Feature
The Gist
- Speculation sparks strategy talk. Could martech and CX vendors consolidate via acquisition rather than partnership?
- Partnerships are real — for now. Vendors like Adobe and Medallia are exploring ecosystem alliances, but acquisitions could shift the power dynamic.
- AI agents are the wildcard. Analysts say agentic AI could blur the lines between CX and DX — if vendors overcome integration hurdles.
The more we cover the intersection of marketing and customer experience — and the associated technologies that create campaigns, experiences and customer service and support — the more we wonder:
What if it were no longer an intersection — and just a straight road where these two worlds live together through merger and acquistion?
Meaning: What if we saw a world where Adobe acquired a provider like Medallia? NICE scooped up Optimizely. Acquia got on the radar of Five9. And what if agentic AI was the common layer that supports this marriage?
You get point. And you get the point of this exercise: speculation. Maybe imagination. Maybe we’re just plain off the reservation and not even close.
At least one expert in the space sounds like he feels that way.
“Nah,” Tony Byrne, founder and CEO of the Real Story Group, which covers each side of the technology equation, said when we asked him of the possibility. “That kind of integration certainly sounds like a nice outcome, but from what we’re seeing among martech vendors, their agents are mostly intra-platform and in some cases (sort of) intra-suite.”
Table of Contents
- Martech-CX Partnerships Are Alive, But Acquisitions ... ?
- Martech Acquisition in 2025 a Precursor?
- Can AI Be the Common Thread for a Martech-CX World?
- Vendors Eye Composability or Platform Path to Power AI Agents
- Agent Dreams vs. Martech Realities
Martech-CX Partnerships Are Alive, But Acquisitions ... ?
Maybe we’re dreaming. But, this part is fact: in our travels to Medallia’s Experience conference last month in Las Vegas, we did hear at least one conversation centered around this idea where marketing technology and customer experience technology become one, like the Spice Girls say. (Yup. Went there).
To which yours truly said, “We call it Experience. Not customer experience. Not marketing. Not digital experience. Just … experience.”
Sounds dreamy, right?
Here’s the deal: partnerships in this world already do exist. Medallia’s got one with Adobe, for instance, and Sid Banerjee, chief strategy officer at Medallia, told us in an interview in Vegas last month there were talks of expansion in that arena but the timing wasn’t there.
Adobe announced its agentic AI partnership model the week before in the same city at its own conference, Adobe Summit.
“We did get some outreach from Adobe to see if we could be part of an announcement,” Banerjee told CMSWire. “The timing just honestly didn't work out, because we were heads down trying to get ready for our conference.”
Medallia’s "very open" to partnerships with other companies that are virtuous ecosystem partners, he added.
“So I would just say, let's watch that space,” Banerjee said. “... We've got a pretty tight product integration to Salesforce as well. This is me personally speaking: I want us to be deliberate in sort of how we think about these partnerships. I don't want just marketing announcements. So I think it takes time for us to dig in and figure out when we have a partnership, what does it actually look like? Not just words on the page, but how are we going to link up our capabilities? I think there's a ton of opportunity for partnerships.”
Especially with artificial intelligence in the mix, Banerjee said we're heading to a world where companies can find ways to work together and “share intelligence across systems for our customers and create an even more powerful solution for our customers.”
Related Article: Survey Shuffle to AI Shuffle: Medallia Wants to Reshape the CX Deck
Martech Acquisition in 2025 a Precursor?
Partnerships in these two spaces — martech and CX – aren’t new. But we’re talking acquisitions.
Will we see a day where a DXP provider makes the leap and acquires contact center or customer service and support? Or vice versa? CX provider NICE certainly has the resources to pull it off.
And we saw something where DXP meets CDP recently when DXP provider Contentstack earlier this year acquired CDP provider Lytics. Close, but not revolutionary as Sitecore acquired Boxever CDP a few years ago. Acquire acquired AgilOne, too.
Can AI Be the Common Thread for a Martech-CX World?
“Both CX (about service-agent interactions) and DX (about digital interactions) are ultimately about delivering the best customer experience,” said David Raab, of Raab Associates Inc. and the founder of the CDP Institute. “AI is the common thread, since, at least in theory, AI can identify and deliver the best customer experience across both interaction types. Agentic AI in particular promises to take on tasks that service agents previously handled. So there will certainly be more overlap between the two worlds.”
Raab sees more partnerships on the horizon. And: competition.
“I’d also expect vendors in each space to increasingly expand their systems to encroach on the other space, so there will be competition as well as partnerships,” Raab added. “In general, I’d expect the DX firms to move more into CX than vice versa, because the tech to do AI-driven CX is almost identical to DX, while AI-driven DX doesn’t really look much like traditional CX (i.e., agent interfaces).”
Related Article: DXP Meets CDP: Contentstack Acquires Lytics
Vendors Eye Composability or Platform Path to Power AI Agents
Chuck Gahun, principal analyst of Forrester, said he sees a stronger focus in orienting SaaS solutions around the customer experiences by consolidating enterprise app capabilities.
“Several vendors,” he added, “have built or are acquiring personalization capabilities, but also visual editors, content analytics and seamless integrations to CDPs and CRMs. The CMS has always been the orchestrator of digital experiences.”
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Enter AI agents, which support content authoring and management. Because of that, they will be able to churn through more data sources faster to create compelling digital experiences.
“To do this effectively and remain competitive,” Gahun said, “vendors will either need to integrate seamlessly and holistically (composability) or acquire solutions to build their own customer experience solution (platform).”
Agent Dreams vs. Martech Realities
But back to the party pooper: Byrne of the Real Story Group. Much of the real value of agents for martech, he said, will come from more independent agent actors that can work across platforms in your stack.
“We should not underestimate just how hard that’s going to be, and also remember that Adobe isn’t really incented to get there quickly. Agents are cool in theory; it’s still very, very early days for moving beyond pilots to real production processes.”
So maybe we are dreaming here, for now. Doesn’t mean we can’t speculate. It could be great fodder and debate if the two worlds collided in acquisitions.
Think the cries of “Monolith! Monolith! Monolith!” are loud now? Imagine how loud they’ll be then if this materializes.
