These are the latest marketing automation stats for this year.
You know, 57% of marketers say lead nurturing is the most valuable feature of automation software.
Before we dive in. Let me ask you:
Do you use marketing automation tools?
Here’s why you should be using marketing automation tools to automate your marketing activities.
To start with, as marketers, we have a lot on our plates that we can attend to.
We have to publish blog posts, schedule social media posts on several social media platforms, reply to emails, create content, write reports, and a lot more.
This is where marketing automation tools come to play.
Marketing automation tools make it easy to automate some parts of our work.
There are social media scheduling apps to schedule your post for several platforms. We have email marketing automation tools to launch your drip email campaign. Sales funnel tools to build funnels, and automate your lead generation and nurturing process.
Does this sound too good to be true?
Let the data speak as delve into marketing automation statistics every marketer must know.
Adoption of Marketing Automation (Statistics)
Who uses marketing automation? How many companies have adopted marketing automation tools? Let’s find out.
1. 75% of all companies use Marketing Automation
In recent research by SocialMediaToday to find out the state of marketing automation, 75% of marketers agree to use marketing automation tools and 25% are yet to adopt marketing automation.
So, it’s clear marketing automation is widely accepted and a good percentage of marketers are already taking advantage of it to boost their productivity and revenue. Why not you?
2. 480,000 websites currently use marketing automation software
Percentage metrics can be misleading sometimes.
While the previous statistic proved that about 75% of marketers use marketing automation software.
But taking a look at the numbers given by BoldDigital, 480,000 websites, you’ll agree it’s a lot. Plus, many of these sites use more than one marketing automation software.
3. 63% of Marketers to Increase their Marketing Automation Budgets
Not only are marketers using marketing automation, but a good percentage of them also have plans to increase their marketing automation budget.
This is commendable because there are hundreds of marketing automation tools in the industry ranging from fairly priced to highly-priced products.
And many of these tools are expensive.
But even at that, more marketers are increasing their marketing automation budgets alongside new marketers adopting it – Invespcro.
This is proof that automation tools make marketing less difficult.
4. 40% of Marketers Not Using Marketing automation plan to adopt it soon
Another statistic that proves that you should be using marketing automation tools.
About 40% of those not yet using marketing automation plan to adopt it very soon, so don’t be left behind.
5. The marketing automation software industry is worth over $6.1 billion
The marketing automation industry has experienced exponential growth over the past years.
More automation tools are created to provide more advanced automation.
In 2019, the industry was estimated to worth over $6.1 billion.
Another statistic predicts the growth of the automation industry to a whopping $16.87 billion by 2025. This further shows that the marketing automation industry is rapidly growing and more businesses are adopting it.
Marketing Automation Usage – What Most Businesses Use It For
6. Social media post scheduling is the most common automation process
Before the age of advanced marketing automation, what we are more familiar with was social media scheduling tools.
These tools allow us to plan and schedule social media posts to various channels.
And among the most-used marketing automation software, scheduling apps take the lead.
Well, you don’t have to take my word for it.
A 2019 report by SocialMediaToday uncovered that 85% of marketers found social media post scheduling to be the most popular use case. This is followed by email marketing (75%). Then social media advertising (58%).
7. Email Automation is among the top three tactics used by email marketers to improve performance (Hubspot)
According to Hubspot’s state-of-marketing report, email automation is one of the top three tactics used to improve performance.
Also, a report by Moosend reveals that 75% of email revenue is generated from personalized campaigns which are also done with email automation.
Personalized campaigns are an added feature in email automation tools.
Email automation allows you to segment your audience and send hyper-targeted and personalized emails to them addressing them by their name.
8. Data-driven Marketing Automation is on the Fast-Rise
Who doesn’t want a tool that provides data and suggestions on how to get the best results from your marketing activities?
I know you have seen or are using one.
There are scheduling apps that predict the best time to post your content.
Most tools have an analytics dashboard to track the performance of your marketing.
Thanks to marketing automation, you get access to advanced marketing data to help you better understand your prospect, interpret data, and leverage the data to make your marketing campaigns most effective.
Now let’s take a look at the benefits.
