologies. The company earned above-average ratings from references for integration
and deployment, as well as high marks for several critical capabilities like campaign creation,
event-triggered marketing and real-time delivery.

Cautions

■ Technical sophistication required: Despite the recent introduction of a drag-and-drop email

composition tool, several references noted that specialized technical skill is required to fully
leverage Sailthru’s capabilities. This requirement may prove challenging for teams without
existing expertise, although buyers should take note that Sailthru is prioritizing user interface
simplification on its 2019 roadmap.
■ Limited industry scope: Sailthru has a limited presence outside its target vertical markets.
Marketers in other industries should closely evaluate whether or not the company’s solution will
be able to support use cases specific to their business needs.
■ Rollout complexity: Client references reported deployment timelines that exceeded the
average for other vendors evaluated in this research. Some noted complexities in the
implementation process, such as customization in the scripting language required for advanced
orchestration. Marketers should plan for adequate internal or third-party support services.

Salesforce
Salesforce is in the Leaders quadrant. Salesforce Marketing Cloud supports regional and global
B2C organizations across a broad range of industry sectors. The solution comprises multiple
modules, including Email Studio, Mobile Studio, Social Studio, Advertising Studio, Salesforce DMP,
Data Studio, Interaction Studio, Journey Builder and Datorama. Pardot, part of Salesforce’s Sales
Cloud suite, supports lead management and account-based marketing (ABM) capabilities for B2B
marketers. B2C marketers seeking cloud-only multichannel marketing hub deployment —
particularly when connectivity to Salesforce assets in customer service, sales and its Commerce
Cloud platform is a priority — should consider Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Strengths

■ Capability breadth: Salesforce Marketing Cloud comprises core elements that enable B2C
marketers to orchestrate end-to-end journeys across all engagement channels. Client
references praised the richness of its Marketing Cloud offering, which earned above-average
ratings from references on its overall capabilities.
■ Native AI: Salesforce continues to add native capabilities like automated segmentation and
enhanced journey analytics across Marketing Cloud via Einstein, its artificial intelligence service.
In 2019, it plans to add predictive frequency capping, predictive content selection and journey
recommendations to enable more insight-driven, autonomous marketing decisions.
■ Extensibility: Beyond its native applications, Salesforce has a vast ecosystem of partner
integrations to deepen capabilities when necessary. The addition of Interaction Studio,

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 17 of 35

 Datorama and MuleSoft in the past year increases marketers’ ability to make Salesforce
Marketing Cloud a central hub for all their multichannel marketing initiatives.

Cautions

■ Cross-cloud unification: Salesforce has yet to attain a unified customer view across all
products, posing challenges to marketers trying to deliver a seamless customer experience. Its
Customer 360 resolution engine aims to provide consistent identities across its products, but it
won’t be generally available until the second half of 2019.
■ Lightweight reporting: Several references noted that the native reporting capabilities within
certain components of Salesforce Marketing Cloud did not meet their needs. Buyers requiring
advanced reporting support may need to add on Datorama.
■ Implementation and training: Clients often require professional services directly from
Salesforce or through a partner for deployments, as well as extensive training. Inconsistency in
the quality of implementation and training noted by some references should spur buyers to
carefully vet their account team and partners.

SAP
SAP is in the Leaders quadrant. SAP Marketing Cloud enables marketers to develop
multidimensional customer profiles for automated and personalized multichannel marketing,
leveraging consent-driven, first-party data. SAP made two major acquisitions in the past year. It
purchased CallidusCloud, a configure, price and quote (CPQ), and sales performance management
software vendor, in April 2018 (subsequently incorporated into SAP Sales Cloud), and voice-of-the-
customer provider Qualtrics in January 2019. SAP serves both B2B and B2C marketers in a single
platform across a deep set of vertical industries. Large enterprises looking for a multichannel
marketing solution to quantify and optimize marketing impact, especially those using other SAP
solutions, should consider SAP Marketing Cloud.

