I was reading a recent blog post by Dan Freeman on “Who’s winning and losing in marketing automation?” where he used a service to analyze the number of websites with tracking code embedded from some of the marketing automation vendors in the marketplace.
While not completely accurate in terms of the results (since organizations can run more than one website, incomplete study across webpages, etc.), Freeman’s post explores the churn of vendors as measured by month-over-month totals by vendor vary – assuming that they are gaining or losing customers based upon whether the tracking code is being used.
One could argue that it can also show how few companies in the overall scheme of things are actually using marketing automation systems – and how early we are in the game of marketing automation adoption – but let’s stay focused on why it is that there is the heavy churn rates.
We can likely also assume that people are not ditching their use of marketing automation, but merely switching vendors because they think they’ll get better functionality, support, and results with the new vendor.
But what struck us was why the churn? What is it about implementing a marketing automation system that has marketers being dis-satisfied. It must be because companies are not getting the “promised” value from their implementation of the technology. So we got curious about why marketing automation implementations are failing, and scoured the web and all of the research studies we could find about marketing automation implementations. Guess what?
Studies show that marketing automation fails three out of five times it is implemented!
For such a serious investment, not only financially but also in terms of time and effort, a 60 percent failure rate seems pretty alarming.
After all of that research, we boiled it down to the five things that determine whether your marketing automation implementation will succeed or fail. Interestingly, NONE of them have anything to do with your marketing automation system (which have essentially the same set of features and functions).
Turns out if you can avoid failure if you master these five things. With some attention, you can likely have your marketing automation system and utilization producing the results you need. The big question is whether marketing departments will tackle and master these things or continue to blame the technology for their lack of results. What they are will surprise you. If ever there was a silver bullet for today’s marketing, these five things pretty well encapsulate what it is — and it will definitely not fit your picture of the shiny silver bullet that requires no extra effort or mastery!
Find out what marketing automation success hinges on by downloading our eBook, entitled “The Top Five Reasons Why Marketing Automation Implementations Fail.”
To read Dan Freeman’s blog post, go here: http://www.marketingtechreport.com/2014/05/marketing-automation-winners-losers.html