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Marketing Automation Challenges Roundup 2019
Mor Mester
In this post
The marketing automation world is growing at a large scale. More and more people use some type of automation for repetitive marketing activities to increase productivity and consequently revenue.
However, even as technology changes and evolves, people working with marketing automation have almost the same challenges as they did 5 years ago. I wanted to find out precisely what challenges marketing automation users have and share our findings with the world in the form of this roundup and this epic 59-page report filled with stats about marketing automation challenges and advice.
Download the full report with stats about marketing automation challenges
My colleague, Viktor created a survey with some questions. The purpose of the first question was to segment the respondents so that we could follow it up with relevant questions about marketing automation: “Do you use some kind of marketing automation software?”.
The respondents who replied with “Yes.” got these questions:
“What is your number 1 challenge when you use marketing automation?”
“What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should she/he pay attention to?”
The respondents who replied with “Not yet.” got these questions:
“Why don’t you use some kind of automation software?”
“If you would use a marketing automation tool, what would be the number one reason?”
The survey also contained questions about the name and industry of the respondent’s company, how many employees the company has and what’s the position of the respondent in the company, and what’s the position of the respondent in the company. This lets us put all the challenges into context and create this 59-page report filled with stats about marketing automation challenges and advice.
I reached out to hundreds of people through relevant Facebook Groups, and LinkedIn messages asking if they’d like to take part. 133 people filled out the survey. 114 (85%) of the respondents use some type of marketing and 19 (15%) don’t.
Main Marketing Automation Challenges
In our survey, 85% of respondents use some kind of marketing automation.
The most common challenge people face with marketing automation is creating quality automations, with 16% of respondents mentioning it.
Based on our data, integrations (14%) are another critical challenge users face with marketing automation technology.
Marketing automation requires lots of content. No wonder, that creating content came in third place, with 10%.
Engagement (8%) is another major challenge and is closely related to content. Automation requires top-notch quality content to drive engagement.
Segmentation, data management, and optimization are mentioned by 6% of the participants as a marketing automation challenge.
Finding tools (5%), personalization (5%), lead scoring (5%), analytics (4%), reporting (3%), and deliverability (1%) were all mentioned as a challenge by some of the surveyed professionals.
Download the full report to get even more marketing automation stats, advice, actionable insights and characteristic challengers based on research.
Coming up you can read the responses to the two main questions of all the people who submitted the survey. I’ll start with the respondents who automate and finish it off with the participants who don’t. Let’s dive in!
Respondents Who Automate
In our survey, 85% of respondents use some kind of marketing automation.
This section contains answers from influencers and expert like Ed Fry, Aaron Krall, Alex Rangevik, Jon Buchan, Sampath, Chris von Wilpert, Gilles DC, Trevor Hatfield, Justin Wu, Hailey Friedman, Jason Quach, Jonathan Aufray, Yam Regev, Sam Hurley, Louis Grenier.
Participants came from high-growing SaaS companies like Sumo, Hotjar, HireVue, and Hootsuite. As well as lots of early-stage startups and large corporations like Nokia and GE.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Managing complexity of data and content. Rarely does all the data and content you need start all in one place.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
The advice that was given to me when I started.
Start simple. Keep it manageable. Get something small working (and push it out into the wild) rather than architect something “clever” and delay actually getting results.And don’t fear pressing “GO!”. Even when it’s enrolling tens of thousands of contacts 😉
Youness Bermime (WritersDo)
Youness Bermime
Owner @ WritersDo
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
My number one challenge is making sure that my subscribers’ list interacts positively with the content of the emails they will receive.
I have to make that both the content is just as high quality as the list of people I will be sending it out to.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
They should pay more attention to content and contact quality rather than quantity.
Sending one email a day to thousands of people who will just be irritated after three days is not a good strategy.
Instead, one email per week, highly customized will get more leads and keep your contact interested in what you are offering.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Making sure that your message aligns with the prospects that are being targeted. It’s easy to set up a marketing automation program and think you have all the criteria/segmenting details to target your audience, but sometimes you can miss the mark and create an unwanted experience for your target customers.
