With individualisation and dynamic engagement the watchwords for 2022, marketers are demanding more from their marketing automation platforms with improved user experience (UX) for ease of use, additional tech-stack integrations, and automated updates to new compliance requirements cited as mission critical needs. New research by Act-On, the leading growth marketing provider, shows some major shifts in the attitudes of marketing teams as they start to gear up to face the post-COVID business environment.

The research – which surveyed more than 800 marketing professionals – reveals what is most important to today’s marketers as they size up one of their most valuable tools: their marketing automation platform. It was found that ease of implementation and use, followed by reporting and analytics capabilities, are top of the list with 40% and 29% of respondents respectively. However, customer support was deemed to be an important factor for 95% of respondents. Interestingly, cost of ownership was least important, which highlights the incredible value that can be generated from implementing an effective marketing automation process, or moreover the marketing spend that is wasted when one isn’t in place.

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Kate Johnson, Act-On’s CEO, comments, “In today’s increasingly complex and layered digital world, marketers need to be able to easily implement and execute on sophisticated data-driven and multichannel initiatives. Marketing automation providers, therefore, must continually adapt to meet customer expectations — with ‘ease of use’ always top of mind. New, more intricate capabilities and integrations have to roll out as part of a simple UX in order for users to get maximum value.”

Another key finding from the research was that almost a fifth (18%) of marketers do not feel confident in their contact database and, therefore, their data is unreliable to leverage for marketing campaigns. It also found that more than half of marketing professionals (55%) do not believe they are getting what they need from their current marketing automation platform from a value perspective, indicating that they are clearly looking for more.

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Johnson continues, “Today’s marketers need to consistently evolve their strategies in order to connect with their audiences in new and engaging ways. It’s therefore imperative that marketing automation platforms deliver on the promise of providing a more efficient and engaging customer journey experience. In addition, marketers need to know that they have support on hand to aid them in migrating over to new platforms or moving to different ways of interacting with audiences.

“Marketing automation platforms should enable marketers to move beyond the lead and engage targets at every step of the customer lifecycle to create effective strategies to grow their business. For this to become a reality, marketers should focus on an automation platform which places the ability to gather and analyse data effectively, alongside a superior UX which makes their lives easier as a top priority. At Act-On, we place a strong emphasis on these elements because we are singularly dedicated to helping our customers achieve maximum value from our platform.”