Marketers in the Nordic countries are two years behind the UK when it comes to their implementation of marketing automation (MA).
But this late adoption means they have been able to avoid the mistakes of their UK counterparts and have much higher levels of satisfaction with their systems, according to exclusive research carried out by B2B Marketing.
More than half of Nordic marketing teams have access to MA, with two-thirds of businesses having adopted them in the past two years, the Nordics Marketing Automation Sophistication Index 2018 found.
But the survey, which canvassed 88 B2B marketers across Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland in association with Finnish martech integrator ID BBN, also revealed just 16% of marketers in the region consider themselves expert MA users. This compares with a fifth of UK marketers when surveyed two years ago.
Marketers unsure increased revenue is due to MA
Revenue has increased in 85% of marketing teams where MA has been implemented. But direct attribution has been difficult, with only a quarter (24%) able to link the increase directly to use of the technology. More than half are confident increased revenue directly attributed to MA will become evident within the next two years.
The biggest issue when adopting MA identified in the research was data integration, cited by 63%. In addition, more than half cited a lack of internal skills as a barrier to ongoing MA success.
Paul Snell, deputy editor at B2B Marketing, said: “Late adoption has allowed B2B marketers in the Nordics to avoid the mistakes of their counterparts in the UK. But they rapidly need to tackle both skills and resource shortages to avoid falling further behind and losing competitiveness.”
Research last year found the six biggest MA firms account for 57% of the total market share.
