Study: High Growth Marketers More Likely to Have Mature Automation in Place

Marketers continue to test the waters in terms of automation, and new research suggests that it’s the high growth marketing firms that are seeing the most success in this area.

The Hinge Research Institute recently published its “High Growth Study 2021,” and statistics showed that high growth firms – those that have experienced exponentially high growth as of late – are much more likely (26.2% vs. 16.6%) to have a highly mature marketing and sales automation strategy in place, compared to their counterparts.

Additionally, 46.6% of leads come from digital sources among marketers who have high-level automation in place. This is compared to 42.4% among those with mid-level automation, and just 30.6% among marketers with low-level automation in place.

“Marketing and sales automation are great tools to leverage scarce resources and accelerate digital lead generation,” wrote the authors of the report. “But simply owning the tools is not enough. They must be deployed in a way that allows them to be effective. Automating a flawed strategy seldom helps.”

The Struggle to Find and Convert Marketing Leads

As more marketers look toward marketing automation, previous research suggests that lead generation is still a problem area for many in the industry.

Verse and Ascend2 conducted the “The State of Lead Conversion in Marketing and Sales” report, and statistics indicated that 41% of respondents feel that following up with leads quickly is still challenging. In addition, 44% said that their sales personnel are too busy to follow up, yet only 25% have a lead conversion solution in place.

Nearly 44% of respondents stated that they have an email marketing automation system in place, while 39% have a customer relationship management system.