70+ Players, Sub 5% Penetration: Marketing Automation Still ‘Crossing the Chasm’

by Dan Freeman 
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This is from a recent interview I did with VentureBeat Magazine....

After several years of 50-plus-percent growth, marketing automation is still the new kid on the block.

Even with 70+ vendors in the space.

“If you’re in the business, it seems like everyone’s doing it,” analyst and consultant Dan Freeman told me yesterday. “But if you take a different perspective, it’s really early.”

In the tech business-to-business sector, most companies have now adopted some form of marketing automation, Freeman says. But that’s only a small slice of the overall market, so even though marketing automation gets a lot of hype and virtual ink — particularly via major acquisitions such as those by Adobe and IBM — it’s still very early days.

According to Freeman, that puts marketing automation squarely in the “crossing the chasm” phase, meaning that the sector is just now spreading from the early adopters and innovators to the early majority.

Read the full VentureBeat article...

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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 Industry Report

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.