Strengths

■ Practical machine learning: SAP Leonardo, the company’s cross-cloud machine learning
framework, added a customer retention model to target at-risk customers. It also provides a
lead conversion propensity model to identify the right audience for a given campaign.
■ Segmentation: SAP earns one of its highest scores from reference customers for its rule-based
segmentation capabilities. SAP Leonardo now identifies segments automatically, prompting
marketers with automated campaigns for execution.
■ Consent and preference management: SAP has extensive data privacy management
capabilities consolidated in the new SAP Customer Data Cloud, built on the company’s 2017
Gigya acquisition. It provides support for identity and privacy authentication, consent collection
and management, and support for cross-cloud single customer profile accessibility.

Page 18 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 Cautions

■ Lagging attribution: For customer attribution and measurement, SAP provides SAP Customer
Attribution, which comes from its 2016 acquisition of Abakus. However, reference customers
continue to rate SAP’s attribution capabilities below average, with some clients relying on other
vendors for this functionality.
■ Product functionalities: Client references characterize SAP Marketing Cloud as an immature
product with gaps in areas such as lead management, support for the web, digital asset
management and content management, all of which received below-average scores. On the
roadmap for 2019 is a content repository, effectively a lightweight digital asset management
solution.
■ Market presence: SAP Marketing Cloud generates less interest from Gartner clients than
competing solutions in the Leaders quadrant, in part because Gartner clients are more likely to
adopt it as part of a broader SAP deployment. Marketers should seek updates on SAP’s partner
ecosystem and the status of the company’s participation in the Open Data Initiative.

SAS
SAS is in the Leaders quadrant. SAS Customer Intelligence 360, its enterprise-level marketing hub,
combines integrated marketing resource management, rich customer journey building and real-time
decisioning for marketing orchestration. Leveraging its advanced analytics heritage, SAS serves all
industries, with a particular focus on financial services, retail and telecommunications. Marketers
seeking a comprehensive multichannel marketing solution centered on AI and machine learning
processes should consider SAS.

Strengths

■ Campaign orchestration: Customer Intelligence 360 delivers an array of capabilities to plan

and orchestrate campaigns and customer journeys. The solution enables extensibility via an
SDK, enabling marketers to design custom tasks or channel outputs. Customers praised the
product’s functionality and performance.
■ Advanced analytics: SAS offers a unified environment for data science model development.
Clients can manage model selection, development and testing in one place as part of their data
science pipeline, and then push those models into production to improve marketing outcomes.
References gave strong scores to SAS’s predictive modeling capabilities.
■ Implementation and support: References consistently highlighted the quality of service
through implementation and postimplementation support delivered by SAS. Customers cited
fast response times, and results-oriented and active focus on issue resolution from the teams.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 19 of 35

 Cautions

■ Product integrations: Client references cited integrations within the SAS portfolio as requiring
significant IT support. They also scored SAS below average for ease of integrating the SAS
platform with other components of the technology stack.
■ Social marketing: Notably absent from SAS’s feature set are social marketing capabilities,
including organic and paid social functionalities, which are provided by most other global
multichannel marketing hub providers evaluated in this research. Prospective clients can expect
multivendor integration scenarios with SAS engagements.
■ Web analytics, email marketing and content marketing: Despite SAS’s historic strength in
analytics, references scored SAS below average on web analytics compared to other vendors in
this research. References also rated email marketing and content management features as
below average compared to other vendors in the research.

Selligent Marketing Cloud

Selligent Marketing Cloud (Selligent) is in the Niche Players quadrant. It offers a broad portfolio of
connected multichannel marketing modules that support email, web, social, mobile (SMS and push
notifications) and direct mail execution. The company serves B2C marketers in upper midmarket
and lower enterprise organizations across the U.S. and Europe by delivering a strong foundational
platform. Selligent continues to grow coverage across multiple industries including retail, media,
travel and hospitality, manufacturing, and financial services. Marketers looking to integrate and
coordinate high volumes of consumer engagements across multiple channels should consider
Selligent.

Strengths

■ Easy-to-use interface: References consistently cited Selligent’s easy-to-use system interface

as enabling marketers from diverse business functions and skill sets to be able to use the
engine.
■ Strong channel integration and coordination: With its Universal Customer Profile, Selligent
enables marketers to identify and classify customers and interactions across multiple channels.
Marketers can create coordinated omnichannel campaigns at the individual level.
■ Accessible AI: Selligent’s intuitive user interface for its artificial intelligence and machine
learning Cortex module enables a broad range of marketing users to leverage advanced
analytics across use cases. These include natural language processing (NLP) for text
generation, channel optimization and message cadence optimization. This allows organizations
to build, scale and deliver complex automated campaigns without the absolute dependency on
data scientists that some other hubs require.

