Some industry experts estimate that as many as 70% of marketers are dissatisfied with their marketing automation systems. A new study found that only 7% of those working with marketing automation systems were seeing a tangible return on their investment. Part of the problem with the current approaches to marketing automation is that the software is required to track such a large number of different pages, forms, and other triggers that over time they gradually become less and less efficient.
Reducing Inefficiencies
Most digital marketing companies like Envigo use marketing automation systems that are set up to generate leads based on sequences of user behavior. For example, it might be set up to detect when a user makes a certain sequence of clicks and then performs an action, such as sending an e-mail. This means that if the design of your website is changed, you will have to set up all of these triggers from scratch. If you don’t, you could find that the routines you had previously set up no longer work.
There are a number of different options when it comes to choosing marketing automation software, many of these established companies are re-evaluating their approaches. There is an increasing appreciation for the importance of scalability, speed, responsiveness, and adaptability in workflow systems. Software packages need to be more lightweight so that they reduce demand of the computer systems overall and they need to take advantage of the latest technologies we have for optimizing data collection and analysis. A large number of software packages are still using user interfaces which are hopelessly out of date and inadequate. This is also true of the APIs. Outdated APIs make it harder for third party developers to develop custom plugins and other extensions.
Artificial intelligence has a large role to play in the future of automated marketing. Artificial intelligence will allow systems to identify the kind of behavior it needs to track rather than having to be fed specific subroutines. Artificial intelligence is also set to revolutionize the field of data analytics. Having access to much more efficient methods of data analysis will save businesses both time and money.
Artificial intelligence is also useful for gaining a deeper understanding of consumer behavior. We interact with this kind of intelligence every time we are recommended a particular product or television show. There are now companies who will perform these analyses, and in some cases the data collection as well, on behalf of any business that requires data analytical services.
Partly owing to frustration among the user base with the slow progress made by the industry in improving the nature of marketing automation software, numerous open source platforms are starting to appear, as are open source APIs. There are also open source versions of individual components of marketing automation software which are ideal for smaller businesses who don’t yet require the full software packages.
Marketing automation software will continue to be the future of intelligent, targeted marketing. The current trends suggest that the industry is adapting to a changed marketplace and the next few years will be a critical test of the industry’s resilience.
