One of the biggest features and benefits of an open source platform like Mautic is the extreme amount of flexibility and customization that is possible. Open source gives incredible power to each business to create a tool that works for them (rather than the business working to fit the tool). Marketing automation historically never had this level of flexibility before Mautic was created and so in that sense I’m excited to see how quickly the marketing landscape has been improved by Mautic.
The crazy part of this Mautic journey personally is the feeling that this has been both instantaneous and interminably long at the same time in achieving this milestone. In reality we’re probably somewhere in between. Mautic has progressed from an alpha release, beta, a stable 1.0, and then a number of releases to the Mautic 2.x series. Along the way we have educated the world about the powers of open source marketing automation and learned a great deal about how to create a world-class marketing automation platform.
Current Status of the Mautic Platform
Today, I am excited to see the widespread acceptance of open source marketing automation as a natural and significant advancement for the MarTech “Forest” (a concept I’ve written about previously). Open source uniquely allows businesses to create campaigns, workflows, integrations, and processes that match their unique requirements. I’ve had the privilege of hearing story after story from those who have found success in a software tool that fits their needs. It’s extremely rewarding to know Mautic is empowering these individuals to do things the way the want to.
Looking Ahead at Marketing Technology
As I consider the landscape today and look ahead at what the future of MarTech looks like I realize there are still ways we can help marketers do even more. What we have done so far is the first step in my opinion. We cannot stop at this point and rest in our success. We cannot pause our forward momentum and progress and consider ourselves to have achieved our goals. This is the beginning. And we must always be looking at what comes next.
The Next Step in the Mautic Journey
I’ve shared the next step recently when I discussed, announcing Mautic 3, and then I shared both technical advancements (yes, I’ve heard this is a highly technical post), and business benefits, timeframes, and even more suggestions based on what I believe is coming next in the marketing space.
There is one particular aspect though which I inherently feel we should focus in on as we discuss marketing technologies, and what moving forward actually looks like. I believe Mautic changed everything by offering an open source flexible platform. I believe being flexible, integrating, and supporting marketers in whatever tools they choose to use from the “MarTech 5000”. This belief compels me to continue to refine and improve what open source marketing automation means. This is some of the reasoning behind my thoughts on Mautic 3. Let me explain with a graphic. This is a sneak peek from an upcoming blog post but I think it perfectly outlines my point.
I love this graphic because it provides a visual representation for a rather abstract concept. In fact, it also provides a picture for the title of this post as well. Mautic fills the gaps between the various and disparate systems in use by a marketer. Mautic does this with the ultimate in flexibility. By no longer existing as only a monolithic platform Mautic is able to fill in the space, adding value, and connecting marketing tools and more across the organization.
Flexibly Adding Value
I highlighted the key phrase in that last paragraph. Adding value. You see, by focusing on filling the gaps Mautic does far more than just connecting various tools in a blind or “dumb” connection. Rather, Mautic enriches the data, adds value, creates additional knowledge, simplifies processes, and improves the marketer’s intelligence into their audience.
Open source gives Mautic the uniquely powerful position in being able to offer this level of customization and separation. Separation in the sense that you can use some of those services without others. I referred to this in previous posts with a term, microservices, and this leads me to the eventual concept and drive behind some of my philosophies for Mautic 3 and marketing automation microservices.
Important: While Mautic 3 has the ability to provide various functionalities as microservices, there is also a full Mautic 3 marketing automation platform as well. (Not to mention an independent robust API platform and an incredible independent UI as well)
Even as I write that I realize there is so many more things I want to share with you on this topic. But I hope this post at least whets your appetite for learning more about Mautic 3 and the reasons behind why what is being proposed for this release is so important. I’ll be writing much more on this topic as well as sharing a full slide deck that highlights the various relationships in more detail. The image above is only one slide in this forthcoming post and I’m very excited to share it with you. Mautic is once again improving the way marketers work and interact with their tools. Stay with me, things are about to get good.
