Who's Winning and Losing In Marketing Automation?

by Dan Freeman 
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Change happens quickly in dynamic markets. Demand for marketing automation software is growing at a healthy clip, but aggregates can mask marketplace turbulence. Behind the 40 plus percent growth rate lies a multitude of customer experiences that determine the ultimate winners and losers.

As businesses struggle to get a handle on the new world of digital marketing, they experiment with new marketing platforms. Marketers try to master this software—to leverage its promise to generate more and better leads, and to streamline marketing processes. For highly competitive products like marketing automation, nuances in product features, and how customers manage to utilize these features can make all the difference. The way a new customer is on-boarded, the support or self-help tools provided, and even the reality of the implementation experience versus the expectations set by vendors can have a major impact on customer retention.

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And in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, retention is key. Vendors often lose money on new customers during the first year. It’s not until an annual renewal, or at least a period of several months, that customers become profitable. Vendors tout their success with press releases about new customers and sometime even publish customer counts and growth rates. What’s not revealed are the dropped customers—the churn.

Until now, that is.

Working with the tech data sleuth firm, Datanyze, I looked at websites that added and dropped marketing automation software from January through April of 2014. The results may surprise you. Salesforce's own marketing automation platform—Pardot—dominated the field with a net gain of 2,020 websites.