Page 20 - AeM_Apr_2017

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Ascend2’s ‘State of Marketing Automation’

Report

Ascend2 just published its survey report “State of Mar- marketing influencers
keting Automation”, which the company conducted in
partnership with leading marketing solution providers. • Sales cycle encounter: A total of two-thirds (67%)
The research-based marketing expert defines market- of the respondents encounter a complex sale with a
ing automation as “software applications designed to long cycle and many influencers during their mar-
streamline repetitive marketing tasks” and highlights in keting. The complex sale is the sweet spot for mar-
its report that the technology has become ubiquitous keting automation. However, one- third (33%) of
across all industries. influencers automate marketing processes for di-
rect sales.
Most important for Ascend2 was to find out what strate-
gies are having the most impact on the state of market- • Objective vs. challenges: The greater the gap
ing automation this year and here are their findings: between the importance and the challenge of
achieving an objective (optimizing productivity, for
• Strategic objectives: While increasing marketing example), the higher the priority it should have in
ROI is an important objective for the largest share of the development of a successful marketing auto-
marketing influencers (46%), optimizing productivity mation strategy.
and acquiring more customers are a close second
with 45%. • Evaluation criteria: A majority (54%) of marketing
influencers point to ease of implementation as an
• Success of strategy: One third (33%) of marketing important evaluation criteria for selecting a market-
influencers consider their marketing automation ing automation system. Ease of implementation is
strategy very successful at achieving important ob- more important than even the cost of ownership,
jectives, describing it as best-in-class. 51% consider making it the subject of the following survey ques-
their strategy somewhat successful while the other tions.
16% are still struggling to achieve success
• Implementation complexity: A total of 84% of
• Critical challenges: There are many challenges marketing influencers perceive the implementation
competing for the top spot, however, measuring of a marketing automation system to be a compli-
performance is a most critical challenge for 41% of cated task, with more than a quarter (26%) describ-
20 April 2017 - Marketing Automation & Attribution