May - 2015 - Special issue > VC talk
Marketing Technology Is White-Hot
Ajay Agarwal, Managing Director, Bain Capital Ventures
Why do I think this is possible?
For decades marketing as an industry didn't change. Interactions were offline. There was no data or system of record, so there was nothing to be automated. Enter the Internet, followed by recent huge leaps in other technology, such as machine learning - a type of artificial intelligence that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.
Now every industry has a huge percentage of its interactions with customers through web sites, mobile sites and mobile apps. And the information about buyers, their likes and dislikes, and the buying process is routinely captured, stored and analyzed. We are finally at the point at which nearly any company with any product or service is able to sell to a global audience - an audience many times bigger than it once was - via the Internet.
Here are the three key drivers for the trend:
Predictive analytics for B2B companies:
The volume of data about buyers, channels and communities that marketers can now harness is incredible. New startups have emerged to deliver added value and insight across marketing functions and channels. The best of them use machine learning and data science to tap into marketing and sales automation data sets, as well as external third-party data, to deliver insights and capabilities.
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