Autopilot, a marketing automation startup, released data that found malaise among marketers towards their current setup and that few marketers were using automation to power their customer engagement.
Autopilot launched the survey, which received responses from 327 senior-level marketing and advertising professionals, as a way to promote their beta launch. The questions focused mostly on e-mail marketing.
“Everyone was talking about how little adoption there is around marketing automation,” said Autopilot CEO Mike Sharley.
Of respondents, 65% said their marketing department could do a better job at staying in touch with customers, which Autopilot tied to the lack of awareness of automation as a way to streamline customer engagement.
While 60% of marketers said they were using mass e-mail blasts to reach customers, only 13% were using automation. And of those 87% who were not using automation, almost half claimed they had never heard of the term.
“The vast majority of marketers aren’t using these technologies,” said Autopilot CMO Guy Marion.
Despite the lack of automation adoption, the study found that 65% of respondents kept in touch with leads at least once every 2-4 weeks.
“Companies that stay in touch with customers every 2-4 weeks have double the leads those who are in touch less than that,” Marion said.
In addition, the study found those using marketing automation had on average more leads and more contacts in their database than those using standard e-mail software.
