Really? Just 1% you say? How can that be with so much buzz about marketing automation and its benefits?
Well, here’s the quick math based on some statistics from the US Census Bureau and analyst David Raab in his recent report on the industry. He takes a look at various vendors, their growth rates, and customer count across three segments:
1. Micro-Business (under $5M in revenue) – ~22,000 companies have adopted marketing automation (15k with one vendor)
2. Small to Mid Sized Business ($5M to $500M) – ~18,000 companies have adopted marketing automation
3. Enterprise (over $500M) – ~3200 companies have adopted marketing automation
Our friends at the US Census Bureau put the total number of companies with employees at around 6 million (this is 2008 data by the way). Total number of business in the US is about 27 million but 21 million or so of those do not formally have employees so focusing on companies with employees. Also, this is only US data where clearly there has been some adoption in other countries so you could infer the overall rate of adoption is actually lower than 1%.
~43,000 companies using marketing automation / ~6,000,000 employer firms = .72%
So, looks like the largest enterprises have pretty broadly adopted marketing automation which is not surprising given the focus and venture capital investment in companies like Eloqua, Marketo, and Neolane (two of which have now been acquired and 1 is now a public company). These have also been the companies most in a position to afford the higher cost of these solutions plus handle the implementation and on-going administration required of these enterprise-focused products.
What’s really interesting about all of this is that of the 6 million companies that *could* adopt marketing automation, roughly 5,000 of them have more than 2,000 employees leaving the majority of companies well under that mark and still in the early innings of taking advantage of this type of marketing technology.
This also assumes that every company needs marketing automation but in a modern business world who doesn’t have a website or use email to communicate with customers or prospects? The point is that we have just scratched the surface in this market with early adopters in the enterprise leading the way and lots of opportunity for Mid, Small, and Micro businesses remaining. They will benefit from the simplification, ease of use, and more affordable pricing available to them from products like ours and others targeted at this group of small to medium sized businesses.
Interesting times ahead!
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