Survey Finds Marketing Automation Vital to Overall Performance

Marketers successfully utilizing marketing automation systems overwhelmingly (94 percent) report it is a vital component to overall marketing performance, according to a recently released survey results.

The study, “Marketing Automation Trends for Success,” by Three Deep and Ascend2, examined a select group of businesses that consider their marketing automation “very successful” at achieving overall marketing goals. The purpose was to determine what these so-called “best-in-class” companies are doing differently.

The majority (63 percent) of the very successful companies surveyed are using marketing automation systems extensively. However, the data shows many are overwhelmed by the use of marketing automation and struggle with the internal adjustments necessary for success.

The top three barriers to marketing automation success were the lack of an effective strategy (58 percent), marketing-sales alignment (42 percent) and complexity of system (42 percent).

To overcome these challenges, nearly three-quarters of the respondents leverage an outside specialist in some capacity to assist in designing a marketing automation strategy.

Email marketing, analytics and reporting, campaign management are the most useful features of a marketing automation system, according to the data.

“The best-in-class say the most useful metrics for measuring marketing automation performance, and meeting the very high expectations are conversion rates and revenue generated,” the authors of the study wrote.

From system implementation to benefit realization, two-thirds of respondents reported it should take less than 6 months.

B2B Marketing Automation Budgets Grow

Sixty-five percent of B2B marketers are increasing their marketing automation budgets in 2016, according to Marketing Land’s “B2B Marketing Automation Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide” report.

The B2B marketing automation industry has shown significant growth over the past two years; marketing automation systems’ revenue totaled $1.8 billion in 2015, up 50 percent from 2014, according to Raab Associates’ research.