1. ADOPTION and MARKETGROWTH of MARKETING AUTOMATION
The US Marketing Automation Software industry is a $3.3B market in 2017, growing 30%+ annually – SharpSpring “Investor Presentation Jan 2018” (2018)
67% of Marketing Leaders currently use a Marketing Automation Platform. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)
35,2 % of the respondents said they currently utilize marketing automation. 64,8 % answered that marketing automation isn’t being used yet by their company. – Liana “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)
Nine out of 10 marketers (88 percent) use more than one martech tool on a regular basis—including single-vendor suite users. Only 16 percent of suite users say it’s the only tool they use. – Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)
More than half of marketers (56 percent) think the martech industry is evolving faster than their companies’ use of marketing technology. – Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)
Over the next two years, an additional 21% of Marketing Leaders plan to use a Marketing Automation Platform. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)
Spending for Marketing Automation tools will grow vigorously over the next few years, reaching $25.1 billion annually by 2023 from $11.4 billion in 2017. – Forrester “Marketing Automation Technology Forecast, 2017 to 2023 (Global)” (2018)
55% of marketing decision-makers plan to increase their spending on Marketing Technology, with one-fifth of the respondents expecting to increase by 10 percent or more. 38% will spend the same, while only 8% decreases their spend – Forrester “Data Global Business Technographics Marketing Survey” (2018)
Marketing automation technology is expected to grow at a 14% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years. The highest growth for “through-channel marketing automation” platforms will reach 25% annually, with “lead-to-revenue automation” platforms at 19.4%. – Forrester “Marketing Automation Technology Forecast, 2017 to 2023 (Global)” (2018)
Almost 40 % of those not yet using marketing automation are going to invest in it in the next 12 months. Only a tenth of the respondents don’t plan to invest in marketing automation within the next 12 months. – Liana “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the “Very successful” use their marketing automation systems extensively, while more than a third (37%) achieved best-in-class status with limited use. – Three Deep & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends for Success” (2016)
27% of companies rate say they are at Marketing automation maturity level “New”. – LeadMD “The 2016 Marketing Maturity Benchmark Report” (2016)
Mapping the customer experience (53%) and use of personalized/dynamic content (51%) are deemed the most effective tactics for optimizing marketing automation. – Ascend2 “Optimizing Marketing Automation survey” (June 2018)
Only 21% of respondents reported an individual maturity level of above average or higher with Marketing automation – LeadMD “The 2016 Marketing Maturity Benchmark Report” (2016)
63% of companies successful in Marketing Automation plan to increase their Marketing Automation budget. The companies with successful marketing automation programs will invest in further success in the coming year. – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)
63% of companies outsource all or part of marketing automation strategy planning. 51% uses a combination of outsourced and in-house resources, 12% outsourced all to a specialist. 37% uses inhouse resources only. – Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).
