B2B marketers in North America are 14% more likely to utilise marketing automation (MA) than their European counterparts, a survey has revealed.
The research – conducted by Econsultancy and Act-On Software – surveyed B2B marketing professionals across North America and Europe to identify the global state of B2B marketing automation.
The survey discovered that of the 350 B2B marketers surveyed, North Americans were more likely to use MA software than Europeans.
The result mirrored each region’s response as to how satisfied they were with the effectiveness of automation on their marketing campaigns: North American marketers were 93% satisfied with its effectiveness, while Europeans were 76% satisfied.
Some 52% of B2B marketing executives in Europe are also likely to find data management an annoyance in comparison with 45% of North American executives.
What are marketing automation’s main hurdles?
In addition, a majority agreed that the top MA challenges were resource issues, hiring those with skilled experience and data management.
Additionally, 93% of the highest-performing marketing professionals surveyed cited ROI was a major benefit of well-implemented marketing automation, while 90% agreed an increase in contribution to pipeline was another key attribute.
Andrew Warren-Payne, marketer and industry analyst at Econsultancy, said: “Despite the important role marketing automation plays in helping marketers to deliver against commercial objectives, the research found that 47% of companies are not yet using the technology.”
According to a report published earlier this year by B2B Marketing and Sitecore, 34% of marketers think their MA efforts are ‘ineffective’, while separate research from CommuniGator suggested only 2% of B2B marketers are fully exploiting marketing automation.
