The field of Marketing Automation is growing at an astonishing rate. Looking for insight into the current state of Marketing Automation, the market and statistics on adoption and use, I compiled a list of all (useful) available statistics.
Feel free to share some stats, a link back to this article is appreciated.
These numbers will keep on changing, almost every day. So I will update them regularly.
I last updated in May 2023
Ultimate marketing automation usage statistic
The ultimate marketing automation usage statistic, this is all you really need:
On average 56% of companies are currently using Marketing automation. With 40% of B2B companies planning to adopt the technology. – Emailmonday “The Ultimate Marketing Automation stats”. (2023) (Tweet this)
Jump to section:
1. Adoption and MarketGrowth of Marketing Automation
2. Benefits and Goals of Marketing Automation
3. Marketing Automation Results
4. Barriers to adoption of Marketing Automation
5. Top Reasons for purchasing Marketing Automation
6. Use of Marketing Automation
7. Historical Marketing Automation stats (2018 and before)
Adoption and MarketGrowth of Marketing Automation
The US Marketing Automation Software industry is an estimated $12.3B market in 2022, growing 20%+ annually – SharpSpring “Investor Presentation Jan 2019” (2019)
The worldwide MarTech industry market has an estimated figure of $344.8bn, with North America and the UK to be worth $149.7bn. – MarTech Alliance “The Martech Report 2021/22” (2022)
96% of marketers have implemented a Marketing Automation Platform – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
Almost 50% of organizations started using their platform for the first time within the last 4 years. This is surprising, with MAPs being already available for over 15 years. – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
67% of Marketing Leaders currently use a Marketing Automation Platform. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)
75% of marketers say they currently use at least one type of marketing automation tools. Making automation tools accepted by most marketers. – Social Media Today “State of Marketing Automation Survey Report” (2019)
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” (2019)
Marketers limit their personalization efforts to A/B testing (50%), customer journey mapping (49%), Marketing automation (48%) and Data-driven Marketing (47%). Hyperpersonalized technologies such as AI (8%) and predictive analysis (12%) remain almost untouched. – House of Marketing “Yearly Marketing Survey 2019” (2019)
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 Technologies “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)
55% of the e-commercemarketers uses software for email marketing automation. And another 25% is planning to start in the coming year –Thuiswinkel.org and Spotler “e-commerce marketing Trendrapport” (2019)
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 Technologies “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 2017 Marketing Maturity Benchmark Report” (2017)
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 2017 Marketing Maturity Benchmark Report” (2017)
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)
Benefits and Goals of Marketing Automation
Revenue is the primary metric that marketers are measured on. The main goal amongst marketers using a MAP is to increase sales revenue. – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
The most important goals for Marketing Automation are Increasing sales revenue (56%), improving lead nurturing (53%), Increasing lead generation (50%), and improving the customer experience / engagement (52%) . – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
Almost 70% of the respondents finds improved targeting of messages is the most important benefit of marketing automation. – Liana Technologies “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)
64% of e-commercemarketeers says e-mailmarketing and marketing automation contributes to more sales. An increase in webshopvisitors, engagement and better insights into the target audience follow at 37%, 30% and 24%. – Thuiswinkel.org and Spotler “e-commerce marketing Trendrapport” (2019)
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 Technologies “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)
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 (60%) the biggest advantage of Marketing Automation.
Higher conversion rates (59%), better quality leads (57%), and generating more leads (57%) ranks almost as important as advantages of Marketing Automation for B2B marketers. – Communigator and SmartInsights “Managing B2B Marketing Automation” (2019)
The least often mentioned benefits of Marketing Automation are Shorter Sales Cycles (22%) and Improving departmental alignment (21%) – Communigator and SmartInsights “Managing B2B Marketing Automation” (2019)
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).
