54% of Marketers Are Failing to Fully Leverage Marketing Automation Tools

Marketers have begun to implement marketing automation tools to simplify processes such as email, social media management, and campaign tracking. However, new research suggests that there is still room for improvement in this area.

Ascend2 recently published its “State of Marketing Automation” report, and the majority of marketers (54%) stated that they do not feel that they are utilizing marketing automation tools to their fullest potential. Only 20% of respondents said that they were doing so, while 26% claimed that they weren’t sure.

In terms of the top challenges, most marketers (39%) cited a lack of training/resources/knowledgebase. About 32% said that they had a lack of management resources, while 31% cited a lack of budget.

So far, the majority of respondents (39%) said that their marketing automation solutions were still only “somewhat integrated.” Twenty-five percent stated that they weren’t integrated at all.

Identifying Top Marketing Automation Challenges

This is not the first time marketers have cited challenges associated with marketing automation, and there has been a wide array of obstacles in their way.

Ascend2 conducted its “Optimizing Marketing Automation” survey, and statistics indicated that only 46% of the best-in-class marketers were “very successful” at achieving their primary objectives through marketing automation optimization.

Some of the primary barriers to success have been data unification (38%), improving the user experience (37%) and being able to streamline marketing processes (30%).