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The internet is full of marketing recaps of 2024 and predictions for 2025. And while this post of that variety too, I don’t want to just tell you what I think the future of marketing looks like, I want to show you.
So last week I hosted the 3rd MKT1 Product Showcase, themed “The Future of Martech”. 6 startups demo’ed their products for marketers.
When I first used these products, I thought:
“I wish that existed when I was in-house”
“That’s gonna save a lot of marketers a lot of time”
"Let me tell all my advisees about this tool"
“I wish I built that”
"Take all of my angel investing money"
“Better host them at an MKT1 Showcase”
I hope when you see these tools, it all clicks—you see how to update your tech stack to avoid getting stuck doing marketing the old way. If you don’t do this, you’ll have bloated marketing teams, annoy prospects with spray and pray tactics, and not meet your revenue and efficiency targets.
In this newsletter..
This newsletter will give you a glimpse into what your martech stack should look like today–and what it should definitely look like in 2025.
Full video of last week’s MKT1 Showcase, featuring 6 products
Short summary of the big shifts impacting your martech stack
Detailed overviews (& discounts!) of each product–and why I think each gives you a glimpse into the future
In this video…
The video was recorded at our live event last week on Riverside (not coincidentally, Riverside presented at the showcase too). It also features: Naro, Framer, RevenueHero, Unify, Attio
You can watch the full video at the top of this newsletter. Clips from each of the company’s demos are included in the summary of each company below.
Each company gives an approximately ~5 min demo, and then I ask questions from our attendees and give my take on each.
In 2025, your martech stack needs to power customized, proactive marketing
Then: Generic & reactive
Spray & pray campaigns: One-size-fits-all strategies like email blasts, generic ad creative, and a single blog post for everyone in your ICP were the norm.
Lead & inbound driven strategies: Growth strategies relied heavily on waiting—tracking form fills, website visits, or email opens before taking action.
Limited ICP & account data: ICP and account research was difficult and time consuming, and true ABM tactics were only possible to small numbers of accounts.
Low engagement & conversion Rates: A 0.5% click-through rate or a 2% form fill rate was considered acceptable, despite the enormous waste of resources.
Now: Customized & proactive
Personalization: Over the past few years, we’ve gone from segmenting campaigns to being able to create content “dynamically” for every web visitor, prospect in the pipeline, etc.
Account-specific channel strategy: You can create bespoke plans for each account–from the content used to what channels you use.
Massive amounts of data: We can get demographic, firmographic, and whatever “signals” we want at the speed of thought.
Less marketing waste (eventually): We aren’t here yet…we are still stuck in the storm. Because there’s so much data and so many new tools that we are still finessing how we use it; but I predict we will get more sophisticated here soon and conversion rates and engagement will go up.
With this in mind, let’s look at how martech can move us forward as marketers…
I’ve organized the 6 companies who demo’ed last week into “fuel” and “engine” categories. In my fuel & engine framework, fuel equals brand, content, messaging and engine equals growth channels & tactics. You need to combine the right fuel with the right engine for the right audience to build a successful marketing machine.
The future of “fuel” martech…
Problem: AI has allowed us to save a bunch of time when it comes to creating content, but it’s also led to a bunch of sh*tty, generic content. Instead, we need to use the martech available to create more engaging content.
How:
Use AI, no-code, and automation to enable your marketing team to create anything. The barriers to creating engaging experiences across mediums (especially video!) and channels are lower. There's no excuse for sh*tty content these days.
We’re no longer stuck doing one-size-fits-all strategies like email blasts, generic ad creative, and a single blog post for everyone in your ICP, instead use martech to create personalized “fuel” for top accounts—or at the very least each ICP.
Featured products: Riverside, Naro, Framer
Riverside
Watch Riverside clip from MKT1 Showcase »
⛔ Problem it solves
Making high-quality audio and video, and then repurposing that content across channels shouldn’t require a million tools and multiple contractors. If you record an event, an interview, a podcast, etc you need to be able to repurpose that to get the proper ROI.
💡 What is it?
Riverside makes it easy for marketers to create professional-quality video and audio content. At MKT1, we use it for everything from video editing, podcasting recording, live event streaming, social clipping, and even internal meetings.
It guarantees high-resolution results even with a shaky internet connection that other tools just don’t and it includes a bunch of other essentials, like automatic transcription, simple editing, custom branding, and team collaboration.
🎯 Who is it for?
Riverside is for marketers—including content, product marketing, events, and social teams—seeking to create high-quality content. Whether you’re an expert producer or newbie to creating content, you can use Riverside.