Marketing Automation Results
86% of marketers are fairly satisfied to satisfied with their MAP vendor. – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
A staggering 47% of marketers are unsure of the ROI attributable to their MAP. – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
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)
Marketers have seen proven value from using a MAP across the board. Most notably, 56% of respondents have seen an increase in conversion rates. – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
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)
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 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)
Barriers to adoption and effectiveness of Marketing Automation
36% of marketers report taking more than 6 months to implement their Marketing automation Platform. 12% takes over 12 months to implement their MAP. – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
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)
Marketing automation Email and CRM are the most effective types of technology use for marketing purposes, according to 53% of marketing influencers. – Ascend2 “Marketing Technology Utilization Survey” (2019)
42% say they should have invested more time in requirements and use cases for their marketing tech projects. – Statista “Marketing Tech Monitor” (2021)
In 33% of Marketing tech projects, Tools selection, processes and Proof of Concept is should have gotten more time. – Statista “Marketing Tech Monitor” (2021)
Only 9% of professionals state they have invested enough time in all project phases of Marketing tech projects – Statista “Marketing Tech Monitor” (2021)
Inadequate technology integration (37%), Measurement and metrics (32%) Marketing budget constraints (29%) and Lack of understanding of the technology available (28%) are the main barriers to marketing technology investment and use. – MarTech Alliance “The Martech Report 2021/22” (2022)
Only 27% of marketing influencers find Marketing Automation/Email/CRM difficult to use. Making it one of the least difficult categories in the study. – Ascend2 “Marketing Technology Utilization Survey” (2019)
MarTech like marketing automation/email/crm, that is far more effective to utilize than difficult, are more likely to be acquired than types that are more difficult to utilize than they are effective (optimization, personalization and testing, for example). – Ascend2 “Marketing Technology Utilization Survey” (2019)
In the answer to the open question: “What is your number 1 challenge when you use marketing automation?”, the most common marketing automation challenges are creating quality automations (16%) followed by integrations (14%) and creating content (10%). – Automizy “Marketing Automation Challenges Report 2019” (2019)
Finding tools (5%), personalization (5%), lead scoring (5%), analytics (4%), reporting (3%), and deliverability (1%) were all mentioned as a challenge by some of the surveyed professionals. – Automizy “Marketing Automation Challenges Report 2019” (2019)
Agencies struggle a lot more with finding the right Marketing Automation tools. Finding tools is the #1 marketing automation challenge for agencies with 20%. – Automizy “Marketing Automation Challenges Report 2019” (2019)
The top three Marketing automation challenges for Agencies are finding the right Marketing Automation tools (20%), integrations (20%) and creating automations (20%) – Automizy “Marketing Automation Challenges Report 2019” (2019)
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 Technologies “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)
Barriers to adoption of Marketing Automation
- Integrating data from sources and systems (56%)
- Lack of resources to set-up and manage marketing automation (54%)
- Lack of staff or skills for setting up rules, lead socring and sequences (49%)
- Creating a Marketing Automation strategy (37%)
- Making the business case for investment / buy-in (27%)
- Marketing Automation platforms doesn’t have the right capabilities (20%)
– Communigator and SmartInsights “Managing B2B Marketing Automation” (2019)
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)
The biggest objection (50%)to using marketing automation (software) is cheaper alternatives in the market. – Kinetic Digital Marketing “Marketing Automation 2018 Report: Do You Really Know What It Is?”
25% say they don’t really know what marketing automation is, as their main objection against marketing automation. It seems like this research tapped into a very special and truthful group of participants. With 8% saying they are “against Automation in general” – Kinetic Digital Marketing “Marketing Automation 2018 Report: Do You Really Know What It Is?”
