Marketing Automation: Stats and Trends

Marketing automation is the use of tools and software to complete repeatable tasks, such as sending marketing emails, updating social pages with new content and generating leads. 

When used well, it should make marketing more efficient by relying on tech to carry out tasks at scale. It should be a mixture of software and strategy.

We've compiled some useful data on marketing automation, looking at adoption of tech, ROI and barriers to adoption. 

what is marketing automation?

Use of marketing automation

  • According to Email Monday,  51% of companies are currently using marketing automation.

  • 63% of marketers are planning to increase their use of Marketing Automation. (InvespCRO)

  • 45% of agencies rely on marketing automation platforms to show ROI and 42% use marketing automation to measure performance, according to SharpSpring.

  • According to Smart Insights, the top three most used marketing automation techniques are email automation (64%), profiling and targeting (26%), and personalisation through dynamic content (23%).

Marketing automation ROI

  • 78% of marketers polled by Lenskold, say that Marketing Automation delivers ROI.
  • Marketing Automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overheads. (Nucleus Research.)

  • 63% of companies that use Marketing Automation outperform their competitors, according to Moosend. 

  • Thanks to the use of Marketing Automation, sales productivity is up by 14.5% on average.  (SalesFusion)

  • Liana Technologies found that 70% of companies using Marketing Automation were most impressed with the improved targeting of messages.

  • 43% of marketers polled by Adestra said that the most important objective of Marketing Automation is optimising productivity.

  • 80% of the top-performing marketers asked by VentureBeat saw an increase in the number of leads after using Marketing Automation.

  • 64% of ecommerce marketers say email marketing and marketing automation contributes to more sales. An increase in website visitors, engagement and better insights into the target audience follow at 37%, 30% and 24% respectively, as Thuiswinkel.org and Spotler have it.

  • 45% of agencies rely on marketing automation platforms to show ROI and 42% use marketing automation to measure performance, according to SharpSpring

Barriers and challenges around marketing automation

  • 16% meanwhile say that the biggest challenge with Marketing Automation is actually creating genuinely good, quality automation.

  • According to the same report from Automizy, 20% of agencies see the number one marketing automation challenge as choosing the right vendor and tools. 

     

  • Other key challenges found by Automizy were creating quality automations (16%),  integrations (14%) and content creation (10%).

  • 55.6% of companies currently not using marketing automation don’t have the know-how to do so, according to Liana Technologies.

    48.1% of companies cited a lack of human resources, and around 32% cited a lack of financial resources.

This post is part of our Martech stats series, which compiles key data and trends. Others include: