Is Marketing Automation Crossing the Chasm?

by Dan Freeman 
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Marketing automation enables marketers to generate, capture and synthesize a vast array of prospect and customer digital interactions with their web sites, landing pages, email campaigns, and social platforms, and to assess and take action on the most promising leads. Seems like a no brainer, but it's still a challenge to get companies to commit. In fact, our research has revealed that less than 1% of businesses use marketing automation software today.

In his book, Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore describes a technology lifecycle in which the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation proceeds according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups. According to Moore’s model, the first group of people to use a new product is called "innovators," followed by "early adopters”.

The “chasm” is the crucial period during which a product is either adopted broadly, or remains part of a niche market. The “early majority” and “late majority” then adopt the product, followed by the last group, known as "laggards".

If this model is applied to marketing automation platforms, it becomes evident that, among large firms, Marketing automation has indeed crossed the chasm (we estimate a 20% adoption rate among companies with 500 or more employees).

By contrast, mid-sized firms are just now at the crossing while small firms (nearly 6 million of them!) are still in the innovators stage. This explains the growing number of marketing automation vendors seeking to gain a foothold into this market, as well as the substantial venture capital the sector has attracted.

Note also that the chasm is the steepest part of the growth curve, so gaining customers at this stage is critical for competitors in this space.

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Marketing Growth Strategies LLC has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.

Are you a marketing automation vendor? Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads.

Considering implementing marketing automation? Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.

Venture Capital Flows and Marketing Automation Adoption

by Dan Freeman 
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Even as venture capital continues to flow into marketing automation, less than one percent of US businesses have invested in the technology.  In fact, it's still at the innovators stage but quickly moving to the early adopters stage—the steepest growth phase of the product lifecycle.

The simple truth is, if you are a marketing automation company and not growing at a rapid pace in the year 2014, don’t expect to compete for long in this space.

If you are a marketer thinking about implementing marketing automation, be an early adopter and gain a systematic advantage over your competitors.

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Marketing Growth Strategies LLC has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.

Are you a marketing automation vendor looking to compete successfully in this high growth market? Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads.

Considering implementing marketing automation? Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.

Who's Using Marketing Automation?

by Dan Freeman 
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OK, so you’re hearing a lot about marketing automation. Getting tweets and emails and reading blogs and white papers about how it’s simplifying and transforming the lives of marketers. From all this hype, you might have the impression that everyone who’s anyone in marketing is using marketing automation software. I recently saw a headline claiming that 46 percent of B2B companies use marketing automation. When I read the details, it was clear that the 46 percent represented those that responded to a marketing automation survey. Who responds to a marketing automation survey? Usually those people that use marketing automation software. Duh! This was not even remotely representative of the marketplace as a whole. 

Marketers who get inundated with these type of stories get an inflated view of the market penetration of new technologies. But if there is a lot of hot air in these numbers, what can we say about the actual adoption rates of marketing automation software?  We delved into this question in our just published Marketing Automation eBook.

We looked at the total number of businesses in the US but took out the smallest of enterprises—those with not even a single employee. The table below shows marketing automation software use by size of company.
Keep in mind there are also over 20 million business with zero employees—freelancers, consultants, and other self-employed people, many of whom use email marketing software and could be ripe to upgrade to marketing automation platforms.

All told, there are roughly 50,000 marketing automation installations—less than 1 percent of the nearly 6 million businesses with at least 1 employee. It’s interesting to note that even for the 631,000 companies with 20 or more employees, penetration only stands at about 4 percent today. 

You can read more about adoption rates market sizing, and profiles of some of the leading vendors in our  Marketing Automation eBook.