🔮 Why it’s the future…
How people engage with content is changing superfast—trends like the shift to video, the preference for people over brands, the rise of ecosystem marketing and co-creating content, etc. means the platforms we use to create content must change too. Put simply, it's becoming increasingly necessary to move beyond traditional blog posts to engage with your audience and tools like Riverside make that possible. Case in point: This newsletter has videos made in Riverside in it!
💸 MKT1 Offer:
Use code MKT1 for 20% off the pro plan–or get started for free always.
Naro
Watch Naro clip from MKT1 Showcase »
⛔ Problem it solves
Marketing and sales don’t always work well together (understatement) and one of the biggest sources of frustration is managing requests from sales to marketing for content. And while we’ve been recording sales conversations for years, I haven’t really seen that be used effectively by marketing to enable sales to close more deals. It really should be easier to create and share the exact content sales needs…
💡 What is it?
Naro is an AI-powered content platform purpose-built for creating and distributing sales enablement content. Naro analyzes sales conversations (from whatever tool you already use) to figure out the top questions and objections from prospects. It then analyzes your content library to see if you have the right content. If something’s missing, Naro makes it easy to generate new content and enablement materials. It then surfaces the right content wherever sales is interacting with the prospect—in email, on calls, etc.
🎯 Who is it for?
B2B marketing leaders and product marketers and the sales teams they work with. It’s ideal for revenue organizations with 10-100+ customer-facing team members.
🔮 Why it’s the future…
Fuel & engine activities have been siloed for too long. Modern tools are bridging the gap and blurring the lines between marketing and sales team responsibilities. Tools that don’t just help you generate content, but help you determine what to create and get it in the right hands (whether through sales or through other distribution channels) will be our content platforms of choice.
💸 MKT1 Offer:
Reach out to Naro and mention MKT1 to get your first 2 months free.
Framer
Watch Framer clip from MKT1 Showcase »
⛔ Problem it solves
Even with modern tools like Webflow, building websites is still challenging and cumbersome. No-code is more like low-code with a high learning curve. We should be able to create well-designed, scalable sites and dynamic, personalized pages in minutes…
💡 What is it?
Framer is a no-code website-building tool for teams to launch sites quickly, without needing a developer. It looks and feels like a design tool, handles hosting and publishing, optimizes for SEO, and has a CMS so you can quickly integrate dynamic content, and even has built in analytics.
🎯 Who is it for?
Framer is for anyone building a website (from early to late stage startups), but is perfect for marketers as it has the lowest learning curve to build sites I’ve personally seen. Your designers will also love using it, as it looks, feels, and works like Figma.
🔮 Why it’s the future…
If you want to build something in marketing, you should be able to build it. But, website building, optimizing, and maintenance has been a notoriously challenging, cross-functional situation since the dawn of time, and we need better solutions. Framer just might be it.
💸 MKT1 Offer:
Get 25% off for a Basic, Pro, Startup or Scaleup yearly site with code MKT1.
The future of “engine” martech
Problem: There’s been an explosion of data, especially when it comes to enrichment data and signals. With all this data we’ve made a bit of a mess–and the most successful marketing orgs will use martech next year to reign it in.
How:
Shift from lead to accounts: Stop fishing with nets, go spearfishing instead. The data to map your TAM (or at the very least your top ICPs) in your CRM is available. Get this data into your CRM, then track engagement against your target accounts.
Get your outbound situation under control: Actually send thoughtful, personalized content to your audience at the right time rather than spamming the universe–and then make it easy to buy when prospects are interested.
Featured products: RevenueHero, Unify, Attio
RevenueHero
Watch RevenueHero clip from MKT1 Showcase »
⛔ Problem it solves
When your prospects are ready to see a demo, you shouldn’t make them wait to schedule over email –this kills conversion and gives competitors a chance to swoop in. You need to offer instant meeting scheduling to prospects everywhere you interact with them, so when they are ready you are ready. It may have been too hard for companies with complex routing rules and tons of qualification criteria to offer instant scheduling in the past, but the right AI tools can now help us do this..
💡 What is it?
RevenueHero makes it easy for your prospects to schedule meetings with your reps from inbound and outbound campaigns. (Yes, you can and should add meeting booking links directly to outbound emails!) RevenueHero also automatically qualifies prospects and matches prospects with the right sales rep based on form, CRM, or enrichment data, so the right reps get the right meetings with qualified people.
🎯 Who is it for?
RevenueHero is primarily purchased by growth marketing and rev ops teams, but it helps your entire GTM function improve conversion, drive more revenue, and make a better impression on prospects. If you have 3 or more sales reps, it’s time for RevenueHero.
🔮 Why it’s the future…
Scheduling tools are table stakes at this point. GTM is getting more streamlined and you need to deliver the lowest friction possible buying experience across all of your channels–from inbound to outbound to events.