Page 20 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 Cautions

■ Support of new releases: Client references expressed concern that the level of support for the
implementation and servicing of new releases and upgrades can be lacking. Selligent seeks to
address this gap with expanded resources and training.
■ Broad but not deep: Selligent delivers a broad array of multichannel marketing capabilities,
such as customer intelligence, channel execution and machine learning for offers and journeys.
However, marketers with specialized data science requirements may need to supplement
Selligent’s out-of-the-box offerings with external capabilities and define processes for bringing
them into the Selligent platform to leverage them for targeting and personalization.
■ Third-party connections: Marketers looking to integrate Selligent with their existing third-party
engines or data sources will find fewer productized connectors than are available from some
competitors. Marketers should evaluate Selligent’s expanding integrations catalog to determine
if additional IT resources are required to code relevant connectors.

Sitecore
Sitecore is in the Visionaries quadrant. It offers a cloud-based multichannel marketing hub solution
focused on personalization. Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) supports customer analytics,
marketing automation and campaigns across email, web, mobile, social and print. The company
has a strong presence in North America and primarily serves organizations in the services,
manufacturing, banking, and travel and hospitality industries. Marketers seeking a solution that
extends multichannel marketing into customer experience design and optimization should consider
Sitecore.

Strengths

■ Content expertise: Sitecore’s heritage as a web content management platform gives it an

advantage at supporting content-centric multichannel marketing campaigns and processes. Its
October 2018 acquisition of digital asset management vendor Stylelabs strengthens Sitecore’s
capabilities in holistically managing the marketing content life cycle.
■ Enhanced experience personalization: Sitecore earned high marks from references for its
algorithmic segmentation, predictive modeling, event-triggered marketing and real-time delivery
capabilities. Its roadmap includes plans to expand its automated personalization capabilities
and further enhance the predictive outcomes to influence next-best experiences.
■ Expanding extensibility: The company aims to expand its community of architects
beyond .NET developers with the introduction of Sitecore JavaScript Services (JSS). This toolkit
will enable JavaScript developers to build single-page applications, progressive web apps and
entire websites without .NET expertise.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 21 of 35

 Cautions

■ Channel limitations: Sitecore has native support for web and email marketing, but requires
integrations or custom implementations for mobile, social and digital advertising capabilities.
References rated Sitecore below average for email and lead management. No references
reported using the solution for mobile messaging or paid social advertising.
■ Analytics weakness: Client references gave mixed reviews to Sitecore’s analytics capabilities,
including web analytics, customer journey analytics and marketing dashboards. An improved
user experience for marketing insights is on Sitecore’s roadmap to be rolled out over the
coming year.
■ Deployment and support: Several Sitecore client references noted a lengthy deployment
process and consistent postimplementation maintenance. Due to Sitecore’s heavy reliance on
system integrator and consulting partners, some clients described a disconnected and
unresponsive relationship with Sitecore’s account management team.

Zeta
Zeta is in the Niche Players quadrant. Its data-driven campaign management technology, services
and proprietary data assets enable analytics, customer acquisition and retention. Zeta’s acquisitions
over the last three years, including Disqus, Compass and Boomtrain, power its Zeta Data Cloud.
With access to intent data from over 2.7 billion monthly unique users, Zeta’s proprietary data
insights can enrich a marketer’s first-party data to enable decisioning and deterministic activation.
Zeta primarily serves organizations in the retail, travel and hospitality, financial services, and telecom
industries. Marketers seeking a multichannel marketing hub solution backed by managed and
strategic services should consider Zeta.

Strengths

■ Performance focus: Zeta’s data layer enables marketers to gain insight into consumer
behaviors through a structured lens. This is designed to protect privacy by limiting 1:1 analytics
and targeting to internal tools so that personally identifiable information cannot be extracted
from the platform. Zeta’s Insight Report can score a marketer’s customers and prospects to
identify predictive drivers of churn and potential product interest.
■ Recommendations and offer management: Zeta’s product and offer recommendations
engine can combine with an external content management system (CMS) or digital asset
manager to increase the speed and flexibility of development for personalization and
orchestration. Zeta’s email marketing, multichannel experiences and real-time offers received
positive feedback from references for ease of implementation and use, performance, and
scalability.
■ Workflow efficiency: Role-based reporting and dashboards enable business users to surface
and take action on insights that matter most to their specific needs. Templates, previews and
tagging help marketers deploy campaigns without requiring deep technical knowledge.

Page 22 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 Cautions

■ Data centricity: Zeta’s accelerating business focus on data asset development may make its
multichannel marketing hub a poor fit for clients focused on consumer data transparency. The
bulk of the Zeta Data Cloud’s reach comes through publishers unaffiliated with Zeta’s marketer
clients. As such, marketers leveraging Data Cloud signals may struggle to communicate to
consumers the source of attributes collected and used in analytics, targeting and offer
selection. Zeta recently hired a chief privacy officer to help navigate potential regulatory
headwinds and further develop trusted relationships with publishers.
■ Campaign centricity: References rated Zeta below average in predictive analytics and
customer journey analytics. Many of Zeta’s partnerships, such as Kitewheel for customer
journey analytics, and its AI/ML assets haven’t helped marketers move beyond a campaign-
focused approach to multichannel marketing.
■ Low mobile adoption: Zeta’s product roadmap emphasizes data-driven audience discovery for
web and email marketing, downplaying the growing role of mobile marketing in the customer
journey. While Zeta offers mobile and SMS, most Zeta references reported using other providers
for SMS and mobile marketing.

Vendors Added and Dropped

We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants as markets change. As a result of
these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant may change over time. A vendor’s
appearance in a Magic Quadrant one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we
have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and,
therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.

Added
Evergage

Dropped
Maropost

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

For inclusion in the 2019 Multichannel Marketing Hubs Magic Quadrant, Gartner focused on
vendors that offer the most relevant and compelling marketing solutions.

Functionality
Vendors must support all of the following:

■ Ability to create, execute and manage multichannel marketing interactions.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 23 of 35

 ■ Proven campaign planning, tracking and reporting with role and approval capability.
■ A UI suitable for marketing users who create, execute and report on interactions.
■ Basic multichannel marketing functionality, such as audience data collection and segmentation,
campaign workflow, and campaign execution.

Vendors must support at least four of nine functionality components:

■ Advanced analytic functionality:

■ Predictive analytics: Capability to analyze customer behavior to predict attrition/churn,
next most likely purchase and propensity to buy, enabling a company to more effectively
target customers or stage the offers to make during interactions. Although this may be
offered through partnerships, we will look for proven integration and references of actual
utilization.
■ Campaign optimization: Ability to balance and coordinate multiple constraints to maximize
expected value from single or multiple campaigns or engagement. Functionality enables
trade-offs among different campaign execution options, such as which campaign to use,
which channel to use, the number of interactions per individual and the expected value of
each interaction.
■ Customer journey analytics: Ability to track and analyze the way customers and
prospects use a combination of available channels to interact with an organization over
time. It should cover the multichannel nature of customer engagement, including human
interactions (e.g., a call center), digital marketing (e.g., website, app and email), customer
service (e.g., live chat), physical locations (e.g., retail stores) and those with a limited two-
way interaction (e.g., display advertising). Although this may be offered through
partnerships, we looked for proven integration and references of actual utilization.
■ Customer profile management: Marketers seek to unify and synchronize their customer
data across multiple channels, devices and life cycle stages for personalized engagement
and campaign orchestration. Vendors should enable marketers to activate their own first-
party data while bringing in and utilizing customer data from second- and third-party
sources. This includes:
■ A unified customer profile, which brings together data from internal systems and data
warehouses, point of sale, website, and other engagement data and attributes to enable
segmentation and customer analytics, and inform personalization.
■ Ability to onboard data and match first-party data with third-party audiences. This
includes data collection capabilities through tags as well as preconfigured integrations
with common marketing point solutions, data partners and analytics tools.
■ Cross-device identification (XDID) techniques to connect the activities of an individual
customer or prospect across devices and channels. Device identifiers can be explicitly
supplied by the device operating system (deterministic) or inferred statistically from
observable characteristics (probabilistic). Marketers rely on XDID for ad targeting,
analytics and personalization.

