Many new marketing automation solutions are now available to help B2C marketers manage customer engagement, B2B marketers manage leads, and marketers of all ilk manage other marketing processes, such as campaigns and digital asset management.

European marketers are traditionally more hesitant about investing in technology projects, leading to a perception that they are late adopters. But in 2014, we observed a new European propensity to invest, and this trend continues with an increasing sense of urgency. In Forrester's Global Business Technographics® Marketing Survey, 2015, 50% of 248 European markers even named "don't have the right technology" as their most important organizational concern related to achieving their marketing priorities — and European firms now have stronger investment plans than their North American peers in almost every marketing category.  

As well as having to deal with a more complex regulatory environment, marketing and sales disciplines are also markedly different in Europe. The survey showed that European businesses tend to:

  • Have federated marketing organizations.The fragmentation of the target markets that European firms sell to means they need to use many more channels, languages, and messages to be effective.
  • Rely more on channel partners.Nearly one-third of the European marketers we surveyed stated that their channel partners were their primary sales channel, compared with 11% in North America. The result? Marketing and sales enablement projects are quite different, with a stronger need for through-channel marketing in Europe.
  • Focus on relationship marketing.European respondents revealed a marked difference in the customer life-cycle phases that they address, impacting the style, tone, and objectives of their respective marketing campaigns. North American marketers more heavily target the phases up to the buy point of the life cycle, while their European peers focus more on the relationship phases.

For the above reasons, many European marketing automation vendors are flourishing by providing unique solutions that successfully address the specific needs of European marketers. Forrester has tracked European martech vendors based on client inquiries and surveys for the past five years, and my latest report profiles all the vendors new to this analysis in 2016 as well as those featured in previous reports:

Austria:           Celum, Emarsys, SmartAssistant

Belgium:         Actito, ADAM Software, Selligent, Showpad,

Denmark:       Sitecore

France:           Azalead Software, Limber, SendinBlue, Splio, Synthesio, Webmecanik

Germany:       BrandMaker, censhare, Optivo, Teradata Marketing Applications

Israel:             SalesPredict  (NEWS July 11 – eBay agrees to acquire SalesPredict)

Norway:         Confirmit

Netherlands:  BlueConic

UK:                Adestra, CleverTouch Marketing, dotmailer, Elateral, idio, SDL, SmartFocus

Most of these vendors are covered by my analyst colleagues in various other Forrester reports, depending on their solution area, but this is the only report that puts all the European vendors together. Of course, despite the promise of enterprise marketing suites, marketers aren't going to buy everything they need from one vendor, whether that vendor is international or country-specific.  

Always keeping you informed! Peter