For example, if your prospect downloads a beginner-level guide…don’t assume that means they’re ready to buy your product. Send them content/messaging related to what they downloaded and then if they engage, take them through the next steps gradually. You wouldn’t ask someone to marry you on a first date, so don’t expect your prospects to either.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Map out the journey you want your prospects to take using a visual flow chart like draw.io or Gliffy before building the process in your marketing automation tool.
This helps visualize the path you want your prospects to take and identify any gaps or holes that might be missing.
When drawing out the process, make sure you have an “exit step” of what’s going to happen at the end of your automation flow…is Sales going to follow-up? Are these prospects going to go down another automation track? Identify the end goal and make sure there are next steps.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Mapping internal processes to the technology. While platforms are quite robust, they often miss elements that impede implementation and success.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Pay attention to the sales process and your customers’ journeys.
It’s essential to map your sales processes and leverage technology to assist and optimize those processes. Without buy-in, enablement, and goal success, a marketing automation implementation may be a real challenge.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Knowing what tone of voice to use, the right length of emails to send and when to send specific emails to ensure a great trial/onboarding experience.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Ensure you’ve implemented the right triggers to know what to send based on what actions the user had taken, and/or which actions you’d like them to take.
Download the full report with stats about marketing automation challenges
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
As of now, I have no challenges. The tools I use work amazingly well. Though I wish there were one tool that did everything instead of managing multiple tools.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Pay attention to the lead nurturing cycle.
Do not pitch to soon, and do no delay the pitch. Build a good relationship with the automation and try to solve people’s question.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
The #1 challenge I see with using most marketing automation tools is they are one-trick-pony systems.
For a marketing automation to be seriously powerful, it should be deeply integrated (if not one and the same) with your CMS/website, CRM, email marketing tool, social media tools, and your digital ad tools.
That way you can personalize content across every digital channel, create a much more personalized customer experience, and drive the right conversion for the right person at the right time.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
If you’re just getting started, I’d say focus less on long term nurture email series / tracks, as they never work that well. And instead, build out behaviourally driven email comms (just one email can be enough, if triggered when a prospect/customer does a certain behaviour).
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
The technical implementation of automation is not that hard anymore. But getting the strategy, the messaging and the workflow right is still a challenge. You have to think and plan a lot to figure what to send, to who and when.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Have a small plan and execute it. And do it manually!
Automate only if you really know what you are doing. I always start every automation process with manual work, then move to half-automation, and only set up fully automated workflows when I understand how the process really works.
Bad automation can be worse than no automation. But once you figure out the process and what to automate, it can do magic!
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Keeping automation as human as possible.
With multiple and more complex multi-part workflows making sure they stay organized, easily understood and there is not any overlap.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Keep workflows as simple as possible.
It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole that can lead to problems. It’s often better to have 5 short automation workflows that are easy to follow and pull leads in and out of them with specific purposes, rather than one extremely long complex one that caters to everything.
Download the full report with stats about marketing automation challenges
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Easy/quick set up and management of funnels and triggers for complex user behaviors.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
To think, investigate and test the logic through from the user perspective first.
If you’re implementing solely from a disinterest in manual work, or because you want your business to feel/run “lean”, you’re likely missing out on key decision influences from the user perspective that enable your automation to have it’s desired effect.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Segmentation and people falling into the right segments.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
100% understand the journey that you want your customers to take in the flow.
We can set any type of funnel or marketing automation flow, but one thing that can be forgotten when starting out is not to think about the whole flow and mindset of the customer going into the flow and also what they will do and how they will be when they exit.
What will be your trigger points be? How will you guide your reader to do what you want?
That is right you are the guide, you are not the strict teacher telling them what to do, that doesn’t work in this day and age. You have to use words, imagery, a bit of humor and knowledge of your customer to get them to trust you and do things.
