Last month, we released the complete results of our 2011 Marketing Automation Survey and today I would like to highlight Figure 5: What Marketing Automation Benefits are Most Valuable? More than 65% of survey respondents have already implemented marketing automation or plan to do so in 2011. The table below shows which marketing automation benefits are viewed as most valuable:
| Extremely Important | Somewhat Important | Not Important |
Not Sure | Rating Average | |||
|
More Leads |
52.5% (188) |
22.3% (80) |
15.4% (55) |
3.9% (14) |
2.2% (8) |
3.6% (13) |
1.77 |
|
Better Lead Quality |
64.6% (230) |
19.4% (69) |
8.1% (29) |
2.5% (9) |
2.0% (7) |
3.4% (12) |
1.53 |
|
Lower Marketing Costs |
35.8% (127) |
27.6% (98) |
22.0% (78) |
6.2% (22) |
3.4% (12) |
5.1% (18) |
2.09 |
|
Lower Sales Costs |
35.5% (125) |
20.5% (72) |
25.6% (90) |
8.2% (29) |
4.8% (17) |
5.4% (19) |
2.22 |
|
Shorter Sales Cycle |
34.7% (123) |
24.0% (85) |
20.3% (72) |
6.2% (22) |
8.5% (30) |
6.2% (22) |
2.25 |
|
Better Campaign Reporting |
33.7% (120) |
31.2% (111) |
21.9% (78) |
5.1% (18) |
3.7% (13) |
4.5% (16) |
2.10 |
|
Better Understanding of Prospect Behavior |
47.0% (167) |
25.6% (91) |
16.6% (59) |
4.2% (15) |
2.3% (8) |
4.2% (15) |
1.84 |
“Better Lead Quality” and “More Leads” are the top two marketing automation benefits. Marketing automation features like “Lead Nurturing Campaigns” (drip marketing), automated “Lead Handling Workflows” and “Web Lead Capture” are helping companies collect more leads and hand better qualified leads over to sales people.
In 3rd place is getting a “Better Understanding of Prospect Behavior.” Marketing automation systems provide detailed reporting on lead sources, lead segmentation and specific interactions with the website and emails (e.g., pages visited, forms submitted, emails opened, etc.). This information is analyzed and processed by sales and marketing to help improve marketing campaign performance and guide lead follow up by sales.
The order of the priorities did not vary based on respondent role (e.g., sales vs. marketing), company size or business model.