Page 24 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 ■ Advanced execution functionality:
■ Event triggering: Functionality involves the detection, prioritization and execution response
for significant events affecting a customer relationship, such as clickstream behavior or
transactions.
■ Real-time recommendations: Suited for areas such as offer management and deals with
offer arbitration. It enables the combination of the most-up-to-date information from data
collected prior to the interaction, as well as new data collected during a real-time interaction
with a customer. Model-driven, real-time recommendation capabilities should be channel-
agnostic and provide both inbound and outbound interactions.
■ Content management/digital asset management (DAM)/product information
management (PIM) integration: The ability to provide or support digital asset
management, product information management, and content management for tailoring and
optimizing customer and prospect interactions.
■ Personalization: The ability to apply context, including knowledge about users and their
circumstances, to tailor and deliver relevant messaging, content, offers and interactions via
digital channels (e.g., web, email, mobile, social, advertising, search or chat) to maximize
conversion and improve other marketing and business results. Offers largely rule-based
personalization and, at a minimum, native execution on the web plus at least two other
channels (e.g., email, mobile, social, advertising/retargeting, SEM, chat or call center).
■ Multichannel lead management capabilities: The ability to provide lead management
functionality for both inbound and outbound marketing initiatives. This includes, at a
minimum, lead collection, analytics, augmentation, scoring, process management and
nurturing, across a minimum of three lead generation and lead management channels within
a single campaign. In addition, functionality must support bidirectional integration with CRM
or sales force automation applications (such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce Sales
Cloud).

Digital Marketing Capability

We consider specific digital marketing functionality, such as web analytics, social analytics, social
marketing, mobile marketing, programmatic advertising and digital commerce connections.

Market Presence and Momentum

For inclusion in the 2019 MMH Magic Quadrant, we focused on vendors with:

■ At least 20 customers using multichannel marketing hub products.

■ At least 15 new customer wins for multichannel marketing hub during the past 12 months.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 25 of 35

 Vendor Viability
Vendors needed to have at least $15 million in 2018 fiscal year revenue and enough cash to fund a
year of operations at the current rate of cash depletion.

In addition, we placed a strong emphasis on innovative, visionary offerings. Visionaries provide a

strong vision for the multichannel marketing market or excel in advanced or emerging areas. These
include customer data platforms and artificial intelligence, identity resolutions, multidimensional
segmentation, mobile marketing, loyalty marketing and social marketing, and real-time interaction
management. They can set strategic direction or demonstrate specific innovative capabilities in one
(or more) functional area (such as advanced campaign functionality or digital marketing integration)
in multichannel marketing that the market will eventually adopt. Visionaries may have multichannel
marketing implementations from different buying centers, such as customer service or digital
commerce.

Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
Product/Service: This is a key differentiator in vendor selection. Therefore, product capabilities are
given a high overall weighting. Subcriteria include basic campaign and advanced multichannel
marketing functionality, basic and advanced analytics, interaction/journey workflow, and
functionality for digital marketing. Weighting: High.

Overall Viability: This addresses the overall health of the vendor, including line-of-business offering
multichannel marketing hub solutions. Viability includes the vendor’s history of and commitment to
the continued success and development of world-class multichannel marketing hub solutions.
Weighting: High.

Sales Execution/Pricing: This provides an assessment of the overall effectiveness of the sales
channel, and how it deals with presales responsiveness, contract negotiations and pricing for the
vendor’s multichannel marketing hub. Weighting: Medium.

Market Responsiveness/Record: This gives an assessment of the multichannel marketing hub

vendor’s success in creating and meeting a consistent demand for its product, measured in
continuing client wins and use in its installed base. Weighting: Medium.

Marketing Execution: This provides an assessment of the vendor’s overall momentum and
perceived multichannel marketing hub focus and presence in the market. Vendors must show
established and continued broad or specific (such as industry focus) credibility for marketing
interactions in a multichannel environment. Weighting: High.

Customer Experience: This is an evaluation of client relationships with multichannel marketing hub
vendors. Product support and responsiveness, and access to best practices, such as user groups,
are considered. An important component of the customer experience is ease of tool use. Gartner’s

Page 26 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 multichannel marketing hub clients see this as an important aspect of the overall customer
experience. Weighting: Medium.

