Marketing automation powers the customer journey — but most don’t know where to start

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In a recent VB Insight report, analyst Andrew Jones discovered a mere 5% of businesses are currently using marketing automation, yet those that do are scoring increased leads, conversions, and revenue across the board. Then why isn't everyone getting on board, and getting there fast?

It turns out it's a lot harder getting started than you'd expect. According to Jones, "There are up to 200 vendors in the marketing automation universe, and probably only 40 that really matter. The single greatest challenge users face when evaluating vendors is understanding the differences in functionality between them."

The promise of marketing automation

Fundamentally, marketing automation refers to software designed for marketing departments to automate repetitive tasks. However, today it is just as much about coordinating and delivering relevant messages and experiences, regardless of channel.

More than two-fifths (43%) of marketers say that marketing automation enables them to touch at least half of the customer journey. Nearly a third (30%) of respondents say it is over 70%.

That's huge.

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In fact, we defined 28 clear use cases for marketing automation platforms (MAPs). The reality is, as marketing's reach and importance has grown — the traditional roles of sales, marketing and service are all turned on their heads. Consumers are in charge now, increasingly informing and supporting themselves in the buying process. Enter marketing automation and its increased potential to organizations as a hub for customer data, and for cross-channel marketing activity for every marketing channel. And we do mean every channel.

It's precisely why Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle, and IBM have each bought MAPs and embedded them within their "marketing clouds." Whether a company builds its own marketing technology "stack" or relies heavily on a single vendor's marketing cloud, marketing automation is quickly becoming the core marketing technology.

Above: Email is leading use case for marketing automation

Marketing tech meets ad tech

The top use cases for marketing automation in the graphic above (email marketing, lead scoring/lead gen, landing page generators) are often thought of lead generation and conversion tactics. But there's a convergence happening with marketing tech and ad tech that's completely revolutionizing the ways in which users are targeted and sold products. Martech, meet ad tech.

Salesforce just unveiled key updates to its "marketing cloud" that makes a strong statement in the idea of delivering messages and experiences in the right time and place. They're calling it "Active Audiences," which essentially ties advertising campaigns to live CRM data. In practice, this means the emails and mobile messages (yes, their technology supports push notifications too) customers engage with, or their purchase history and customer service records are all taken into account for which ads they'll be shown. This likely means activity and ad spend on networks rich with personal data, like Facebook, will become increasingly important.

More information:

Oracle is the gold standard for database technology and applications in enterprises throughout the world. The company is the world's leading supplier of information management software and the world's second largest independent softwar... read more »

Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO) provides the leading marketing software for companies of all sizes to build and sustain engaging customer relationships. Spanning today's digital, social, mobile and offline channels, Marketo's® customer eng... read more »

The Marketing Cloud is the #1 solution for companies to build 1:1 customer journeys at scale. It enables marketers to build a single view of the customer, plan and optimize the customer journey, deliver personalized content across chan... read more »

With end-to-end enterprise marketing management solutions from IBM, you can transform all aspects of marketing to engage customers in highly relevant, interactive dialogues across digital, social, mobile and traditional marketing chann... read more »

Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC) is a collection of integrated online marketing and Web analytics solutions by Adobe Systems. It includes a set of analytics, social, advertising, media optimization, targeting, Web experience management and ... read more »

Oracle Marketing Cloud personalizes customer experiences with marketing software including content marketing, social marketing, and data management... read more »

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Source: Marketing automation powers the customer journey — but most don't know where to start