vital marketing

For the past couple of months the Aberdeen Group has been studying companies that automate the lead to sales process. They have just published the new benchmark study titled “Automating Leads to Sales – Improve Return on Marketing Campaigns” that shows marketing automation solutions have a positive impact on the lead-to-sales conversion rate. Among their key findings are:

• Over two-thirds of companies that have implemented a marketing solution within the last two years have seen a 10+ percent improvement in the lead-to-sales conversion rate.
• 53% of companies are currently using marketing automation solutions for lead management; this number is expected to jump to 83% in the next 24 months.
• 62% of Best-in-Class companies are growing their budget for marketing automation solutions year-over-year
• 55% of laggards have no automation in place to track and measure lead management performance

The study also states that small (SME) and mid-market (MME) enterprises are exceeding average performers in all metrics benchmarked.