Marketing Automation Remains Critical to Marketers’ Top Goals

Automating some marketing processes can streamline day-to-day business, but how is technology benefiting marketers who have invested in the automation process?

Recently, Econsultancy conducted the “2017 State of B2B Marketing Automation” report with Act-On Software to dive deeper into the concept.  Most respondents (66 percent) said that generating higher quality leads is among their top three reasons for implementing automation. Roughly half (49 percent) indicated increased revenue was a primary goal.

Half of the respondents (53 percent) said they are currently using marketing automation technology and 37 percent are looking to implement elements of automation soon.

Overall, 82 percent claim that they are more efficient, thanks to marketing automation. Seventy-nine percent believe marketing automation is delivering a return on investment, and 76 percent state that it has increased contribution to the pipeline. In total, 98 percent believe that effective marketing automation is essential to long-term business success.

That being said, it appears that there is still work to do in terms of maximizing the potential of automation. The majority of respondents (85 percent) claim that their marketing automation system is “effective,” and only a small portion of them believe their strategy is “very effective.”

“This can be attributed to the significant gap in adoption between leaders and their peers, particularly in more advanced areas such as account-based marketing, lead recycling, progressive profiling and business intelligence integration,” wrote the authors of the report.

Marketing Automation and Customer Journey Mapping

Marketers are not only turning to automation more frequently, but they are using it to conduct tasks, such as customer journey mapping.

The “2016 State of Customer Journey Marketing” survey from Autopilot found that marketing automation has increased four-fold over the past two years. Sixty-four percent of high-performing marketers are now sending automated emails to contacts at least one per week.

Marketing automation users are about 60 percent more likely to frequently stay in touch with their contacts when compared to their counterparts.