I had no particular expectation of what I\u2019d find in the data from the latest VEST report. Happily, I did find something intriguing, at least to my obviously-biased eyes. When I looked at the most common items that had been upgraded by three or more vendors, it immediately became clear that changes related to Marketing automation analytics features were heavily represented. <\/p>\n
By including items upgraded by two or more marketing automation vendors<\/a>, the analysis expanded to 43 of the 200 total. Houston, we have a pattern! The results from the expanded set showed the same image \u2013 19 of the improved features fell into analytics, compared with 4 each in the following most common groups being CRM integration, content marketing and campaign management.<\/p>\n I might have expected more development of features for social, mobile, and content marketing, which are top-of-mind for many marketers today. So this result was totally unexpected. But can still be explained with 20\/20 hindsight. Social and content marketing are mostly managed outside of marketing automation. Mobile is mostly limited to ensuring messages are viewable on mobile devices.<\/p>\n![\"upgraded_features_marketing_automation\"](\"https:\/\/www.emailvendorselection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/upgraded_features_marketing_automation.png\")
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\nWhat I did for my analysis was look at changes in vendor scores for the 200 items that go into the data. That gives an interesting view of where vendors are improving their products. In fact, if you count lead scoring and content testing as part of analytics, seven of the 12 items fell into that category. <\/p>\n<\/span>Expanded Analysis<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/span>Why Analytics tops the list of Upgraded MA features<\/span><\/h2>\n