Salesforce, Adobe and Braze have topped the latest Gartner report into Multichannel Marketing Hubs, making it into the top quadrant for both their leadership and well as visionary approach to their respective platforms.

Gartner defines multichannel marketing hubs (MMHs) as software applications that orchestrate personalised communications to individuals in common marketing channels. MMHs optimise timing, format and content of interactions through the analysis of customer data, audience segments and offers. MMHs are foundational for multichannel marketing, customer journey orchestration and next best action programs.

At a minimum, MMHs must enable marketers to use data to deploy media across channels to addressable individuals. Other requirements for being considered in the Gartner report include: Customer profile management and integration of multiple customer data feeds into unified customer profiles that enable campaign management, journey orchestration and channel execution; persistent profiles for retargeting and time-based journeys; campaign and journey management; and multichannel execution and measurement for deploying and measuring the performance of personalized messages from campaigns and journeys through a mix of native channels and integrated activation points.

In all, 14 vendors were plotted across the Gartner Multichannel Marketing Hubs quadrants in this edition. Salesforce, followed by Adobe then Braze, were in the top quadrant as both leaders and visionaries in the field. Challenger vendors included SAP (Emarsys), Zeta Global and Iterable.

Further down the chain for vision but less ability to execute were Bloomreach, Optimove and Insider. Niche players are Pegasystems, Cordial, Acquia, MessageGears and Acoustic.

Vendors that dropped out either due to not meeting Gartner’s criterion or not validating certain inclusions were HCLSoftware, Cheetah Digital, Redpoint Global and SAS.

According to Gartner, standard MMH capabilities include: Advanced data management; analytics; advanced multichannel execution; and application management. There are a host of other optional and advanced functionality coming into the mix as well, from prescriptive intelligence and decisioning to consent and preference management, digital commerce, collaboration and work management and campaign ideation.

Vendors need to have at least US$500 million in software licence revenue from these products and 1500 customers or; $150m in revenue and at least 350 customers, with at least 25 net new paying customers year-on-year; or $30m in revenue and at least 30 net new paying customers compared to the year prior, with combined revenue growth and profit margins meeting or exceeding 40%.

As part of its analysis of the evolving platform space, Gartner noted MMH providers further strengthening GenAI capabilities in the last year, primarily in generating content for messaging.

“Providers showed the ability to use GenAI as a creative assistant, helping users create variations of text and imagery for experiments or to personalise multichannel messaging,” the analyst firm stated.

“In the last year, providers also added the ability for GenAI to generate target segments or design and assemble journeys. Marketers who seek to accelerate journey operations should investigate GenAI capabilities for their impact on MMH performance and productivity. GenAI enhancements could not only help build deeper customer relationships through tailored experiences but also potentially accelerate campaign production times, enabling businesses to gain competitive advantage from agile marketing. Marketing buyers often incorporate POC tests to help make the business case when adding or replacing a martech.

“This is even more important when assessing the value of GenAI in MMH. In POC tests, marketing buyers should use measures like campaign cycle time — how much time is required to bring a new journey to market — along with products’ impact on marketing performance to select providers for generative journey building.”