MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – Marketing automation is becoming a business imperative for attracting and keeping customers, and is central to the long-term survival of the modern enterprise, finds Ovum. The global analyst firm predicts that over the next six years a critical mass of businesses will make a leap of faith to invest in marketing automation, as internal pressures to automate marketing and fears of competitive disadvantage grow.
New research* from Ovum’s Digital Marketing and Connected Customer practice reveals that a cadre of enlightened CEOs and CMOs will drive the digital agenda and adoption of marketing automation. “Marketing professionals that ignore the significance of automation in the face of stakeholder pressure to be accountable, measurable, and transparent do so at their own peril,” warns Gerry Brown, senior digital marketing analyst at Ovum. “Automation can provide a much-needed boost to marketing’s credibility. It can change the common perception of marketing being a cost center to becoming a valued source of incremental revenue, profit, and customer loyalty.”
According to the report, users will develop a taste for marketing innovation using marketing automation technology tools. Improved industry benchmarks, campaign experimentation, and revenue predictions will encourage “what if” scenario planning and realtime, event-driven decision-making within marketing.
Organizations will need to adjust their structure to accommodate digital marketing, replacing traditional hierarchies with more collaborative models that cut across organizational siloes. Organizations will also need to recruit a different mix of analytical, technical, and creative talents within marketing to fully exploit the opportunities offered by digital marketing.
“However, while marketing automation technology is showing explosive growth, it’s not for the fainthearted. Marketing automation also requires dedication and sustained resource commitment to make it fly, especially in the area of data management,” concludes Gerry Brown.
