Scott Brinker

Integration Tops Martech Vendors' Evaluation Criteria

My annual reminder to #martech vendors that integration is a top criterion when marketing ops professionals evaluate your product. 😀 Data from the latest State of the Marketing Operations Professional report, published in November 2025, produced by Mike Rizzo and team at Marketing Ops Community. (Pointer to the full report in comments.) Oh, and before I get the usual pushback on, "Why isn't business outcome the top criterion?" — this is a lens on the *technical* evaluation of a product. OF COURSE, business impact is the most important thing overall. The business case for any technology should be thoroughly vetted before proceeding with any other level of evaluation. But once a decision has been made to purchase a capability, buyers will compare prospective vendors along a number of different dimensions to make their choice. And the team that's responsible for actually incorporating it into your marketing operations is going to evaluate the alternatives on the factors ranked in this report. After being burned way too many times by martech purchases that made a great case in isolation but failed to launch because they didn't play well with the company's overall tech stack, make no mistake: the decision-makers are going to pay very close attention to the assessment of their marketing ops team. Ton of other great insights in the full report.