Special Edition | Unveiling the TMW 100
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Unveiling the TMW 100
2023’s TMW 100 is finally here, and with it, our first-ever list of marketing technologies competing to become the most innovative marketing technology of the year.
Congratulations to our contenders from all over the globe. From the largest companies in the world to startups that haven’t even launched yet, the TMW 100 is assembled from innovators from all over the place, and is set to be fiercely competitive!
This essay will be a little different. Instead of our regular programming, I’ve done an analysis of what makes up the TMW 100 across a bunch of data points as a preview of what kinds of companies are pushing the marketing technology forward. I’ll share the full analysis at the live awards event.
In other words… Get ready for a lot of charts. And I mean a lot.
Before we get to that, now that the TMW 100 is here, the people’s choice voting has officially opened. Your vote will decide the global ranking of each contender from 1st to 100th place. But be quick! People's choice voting ends on 29 September 11:59 pm PST.
Go here to start voting!
You’re also invited to the awards ceremony, where we’ll present the TMW 100 voting outcomes, innovation insights and winners live and online at 3 pm PST Tuesday 7 November, from MOps-Aplooza in Anaheim, California.
Join the FREE livestream! Register for our online livestream session of the awards ceremony and receive a recording of the event! Register Now.
Be there in person! Purchase a ticket to the live awards ceremony and the full MOps-Apalooza event, with 20% off ticket fees exclusively for TMW 100 voters. Check it out.
A dumb idea
It has been exactly 200 days since I came up with the idea for TMW 100 while watching my kids on a playground on a hot summer’s afternoon. I’d just gone full time on TMW the week before and was facing an uncertain future trying to build an independent media business serving the marketing technologist, when the idea kind of came out of nowhere: we should really know about who’s building the future of the industry in which I love.
At that point, the idea seemed completely implausible. It would be expensive! It hasn’t been done before! How are you going to get companies to join?! Ah, so many questions. Given that TMW is primarily a newsletter, it would surely be dumb to launch a public awards event for marketing technology. Maybe I should wait a few years….
But I knew that the industry needed a clear signal of which companies are innovating for marketers. Our existing methods were not helping, and Martech was only getting bigger, adding more than 1,000 companies in this past year alone. In the way that TMW newsletters have become a vehicle to give people clarity on what matters in Martech, I thought: why not extend this to the companies themselves?
From TMW #130 | Introducing TMW 100:
“Over time, this quadrant-style assessment of marketing technologies popularized by analyst firms have come to resemble more of a Myers-Briggs personality test than an assessment of the actual innovation, excellence, success, or the growth of these companies.
And when we’re wanting to find marketing technologies in our research, we might turn to G2, Capterra, or TrustRadius. But again, these marketplaces fall short of providing the kinds of information buyers need. The data shown with ranked companies is based on customer testimonials and company size, not innovation or breakthrough ideas. Even then, there’s no comparison of total customers and those that leave a review. And I constantly get paid ads asking me to leave a review on these platforms for a $25 Amazon gift card. Not all is what it seems.”
Still, I went for it (because, of course I thought it was going to be easy – it wasn’t), and with the help of MarketingOps and our charity partner She Loves Data, along with our incredible Martech Innovation Judges, contributors, media partners and staff, I am so excited to share a few initial insights and stats from the TMW 100 with you.
The shape of TMW 100
Below, you’ll see a bunch of charts. And the first thing you’ll notice is that there are two groups: the Martech companies that have entered the TMW 100, and the Judge’s Pick – representing 36 companies (three selected per judge) that particularly stood out for their innovations. You can check out all the represented categories and the Judge’s Pick here.
So what’s the make-up of the TMW 100? Here are some interesting stats about the TMW 100 by the company’s characteristics, along with some surprising insights as to which companies the Judges picked.
First thing first. What types of case studies are represented, ranging from product-focused technology, customer success, to business models? We wanted to give technology companies the ability to compete beyond just new products. Yet, unsurprisingly, TMW 100 is comprised overwhelmingly of product-based case studies. But here’s the surprising thing: the other two case studies were more likely to get a Judge’s Pick.
TMW has a wide variety of countries represented. And while Australia (which is the 10th largest Martech market globally) India and the United States lead total entries and Judge’s Pick, there are some special companies that the Judges loved out of the United Kingdom.
When we turn to the categories of the companies that have joined the TMW 100, most are in the data and analytics space: a big bucket of everything from CDPs to analytics solutions and data integrations and it’s where the majority of the Judge’s Picks came from. Despite this, management and monitoring categories also enjoyed a lot of love from the Judges.
But if you drill down into the subcategories, you can see there’s a lot of variances in how companies label themselves, with everything from CMS to influencer management, loyalty platforms, live chat, affiliate marketing, marketing performance and attribution and public relations.
How about the size of the companies in the TMW 100? We’re measuring that with staff headcount and funding stages, both indicators (outside of revenue) that we can use to gauge how big and small the TMW 100 company sizes are.
As you can see, a lot of the TMW 100 is in the middle of the road. Companies with less than 50 staff are the biggest group, but they also hold the smallest share of Judge’s Pick entries in each headcount range. Companies with 50 to 100 staff get to enjoy that privilege!
I call this one the cigarette chart (tip it to the side).
When it comes to funded companies, early-stage Martech solutions are about two-thirds of all funded startups in the TMW 100, comprised of seed and series A stage companies. Seed stage also enjoyed a far larger share in Judge’s Pick, if anything this makes me optimistic about new startups – we’re still building new and interesting things!
And this is backed up by their age. The vast majority of Martech companies are less than 6 to 7 years old, but that didn’t sway the Judges at all. As you can see, Judges were voting for companies young and old!
And lastly, the customer focus for the TMW 100. Most companies are focused on the Enterprise, while the second largest is the mid market.
Phewww…. ! That’s it for now. As you can see, the TMW 100 is wonderfully diverse, with a broad representation geographically, by size, category, customer focus, and funding. I’ll be sharing more insights at the live event, and more on how the public voted on the list, which should yield even more fascinating insights into how marketing technology companies are building the future of the industry.
For now, get out there and vote vote vote!
Stay Curious,
Make sense of marketing technology.
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Want to share something interesting or be featured in The Martech Weekly? Drop me a line at juan@themartechweekly.com.