More SMBs Moving Toward Automated Marketing: Report

Email marketing is headed for extinction, at least if one study is correct.

The report, released by ActiveCampaign, suggests that marketing automation is the next big thing for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), many of whom have relied on email marketing for years.

This comes down to a number of factors. But at its most basic, traditional marketing just takes up too many resources between man-hours and computing power. One of the easiest ways to scale up your operations is by automating some of those processes.

According to the study, 64 percent of SMBs say they’re planning to adopt the technology within the next two years as automation tools move away from cumbersome enterprise-level solutions toward subscription-based cloud platforms.

Automated marketing consists of software platforms that automate repetitive tasks which take up time and resources. Things like emails, social media, and other website actions. Some of the big names in the field include Averetek, Balihoo, BrandMaker, Partnermarketing.com, SproutLoud, and more.

Trending Toward Automation

But the big problem, according to the study, is that most small businesses don’t know where to begin with marketing automation. Forty percent of respondents said marketing automation is currently out of reach, while 26 percent say their current software is too complex.

Interestingly, only 30 percent of SMBs that use email marketing software also have marketing automation software in place. But the trend is clearly pointing toward automation as more than half of SMBs with marketing automation currently in place previously used email for three years or more before adopting automated software.

Additional findings include: