New Report: Marketing Automation Held Back By Budget, Data Management And Lack of Time

From Openprise’s “Martech Data Report”

Two-thirds of marketing and sales professionals surveyed for a new report do not use a marketing automation platform (MAP). And, of the third that do, their usage is basic to moderate, with only about half of those engaging in personalization or lead nurturing.

Those are some of the sobering findings in the “Martech Data Report” from Redwood City, California-based IT/data management shop Openprise, based on survey responses from more than 400 marketing and sales professionals in the US.

Although Openprise itself is in the business of cleaning and managing data, the report’s emphasis on the often-overlooked complications of working with big data rings true.

For instance, the marketing platforms are increasingly differentiating themselves on their access to data sources and management, including Oracle’s purchase of data management platform BlueKai and marketing analytics firm Datalogix, Adobe’s launch of its data matchmaker, Audience Marketplace, and Salesforce’s analytics cloud Wave. And while many marketers have learned the skills for employing marketing tools, few are skilled at data cleaning and management.

John Donlon, research manager for marketing ops at research firm SiriusDecisions, told me that “the average marketer is pretty-tech savvy, but the data management piece is a whole other process.” He added that marketers are also continually looking for new targeting attributes, such as different kinds of social communications, which means they are constantly adding new kinds of data — especially since “a lot of the traditional data sources, like list providers, have become a commodity.”

Among the report’s findings:

1. Maintaining clean data is one of the key obstacles in fully utilizing a marketing automation platform. Half of those with a MAP place data hygiene as their top data challenge over, say, segmentation, because of inaccuracy, incompleteness or outdated info. This means more time is spent on managing data than any other single function.

2. More MAP-owning respondents — 24 percent — cite “lack of data” as a reason for not pursuing advanced marketing practices than do those who don’t have a MAP (14 percent). In one sense, this is expected, since non-MAPPERs may not have the necessary data-handling tools — but it’s hard to imagine any marketer these days who does not have to target customers and potential customers in some fashion.

1. For those who do use a MAP, “lack of time” is the key culprit holding them back from practicing personalization, lead nurturing or other advanced practices. Only about half of those with a MAP utilize personalization or lead nurturing. For those without a MAP, the key factor is “lack of budget.”

2. While nearly 80 percent of respondents use some method or tech to score leads, only half of those use it to qualify leads. And sales people prefer demographics for scoring, while marketing likes to track behavior.