The rise of marketing automation is inevitable. With more businesses (and consumers) going digital, marketers are shifting to more efficient and measurable online marketing campaigns. Manual processes need to be eliminated and repetitive tasks must be addressed so that marketers can focus on more important things—specifically growing their businesses.
Marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of online marketing campaigns, according to 91% of those who use this technology. This number is not surprising as implementing marketing automation could lead to an average 451% increase in qualified leads. It is so vital to online marketing success that 9 out of 10 marketers use more than one form of marketing automation software.
Bottom line, the adoption rate of marketing automation is high because it serves its purpose well.
A Quick Recap of Marketing Automation
When we say marketing automation, we’re referring to the use of software or web-based services to implement, manage, and automate repetitive marketing tasks and manual processes across multiple channels—all designed to generate more qualified leads, increasing revenue, and strengthening customer relationships.
To win at marketing automation, you should follow the best practices like creating marketing automation workflows, lead scoring, setting up campaigns using customer journey, and more. It also helps if you understand the basics and have a clear picture of what it means for your business.
So, let’s deepen your appreciation of marketing automation with these compelling facts and statistics that show how it helps businesses grow.
Top Benefits of Marketing Automation
- Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. (Invespcro)
- 4 in 5 users increased their leads by using marketing automation software and 77% had an increase in conversions. (Invespcro)
- Businesses that implement marketing automation experience an average of a 451% increase in qualified leads. (Annuitas Group)
- The use of lead nurturing through marketing automation saw 15-20% of potential buyers that were not ready to purchase converted to sales. (Protocol80)
- 76% of companies that implement marketing automation generate a return on their investment within the first year. (Marketo)
- 74% of respondents said that the technology’s ability to save them time was its largest benefit. (Invespcro)
- 94% of marketing professionals say content personalization driven by marketing automation is improving. (Ascend2)
- Nucleus found that marketing automation improved business productivity by an average of 20 percent. (Nucleus)
Adoption of Marketing Automation
- 91% of marketing automation users agree it is “very important” to the overall success of their online marketing activities (Invespcro)
- 63% of marketing plan to increase their marketing automation budget this year (Invespcro)
- 27% of companies say that they still consider themselves “new” to marketing automation (Invespcro)
- 86% of marketers consider “ease of use” to be the most important factor when evaluating automation tools (Invespcro)
- The US Marketing Automation Software industry is a $6.1B market in 2019, growing 20%+ annually (SharpSpring “Investor Presentation Jan 2019”)
- 75% of marketers say they currently use at least one type of marketing automation tools. (SocialMediatoday)
- 67% of Marketing Leaders currently use a Marketing Automation Platform (Salesforce)
- With 48% of Marketers using marketing automation, it is one of the 4 most popular methods to create personalized customer experiences. (House of Marketing “Yearly Marketing Survey 2019”)
- Marketers limit their personalization efforts to A/B testing (50%), customer journey mapping (49%), Marketing automation (48%) and Data-driven Marketing (47%). Hyper-personalized technologies such as AI (8%) and predictive analysis (12%) remain almost untouched. (House of Marketing “Yearly Marketing Survey 2019”)
- Spending for marketing automation tools is expected to reach $25.1 billion annually by 2023 (Forrester)
- Marketing automation is “very important” to the overall performance of marketing, according to 94% of the best-in-class marketers participating in a recent Ascend2 survey. (Ascend2)
- Nine out of ten marketers use more than one form of marketing automation software on a regular basis. (Ledgeview Partners)
- There are over 480,000 websites that currently use marketing automation technology. (Bold Digital)
Main Goals for Using Marketing Automation
- 92% of users said that their main goal was to improve their qualified lead pipeline, closely followed by customer retention (81%) and the lead nurturing process (66%).(Invespcro)
- 64% of marketing professionals agree that creating a successful strategy is a top priority for optimizing marketing automation, followed by 50% for improving user experience, 38% for delivering personalized content, 36% for integrating all marketing systems, 36% for streamlining marketing processes. (Ascend2)
- 58% of industry leaders using marketing automation say that conversion rate and revenue generated are the most useful metrics to measure. (Invespcro)
- The most important strategic goal of marketing automation, according to marketers are: 61% to increase lead generation, 67% lead nurturing, 47% sales revenue, 36% improving customer engagement, 28% marketing productivity, 28% improving campaign measurability, 22% improving campaign targeting. (Invespcro)
- Custom automation workflows perform the best out of any type of marketing automation workflow. (Omnichannel)
Key Challenges in Marketing Automation
- Delivering personalized content is the most challenging barrier to marketing automation success for 44% of marketing professionals, followed by 43% integrating all marketing systems, 41% for creating a successful strategy and 41% for achieving data unification. (Ascend2)
- Data integration, technology shortfall, and lack of skills or experience are currently perceived as the biggest barriers to marketing automation success. (Adestra)
- A survey of 243 marketing automation users showed that the top challenge in selection between different marketing automation vendors is knowing the differences in functionality. (VentureBeat)
- 16% of marketers think creating quality automations is their number 1 challenge (Automizy) https://funneloverload.com/marketing-automation-statistics/
- 20% of agencies struggle to find the right marketing automation tool (Automizy
- 55.6% of companies that don’t use automation cite a lack of expertise as the reason (Liana Technologies)
- The cost of software is one of the biggest objections to marketing automation. one of the biggest objections to using marketing automation was the availability of cheaper alternatives (Kinetic Digital Marketing)
Ready to Automate?
The future of digital marketing is leading us to automation. With people becoming more attached to their smartphones and computers, it’s important for businesses to be where their customers are—the digital world. Given its proven worth in helping businesses hit their sales and marketing targets, marketing automation can make every marketer’s digital life easier.
What marketing tasks are you automating to improve efficiency? Let us know in the comments!