Be consistent in everything that you do, know your brand, know your brand voice and look at every campaign as a whole to make sure your language and flow make sense.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
The issue of having to use a variety of tools for doing different tasks and lack of integration.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
I think one has to start with the basics and prioritize the use of marketing automation accordingly.
In this regard, it won’t make sense to learn a software which helps with increasing retention if you are a new business and are in the acquisition stage.
There are also tons of case studies and books available which can be of help.
More than that, irrespective of what the industry standard is for a particular strategy or tactic, it is important that you test your own data. For instance, to use a simple example, many new business owners are wondering what the best time to tweet would be. Now, this is something which the business owner should analyze based on their own audience’s activity level.
Constant experimentation, data analysis is the key. In this regard, as Sean Ellis says in his recently released book Hacking Growth, one has to adopt the philosophy of MVT (Minimum Viable Testing) to make the best use of one’s resources and build on that experience and the lessons it provides.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Don’t know if number 1 as such, but currently synchronizing contacts’ information state (active, unsubscribe, etc.) between MA system and all other systems (product internal DB, CRM, etc.)
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
If the product is flexible enough to support different workflows and integration with outside world, decent content editor for emails is a must as well.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Syncing email databases and lists.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Create a structured system for your mailing list, tagging users, signup source and whatever other properties that you might find useful based on your email marketing strategy.
Do it before you start with automation, you’ll thank me later on – especially if you plan on sending e-mails and notifications from multiple places (your backend, Mailchimp, Mixpanel, Appcues…)
Juan Quintero (Rootivo)
Juan Quintero
CMO @ Rootivo
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Way too many options.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Complexity and as a result of that, a lack of focus on what actually matters.
Marketing automation tools today can do so much and enable marketing professionals to work across channels with less friction than ever before. But if you have no strategy before you begin and just try a bit of everything, you end up with a dozen irrelevant personas, hundreds of mail flows with only a few leads in each, way too many reports, and a ton of different landing pages.
Managing all of this ends up taking more time when the marketing automation tool was actually supposed to give you more time by cutting administration. So make sure you go systematically into the implementation of your tool.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Scale with your leads.
If you are just starting out and have less than a 100 customers, there is no reason to do lead scoring, mail flows for 6 different personas, and schedule a ton of content.
You will end up spending so much time setting it all up and administering it instead of doing what actually matters at this stage: get more customers.
So start simple, one persona [decision-maker], one mail flow [generic], one really good piece of content [promote the shit out of it].
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Adding a personal touch to your content to appear as humanly and non-automated as possible.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
That automation should just be a “supplement” to your marketing efforts.
It should simply be a tool that helps you save time and manage the tedious tasks.
The best way to reach out to people is to make them feel like they are special and unique, and that you are interested in them. This, unfortunately, automation alone cannot do.
Download the full report with stats about marketing automation challenges
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
The biggest challenge I’ve faced when I’ve deployed automation platforms in multiple businesses is bringing existing company data into the marketing automation platform, and connecting that to other company systems, so it stays relevant.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Take your time. Plan meticulously, but don’t be afraid to test.
Without these three facets, the successful deployment of a marketing automation platform will be inhibited.
You must also be wary of sending customers or prospects too much content through overly complex workflows or sequences that cross-over.
You need to have a way of managing which contacts receive what information, when… and ultimately, why they are receiving it.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Making sure that I’m using it to its full potential, especially in terms of integrations.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
I would recommend to someone just getting into marketing automation to really understand what they’re trying to get out of it.
Without some form of goal post to look for, it’s going to be very hard to use any software properly – let alone well.
Having an end goal, whether that be lead nurturing or auto-segmenting, whatever, it’s much easier to implement something useful if you can relate it back to how it helps you as a business.
Then you can step back and look at the process as a whole and see how marketing automation can be used most effectively to help you save time and stop letting things fall through the crack (like follow up).
Download the full report with stats about marketing automation challenges
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Setting up clear behaviour based funnels using combinations of data, timing, and interaction with previous emails.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Start off simple, A/B test when you can put a minimum of 250 emails into each version, less then that and it’s just not worth it.
