RSG has just released an update to our Marketing Automation and Social Technology vendor evaluation report.

As a marketer, you will be familiar with the maxim that "the best advertising is word of mouth." Circa 2016, the main avenues for "word of mouth" are social media networks. Not surprisingly, social media marketing is very much a part and parcel of most marketing plans. Just consider these statistics from eMarketer:

• 88% of US marketers use social networks for marketing
• 10.7% of the marketing budget goes towards social media marketing

The focus of this research update is also Social Media Management & Marketing, and we've added two new vendors: HootSuite and Sprinklr to our evaluations lineup.

Here's a sneak peek.

HootSuite was an early market entrant and is today perhaps the most widely-used tool for social media management. The enterprise edition supports team collaboration and can manage publishing to major social media channels but ad management is limited to only a few of these channels.

Sprinklr Experience Cloud is a collection of tools for social marketing and engagement, targeted at the enterprise and mid-market customer segments. Several large systems integrators and consultancies are Sprinklr implementation partners -- a sure signal that this is a complex, costly, and potentially powerful platform. Interestingly, the company has made several tuck-in acquisitions in the last couple of years.

As usual we review these products in-depth and assess their suitability for different use cases, including social monitoring & intelligence and social customer support.

We also updated our review of Hubspot in this release.

The full report is available for immediate download to RSG's Marketing Automation and Social Technology subscribers.

If you are not yet a subscriber, you can download a sample evaluation chapter.