What’s the state of Marketing Automation in 2023?

Spotler and Smart Insights have worked together for 6 years to develop a broad understanding of the world of B2B marketing automation. To line up with our joint State of Marketing Automation & Annual Trends report’s 2023 edition, Dave Chaffey shared some of the key highlights on a live webinar.

You can watch the whole session including Q&A here.

Adoption vs. Capabilities

Last time we did this research, only 5% of marketers rated their use of marketing automation as High (“we use all the features and optimize them to get the best results”). This time around that has grown to 9%.

We also saw a hollowing out of the middle of the field, with the Moderate (2), Intermediate (3), and Good (4) groups shrinking. The most likely explanation for this is a mismatch between the growing capabilities of Marketing Automation platforms and the speed of adoption. If the technology hadn’t developed, we would have seen a shift upwards as marketers spent more time with the platforms, got trained or experimented themselves. Particularly as Artificial Intelligence continues to make its mark in more and more ways, “getting the most out of the technology” becomes harder and harder to do.

Having a (email) blast

“I know from our own tests at Smart Insights, if you reference the role of a person, such as a marketing manager, or digital marketing manager, you will get really significant uplift on opens and clicks.”

31% of respondents admitted that they don’t do any form of targeting in their email comms. Sending identical messages to every contact is at best lazy, at worst actively chasing buyers away.

Happily, 37% of marketers surveyed are segmenting their audience into 2-5 distinct groups. This is a sensible level; targeted without getting too granular. In the case of Spotler, where exactly in the UK someone lives isn’t important for how they would buy and use marketing tech. Knowing their industry, company size, and what department they’re in (usually Sales or Marketing) is enough for us to get started.

Knowing the (lead) score

Perhaps connected to this is the stat that only 17% of businesses are able to integrate website activity with their marketing automation platform and take advantage of the resulting insights.

If you’re browsing an online shop for running shoes, but they keep sending you emails about ski gear, you would conclude that they don’t really know you. On the other hand, if they were to send you an offer on running socks, you’d be impressed they understand the broader intent behind your search.

Tools that will take your job (or maybe not)

It’s pretty much impossible to avoid talking about ChatGPT right now, so what are Dave’s thoughts?

“I don’t see it at this stage at least as too much of a threat, because you still need to take the right decisions based on you really collaborating with the AI.”

Dave’s example was asking ChatGPT to create a series of nurture emails. The results were “a bit generic, what I would call ‘marketing happy talk’”. In the A.I.’s favour was that you can ask it to explain the structure of the output it has created, which is a good learning tool.

NFTs (New Funky Tools)

On the topic of shiny new things, we drew on a GWI survey that showed only 17% of UK consumers can correctly define an NFT (non-fungible token). The correct definition is “a file that establishes proof of ownership of a digital asset”.

If less than 1 in 5 people know what an NFT is, you probably don’t need to rush to put together an NFT strategy. While there are big examples of companies putting effort into NFTs and other Web3 technologies, such as Starbucks, we’re nowhere near mass adoption.

How will you win 2023?

If it’s possible to distill an hour of insights and predictions into a single summary; take what you’re doing and do it better. None of the headline-grabbing stuff will upend the world of marketing by themselves; they require smart humans to wield them.

If getting more from your Marketing Automation platform is on your list of priorities for 2023, start by giving us a call!