• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, February 19, 2025

B2B brands are at least reasonably proficient at automation, judging by the State of B2B Marketing Automation, a study from Act-On, conducted in partnership with Ascend2. 

Of the companies polled, 34% rate themselves as very successful at automation, and 62% as somewhat so. Only 4% say they are unsuccessful.  

And brands are increasing their marketing automation budgets — 19% significantly and 56% moderately — for a total of 75%. 

How far have they gotten with automation? They say they are:

• Partially automated — 49% 
• Mostly automated — 40%
• Fully automated — 11% 

Yet they face many challenges:  

• Creating an overall strategy — 51%
• Collecting quality data — 49% 
• Allocating budget and resources — 43%
• Integrating technologies/data — 42%
• Building effective customer/buying journeys — 41% 
• Identifying better metrics to gauge success — 34%

Email tops the uses of B2B marketing automation:

• Email marketing — 57% 
• Social media management — 47% 
• Content management — 39% 
• Paid ads — 34% 
• SMS marketing — 33% 
• Landing pages — 30%
• Live chat — 29%
• Campaign tracking — 29%
• Workflows/visualization — 25% 
• Account-based marketing — 29%
• Sales funnel communications — 23% 
• SEO efforts — 23% 
• Dynamic web forms — 21% 
• Push notifications — 19% 
• Lead scoring — 17%

These are their primary goals for the year ahead: 

- Improve data quality — 44%

- Identify your ideal customers (or best prospects) — 41%

- Increase personalization — 38% 

- Decrease costs — 35%

- Create or optimize overall strategy — 33% 

- Integrate technologies/data — 29%

- Increase automation across the customer journey — 29% 

- Identify better metrics to gauge success — 22% 

B2B companies are also using AI for:

• Targeting audiences — 43%
• Analytics and reporting — 41% 
• Personalization — 36% 
• Email marketing — 35% 
• Content creation — 35%
• Customer service — 29%
• Lead generation and qualification — 37% 

Meanwhile, 33% strongly agree that automation helps them build effective customer journeys, while 59% somewhat agree, and 49% strongly disagree. 

Act-On and Ascend2 surveyed 207 B2B marketing professionals across various industries. Of these, 44% are at the C-level/executive level, 43% are VP/director/manager level, and 13% are at the non-management level.