As architect and technology strategist Kelly Jo Horton once told us, “Marketing operations is not a single discipline. The perception that it is a single role is the biggest problem.” It’s especially a problem when it comes to parsing marketing ops jobs postings. As Steve Petersen writes in his latest contribution to MarTech, there’s simply a lot of confusion about what marketing ops means.

“In some cases,” he said, “a posting for a marketing operations position had the typical marketing automation callouts but also covered a whole host of other disciplines ranging from analytics to UI/UX design to technical strategy.  There were also marketing technology positions that were almost exclusively marketing automation and CRM administration. The field needs clearer distinctions.”

Steve goes on to propose consistent language based on breaking down the specific elements of roles like Marketing Technologist, Marketing Operations, Data Scientist and Product Manager. These roles reflect some of Scott Brinker’s marketing tech role types: Maestro, Maker and Modeller.

Read more here.

Open source digital experience platform Acquia announced an agreement to acquire Widen, maker of digital asset management (DAM) and product information management (PIM) technologies. The deal is expected to close later this month.

With this addition, the Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform will enable businesses to manage visual content workflow across the full cycle of digital experiences and enrich it with product data.

The Widen PIM offering centralizes product data for syndication across websites and e-commerce channels, making it a hand-in-glove fit for digital content creation workflows by marketing teams. The acquisition also introduces Acquia to new customers, as Widen currently boasts more than 700 organizations that use its technology, including New Balance, Energizer and Crayola.

Why we care. This deal follows the trend we’ve seen among some of Acquia’s DX competitors to provide digital asset management technology for users. For marketing teams, this goes much further than just the needs of a remote-work staff adjusting to the pandemic.

The demands for content management have never been greater due to the number of channels a marketing team needs to cover, and this content production needs to be centralized and data-enriched in order to be relevant to consumers.

With a 98% open rate vs email’s average open rate of 18%, it’s obvious that mobile continues to change our expectations and how we want to interact with businesses. To learn just how critical text messaging has become, join experts from Podium as they unveil findings from more than 1,000 consumers who shared their sentiment and familiarity with texting, and how ripe the opportunity is for those businesses who leverage it. You’ll learn how messaging has evolved over the last decade and how promotional text messages can be an effective marketing channel.

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ON24, the webinar and virtual event platform, has announced that it is now possible for audiences to watch ON24 Webcast Elite live and simulive (as well as on-demand) webinars directly in the ON24 Engagement Hub, a central content destination to drive demand and engage with customers. Brands will now be able to present both live and on-demand experiences in the same content hub.

Users will be able to move between live experiences and other kinds of content, with brands able to capture first-party engagement data and measure performance across different content experiences. Other new features include AI-driven next-best-content recommendations, out-of-the-box content categories and favoriting and bookmarking capabilities.

Why we care: B2B purchasers are doing their own research and are increasingly looking for self-serve experiences. They do not want to visit a series of silos to consume different kinds of content. It makes absolute sense to offer content in one place and to weave it together with personalized recommendations.

A successful IPO in February this year came on the back of heightened demand for virtual experiences in 2020. While everyone figures out the future of in-person, virtual and hybrid if and when COVID-19 ebbs, players in this space are wise to build on recent success with new innovation.

Grab your free MarTech pass now and get ready to discover 50+ marketing technology solutions — and the actionable tactics you need to leverage them to overcome critical data challenges. Available live — this coming Tuesday and Wednesday, September 14-15 — AND on-demand, so you can explore, learn, and train when it fits your schedule.

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Kelly Jo Horton, Senior Client Partner, Etumos. Here’s a more developed version, but the rough sketch above illustrates something a lot of people are now saying: There’s a critical role to be filled by a senior marketing ops figure reporting to the CMO.