A key question about mobile marketing is whether marketers should employ platforms specifically designed for those devices or utilize mobile capabilities within larger, multichannel marketing clouds.

Gartner’s first Magic Quadrant report on mobile marketing platforms points out the depth of mobile capabilities in mobile-only offerings, plus it notes the flexibility for a marketer who doesn’t necessarily want to make such a large commitment to one vendor. (A complimentary copy of the report is available from one of the selected vendors, Braze. Registration required.)

On the other hand, although mobile-only vendors are beginning to add other channels like email and Internet of Things, the large marketing clouds offer built-in integration of mobile campaigns and data with all the other channels.

In assessing 15 vendors, Gartner places five mobile-only platforms into the top category of Leaders (Braze, Urban Airship, Swrve, Localytics and Leanplum) and only one marketing cloud (IBM).

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]