What Canadian Marketers Can Learn From Marketing Automation’s Early Adopters

Understandably, customers don’t like being treated like a number. They want to be treated like individual people. Even among small and medium-sized businesses, though, where face-to-face contact may be more common, this can be difficult to do, especially when a business is trying to attract new prospects. Now there’s more proof than ever before that marketing automation may be exactly what they need.

The whole point of marketing automation is to use hard data as a way of driving more personalized and relevant messages than ever before. It makes sense, then, that Canadian companies looking at marketing automation want to see some hard numbers about marketing automation itself before they take the plunge.

We’re more than happy to help with that. Use these stats as a way to build the business case for marketing automation to help your company thrive in 2015 and beyond.

1. Standing still is not an option. In fact, 34 per cent of average performing B2B companies indicates that their current technologies are sufficient to scale end-to-end marketing over the next 1-3 years. ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing “ (2015)

2. Marketing automation is fairly priced according to 47 per cent of companies, and 10 per cent describe it as a inexpensive. Even among the 22 per cent who see the technology as a significant investment said it was worth it. VB Insight “Marketing Automation, how to make the right buying decision” (2015)

3. Marketing automation is addressing many of the biggest pain points marketers face. For example, nearly three quarters say the technology has saved them time, while 68 per cent say it has helped them increase engagement with their customers. Adestra Marketer vs Machine (2015)

4. Early adopters have yet to reap the full potential of marketing automation. Advanced analytics, for instance, can help them create progressive profiles of customers and prospects as they move through the funnel, but only 38 per cent have tried this yet. Webmarketing 123, 2015

5. For most firms, marketing needs to tie directly to sales. Good news: 84 per cent of marketing automation users say the technology helped drive more leads. Statisa, 2015

7. Marketers are always interested in customer satisfaction, so how satisfied are they with marketing automation? Very satisfied: 74 per cent said the technology has been beneficial or quite beneficial to their company overall. B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)

The marketing game has changed. The customer’s journey with your company no longer ends after purchase, and the most successful marketers understand that to reach this new customer, they need new tools and strategies.

Check out what Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud can do for your business and take a look at the increasing significance of the customer journey and a data-centric look at the digital marketing landscape in the 2015 State of Marketing Report: