30 Marketing Automation Stats. What Info Should You Be Looking At?

Marketing automation is becoming more and more common in digital marketing, with more tools than ever before being developed to help marketers work smarter and faster. Marketing software now has so much data that it can optimise faster than any human would be able to. Digital marketing is becoming about how we best use this power to get the most out of our campaigns.

At Embryo, we are using a range of automation to make our workload easier and to free up our team of digital marketing experts time to work on where they are most needed. It’s this knowledge which sets us apart from other agencies and enables us to put more time into combined marketing performance and strategy, rather than report on vanity metrics.

If you’d like to speak to one of your team in more detail about marketing automation or about any of our digital marketing services, feel free to get in touch with our team after you’ve read this blog by phone at 0161 327 2635 or email [email protected].’

How much is marketing automation used in day-to-day digital marketing?

Understanding automation in digital marketing is crucial, and there are so many areas of automation, some that we take for granted and some that we don’t even think about. Here is a collection of top-level stats relating to marketing automation across all areas of digital:

• Salesforce State of Marketing Report found that 67% of marketing leaders currently use a marketing automation platform.
• 75% of email revenue is generated by automated campaigns, according to Campaign Monitor.
• On the whole, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost.
• 91% of the most successful marketing agencies agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels.
• Marketing Automation ROI: A report by VB Insight found that 80% of businesses saw an increase in the number of leads, and 77% saw an increase in conversions after implementing marketing automation of some kind to their CRO optimisation.
• Marketing automation can lead to a 15% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead by improving customer retention.
• According to Mailchimp, segmented email campaigns have a 14.32% higher open rate compared to non-segmented campaigns.

Our Award Winning PPC Team at Embryo use automation frequently as part of their optimisation of both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads

One of the areas Embryo uses automation most is paid media. There is so much user data from interactions with paid ads online, that the algorithms for paid search are full of data that if you tell them your goals they will bring results. What’s important is setting the boundaries of where this is to operate to ensure you achieve your client’s goals and KPIs. Here are some stats on automation in use at the heart of digital marketing, pay-per-click:

• 68% of B2B organisations use A/B testing on landing pages to generate leads for future conversion.
• Campaign Monitor report that using a segmented campaign can create as much as a 760% increase in revenue when putting data-created audiences into their own ad groups.
• Personalised headline copy from Google Ads campaigns improves click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%.
• Wordstream reports that automation tools can reduce the time spent on keyword management by up to 90%, which is something we have also found working on our client’s Google Ads Campaigns.
• Hubspot reported last year that ad copy testing using automation can result in a 15-20% increase in click-through rates, which is also something we have seen to be true at Embryo.
• 74% of PPC marketers use automation to schedule ads during peak performance times, a key consideration when getting the most out of your PPC budgets, as reported in the Search Engine Journal.
• Looking through Google Support, you can also find notable stats on marketing automation such as automated ad copy from a DSA campaign, which can improve Quality Scores by 16-18%.

Paid Social also has a lot of automation to play with, as users spend more and more time online scrolling

The algorithm that dictates what content we see on paid social, is constantly learning and updating the file on each of us with what we do and don’t like depending on our behaviours. Matching up our data, they are then also able to see what we are doing on other platforms to build a fuller picture. Paid Social probably has the biggest use of automation out there, with so much data existing in these platforms that we aren’t able to access. Here is just a glimpse into the automation stats for paid social:

• Social Media Today reports that 75% of marketers say they currently use at least one type of marketing automation tool in their social media marketing strategy.
• 72% of marketers use some form of marketing automation for paid social campaigns, according to the Sprout Social Index. This can be automatic placements, AI-generated ad copy or automatic recommendations within the Meta business platform.
• Marketers who use automation tools for paid social advertising experience a 32% reduction in ad spend, though at Embryo, our paid social team have found that using bid caps is a good way to get around ad platforms using your budget regardless of the results, giving the automation a boundary to operate within.
• Similar to PPC, Marketing Land has also found that automated ad targeting on social platforms can increase click-through rates (CTR) by 74%.
• Adweek has reported in recent months that automation tools can boost ad relevance by 76% through personalized messaging on social media.
• Companies using paid social automation tools report an average ROI increase of 42%.
• An important stat for all business owners here, marketers can save up to 20% of their time by leveraging social media advertising automation, taking the leg work out of deciding all the variables for each individual campaign.
• Automated A/B testing and experiments for social ads can lead to a 25% increase in conversion rates according to AdExchanger.
• Remarketing campaigns with automation tools can boost conversion rates by 42% on social media, these automated tools can create audiences for you, using a whole collection of sources, so you aren’t just limited to what’s in the social platform, even though your ads are delivering there.
• Mobile optimised ads created with social media automation tools have a 48% higher conversion rate, as they look at feel better on the user’s device. You can create this manually of course, but it’s far quicker to let marketing automation do the work.

Email Marketing is the most popular use of automation in marketing

How to Create a Successful Email in Mailchimp: A Step-by-Step Guide (2023)

Tools such as Mailchimp, Klaviyo and Mandrill have all been early adapters in automation, taking over the manual send of a message by allowing marketers to set up flows of what they want to happen when, and then leave the tool to it. All the marketing team need to do is go back and analyse, then optimise, but many of these tools will also make their own recommendations. At Embryo, our content team often create bespoke messages to fit this automation, and here are some headline stats on why automating your email is a no-brainer:

• 82% of companies use email marketing automation in some form, even those sending mainly internal communications.
• Mailchimp reports that email campaigns that use list segmentation techniques see a 14.32% higher open rate compared to non-segmented campaigns.
• Personalised email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%.
• Companies that nurture leads by marketing automation make 50% more sales for 33% less than non-nurtured prospects.
• Welcome emails sent through marketing automation generate 320% more revenue per email than promotional emails, Wordstream reports that adding an offer at the start of a customer’s journey is the top way to use your email marketing campaign.
• Automated cart abandonment emails sent within an hour have an average order rate of 4.64%, Salecycle also reports that along with the welcome email, cart abandonment is the top priority for ecommerce.

Where to begin with Marketing Automation

There is a lot to digest when learning about marketing automation and the endless possibilities of what you can do within marketing now we have so much data at our fingertips. It’s important to always remember your goals and have a good understanding of your customer journey before automating anything that could make your marketing team’s work easier.

At Embryo, we’re experts in strategy across all digital channels, so if you want to speak to us about how we can help with your automation on SEO, PPC or Paid Social please do get in touch with our team by phone at 0161 327 2635 or email [email protected].