This week in martech
News from HubSpot, Bizzabo, Outfunnel, OUTFRONT and Merkle
HubSpot + The Hustle
Inbound marketing platform HubSpot has announced it will acquire the business and tech publisher The Hustle. The Hustle supplements a blog featuring short news items with newsletter, podcast and research products. The move is expected to allow HubSpot to make content available, especially to growing companies, building on the success of its own educational blog, Academy.
The Hustle’s subscription research service Trends has some 10,0000 subscribers, and the free daily email 1.5 million.
We asked Kieran Flanagan, HubSpot’s SVP Marketing, about how the acquisition will benefit HubSpot customers. He told us: “Over the past year, we’ve seen our customers increasingly gravitate toward popular forms of media like newsletters, research, and podcasts. In order to meet our customers where they are, we knew we needed to expand beyond our existing educational content streams to deliver the tech and business news that these scaling companies are looking for. Our acquisition of The Hustle will help us reach that goal by providing our customers and community with the content they want on the platform they prefer.”
Why we care. For a software company, HubSpot has always been highly focused on content, whether educational content for HubSpot users, or more general informational content at the HubSpot blog. With this acquisition, HubSpot is betting on the trend for B2B brands to offer richer, content-based experiences to prospects and customers — much more than just technical information and white papers.
Bizzabo joins the Adobe Exchange Partner Program
Events platform Bizzabo this week announced it had joined the Adobe Exchange Partner Program. As an official Adobe partner, Bizzabo aims to help B2B marketers stage and manage in-person, virtual or hybrid events.
Bizzabo, previously focused on in-person events, launched a virtual events solution in 2020 aimed at mid-market and enterprise clients. Bizzabo also has an established integration with Marketo Engage, part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, to share registration and attendee activity data.
Why we care. As virtual-first B2B event platforms like ON24 prospered during lockdown, it’s been fascinating to watch platforms like Bizzabo, previously associated with physical events, pivot to serving a virtual environment. These platforms are positioning themselves to respond to whatever comes next: a return to normalcy, extended remote in engagement, or a mix of the two.
Sales and marketing still not in alignment says report
In a new survey, “The Revenue Marketing Report: 2021,” the revenue marketing automation platform Outfunnel and CRM Copper, cast doubt on whether sales and marketing teams have been forced into greater alignment by the challenges of the current economy. Senior Forrester analyst Craig Rosenberg told us last year: “Alignment. We’ve all been talking about it for a long-time, but now you have to do it. Everyone had to put down their swords, get in a room and figure it out together.”
According to the report, though, 43% of respondents thought goals were poorly aligned; 43% thought the teams collaborated poorly; and 46% of marketers felt that sales doesn’t understand what’s important. Sales people were more likely than marketers to think the teams work together well. Concerns were also expressed about the utility of sales and martech tools, and especially about the difficulty of integrating them.
Why we care. At the top level, we hear that sales/marketing alignment is more necessary than ever, and that it’s happening -— especially as sales relies increasingly on the digital channels where marketing is at home. Maybe things look different from the trenches.
OUTFRONT powers “Making Black History with…” campaign
OUTFRONT Media, the outdoor media company and pioneer in the digital billboard, or ‘liveboard,’ space, marked the first day of Black History Month by launching its “Making Black History with…” campaign. The campaign will run on highly visible digital OOH assets in 35 markets nationwide, highlighting the achievements of Black trailblazers.
The honorees will include some leading figures in marketing, such Dara Treseder, SVP, Global Marketing and Communications at Peloton, and Remi Kent, Global CMO, Consumer Business Group at 3M. The full list of honorees, from a range of professions, can be found here.
Why we care. It’s not just about the positive Black History message. OUTFRONT is one of the vendors in the OOH space which understands that digital billboards are more than just regular billboards which can be refreshed remotely. They can convey substantial content, especially to briefly captive audiences, like commuters at transit hubs. Once we all start moving around again, expect to hear more about this space.
Merkle partners with B2B marketing solutions
Performance marketing agency Merkle has announced enhanced partnerships to enhance its B2B services. It will be collaborating with LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and ABM platform Madison Logic.
The collaboration will help Merkle B2B drive client strategy using Madison Logic insights. Madison Logic has an integration with LinkedIn that supports the orchestration of paid media campaigns targeting buying teams at priority accounts.
Why we care. Merkle is a global agency which has extended its capabilities into tech consultancy and implementation, but it’s not trying to build everything in house. This partnership aims to benefit mutual customers of Merkle and Madison Logic by tightly integrating LinkedIn focused ABM capabilities with Merkle’s B2B agency services.
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