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)
Top Reasons for purchasing Marketing Automation
Marketing automation ranks 8.6 on a 1-10 scale of importance. Indicating that Marketing automation is very important to marketers in a variety of roles. – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
52% of marketers say integrations are key when selecting a marketing automation platform, followed by Key Features (45%) and Scalability (35%). – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
Only 15% of marketers find implementation time to be a key decision-making factor</b> in choosing their current marketing automation platform. – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
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)
Use of Marketing Automation
Email marketing is the most commonly used Marketing Automation feature, with 79% of marketers using it. – Demand Spring “Marketing Automation Platform Insights” (2021)
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)
Social media post scheduling (83%) is the Digital marketing element deemed most suitable for Marketing Automation. Followed by email marketing (75%), Social Media Advertising (58%) and messaging / chatbots (53%). – Social Media Today “State of Marketing Automation Survey Report” (2019)
PR Outreach and Brand Promotion is seen as least suitable digital marketing element for Automation. With only 22% of respondents indicating they find it a good match. – Social Media Today “State of Marketing Automation Survey Report” (2019)
33% of email marketing campaigns is automated. – DMA UK “Marketer email tracker” (2019)
Organisations are more likely to segment (43%) than automate (33%) their email campaigns. Almost a quarter of campaigns are not segmented or automated. – DMA UK “Marketer email tracker” (2019 )
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)
54% of B2B marketers use marketing automation software to assist them with their content marketing efforts. When asked what benefits technology provides, three out of four (75%) B2B marketers say it provides better insight into how content is performing. Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs – “2019 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, North America”
Marketing Automation is one of the technologies that show the most difference in adoption between most successful (63%) and least successful (39%) marketers. Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs – “2019 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, North America”
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:
The US Marketing Automation Software industry is a $3.3B market in 2017, growing 30%+ annually – SharpSpring “Investor Presentation Jan 2018” (2018)
Best-in-Class companies are 67% more likely to use a marketing automation platform. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
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)
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)
Only 22% of mid-sized companies use analytics to manage their marketing campaigns. – Beagle Research Group “2013 Marketing Automation Study: Data and Analytics: Marketing’s Next Frontier” (June 2013)
85% of B2B marketers using marketing automation platforms feel that they’re not using them to their full potential. SiriusDecisions “Increasing Adoption of Marketing Automation Platforms” (2014)
The adoption of marketing automation coupled with CRM integration has grown remarkably 5 years ago 7.9% of respondents had an integrated CRM and demand generation solution and only 1 in 4 (27%) had some level of integration. – ResearchCorp “Demand Generation Adoption Survey” (2014)
Of companies that use cloud-based marketing automation tools, 50% of them use multiple marketing automation systems. – VentureBeat “Marketing Automation index update” (2014)
B2B marketers target an average of 4 different audiences with separate content marketing strategies – Content Marketing Institute & MarketingProfs “2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” (Sept 2014)
The best performing capabilities are CRM Integration, Outbound marketing campaign integration and Extending length of customer lifecycle for companies using MA more than 2 years. – HeinzMarketing and Ontarget “Marketing Automation Effectiveness and Performance Survey” (2014)
The best performing capabilities for MA over 2 years in relation to importance are Lead Segmentation, Lead Nurturing Campaigns and Generating New Prospects. – HeinzMarketing and Ontarget “Marketing Automation Effectiveness and Performance Survey” (2014)
45% of companies are taking advantage of lead nurturing capabilities in their Marketing Automation Platform, including just 68% of Best-in-Class companies. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for more than 2 years. – Gleanster “Q3 2013 Marketing Automation Benchmark” (2013)
The industries with the highest rates of adoption for marketing automation are Software & Internet, Telecommuncations, Computer & Electronics, Health & Pharmaceuticals, Business Services.
– Mintigo “State of the Marketing Technology Industry” (2014)