Marketing teams also seemed to forget about conversion as a major lever for driving revenue during the “Let’s spend with reckless abandon” period of marketing circa 2020 + 2021. I can’t tell you how many analytics dashboards I still see that don’t have a single conversion graph. You can make your marketing team more efficient instantly by improving conversion and this is a fool proof way to do it.
💸 MKT1 Offer:
Get 15% OFF if your company buys RevenueHero before 1/31/25.
Unify
Watch Unify clip from MKT1 Showcase »
⛔ Problem it solves
Doing account and contact research and using this to send outbound campaigns is all the rage. But the process of doing this has become a bit of a mess. We string together tons of tools, throw caution to the wind when it comes to deliverability, and hire expensive agencies to try to do more effective outbound. To improve ROI of these efforts, we need tools that help us make sense of all this data and make building these workflows easier.
💡 What is it?
Unify is a single platform for building pipeline with simple workflows for building outbound plays and sequences. With 10+ data sources, 1st and 3rd party signals out of the box, deliverability management, you’ll be able to reach buyers where they are and when it matters.
🎯 Who is it for?
Unify helps demand gen and growth marketing, rev ops, and sales teams simplify their pipeline-building workflows. If you’re looking to add outbound as a channel or improve your efficiency, consider Unify.
🔮 Why it’s the future…
It should be a good thing that we can now use 1st-party, 2nd-party, and 3rd-party signals to better target people in our exact ICP, at the exact right time, with personalized content. But many companies are just using this to run the same playbook they ran with human SDRs, now with AI SDRs: spamming their prospects.
The best GTM teams will use the data available to do smarter marketing, not MORE marketing. Tools like Unify not only give you all the data, but help you build smarter workflows.
💸 MKT1 Offer:
Mention MKT1 for 1 month free on Unify annual deals.
Attio
Watch Attio clip from MKT1 Showcase »
⛔ Problem it solves
Our CRMs and marketing automation tools are becoming things we have to integrate with and update, not useful drivers of our strategy or orchestration platforms like they once were. Our CRMs shouldn’t be a chore to update and blockers for our marketing campaign ideas.
💡 What is it?
Attio is the next generation CRM. Design powerful workflows, deploy AI, integrate your data, and build detailed reports—in one platform. Setting it up takes less than a minute because it syncs with your email and calendar and then enriches your contacts with valuable data. Attio also lets you build Zapier-style automations–truly making it your source-of-truth and starting place for any marketing activity.
🎯 Who is it for?
Attio works for any go-to-market motion from PLG to sales-led and it’s used by many roles in an organization, but is particularly useful for RevOps and Revenue Leaders.
🔮 Why it’s the future…
CRMs have looked how they do since before I started in marketing (so at least 20 years here). But the way we do marketing has changed dramatically, and I don’t think the current structure and design of CRMs + Marketing automation tools are serving us well. We need a CRM built in an AI, account, and action centric way, that’s not cumbersome or had to configure.
I believe we will look back and say “How were data enrichment and CRMs so disjointed in the past”...well we likely won’t call it a CRM anymore, but I’m not going to rename the category in this newsletter!
💸 MKT1 Offer:
Get up to 80% off with their startup program here.
Takeaways
These products and modern martech show us what’s possible now and in the future:
Everyone will be able to make high quality webinar and podcast recordings
Making sales enablement content that actually gets used won't be a headache
The barriers blocking anyone from designing website and launching will be knocked down
Routing prospects won't feel like a traffic jam, instead it will be smooth and simple
Launching personalized, well-timed campaigns won't take 97 tools
CRMs won’t feel like they are built for GTM strategies of the past
As you move into next year, update your stack to enable your team to avoid Random Acts of Marketing (R.A.M 🐏), not create more. We need to take advantage of the advances in martech to do more personalized and proactive marketing, not just churn out more irrelevant content and send it to anyone with an email address.
Build your marketing plan around the right big-bet campaigns that combine the right fuel, with the right engine, for your specific audience, using the right tools and data, and you’ll be off to the races.
More from MKT1
🙏 Thanks again to everyone who participated and attended the MKT1 Showcase. We had over 700 RSVPs!
📰 Upcoming Newsletters: Before the end of the year, I’m sending a paid only “December Roundup” newsletter, featuring a video walkthrough of my budget template.
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🧑🚀 Job board: Jobs from the MKT1 community. Paid subscribers can add jobs to our job board for free.
Full disclosure: The companies included in this post all sponsored the Showcase event and newsletter. I handpicked a list of products I believe represent the future of martech, we reached out and asked them to join. As always, I personally vet each company who sponsors MKT1 Newsletter and actually recommend them my advisees and portfolio companies.
If you are interested in partnering with us, reach out at sponsorships@mkt1.co.
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