Survey Finds 92% of Marketers Ineffective at Marketing Automation

According to a recent survey, a significant amount of marketers are using email marketing automation either incorrectly, inefficiently or not at all. Considering that the global market for marketing automation software is expected to reach $7.63 billion by 2025, this revelation is cause for some concern.

The survey, conducted by GetResponse and SmartInsights, was taken in order to compare email marketing, automation and landing pages among 585 marketers across 19 industries and 181 countries, and who sent 10 billion total emails. Overall, the 585 marketers came from B2C firms (44 percent), B2B firms (19 percent) and firms that have both B2C and B2B platforms (27 percent).

Out of this sample size, 28 percent rated their marketing automation effectiveness as basic, while 16 percent rated it as moderate. 19 percent of marketers admitted that they do not use marketing automation at all, and a mere 8 percent claimed to be engaging with marketing automation at a high rate of effectiveness.

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The data itself was collected after a study across four different techniques used to estimate the drive behind marketing and email automation, namely evaluation and tracking, targeting, communication strategy, and testing and optimization.

Since almost every business operating in this day and age has an online presence, they are required to automate promotions in order to ensure that personalized products reach individuals with matching customer profiles. This allows them to send the correct offer to the proper end-user at the proper time, resulting in their reaching a maximum sales potential. Email marketing allows brands to personalize their message while collecting behavioral data on users to hone precision and increase ROI.

Marketing automation technology is particularly adept at streamlining the marketing and sales processes, as well as helping to create targeted campaigns. Effective email marketing systems are good at assisting integrations with e-commerce and CRM platforms by sharing API codes, which leads to better, more end-user specific opportunities in the future.

Automation is a crucial process for brands, as it allows them to eliminate the need for cold calls, increase sales efficiency, reduce operating costs, customize market channels and build customer loyalty. As a tool, it is extremely necessary for conducting business in a complex, omnichannel world. If you're like the 92 percent of marketers who responded to this survey by admitting little to no effective knowledge of or experience with email marketing automation, then let this be both warning and call to arms. It's never too late to change—until it is, of course.