54% of CMOs have either begun or completed their implementation of marketing automation software – MarketingSherpa – “CMO Perspective on B2B Marketing Automation” (2011)
There are nearly 11 times more B2B organizations using marketing automation now than in 2011. – SiriusDecisions “B-to-B Marketing Automation Study” (2014)
56.1% of mid-sized companies use marketing automation in conjunction with CRM. – Beagle Research Group “2013 Marketing Automation Study: Data and Analytics: Marketing’s Next Frontier” (June 2013)
CMOs at top-performing companies say that the most important reason for implementing marketing automation is to increase revenue (79%) and get higher quality leads (76%). – Gleanster “Q3 2013 Gleanster Marketing Automation Benchmark” (2013)
8% of B2C and 21% of B2B marketers find Marketing Automation one of their Top Digital Priorities. – Adobe “Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing” (2014)
The most important criteria for a marketing automation system for CMOs are ease-of-use (92%) and the ability to tie marketing performance to sales (72%). – Gleanster “Q3 2013 Gleanster Marketing Automation Benchmark” (2013)
Of US businesses with 20 or more employees only about 4% are users of marketing automation software. – VentureBeat “Buyers and Users Marketing Automation Survey: Results, Analysis and Key Findings” (2014)
89% of respondents who have deployed marketing automation have integrated it with a CRM system. – ResearchCorp “Demand Generation Adoption Survey” (2014)
90% of marketers agreed that integrated marketing technology could boost their key capabilities, yet only 4% marketers reported having a completely integrated marketing stack – Signal “Cross-Channel Marketing and Technology Survey. Overcoming Barriers to Cross-Channel Success: Optimizing the Marketing Technology Stack” (2014)
51% of marketing execs say their marketing technologies and data are only loosely integrated or not at all. – Signal “Cross-Channel Marketing and Technology Survey. Overcoming Barriers to Cross-Channel Success: Optimizing the Marketing Technology Stack” (2014)
24% of companies has managed to integrate their core tools to the point it satisfies the majority of their integration needs. – Signal “Cross-Channel Marketing and Technology Survey. Overcoming Barriers to Cross-Channel Success: Optimizing the Marketing Technology Stack” (2014)
Almost 1 in 3 marketing execs reports feeling stuck or impeded by their technology infrastructures. – Signal “Cross-Channel Marketing and Technology Survey. Overcoming Barriers to Cross-Channel Success: Optimizing the Marketing Technology Stack” (2014)
Marketers that have adopted MA say the main benefts of Marketing Automation are:
- Taking repetitive tasks out of marketers hands, allowing focus on new/more exciting projects (36%)
- Better targeting of customers and prospects (30%)
- Improving the customer experience (10%)
- Better email marketing (9%)
- Reduction of human error in campaigns (8%),
- Lead management (4%) and multichannel marketing (3%)
– Redeye and TFM&A Insights “The Marketing Automation Report 2014” (2014)
63% of B2B marketers allocate 10–29% of their marketing budget to marketing automation. – Pepper Global “B2B Marketing Automation Report 2014”
For a majority of B2B marketers, marketing automation budgets stay flat (48%) or increases (41%) in the coming year. – Pepper Global “B2B Marketing Automation Report 2014”
23% of marketers are not using Lead Generation Marketing Software at the moment, but are planning to in the future. – Ascend2 “Lead Generation Strategy Survey” (2014)
91% of buyers were evaluating marketing automation for the first time. – SoftwareAdvice “Marketing Automation Software BuyerView” (2014)
The most useful measure of marketing automation performance are conversion rate and revenue generated, say 70% of very successful Marketing Automation users. – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)
The most significant barrier to marketing automation success is the lack of an effective strategy (52%) . – Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).
91% of the most successful users agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels. – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)
Main barriers to adoption of Marketing automation are: 1) No Need 2) No budget 3) No management approval. – ResearchCorp “Demand Generation Adoption Survey” (2014)
The adoption of marketing automation technology is expected to increase to 50% by 2015. – Serious descisions “How Marketing Automation Has Evolved” (2012)
The most mature users of marketing automation achieve 32% greater revenue versus their plan than average companies – and a whopping 79% more than the least mature companies. – Marketo “Benchmark on Revenue Performance” (Sept 2012)
The most significant barriers to marketing automation success are
- Lack of an effective strategy (52%)
- Complexity of the system (42%)
- Inadequate contact data quality (38%)
- Lack of employee skills (32%)
- Lack of relevant content (31%)
- Marketing and sales alignment (30%)
- Budget constraints (27%)
– Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).
