There are 34 different technologies under the marketing automation umbrella. Some are laser focused on specific features (for example LiveRamp – a tool specializing in automating data onboarding or OwnerIQ – a second party data and decisioning solutions tool), whilst others provide a wide range of features covering various stages of the sales-marketing funnel.

This research will focus on the 6 most dominant technologies (those with at least 10K websites using their technology and provide solutions that go beyond advertising).

Out of the 6 dominant technologies, HubSpot had the largest market share in 2016. However, it’s important to understand that each solution offers different pricing and features and is suited to different types of companies. For example, Marketo is typically a better fit for enterprises while HubSpot is typically a better fit for medium sized companies. This could explain the reason HubSpot has a larger market share than Marketo.

Marketing automation is most popular among B2B companies. This comes as no surprise as marketing automation is very useful in cases of complex sales cycles and long decision making processes (properties that are very characteristic to B2B companies).

The following break down displays the distribution of technologies by company revenue tier. Surprisingly, there isn’t a clear distribution between SMBs, mid-markets and enterprises.

Act-On and Pardot have a rather constant market share across all tiers.

Eloqua becomes more dominant among companies with larger revenue.

HubSpot is very dominant among SMBs. However, as the revenue tier raises, HubSpot's domination decreases. There’s an anomaly in companies with yearly revenues between 200M-1B. In such companies, HubSpot it the dominant tool. A possible explanation could be an effort that HubSpot is making to bring such companies on board.

Marketo is scarce among SMBs, but becomes a dominant technology in larger companies. Aside from the anomaly in 200M-1B, Marketo is hands down most dominant in companies with a revenue of 1B and above.

All technologies seem to be directing most of their market penetration efforts in the English speaking markets. Pardot has identified an opportunity in the Polish market. Marketo have planted seeds in the Japanese market while Infusionsoft is penetrating South American countries. Across the EU we didn’t identify one dominant technology. It will be interesting to see if that changes in 2017.

The general growing interest in marketing automation reflected on Google Trends is proving to reap fruit among the technologies. Pardot has seen the largest growth in 2016 with an amazing increase of 108.9%. The rest of the players grew between them by an average of 48%.

“Companies who use this also use”

There is a trend among different tools that are used alongside different technologies. Here’s a breakdown:

Companies who have Act-On installed typically have another technologyinstalled alongside (e.g. Pardot/ HubSpot).

Most companies who have adopted marketing automation technologies are also using media buying tools. The connection between use of automation and media buying tools is simple: these sites are more mature when it comes to digital, using multiple technologies and tools within their marketing arsenal to optimize visits, retention, engagement and conversion.