Operations: This is the ability of a vendor to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include
organizational structure (such as skills, experience, systems and other vehicles) that enable the
vendor to operate efficiently and effectively on an ongoing basis. Weighting: Low.

Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Product or Service High

Overall Viability High

Sales Execution/Pricing Medium

Market Responsiveness/Record Medium

Marketing Execution High

Customer Experience Medium

Operations Low

Source: Gartner (April 2019)

Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: This is the vendor’s ability to understand the multichannel marketing hub
space, and its value proposition in the market, and how effective it is at reaching the marketing
buying center for companies purchasing multichannel marketing hub solutions. Vendors must
demonstrate multichannel marketing solutions that fit the needs of the overall market. Weighting:
High.

Marketing Strategy: This offers an assessment of how well a vendor can differentiate itself from its
competition and of functionality, and how it articulates continued leadership in its overall
multichannel marketing vision. Weighting: Medium.

Sales Strategy: This assesses a vendor’s strategy in using direct and indirect sales channels to sell
its multichannel marketing hub solutions. Weighting: Medium.

Offering (Product) Strategy: This assesses the multichannel marketing hub feature set as it maps
to functionality requirements, particularly functionality that enables advanced capability in inbound
and outbound environments. Weighting: High.

Business Model: This assesses the vendor’s alignment of its go-to-market and sales strategies for
particular industries, geographies or delivery models. Weighting: Medium.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 27 of 35

 Vertical/Industry Strategy: A vendor is assessed on how well its solutions target its current market,
as well as its ability to leverage best practices or capabilities for targeting new industries. Weighting:
Medium.

Innovation: This assesses the vendor’s expertise or capital for investment for pre-emptive purposes
in developing new areas in multichannel marketing. Weighting: Medium.

Geographic Strategy: This assesses the vendor’s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings
to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the “home” or native geography. This can be
either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for that geography and
market. Weighting: Medium.

Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Market Understanding High

Marketing Strategy Medium

Sales Strategy Medium

Offering (Product) Strategy High

Business Model Medium

Vertical/Industry Strategy Medium

Innovation Medium

Geographic Strategy Medium

Source: Gartner (April 2019)

Quadrant Descriptions

Leaders
Leaders consistently do considerably better in overall multichannel marketing performance for basic
and advanced campaigns, and for integration with digital marketing. They have high market
visibility, high market penetration, strong market momentum and a strategic vision for growing the
multichannel marketing hub business.

Challengers
Challengers see continued investments in multichannel marketing hub solutions as complementary
offerings to the business applications that are their core competencies. Challengers have a
developing understanding of the multichannel marketing hub market and basic functions. They see

Page 28 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 multichannel marketing as an opportunity to increase revenue and retention in their installed bases,
and they concentrate on established clients’ needs for multichannel marketing functions and
strategic direction, rather than on setting a visionary pace with potential requirements.

Visionaries
Visionaries provide a strong vision for the multichannel marketing hub market, or they excel in
advanced or emerging areas such as inbound marketing and digital marketing. They can set a
strategic direction or demonstrate specific innovative capabilities in one or more functional areas
(such as advanced campaign functionality or digital marketing integration) that the market will
eventually adopt. Visionaries may have multichannel marketing implementations in multiple buying
centers, such as the contact center, digital commerce or social marketing departments. Although
Visionaries show promise in multichannel marketing, they may lack execution capabilities, such as
growth potential, resources or scalability.

Niche Players
Niche Players provide specific needs in the multichannel marketing hub space. They may be
focused on a specific function, process (for example, lead management), geography or industry.
Multichannel marketing hub vendors in this section tend to lack a broader set of multichannel
marketing capabilities (such as advanced analytics) or execution potential (such as sufficient
resources or a fully developed market strategy).

Context
Marketing expense budgets are stabilizing after a brief period of instability between 2016 and 2017,
having leveled off to 11.2% of company revenue in 2018 (see “CMO Spend Survey 2018-2019:
Marketers Proceed Into Uncharted Waters With Confidence”). CMOs also remain optimistic about
future funding — 63% expect their budgets will increase in 2019. As it did in 2016, marketing
technology once again grabs the largest share of marketing resources and programs, accounting for
29% of the total marketing expense budget in 2018,1 up from 22% in 2017.