Marketing automation adoption is higher in companies with more employees. Adoption is 76% of companies with >100 employees, 26% in mid-sized companies of 10-100 employees and 18% amongst companies with Buyer Zone “The State of B2B Lead Generation 2013 Report” (2013)
The biggest problem areas when using Marketing Automation for less than 2 years are: Pipeline Reporting, Measuring marketing campaign effectiveness and increasing sales effectiveness – HeinzMarketing and Ontarget “Marketing Automation Effectiveness and Performance Survey” (2014)
A lack of mature marketing practices / processes is the #1 reason for not implementing a marketing automation platform. Indicated by 45% not currently using a MAP. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
54% of marketers that hadn’t implement Marketing Automation, said it was part of their plan, but they have other elements in need of more immediate attention. 21% said that the cost structures where Prohibitive. – Redeye and TFM&A Insights “The Marketing Automation Report 2014” (2014)
13% of the marketers said a Lack of technical proficiency in their team was stopping them from adopting Marketing Automation. A lack of understanding of benefits is holding back 12% – Redeye and TFM&A Insights “The Marketing Automation Report 2014” (2014)
17% of marketers described marketing automation software as “extremely important” for Demand Generation Success, 24% as “very important”. – Software Advice and Research Now “Demand Generation Benchmark” (2014)
57% of respondents admit their marketing infrastructure is separated by channel, not wel-integrated, or lacking entirely. – Forrester Research & Oracle “Why You Need To Be A Modern Marketer” (2014)
Nearly 70% of businesses are using a marketing automation platform (MAP) or currently implementing one. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
42% of CRM users plan to increase spending in marketing automation, – Software Advice “Customer Relationship Management Software UserView” (2014)
43% of companies using a marketing automation platform (MAP) have been doing so for over 4 years. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
26% of marketers make extensive use of marketing software to manage lead generation, 36% make limited use of marketing software for it. – Ascend2 “Lead Generation Strategy Survey” (2014)
19% indicated they switched Marketing Automation Providers (MAP) providers recently or were currently doing so. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
53% of all respondents are currently using or applying marketing automation. Another 17% are currently evaluating or considering marketing automation. Pepper Global “B2B Marketing Automation Report 2014”
In the America’s there are significantly higher adoption with 69% of respondents using or applying marketing automation. In EMEA this is 39% and in APAC only 36%. – Pepper Global “B2B Marketing Automation Report 2014”
97% of B2B respondents used email marketing software. Customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation suites were the next most commonly used technologies, at 97 and 96 percent.B2B – Software Advice and Research Now “Demand Generation Benchmark” (2014)
53% of the B2B organizations surveyed have adopted marketing automation systems, a greater number than the 43% adoption rate at organizations identified as B2C and combination B2B / B2C organizations. – ResearchCorp “Demand Generation Adoption Survey” (2014)
In higher revenue tiers, a higher percentage of companies have adopted Marketing automation.
- 60% in companies with over $500M revenue,
- 10% in companies with $20M – $500M revenue,
- 5% in companies with $5M – $20M revenue,
- 3% in micro companies with less than < $5M revenue
Raab Associates “Marketing Automation 2014 Industry Overview” (2014).
B2B marketing managers say the most important criteria for marketing automation software are (1) price, (2) product integration (e.g., CRM, social, web, mobile), and (3) ease of use. – Pepper Global “Marketing Automation Trends Report 2014” (2014)
86% marketers consider ‘ease of use’ as the most important criterion when evaluating automation tools. – Regalix “The State of Marketing Automation” (2014)
20% of agencies make extensive use of marketing automation. Only 30% of agencies aren’t using marketing automation to distribute content, prove inbound marketing ROI, and improve inbound effectiveness with personalized targeting. SharpSpring & Ascend2“Inbound marketing: Benchmarks from the Agency Perspective” (2014)
Only 14% have standardized, fully integrated cross-channel marketing automation platforms, with 42% of retailers standing out as more advanced than other verticals using this type of solution. – Forrester Research & Oracle “Why You Need To Be A Modern Marketer” (2014)
66% marketers reported allocating less than 10% of their budget to Marketing Automation. – Regalix “The State of Marketing Automation” (2014)
54% marketers who have not yet implemented Marketing Automation cite lack of budgets as a major obstacle preventing implementation. – Regalix “The State of Marketing Automation” (2014)
Companies that have adopted marketing automation perform well compared to companies that haven’t:
- 45% regularly repurpose content for efficiency, compared with 28% of companies without marketing automation
- 54% capture intelligence for the sales team, compared to 25% without marketing automation
- 49% customize content to the Buyer Journey stages, compared to 21% without marketing automation
- 59% can use intelligent targeting to trigger content, compared to 17% without marketing automation
– The Lenskold Group, “2013 Lead-Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study” (2013)
