March 20, 2018—Sweet Sixteen update!
Round 1 voting exceed expectations and provided some exciting showdowns (not quite Michigan buzzer beating Houston but for martech geeks, it was high drama!). We’re down to 4 vendors in each category with some solid SMB Marketing Technology match-ups (vote here):
Marketing Automation
- HubSpot vs. SharpSpring
- Marketo vs. Pardot
Content Management
- WordPress vs. HubSpot
- SquareSpace vs. Adobe Experience Manager
CRM
- Salesforce vs. HubSpot
- Zoho vs. SugarCRM
Email Marketing
- MailChimp vs. Emma
- Vertical Response vs. Constant Contact
Updated Bracket Below
March 15, 2018—It’s that time of year again. When everyone—even the fair-weather variety—is suddenly a die-hard college basketball fan. Yes—it’s March Madness!
People are filling out their brackets, seeking advice from their co-workers on various match-ups, asking Alexa “Where is Gonzaga” (sorry Washington state people) and, with the advent of Draftkings and FanDuel, putting some serious money on the line—way more than in the standard office pools of the past.
But as this is a website about digital marketing and technology, we’ve put our own spin on March Madness and launched our first annual Martech Madness tournament!
Join the Madness with us!
Rather than South, West, East, and Midwest—we’re pitting the best SMB marketing automation, content management, CRM and email platform solutions against each other. Think HubSpot vs. Pardot and MailChimp vs. Constant Contact, rather than Duke vs. Kansas and North Carolina vs. Xavier.
Is this scientific or statistically significant? Probably not. Fun for martech geeks? That’s our goal!
So how does it work?
- We’ve created the Martech Madness bracket below and built a voting mechanism in SurveyMonkey.
- Unlike the 64-team NCAA tournament, Martech Madness starts with 32 competitors. Did we potentially miss a few? Sure, but we think these 32 represent the lion’s share of SMB adoption (and are most familiar to SMBs).
- Including the final round (a.k.a. the National Championship) there are five rounds of voting. The rounds align with the actual dates of the NCAA tournament. Voting is quick—we’re just asking you to pick one solution over another.
- There is an optional comment field for each match-up, but that’s only for people who aren’t satisfied with a binary choice and just have to have their thoughts heard—we welcome that!
- After each round of Martech Madness, we’ll update this post with the latest bracket results—so be sure to subscribe.
Turn out the Vote!
Don’t just vote (but yes, vote!). And definitely feel free to spread the word – the more voting, the more accurate the results.
P.S. If you chose to wager on the outcome—we can’t stop you. And we definitely don’t want a piece of that sweet action. Wink, wink.