If you have the data you can still create simple flows if you don’t have data plugged in (so you only have an email for example), you can only really trigger emails based on timing, so bear in mind a user may complete an action before they receive an email.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
That what I am sending out will be relevant.
For example, when planning ahead, I don’t want my marketing message to be sent to the wrong people at the wrong time (think scandal in the press, and your message is in some way unintentionally insensitive).
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
That your message is relevant to your target market.
Don’t be afraid to automate, but also be aware that if you are marketing to everyone, you are marketing to no one.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
The number 1 challenge when using marketing automation is to actually choose the right tools for my needs.
There are so many choices around, and it’s not always easy to find the perfect fit.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Before using marketing automation, that person needs to make sure he/she needs it. Not all tasks need to be automated.
Indeed, I work with clients who want to automate everything, but in fact, they don’t need to automate something that doesn’t give results.
Eddy Bautista (Webtris Digital)
Eddy Bautista
Marketing Director @ Webtris Digital
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Understanding how to connect the dots and connect other services to make it work to the best it can be.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Understand the market.
There’s a lot of programs that help you automate processes, some are really useful, and others seem like a total waste of time.
I would really recommend also to have beta users. Don’t have friends that will say just nice things about it but really ask them, “what are we doing wrong?” There’s always room for potential.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
To gather insightful stats.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Try to see the full customer journey and target the emails fitting to the correct audience.
Fahad Mohammed (BrandX Holdings)
Fahad Mohammed
CEO @ BrandX Holdings
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Making sure I stay authentic without it seeming robotic.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Pay attention to the strategy you have in place using marketing automation and understand that streamlining your marketing efforts doesn’t allow you to stop your other marketing strategies around content.
Download the full report with stats about marketing automation challenges
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Getting fully accustomed with the tech itself / Utilizing all features!
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Definitely plan ahead — Don’t expect to just make the purchase and get started!
This stuff takes time to master. Be sure to lean on the vendor to support you all the way through, especially during onboarding.
You will probably need assistance from a web developer, too…
ALWAYS expect the unexpected: Extra coding, issues with tech you’re currently using / ability to integrate and longer timelines.
HOWEVER: It’s all worth it in the end!
Monnel Espiritu
Monnel Espiritu
Marketing Freelancer
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
With the level of competition that we have now in digital marketing, building your marketing automation machine is a must. Even small brands who think that marketing automation is just for the big boys should invest in their own automation if they really want to grow and become one of the dominating players in their industry.
I guess the real challenge in marketing automation is working with clients who already have a system in place that doesn’t work or deliver. There’s a big difference in working with clients in tabula rasa state and clients with their heads full of “automation hacks”.
For clients who are just starting in marketing automation, I often hear them asking “what am I going to do with my list?”, “I have a big following, but I don’t know what to do with it”, “I’m not making money from my tribe even if they’re consistently engaged with me.” So once I hear these kinds of sentiments, I know that my job in convincing these people to invest in marketing automation will be a lot easier. I prefer working with this type of client because they are a lot easier to work with and I can help them in building their sales funnels and automation from scratch. They don’t have biases when it comes to marketing automation, and they won’t insist on using “fads techniques” from gurus they follow. They would easily see and appreciate the changes that you bring to the table thus making it easier to work with them and deliver the result you promised.
The real challenge is working with people who already have their marketing automation that doesn’t work. When this type of clients insist on using the “system” from their guru, I know that they would be hard to work with and I will need to adjust a lot of cogs to build their marketing automation machine. Why would they have me onboard if they’re guru’s automation works, right?
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Imagine your marketing automation as a machine.
It has different parts, levers, and cogs. Your goal in building your machine should focus on seamlessly integrating your marketing channels to continuously push and nurture your audience down to your conversion funnel.
You have to be meticulous and plan out everything before you start building your machine. You can’t just build as you go. That’s a recipe for disaster.
While you can easily start from scratch, you shouldn’t build the bridge as you walk on it. Marketing automation requires planning – a blueprint.