The majority of users think Marketing Automation is worth the price. 10% finds it inexpensive, 47% fairly priced, 22% pricey but worth it and 11% too expensive. 10% was not sure. – VB Insight “Marketing Automation, how to make the right buying decision” (2015)
61% of respondents are not using marketing automation at all and the remaining responses were split over a large range of 27 different vendors and combinations of solutions. – TFM&A “The 2015 Marketing Technology Report” (2015)
Marketing automation is used by 42% of companies, CRM / sales automation systems by 54%, while Email marketing technology has the highest adoption. It is used by 82% of companies. – Ascend2 “Marketing Technology Strategy” (August 2015)
66% of average performing B2B companies indicates that their current technologies are sufficient to scale end-to-end marketing over the next 1-3 years. For 34% they aren’t. ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing “ (2015)
Of the top performers in B2B 69% use Marketing automation for Customer acquisition and 50% for Customer Retention. – ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing “ (2015)
33% have already implemented marketing automation software within their businesses and half of all respondents of (Faststats software users) plan, or aspire, to do so. 11% plan to implement marketing automation immediately and 19% within the next year. Only a few respondents said they weren’t (3%), or were unlikely (5%) to implement marketing automation software. – Source: Apteco Ltd “Trend Report Data driven marketing 2015”
Source: Apteco Ltd “Trend Report Data driven marketing” (2015)
2. Benefits and Goals of Marketing Automation
Almost 70% of the respondents finds improved targeting of messages is the most important benefit of marketing automation. – Liana “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)
Improved customer experience (45,9 %), improved quality of leads (37,7 %) and an increased number of leads (34,9 %) are deemed important benefits of marketing automation. – Liana “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)
Marketers say the most important objectives of a marketing automation strategy are:
- Optimizing productivity (43%)
- Increasing marketing ROI (41%)
- Improving campaign management (40%)
- Improving database quality (39%)
- Acquiring more customers (39%)
- Measuring performance (37%)
- Aligning Marketing and Sales (24%)
– Adestra “State of Marketing Automation Benchmarks for Success” (2017)
30% of companies find automation of the lead generation process a critical challenge to lead generation success – Ascend2 “Lead Generation to Increase Conversions Survey” (2017)
Nearly two thirds of companies surveyed (63%) expect to realize the benefits of their marketing automation system within six months of implementation. – Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).
Only 24% of top marketers included alignment with sales as a priority for marketing automation. This is a potential miss. – Adestra “State of Marketing Automation Benchmarks for Success” (2017)
Business Owners, Executives and Marketers asked to identify the biggest benefit of Marketing Automation for them, say it is Saving time (30%) following with Lead Generation (22%) Increase in Revenue (17%) Customer Retention (11%), Tracking and Monitoring of marketing campaigns (8%) and a shortened sales cycle (2%) – SmartInsights and Getresponse “Email Marketing and Marketing automation Excellence 2018” (2018).
Marketers say that the biggest benefits of Automation are Saving time (74%), Increased customer engagement (68%), More timely communications (58%) and Increased opportunities including up-selling (58%) – Adestra Marketer vs Machine (2015)
45% of agencies rely on marketing automation platforms to show ROI and 42% use marketing automation to measure performance – SharpSpring State of Marketing Automation for Agencies” (2017)
42% of agencies note client acquisition as a top objective in their marketing automation strategy. – SharpSpring State of Marketing Automation for Agencies” (2017)
60% of B2B marketers say they’ve been more focused on improving audience segmentation and personas over the past 18 months. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)
92% report improving their qualified Lead pipeline as a top organisational goal. Followed by Customer retention (81%) and Lead/Pipeline velocity (Nuture, edication and price insulation) with 66% – LeadMD “The 2016 Marketing Maturity Benchmark Report” (2016)
Increasing sales revenue (53%), lead nurturing (43%) and customer engagement (37%) are the most important objectives of a marketing automation strategy. – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)
Integrated best-of-breed marketers get the most value from their technology stacks, with 83 percent rating their companies’ ability to leverage the full power of their tools as “excellent” or “good.” – Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)
B2B marketers find improved user experience and relevance of communications (59%) to be the biggest advantage of Marketing Automation.
Higher conversion rates (57%), better quality leads (55%), and generating more leads (54%) ranks almost as important as advantages of Marketing Automation for B2B marketers. – Communigator and SmartInsights “Managing B2B Marketing Automation in 2017” (2017)
The number of marketers who feel their companies’ current marketing technology helps them better do their jobs increased from 58 percent to 69 percent. – Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)
The most important strategic goals of a marketing automation strategy are Increasing lead generation (61%), lead nurturing (57%) and sales revenue (47%). Next are Improving customer engagement (36%), marketing productivity (29%), improve measurability (28%) and campaign targeting (22%). – Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).
3. Marketing Automation Results
High Performers are 3.2x more likely that underpreformers to say their technology stack is extremely or very effective at collaboration across marketing functions. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)
High Performers are 2.6x more likely that underpreformers to say their technology stack is extremely or very effective at delivering marketing efficiencies like automation. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)
Nearly 90% of agencies say their marketing automation strategy is successful, while only 2% count themselves as “worst in class.” – SharpSpring State of Marketing Automation for Agencies” (2017)
Only 8% of companies see increased revenues within 6 months of adopting marketing automation. After one year of MA use 32% claim to see increased revenue. For those to have been using it for more than two years the figure is 40%. – B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)
33% of company respondents still consider their automated email marketing programmes to be not successful. Only 8% deemed their efforts very successful. – eConsultancy “Email Marketing Industy Census” (2017)
80% of marketing automation users saw their number of leads increase, and 77% saw the number of conversions increase. – VB Insight “Marketing Automation, how to make the right buying decision” (2015)
Half of the companies reported no increase at all in qualified Leads since implementing Marketing Automation, while only 19% saw a dramatic increase in qualified leads with marketing automation. – LeadMD “The 2016 Marketing Maturity Benchmark Report” (2016)
17% say marketing Automation has been very beneficial for their company, 57% quite beneficial, 26% see limited to no benefit. – B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)
27% of those new to the technology report “More relevant messages” as a result, but that increases with time to 74% for the veteran Marketing automation users started using MA more than two years ago. – B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)
Only 32% of companies consider marketing automation “Very successful” at achieving their important goals. – Three Deep & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends for Success” (2016)
Marketers familiar with pipeline marketing are 48% more likely to see ROI greater than 1.5x. Marketers who identify as pipeline marketers are 119% more likely to report sales and marketing alignment. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)
The most useful metrics for measuring marketing automation performance are Conversion Rate and Revenue Generated , say 58% of best in class Marketing Automation users. – Three Deep & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends for Success” (2016)
4. Barriers to adoption and effectiveness of Marketing Automation
Delivering personalized content and integration of marketing systems are the most challenging barriers to marketing automation success. With 44% and 43% of marketing influencers saying so. – Ascend2 “Optimizing Marketing Automation survey” (June 2018)
The lack of expertise and know-how (55,6 %), as well as lack of human resources (48,1 %) are most common reasons why companies are not using marketing automation. – Liana “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)
Content personalization, artificial intelligence and predictive modeling, and customer experience mapping are the most difficult tactics for optimizing marketing automation. – Ascend2 “Optimizing Marketing Automation survey” (June 2018)
The most Challenging barriers to marketing automation success are:
- Delivering personalized content (44%)
- Integrating all marketing systems (43%)
- Creating a successful strategy (38%)
- Improving the user experience (37%)
- Streamlining marketing processes (30%)
- Enhancing measurement and reporting (30%)
– Ascend2 “Optimizing Marketing Automation survey” (June 2018)
The Major Challenges of managing Marketing Automation for B2B:
- Integrating data form different systems (56%)
- People factors / encouraging marketing and sales adoption (40%)
- Setting up tracking to prove ROI (37%)
- Understanding privacy requirements (eg GDPR) (30%)
- Managing Data / email list quality (28%)
- Selecting the right segments (21%)
- Managing Testing (12%)
- Defining rules for email sequences (9%)
– Communigator and SmartInsights “Managing B2B Marketing Automation in 2017” (2017)
Major roadblocks to marketing technology implementation are falling:
- There’s less internal resistance: A quarter of marketers (25 percent) say they’re facing internal resistance to change at their organizations, down from 33 percent a year ago.
- Only 24 percent of marketers currently see implementation or integration as an obstacle, compared to more than a third last year.
- The number of marketers who don’t have executive buy-in for martech investment dropped by half, from 22 percent to 12 percent.
- Only 10 percent of marketers say they don’t need new martech tools, half the number of a year ago (20 percent).
– Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)
Technology integration complexity is the most challenging obstacle to success, 50% of companies indicate. The result is that only 25% of companies have extensively integrated their disparate marketing technology systems. Nearly as many (22%) have not integrated their marketing technologies at all. – Ascend2 “Marketing Technology Strategy” (August 2015)
The most challenging obstacles to success are lack of quality content (40%), budget constraints (38%) and the lack of an effective marketing automation strategy (38%). – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)
61% agree that the implementation process of Marketing Automation was difficult – B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)
5. Top Reasons for purchasing Marketing Automation
With 64%, Ease of implementation is the No. 1 criterion for choosing a marketing automation platform, followed by Technical support (42%) and cross-platform integration (41%). – Adestra “State of Marketing Automation Benchmarks for Success” (2017)
Only 23% say clients and recommendations factor into the evaluation for choosing a marketing automation platform. – Adestra “State of Marketing Automation Benchmarks for Success” (2017)
Analytics and reporting (52%), Campaign management (46%) and Lead nurturing (46%) are considered the most useful Marketing Automation features. Followed by lead nurturing (46%), email marketing (42%), Integration capabilities (40%), Lead scoring (32%) and list segmentation (26%) – Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).
Lead nurturing (57%), Analytics and reporting (52%) and List segmentation (39%) are considered the most valuable Marketing Automation features. – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)
In B2B Access to customer data (95%), Marketing alignment with sales (90%), fragmented marketing systems (83%) and limitations with current technologies (80%) are the 4 top challenges for reaching current marketing objectives. ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing “ (2015)
6. Use of Marketing Automation
The top three marketing automation techniques used are Email automation (64%), profiling and targeting (26%), and personalization using dynamic content (23%). – SmartInsights and Getresponse “Email Marketing and Marketing automation Excellence 2018” (2018)
Lead scoring, Advanced segmentation and AI (artificial intelligence to improve message relevance) were the least often used marketing automation techniques. This could be due to a lack of digital skills in this area. – SmartInsights and Getresponse “Email Marketing and Marketing automation Excellence 2018” (2018)
Businesses aren’t making the most of marketing automation. Less than 3 in 10 (28%) use many features. – SmartInsights and Getresponse “Email Marketing and Marketing automation Excellence 2018” (2018)
59% of companies do not fully use the technology they have available. Those companies that don’t have all the marketing technology tools they need are much more likely to fully use what they have (33%), than those that do have all the tools they need (9%). – Ascend2 “Marketing Technology Strategy” (August 2015)
Only 14.4% of respondents are currently using predictive analytics, but 34.9% are considering adding it in the near future. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)
A third of agencies don’t pass martech costs back to clients at all. This number rises to 50% amongst small agencies. – Akero “The Agency Marketing Technology Report” (2018)
On average, agencies use 7 different pieces of MarTech software – Akero “The Agency Marketing Technology Report” (2018)
65% of marketing executives plan to spend more money on marketing technology in the coming year, including 28% who plan to increase spending by more than 25%. – Conductor 182 Marketing Executives Reveal Their 2015 Success Tactics (2015)
75% of very successful users outsource all or part of their marketing automation strategy planning to benefit from specialized expertise. – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)
22% of marketers report that they aren’t confident they can stay up to date with Marketing automation best practices, 79% was confident they could. – B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)
67% of respondents report having both marketing automation software and CRM software in their marketing stack. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)
Marketing attribution plays a huge role in measuring marketing performance, particularly to down-funnel metrics such as revenue. 75% of respondents said that they had an attribution model in place, 38.8% of respondents reported using single touch attribution models, while 25.4% are using multi-touch models. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)
Only 22.4% of respondents believe that they are using the right attribution model. Despite that, only 30.2% plan to change their attribution model in the near future. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)
B2B top Performers are 20% more likely to currently use Marketing Automation technology than the average performers. – ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing” (2015)
Historical Marketing Automation Statistics
Below is an overview of the marketing automation stats from gone years, either from before 2015 or already replaced by newer versions of the same research.
Most aren’t valid anymore. Automation and MarTech have developed so fast, but they do give a unique perspective on how things used to be. Have fun looking into the history and evolution of Marketing Automation: