Most marketing automation research totally irritates me because it isn’t specific about what the product is or who the buyers are. Call me picky but I’d like to see data for a small company that has signed up for an email marketing package separated in some way from the report of a mega company signing on for a full blown marketing automation platform – you know, the kind that one person cannot possibly manage in their extra time.
Because it actually puts some definitions on what its talking about I think that the Marketing Automation Software Buyer View | 2014 from Software Advice is well worth the read.
The results actually separate CRM’s from email marketing from marketing automation and in doing so finally produce some information that actually makes sense. It talks about why companies are looking at marketing automation and just how many have not really made the leap.
Almost 50% of buyers are simply running CRM software and 21% are still using manual methods like spreadsheets and one off emails. Only 7% are running email marketing software and 9% report using marketing automation.
Reading most reports, you’d think that the entire planet has automated their marketing. Well folks, that is not the case at all.