Marketing automation: a power still unknown to many

The fast pace of innovation continues as several new vendors emerge, each offering something unique to appeal to their local customers.  

Marketing automation helps organisations improve lead quality, automate marketing campaigns, monitor and measure marketing efforts, and drive efficiencies in customer acquisition and retention. 

The growing need for cross-channel digital marketing in marketing organisations, across industry verticals, will allow software providers to cast their nets further and strengthen the business case for marketing automation.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Global Marketing Automation Software Market, finds that the market earned revenues of US$906.9 million (Bt30.5 billion) in 2014 and estimates this to reach $14.51 billion by 2020. Future market growth will centre on the Asia-Pacific despite rampant price sensitivity in the region.

Marketing automation as a function has moved beyond e-mail and the Internet, evolving into a true cross-channel automation platform through tighter integration with mobile, social media, display advertising and search channels, said Frost & Sullivan Digital Media Industry Analyst Hiral Jasani. 

As a result, global marketing automation tools have seen a phenomenal rise in demand as small, mid-market and large enterprises, especially in manufacturing, banking and financial service, healthcare, and e-commerce sectors, look to drive marketing efficiencies.

Product development efforts are focused on providing more sophisticated analytics capabilities to end-users. The market also witnessed increasing vendor partnerships with technology application providers within the advertising, content marketing, mobile app analytics and social marketing areas.

This surge in demand will be tempered to a certain extent by the low awareness of end-users about industry best practices in specific verticals such as pharma and manufacturing. In addition, the inability to demonstrate significant returns on investment also deters firms from deploying marketing automation solutions.

Price competitiveness is another challenge; therefore, marketing automation providers must improve their pricing models to achieve economies of scale, especially in emerging markets. Furthermore, increasing market consolidation is also expected to affect growth, as large enterprise software companies continue to swallow pure-play marketing automation technology vendors.

Marketing automation vendors must be more aggressive in positioning vertical-specific value propositions in order to expand into diverse industries, urged Jasani. They also need to build partnerships with digital marketing agencies to broaden their presence in different verticals and geographies across the globe.