You have to anticipate different circumstances and examine and adjust your value ladder (whenever needed) to match your retention strategy.
Once you all have this figure out, you can just let it work for you and focus on other aspects of your marketing campaign so you can keep feeding your machine and keep converting people into a sale.
Ben Bradbury (Schema Growth)
Ben Bradbury
Sales Director @ Schema Growth
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Emails looking as personalised as possible.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
It’s not about the tool for the sake of a tool; it’s about using tools to solve problems.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
Converting cold leads into users.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Workflow construction is something I find very important.
You should try to deliver very personalized and relevant messages and keep your focus on that matter, so the tool’s construction must be easy to use.
Furthermore, the way you build and manage your lists can have a huge impact on how well you are able to connect with your contacts. That’s why it is very important that your chosen tool lets you customize your lists as much as possible.
The next thing I would advise you to keep in mind is: your sales funnel. Whom are you speaking to? What information do they need from you? Can you measure their responses right?
If your tool can help you with these issues, then it should still be “in the game”.
In addition, in nowadays advanced technology you shouldn’t be satisfied with a tool that can’t serve multiple channels, and that can be useful for various departments.
And one last thing: the pricing packages are also one of the facts to consider. Be well informed about the market prices and if there is no free trial option – request a free demo. After all, you should test if the tool has the above-mentioned functionalities.
What’s your #1 challenge when you use marketing automation?
People know when an email is automated, so the engage rates are small.
What would you say to a person who just got started with marketing automation? What should he or she pay attention to?
Find a (scalable) system to reach out to each subscriber in a way that it does not look automated.
Respondents Who Don’t Automate
In our survey, 15% of respondents don’t automate their marketing yet at all. Coming up you can read about the reasons why companies don’t use marketing automation.
Djahill Zouaoui (Link Hustler)
Djahill Zouaoui
Founder @ Link Hustler
Why don’t you use some kind of automation software?
I use automation in terms of monitoring or pulling out info from the web but not in terms of actually automating a “publication” task.
I guess I’m not yet at a scale where I really need it.
Also, I have a “bad” opinion about automation software transgressing TOS of some platforms like Massplanner with Instagram.
If you would use a marketing automation tool, what would be the number one reason?
Scaling up my activities.
Download the full report with stats about marketing automation challenges
Why don’t you use some kind of automation software?
I am new to the digital marketing field, so first I want to learn skills myself, and then manually I want to implement and get experience so that it will polish my skills as well as help me.
So at starting phase, I don’t want to depend on something which automates my tasks, but when I will explore other things and don’t find time to spend on manual tasks, then I may think for automation tools (but not fully).
Because automation kills people’s job at large extent and also force them to learn new things so that they can sustain in life.
For younger ones, it is easy to learn things, but for already settled people it becomes bitter and tough (recent example layoffs in IT sector).
But since marketing also needs creativity, so I believe companies won’t tell AI to do this job too else it will be like they are hitting axe on their legs only.
If you would use a marketing automation tool, what would be the number one reason?
Only in emergency.
Download the full report with stats about marketing automation challenges
Why don’t you use some kind of automation software?
Timely to setup, Need a tutorial.
If you would use a marketing automation tool, what would be the number one reason?
Get better PPC results for my clients. I have tried, but they sometimes work.
Summary and Acknowledgements
This roundup provides a thorough picture of the challenges marketers have with automation.
However, if you’d like to dive even deeper I suggest you download the Marketing Automation Challenges Report 2018 filled with data, insight, and cross-examination of the topic throughout different company sizes, industries and positions.
As you could see the main concerns and challenges marketers have with marketing automation are creating automations, integrations, and complexity.
That’s the reason why we at Automizy focus on providing a seamless experience for our users with an easy-to-use interface and visually recognizable patterns.
Download the full report with stats about marketing automation challenges
I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to creating this roundup in any way shape or form. I’m sending my highest level of appreciation to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey. Without the contribution of all you amazing people, this report couldn’t have turned out this great. Thank you so much!
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