What are the Benefits of Marketing Automation? (Survey Results 2.0)

Back in 2017, we conducted the first international marketing automation survey and now it’s time to get a fresher perspective of how marketers use automation. Here we listed some of the latest survey results and the key takeaways. We also compared our findings against the previous findings.

Goal

We wanted to find out how marketing teams utilize marketing automation in their daily job, what benefits they get, and what challenges they face.

Respondents

331 marketing and communications professionals from Finland, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong took part in the survey.

Familiarity with marketing automation

Almost 90% of the respondents are familiar with marketing automation. Back in 2017, 20,3% said they were not familiar with the technology, whereas only 13,9% said so in the recent survey.

Marketing automation benefits

The most prominent benefits of marketing automation are improved targeting of messages and a better marketing ROI. In 2017, 32,9% marked improved marketing ROI as the key benefit, whereas 40,5% picked the same option in 2019.

Marketing automation challenges

The key challenges of marketing automation are lack of expertise and lack of human resources. In 2017, 40% of marketers were frustrated with the lack of appropriate content, whereas only 15,3% experienced the same issue in 2019.

Key takeaways:

Marketing automation becomes more popular among marketing and communication professionals.
Improved targeting of messages is the key benefit of marketing automation. This proves that today’s digital marketing is all about personalized communication.
Automation can solve some of the key problems marketers facing today, such as maximizing ROI, improving customer experience and bringing more qualified leads.
The key marketing automation challenges are the lack of skilled workforce and insufficient knowledge on how to use the technology.