In our previous post, we presented the high-level conclusions of our marketing infrastructure survey. Now we’re going to show you how the sausage was made. In creating the survey the first questions we asked were both the most obvious and gave us significant insights. For the remainder of this series we’ll be reviewing the questions and the responses across all organization sizes, and of course the conclusions derived from them.

1. What types of campaigns are you implementing?

For the first question we offered a multiple choice selection of nine standard marketing campaigns any of which a marketing organization would run regardless of size or budget constraints. These included email marketing, social media, direct mail, webinars, banner and print advertising, SEO/PPC, and lead scoring and nurturing.

What becomes immediately apparent is that Email remains the primary marketing program regardless of organizational size. Forrester Research estimates that 94% of all organizations engage in email marketing as the core component of their lead generation mix. We found nothing to contradict that finding here and in fact, the usage numbers were virtually identical across all organizational sizes.

Second in preference was social media. While many discrete activities comprise a social media program such as blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and Linked’In as well as podcasting and other activities, different organizations will implement different mixes depending on production, distribution, and promotion budgets. Larger organizations spend more on programs with higher production and distribution costs while smaller organizations utilize less costly media with minimal promotion costs. One of the benefits of social media is that by using best practices for distribution and creating compelling content, smaller organizations are not necessarily at a disadvantage from their larger competitors in terms of getting their messages heard.

Third in popularity was a statistical tie between advertising (both banner and print), and direct mail. While it’s fashionable among marketing pundits to talk about the dramatic shift away from print advertising and direct mail (two of the most conventional and traditional marketing channels) our numbers show that there’s no sign of diminishment in utilization regardless of organization size. All four organizations are implementing them in approximately equal measure.

The final categories consist of those most associated with marketing automation software systems. These include lead scoring, lead nurturing, and SEO (search engine optimization) /PPC (pay per click). Given that less than 10% of organizations use Marketing Automation software and those that do only use it to 25% of it’s full capability as reported by Sirius-Decisions, the lack of their use across all organization sizes is not surprising.

2. Which campaigns are the top two sales pipeline contributors?

Our follow-up question was based on the campaigns they selected in question #1 as to which two programs can be most directly tied to sales conversions. The results here were virtually identical regardless of organization size.

The top sales contributor was email – certainly not a surprise given its ubiquity. The second was trade shows. Again, old-line marketing techniques come to the fore as the main marketing contributor to revenue. While email is clearly the most popular across all organization sizes, tradeshows had a greater adoption especially among the larger organizations from the remaining options. Given the cost to mount a consistent tradeshow presence it’s natural that the organizations with larger budgets and who already enjoy a certain amount of brand recognition would continue to invest along these lines.

The conclusion we can draw based on the first two questions from the survey is that investments are being made in programs that are assured to deliver results that can be measured and managed without the need of new marketing systems or process re-orientation. While many marketing pundits continue to highlight the benefits of Marketing Automation, what is clear is that marketers are not racing to implement these technologies – for the time being. As we progress to the next level of responses in the upcoming posts, we’ll be able to see under what conditions marketers are open to adopting integrated marketing technology that can ensure predictable and positive results without having to implement significant processes, budgets, and costs – in short, a Marketing Automation System.

Recently, we took a survey of marketing professionals from a variety of organization sizes:
• 25 Employees but less than 75,
• 75 Employees and greater, but less than 250
• 250 Employees and greater but less than 500
• 500 Employees and greater

The results were very much in line with many things that we at Act-On have been proposing and in many instances run contrary to the “conventional wisdom” that many marketing automation vendors have been promoting. While you may think “oh isn’t this convenient – a vendor ran a survey that backed up it’s own point of view”, we entered into this project without any preconceived ideas as to how it would turn out. We took a blind cross section of marketing roles, regions, and industries and invited them to participate. We did not weight the number of participants towards what we would perceive to be a more favorable demographic – the 25 & 75 Employee size organizations – statistically we had virtually equal participation across all organization sizes. More importantly, we focused across the board on a variety of marketing roles – from CMOs to marketing managers to get a real cross section of how marketing departments function and what truly concerns them.

What we found was that the results were remarkably similar regardless of organization size – while there was some variance between different sized organizations in questions where budget, staffing size, and brand strength would be an influencing factor, in general, the trends were the same.

For the purposes of this blog, we’ll be analyzing the questions and answers in each post, show the results by demographic and highlight the key conclusions drawn from each question. To kick things off and whet your appetite for the detail to come, this is what we found at the high level:

• Email Marketing is still by far the most popular communication channel
• A variety of point tools is the most common method for campaign management across the board
• Close to half of the respondents are dissatisfied with their tools for managing campaigns
• Resource constraints is the common challenge across all organizations
• For all the talk about new technologies, tried-and-tested methods, tools, and practices are still most prevalent.

In our next post, we’ll begin to dissect the survey and the responses. If you’d like to jump ahead, you can view the associated webcast here: http://cdn1.actonsoftware.com/video/w/1.26.2011-SurveyResults-Webinar.swf
Either way, we think you’re going to be fascinated with the results!

The hype surrounding marketing automation has reached a fever pitch over the last year, with companies in the space raising vast amounts of venture capital at astronomical valuations. But one uncomfortable fact remains: marketing automation software winds up as shelf-ware.

According to Forrester Research only 2%-5% of B-to-B companies have actually invested in a marketing automation solution with only 25% of them using it anywhere near to full capability. Most of them wind up using it just for email marketing. Considering the high costs involved– software licenses as well as the associated customization and implementation services – this is one expensive spam cannon!

So what’s holding marketers back from deriving full value from these systems, if the benefits are so compelling? The answer is: time! In the fast changing world of the marketer, the typical marketing automation system, with its intricate processes and procedures, becomes an active impediment to timely action. The time it takes to formulate, implement and roll out changes to the marketing process simply overwhelms the time constraints that marketers are working under.

Here at Act-On, we’ve taken the opposite approach. Our platform conforms to the needs of the marketers, rather than requiring marketers to change their ways to match the system. Starting with best-of-breed email, we have built a fully integrated platform that enables marketers to incorporate automation on an as-needed basis. More importantly, they’re able to maximize their agility and stay ahead of market conditions. In an era where time is more precious than money, Act-On enables marketers to save both.