Benefits & goals of marketing automation (key statistics)
Using marketing automation software comes at an additional cost. So it’s essential for businesses to benefit from their investment.
Here are some statistics that prove the positive ROI of using automation software.
9. 80% of Marketers Use Marketing Automation to Generate Leads
Yes, you read that right, leads.
According to previous surveys, about 65% of marketers rank lead generation as their major challenge. Yes, lead generation is hard. But what if marketing automation could ease the work for you?
Studies by VB Insights showed that 80% of marketing automation users saw their leads count increase and 77% recorded an increase in the conversion rate.
10. Businesses that implement marketing automation experience an average of a 451% increase in qualified leads. (Business2Community)
Many studies have been carried out to know the correlation between the use of marketing automation and the conversion of leads.
Another survey revealed that businesses that use marketing automation experience a 451% increase in qualified leads.
11. 58% of Agencies Believe it Helps them Understand Marketing ROI
Dealing with data can be stressful and tiring. And for agencies that deal with a large number of clients, this is super tiring for them.
Since the adoption of marketing automation, agencies have found it easier to measure and understand their marketing data including ROI. This study was carried out by Sharpspring.
12. 58% of Marketers use Marketing Automation Software to Upsell Products – Source
Besides lead generation, the next big thing marketers use marketing automation software for is to upsell their product.
Upselling products by creating an automated email welcome series to engage and convince leads to buy.
This requires planning everything beforehand and having your email automation software take care of it.
Marketing Automation ROI & Results statistics
13. 85% of companies use Marketing Automation for Revenue Growth
According to studies by Moosend, 85% of companies use marketing automation to increase their revenue growth.
69% use it to improve their productivity.
By automating some marketing activities, you become more productive and that results in better revenue as you can do more in less time.
14. 76% of Marketers see a Positive ROI within a Year
Marketo surveyed the ROI of marketing automation.
The result? 76% of marketers recorded positive ROI within the first year of adoption.
That’s great news. As marketers, you can rest assured that your investment will lead to better profits and ROI. Getting the returns on investment in the first year is commendable.
15. 80% of marketers report an increase in leads due to automation
Here’s another statistic that proves how companies are winning with marketing automation.
16. 77% of marketers report an increase in conversions due to automation
If there’s something you can be sure of, it’s an increase in conversion.
Automation saves you time and allows you to do the impossible.
I wonder how possible it would have been to send every email update to your list of 10,000 subscribers? With automation, you can automate lead generation and nurture.
This leads to the next one:
17. Automated lead nurturing converts 15-20% of customers to sales
Lead nurturing is one of the activities that most marketers shy away from and the cause for the low lead conversion rate.
Thanks to marketing automation tools, you can set up an entire follow-up email campaign which could result in a 15-20% conversion rate.
18. Nucleus found that marketing automation improved business productivity by an average of 20 percent.
This is yet another research that proves the benefit of using marketing automation.
In simple words, you don’t have to log in to all your social media accounts every day to post, you can schedule content for the whole week or month (there are scheduling tools).
You don’t have to send a manual welcome email series for every new subscriber (Email automation like GetResponse is there to help).
Onboarding every new client isn’t necessary.
There are onboarding tools and automated webinar tools to help.
In short, marketing automation is the productivity booster. You can cut the time spent on a marketing task without a drop on efficiency.
19. 80% of marketers credit their success to marketing automation
Execution is the most essential part of marketing.
Coming up with plans is brilliant. But sometimes, carrying them out beat you to it. This is where marketing automation finds usefulness.
If execution is key, then marketing automation has an award for it.
Marketers owe their productivity to automation tools and it’s just logical to credit their marketing success to marketing automation.
Marketing automation limitations/challenges statistics.
Everything has its benefits and downsides. Marketing automation isn’t without limitations.
For instance, the cost of marketing automation might not fit well into a small business’s budget.
Besides that, there are few other limitations. Let’s dive into it.
20. 44% of marketers consider delivering personalized content to be the biggest barrier to success
Personalized content goes a long way to assure your prospects that you care about them.
Doing this manually is near impossible considering how big most email lists are. You can’t send personalized content to a list of 1000 subscribers manually not to talk of 10K subscribers.
This is a major challenge for marketers. But to some extent, marketing automation makes it possible to deliver personalized content.
You can automatically address leads by their first name and also group your list based on their interest.
21. 16% of marketers think creating quality automation is their number 1 challenge
Another challenge marketers face is creating quality automation. This requires patience and having an understanding of how your chosen automation tool works.
While you might not find it difficult to set up social media scheduling tools, advanced automation like funnels can be overwhelming.
About 16% find marketing automation setup difficult. This is why some businesses outsource their automation set up to agencies.
22. 20% of Agencies Struggle to find the Right Marketing Automation tool
With several tools in the industry, it’s easier to get overwhelmed with options out there.
For agencies, this rings different because with every new client is the possibility of reviewing your tools.
Some clients are rigid about the marketing automation tool they use and as an agency, you must be ready to adapt to it.
So agencies have the responsibility of knowing how to use most of the popular marketing automation tools in the industry. This also makes the decision a difficult one.
Besides, another survey of 243 marketing automation users showed that the top challenge in selection between different marketing automation vendors is knowing the differences in functionality. (VentureBeat)
23. 6% of marketers struggle with data management, optimization, and segmentation
Looking at your dashboard containing charts and data, there’s a possibility of being overwhelmed.
While there are tools that provide additional information on the data, data understanding is quite important.
As a marketer, you must be able to interpret data and take the right actions based on your data.
Just like you guessed, it’s a struggle for some marketers.
24. 55.6% of companies that don’t use automation cite a lack of expertise as the reason
With every marketing automation tool comes the need to understand how it works.
This is why companies rarely change their automation tool because of the need to learn and familiarize themselves with the new interface.
Surprisingly, more than half of surveyed marketers that don’t use automation cite a lack of expertise as the cause.
25. The cost of software is one of the biggest objections to marketing automation
Let’s be real. Marketing automation tools are expensive. Some tools start at $99 per month and some cost as high as $1200 per month.
Let’s not neglect the fact that you’ll need more than 1 marketing automation tool. Some companies use more than 3 automation tools.
In total, the bill could be running close to $2000 per month. The cost of automation software is one of the challenges small businesses face.
26. 56% of marketers say their companies can’t keep up with marketing technology evolution – Source
Just as the industry is rapidly growing, keeping up with the technology evolution becomes hard. Because for every new marketing automation software, you have to master it to harness the features of the software for your business.
Besides that, every new marketing automation tool you add to your suite of tools is an added recurring expense you have to cover.
Many companies won’t be able to keep up with the technological evolution.
27. Customer Experience Mapping is the Most Difficult Automation Tactic
Yes, there are automation tools that allow you to customize your customer experience.
Features like audience mapping, tagging, and segmentation make it easy to map your customer experience.
But the initial setup process is time-consuming and difficult. This is why there are experts that help with setting this up.
General Marketing Automation Statistics
- The amount of times “marketing automation” has been searched per week has almost tripled over the past five years. (Google Trends)
- There are over 100 marketing automation software platforms with verified user reviews available to browse by user satisfaction on G2.com.
- Nine out of ten marketers use more than one form of marketing automation software on a regular basis. (Ledgeview Partners)
- One of the strongest areas in which marketing automation can make a difference, according to survey results, is during the onboarding of new accounts. (SiriusDecisions)
Final Thoughts on the State of Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is a booming industry.
Taking advantage of marketing automation software can put you ahead of the competition.
Besides, why do things the hard way when there are tools to automate the task?
Based on the above statistics, automation is proven to have a positive effect on both the revenue and the productivity of marketers.
If you’re yet to use automation software to ease your work, this is the right time to take action.
But as stated above, you should avoid picking the wrong tool as this is one of the challenges that marketers face.
If you need help picking the right tool, there are hundreds of articles on marketing automation software on KhrisDigital. Leverage these reviews to make the right decisions.
Here are links to some of them:
- Best Sales Funnel Builders (Sales funnel automation software)
- Best Webinar Marketing Software (Webinar marketing automation software)
- Best Autoresponders for Affiliate Marketing
- In-depth Kartra review: All-in-one platform teardown
Are you using marketing automation software?
What do you have to say about it?
Leave a comment below. I would love to hear from you.
Check out my other Statistics round up: