People say good things don’t last forever. And that is exactly what gets me thinking: Will marketing automation ever die? That’s a pretty valid question, don’t you think? I mean, we are all using it right now, having fun, reaping the benefits. But what if there is no marketing automation to help us out in the future? Can something like that actually happen?
You might say that I am thinking way too ahead right now. I agree. But it is necessary to develop a knack of foreseeing future trends if we have to survive in the world of marketing and sales. Of course, for the time being, marketing automation is here to stay. There is still time for it to evolve before we actually start asking, will marketing automation ever die.
Survival Through The Years
In the past few years, marketing automation has grown from a simple email marketing tool to a multi-faceted omnichannel tool. It has added more channels like social media, and mobile for instance. It has helped marketers perfect their cross-channel marketing strategies. It has finally let Marketing and Sales bury their hatchet and improved their efficiency. Post-sales activities have now become fully automated, and that is all thanks to marketing automation. Hopefully, in the near future, marketing automation will be adding machine learning and AI in its arsenal.
Having said all that, it does seem that marketing automation is a golden future up ahead. But everyone said that about CRMs as well. And, as we all know it, CRMs are a dying race. Everybody is moving over to marketing automation platforms nowadays.
How Can Marketing Automation Survive?
Let me put it this way, marketing automation vendors need to keep it growing. Or else, marketing automation will die. If you are a marketing automation user, you are probably using it right now for lead nurturing, lead management and for other marketing jobs. But it does not help you when you want to do marketing administrative jobs. It does not have anything to offer when you are fulfilling your marketing administration duties like hiring marketing personnel, managing marketing budget etc.
If marketing automation needs to survive, then vendors have to expand their range of services. Otherwise, another tool, that is far better than marketing automation will come and take its place.
There is still a lot of ground to cover for marketing automation vendors. They can either concentrate on Marketing or they can concentrate on Sales and Service. We have seen a lot of expansions in the Sales horizon which has made marketing automation a wonderful tool for Sales as well. However, there is one stumbling block that is still pulling down the efficiency of Sales departments, CRM. Either vendors can do something to completely do away with CRMs or they can look at acquisition by CRM companies(which has been the norm in the last decade).
Take a look at any of the current marketing automation platforms out there. You will notice that they all have functionalities that support only lead nurturing. So, vendors need to step up their game.
While interactive content has expanded exponentially in the past, marketing automation hasn't been able to keep up. No marketing automation tool available in the market allows tracking users' interactions in VR content and this needs to be changed soon.
Almost all marketing automation tools have workflows but I haven't come across any tool till date which allows self-creation of workflows based on machine learning and AI.
So, Will Marketing Automation Ever Die?
Marketing automation will become commoditized in the coming years, and every company will be using it. It’s hard to answer this question with a yes or a no, simply because there are so many complications. However, the best way to answer it will probably be to come up with a plan of survival. How else can you beat death if you do not know how to live?
Marketing automation software vendors need to concentrate on broadening their horizons and implementing new changes into their systems. They need to keep growing. Stagnation will definitely lead to death.
Of course, with newer features, new competition will be arriving from outside the marketing automation market. But marketing automation vendors should relish it because that will help motivate them to stay on the path to success.
So, what do you think? Will marketing automation ever die? Write to us at info@esanosys.com to share your views.