Marketing leaders continue to invest in platforms and services that drive more relevant digital
experiences across the customer journey. Personalization is key to those efforts. Eighty-seven
percent of B2C marketers surveyed currently personalize marketing communication, and over 50%
2
have increased their investment in personalization since 2017. With personalized marketing driving
business results, customer insights are now the lifeblood of effective multichannel marketing —
making customer data and profile management the new competitive battlefield for marketing hubs.
Fifty-eight percent of multichannel marketers surveyed indicate that leveraging integrated customer
data to drive multichannel marketing execution presented a moderate or significant challenge over
the past 12 months (see “Multichannel Marketing Survey 2019: Marketers Reorient Programs
Around Customer Insights”).

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 29 of 35

 As such, marketers want MMH vendors with strong customer intelligence and analytics capabilities
to improve the targeting, performance and measurement of their multichannel marketing strategies.
Just over half (51%) of respondents to Gartner’s 2018 Marketing Technology Survey indicate they
have fully deployed and are using an MMH; another 26% are in the process of deploying one; and
3
14% plan to do so by the end of 2020.

MMH vendors stay relevant to clients by enabling their ability to:

■ Collect and unify individual and audience data from multiple sources
■ Perform detailed customer segmentation using that data
■ Improve the timing and targeting of personalized messages and offers across seamlessly
orchestrated campaigns
■ Orchestrate and respond to a proliferating number of consumer touchpoints with personalized
experiences
■ Attribute results to specific channels, convert campaign data into predictive insights and
prescribe profitable next-best actions and offers for marketing teams

Market Overview
Multichannel marketing builds relationships by responding to expressed and implied customer
needs through relevant, connected engagements to targeted audiences. Success requires data-
driven insights into customer behaviors and interests, goals, and needs. It also requires knowing
how channels operate most effectively — in isolation and in harmony — to deliver the right content
to the right audience at the right time. To achieve personalized multichannel engagements for
growth, marketing leaders need tools and talent to capitalize on their customer intelligence.

As marketers increasingly see effective multichannel marketing as synonymous with personalization,

multichannel marketing hub vendors are focusing on capabilities that deliver relevant,
contextualized customer experiences. They’re supporting the full scope of the customer journey
with a more open, extensible approach to data that facilitates customer profile unification from
multiple data sources. They’re also driving greater brand relevance by fortifying capabilities around
machine learning, channel attribution and customer journey analytics, and the application of
customer insights in real time (or near real time).

Hub Vendors Differentiate on Client Service and Expertise

In this year’s Magic Quadrant, client references praised overall product capabilities. However, even
those satisfied with tool functionalities didn’t hesitate to cite customer service shortcomings or
inadequate vendor expertise. Gartner’s analysis of customer reference surveys indicates that
marketer sentiments about their chosen MMH vendor correlates directly — positively and negatively
— to the level and quality of support vendors provide.

Page 30 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 As solutions become increasingly complex, vendors that support marketing teams with a focus on
technical support and ease of use can set themselves apart. Other key themes this year include:

■ Customer data and profile management: A key vendor theme in last year’s Magic Quadrant,
data and profile management is even more integral today. Marketers are demanding capabilities
for data control, flexibility and analysis. In response, MMH vendors are enhancing their ability to
unify, synchronize and reconcile customer data across multiple channels, devices and life cycle
stages. In many cases, vendors are either explicitly or implicitly building customer data
platforms. This reflects a shift in the capabilities that marketers perceive as driving competitive
differentiation (see “Smart Hubs and Dumb Spokes — A New Approach to Multichannel
Marketing”).
■ Practical machine learning and artificial intelligence: Nearly every MMH vendor evaluated
for this research has machine learning and AI capabilities, in some stage of development,
designed to make customer insights more accessible and actionable. This year, vendors are
emphasizing practical applications of machine learning, such as automatic campaign
generation based on business goals and autonomous campaign optimization capabilities.
Machine learning now supports anomaly as well as list fatigue detection and frequency
management, designed to prevent customer overengagement. The predictive accuracy of these
capabilities can improve over time as marketers add more data to the models. MMH platform
end users stand to make better business decisions supported by heightened abilities to discern
next-best segment, channel, offer and content options.
■ Personalization capabilities: The application of AI and machine learning is designed to
facilitate more seamless personalization across channels and touchpoints. Customers now
expect this kind of personalized engagement (see “Crawl, Walk, Run: Define Your Vision,
Strategy and Roadmap for Personalization”). MMH vendors continue to integrate historically
stand-alone tools as native capabilities, enabling marketers to gather customer data, and tailor
the content, products and offers accordingly. However, in duplicating some of the capabilities of
dedicated personalization engines, MMH vendors risk contributing to marketplace confusion.
■ Consent and privacy management: Prompted by the European General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect in May 2018, and similar modern privacy mandates
emerging in other markets, multichannel marketers increasingly embrace data transparency.
They see accrued value to the brand by making customer data viewable and manageable,
despite the operational challenges they perceive around data privacy and security. Some MMH
vendors support native or third-party consent management and auditing capabilities, such as
consent collection, permission management, and detailed preference and opt-in management.
These functions help marketers comply with stringent data privacy regulations.
■ Increasing solution complexity: Multichannel marketing platform vendors have long needed to
ease integrations between their solutions and adjacent, complementary technologies, such as
sales force automation systems and digital asset or content management platforms. MMH
vendors tout the openness of their solutions. However, a trend among providers with integrated
suites, in particular, is to make their platforms less modular, seemingly requiring marketers to
piece together the capabilities of a multichannel marketing hub by purchasing myriad solutions.
Marketers need to carefully evaluate the solution set on offer — both native and third-party

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 31 of 35

 capabilities — against their needs to avoid acquiring functionality that gets underused or
abandoned altogether.

Gartner Recommended Reading

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

“How Markets and Vendors Are Evaluated in Gartner Magic Quadrants”

“Multichannel Marketing Survey 2019: Marketers Reorient Programs Around Customer Insights”

“5 Steps Marketers Can Take to Implement Event-Triggered Multichannel Marketing”

“Crawl, Walk, Run: Define Your Vision, Strategy and Roadmap for Personalization”

“The Multichannel Marketing Leader’s First 100 Days”

Evidence
“CMO Spend Survey 2018-2019: Marketers Proceed Into Uncharted Waters With Confidence”

2 “2018 State of Personalization Report”

3“Presentation of Marketing Technology Survey 2018: Martech Adoption Surges as Brands Pursue
Personalization, Measurement and Advertising Accountability”

Evaluation Criteria Definitions

Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined
market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills
and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as
defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.

Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial

health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that
the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering
the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of
products.

Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the
structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation,
presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.

Page 32 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and
achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer
needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's
history of responsiveness.

Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed
to deliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and
business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification
with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can
be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional initiatives, thought leadership,
word of mouth and sales activities.

Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable

clients to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways
customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary
tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups,
service-level agreements and so on.

Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors
include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences,
programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate
effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.

Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs
and to translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest
degree of vision listen to and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or
enhance those with their added vision.

Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated

throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising,
customer programs and positioning statements.

Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of
direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend
the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the
customer base.

Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and

delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as
they map to current and future requirements.

Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business
proposition.

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 33 of 35

 Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and
offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical
markets.

Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources,

expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.

Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to
meet the specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either
directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that
geography and market.

Page 34 of 35 Gartner, Inc. | G00361358

 GARTNER HEADQUARTERS

Corporate Headquarters
56 Top Gallant Road
Stamford, CT 06902-7700
USA
+1 203 964 0096

Regional Headquarters
AUSTRALIA
BRAZIL
JAPAN
UNITED KINGDOM

For a complete list of worldwide locations,

visit http://www.gartner.com/technology/about.jsp

© 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates. This
publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without Gartner's prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of
Gartner's research organization, which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication
has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of
such information. Although Gartner research may address legal and financial issues, Gartner does not provide legal or investment advice
and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by Gartner Usage Policy.
Gartner prides itself on its reputation for independence and objectivity. Its research is produced independently by its research
organization without input or influence from any third party. For further information, see "Guiding Principles on Independence and
Objectivity."

Gartner, Inc. | G00361358 Page 35 of 35