91% of companies using Marketing Automation rate it as successful

According to the latest study from Ascend2, 32 percent of marketers rate marketing automation as “very successful” at achieving important objectives such as increasing lead generation and improving lead nurturing. 59 percent rated it as “somewhat successful”.

71% of companies which participated in Marketing Automation Trends Survey currently use marketing automation to some extent. Another 23% do not use it but are planning to in the foreseeable future.

Increasing lead generation (61%) and improving lead nurturing (57%) are the most important goals of a marketing automation strategy.

The next important objectives are increasing sales revenue (47%), improving customer engagement (36%), marketing productivity (29%), performance measureability (28%) and campaign targeting (22%).

Expectations for marketing automation are very high with 76% of companies stating it is very important to the overall marketing performance.

Among the most useful features of marketing automation, there are analytics and reporting (51%), campaign management (46%), lead nurturing (46%) and email marketing (42%).

When asked about the most significant barriers to marketing automation success, many professionals said about lack of an effective strategy (52%), complexity of such system (42%) and inadequate contact data quality (38%).