The majority of senior managers consider marketing automation (MA) important to their business, a new report by B2B Marketing has revealed.
The MA Benchmarking Report showed that 47 per cent of senior managers recognises MA as ‘important’, and a further 18 per cent ‘extremely important’. Only three per cent of those surveyed said their senior management team considers the technology of ‘little of no importance’.
Meanwhile, the report also sheds light on the relationship between sales and marketing. Almost half (48 per cent) of those surveyed said marketing and sales are generally aligned. Thirteen per cent of marketers described their sales and marketing activities as ‘fully aligned’, and an additional 35 per cent said the departments were ‘mostly aligned’.
Only 12 per cent of respondents said marketing is ‘not really aligned’ with sales. The remaining 41 per cent of respondents reported they are only ‘somewhat aligned’ with the sales team.
Alex Aspinall, head of content at B2B Marketing, explained: “In order for MA to be set up correctly, sales and marketing need to agree on various data practices, lead management and scoring models; not necessarily an easy process. But once these are in place, and SLAs are signed, it should become possible for MA to help remove some of the old arguments and accusations. This is a theory our respondents can corroborate.”