B2B marketers see an average 20% increase in sales opportunities from nurtured leads versus non-nurtured leads after successfully deploying a lead nurturing program – DemandGen “Calculating the Real ROI from Lead Nurturing” (Aug 2013)
Companies using marketing automation see 53% higher conversion rates from initial response-to-MQL and a revenue growth rate that is 3.1% higher than non-users. – Aberdeen Group “Marketing Lead Management Report” (2012)
63% of companies that are outgrowing their competitors use marketing automation. – The Lenskold Group “2013 Lead Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study” (2013)
78% of successful marketers say marketing automation systems are most responsible for improving revenue contribution. – The Lenskold Group 2013 Lead-Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study (2013)
67% of B2B marketers say they see at least 10% increase in sales opportunities through lead nurturing, with 15% seeing opportunities increase by 30% or more. – DemandGen “2014 Lead Nurturing Benchmark Study” (Oct 2014)
B2B marketers who implement marketing automation increase their sales-pipeline contribution by 10%. Forrester Research “The Forrester Wave Lead-To-Revenue Management Platform Vendors” (2014)
Marketing automation high performers have an average of 60% higher lead-to-sale conversion rating. These high performers rate cost of customer acquisition (COCA) 1.4x stronger – PR20/20 “Marketingscore report” (2014)
After implementing a marketing automation platform the increased collaboration between sales and marketing leads to:
- 17% advantage in capturing insight from prospects and customers
- A 13% advantage executing and defining field programs
- A 12% advantage in managing leads and lead pipelines
– Forrester Research “The Forrester Wave: Lead-To-Revenue Management Platform Vendors” (Q1 2014)
68% of Best-in-Class companies are using lead scoring, compared to just 28% of Laggard firms. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
Only 3% of 186,500 businesses surveyed used one of the four most common marketing automation systems- Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot or Pardot. – Mintigo “State of the Marketing Technology Industry” (2014)
Best-in-Class firms are more than 2X more likely to use lead nurturing with a MAP than Laggard firms (68% vs. 27%). – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
Best-in-Class firms are more than 4X more likely to use database segmentation and targeting with a Marketing Automation Provider than Laggard firms. A difference of 78% vs. 23%. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
Best-in-Class companies reduced close cycle time by an average of 49%, compared with a 30% improvement by all other companies. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
88% of top-performing companies are effective in routing “hot” leads to Sales vs. 57% of All Others. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
Best-in-Class companies saw a 36% conversion rate from marketing response (raw lead) to marketing-qualified lead (MQL) vs. 18% for All Others. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)
Adoption and Investments in Marketing automation differs heavily per industry.
- Maintainers (technology, financial markets, life sciences, and oil and gas industries) are fine-tuning their earlier marketing automation investments.
- Transformers (insurance, health insurance, media, retail, and telecoms) are investing in business change, of which marketing automation is potentially a key component.
- Skeptics (manufacturing, professional services, and retail banking) are evaluating how marketing automation can best be applied to their industries.
- Laggards (higher education, education, government, healthcare, and utilities) are yet to actively consider wholesale adoption of marketing automation.
– Ovum “Industry Adoption of Marketing Automation in Europe” (dec 2013)
58% of top-performing companies; where marketing contributes more than half of the sales pipeline, have adopted marketing automation. – Forrester Research “Gauging Your Progress and Success” (2013)
B2C marketers who are using automation- including everything from birthday emails to cart abandonment programs – have seen conversion rates as high as 50%. – eMarketer “Email Marketing Benchmarks” (2013)
Companies that use marketing automation are 3 times more likely to track and attribute their content-marketing efforts to multiple touchpoints than companies without automation (36% vs 11%). – The Lenskold Group “2013 Lead Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study” (2013)
25% of Fortune 500 B2B companies have adopted marketing automation. – ClickZ Fortune 500 B2B Adoption of Marketing Tools study (2013)
% Revenue Plan Attainment – Marketo “Benchmark on Revenue Performance” (Sept 2012)
The top four features of a Marketing Automation used are email marketing (89%), lead nurturing (84%), integrations such as CRM, mobile, social etc for accumulating customer intelligence across channels (80%), and cross-channel campaign management (82%). – Regalix “The State of Marketing Automation” (2014)
The combination of process with marketing automation yields a 417% increase in revenue from those surveyed. – Focus.com “Marketing Automation By the Numbers” (2012)
Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. – Focus.com “Marketing Automation By the Numbers” (2012)
B2B marketers say the #1 benefit of marketing automation is the ability to generate more and better leads. – Pepper Global “Marketing Automation Trends Report 2014” (2013)
Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. – Focus.com “Marketing Automation By the Numbers” (2012)