8 Common Challenges in Marketing Automation and How To Overcome Them

Marketing automation offers significant advantages: scaling campaigns, freeing up your team for creative work, and driving better engagement with less effort. But if you’re here, chances are it’s not living up to the hype.

Maybe your workflows aren’t as seamless as you expected. Perhaps engagement rates are disappointingly low. Or maybe you’re stuck with disconnected tools that refuse to integrate. Whatever the issue, automation isn’t delivering the results you need—and you’re not alone.

Enterprise businesses rely on automation to streamline operations and improve efficiency. But even the most sophisticated organizations run into key challenges that disrupt their strategy, from misaligned marketing and sales teams to data silos and lackluster personalization.

The good news? These roadblocks aren’t deal breakers. Let’s look at eight common automation pain points and how to fix them.

Why do companies struggle to implement marketing automation effectively?

Despite its promise, marketing automation isn’t always easy to implement. Businesses often run into challenges that prevent them from fully leveraging its potential. 

For some, the issue starts with an unclear marketing automation strategy. Without a defined roadmap, automation can create more confusion than efficiency. Others face gaps in expertise, struggling to set up, manage, and optimize it effectively. And, even when workflows are in place, misalignment with the customer journey can cause brands to send the right message at the wrong time (or vice versa).

Then there’s the human factor: Some teams resist adopting marketing automation software, seeing it as a threat rather than a tool to enhance their work. Poorly structured workflows can also limit the impact of automation, preventing businesses from getting the results they expect. 

1. Misalignment between marketing and sales teams

For marketing automation to thrive, everyone using it has to be rowing in the same direction. But too often, marketing and sales teams operate in silos, each with its own set of (sometimes competing) goals. 

When teams aren’t aligned, organizations face weak lead handoff, inconsistent messaging, and fragmented data usage. The result? Lost opportunities, inefficient workflows, and a disjointed customer journey. In some cases, sales and marketing even compete for control rather than working toward shared revenue goals.

It’s not that marketing automation isn’t working—teams may be using it independently. The issue is that without true collaboration and data visibility, automation won’t reach its full potential.

Tips and practices to overcome this challenge 

Automation is a powerful tool, but alignment starts with shared goals and accountability. Marketing and sales teams must agree on key performance indicators (KPIs), define a seamless lead handoff process, and ensure both teams have real-time access to the same customer data.

For large organizations, this requires a solution that connects marketing and sales workflows in one shared space. If your company operates on ServiceNow, Tenon is a native-built application that ensures marketing, sales, and the front office work in sync. With Tenon, your teams can pull together, not compete with each other.

Encourage collaboration with automation tools that offer shared dashboards and real-time KPI tracking. With a unified system, teams can seamlessly align workflows, measure impact, and drive better automation outcomes.

Learn more about Tenon + ServiceNow.

2. Difficulty measuring ROI and effectiveness

Like much of digital marketing, the impact of marketing automation can be hard to quantify. You may see results, but how much of that success is directly attributed to automation versus other factors?

Tracking effectiveness across customer segments is even trickier. Big-picture metrics like overall sales growth are easy to measure, but assessing how automation and personalization influence engagement and customer sentiment is more complex.

Tips and practices to overcome this challenge

Start by defining what a return on investment (ROI) means for your business. Is it purely revenue-driven, or do other success indicators—like newsletter sign-ups or social engagement—matter? Clarifying this ensures you’re measuring for the right outcomes. 

From there, set clear KPIs and use analytics tools to track marketing campaign performance. A/B testing can help refine automation workflows so you can optimize for the best results.

Finally, integrate your automation system with your customer relationship management (CRM) tool to improve attribution and gain better visibility into how automation influences customer actions.

3. Poor data quality and integration issues

Data is everything, but not all of it is equally useful. Most enterprise businesses don’t struggle with a lack of data; if anything, they have too much, but either lack the right data or struggle to make it actionable.

When data is inconsistent, outdated, incomplete, or poorly integrated, automation suffers. Even the biggest brands face data quality issues (which can occur for numerous reasons), leading to ineffective campaigns, integration failures, and lost revenue opportunities.

Beyond accuracy, data must flow freely across locations, applications, and platforms. When integrations aren’t performing as they should, information gets stuck in silos, disrupting automation and reducing effectiveness. 

Tips and practices to overcome this challenge

Marketing automation is only as good as the data powering it. Ensure data consistency by integrating your marketing automation platform, CRM, analytics, and customer data tools so information moves seamlessly.

Implement data hygiene practices to routinely clean, verify, and update information. Automate data validation wherever possible to prevent bad data from interfering with workflows.

4. Lack of personalization in automated campaigns

Automation enables brands to communicate at scale, reaching thousands or even millions of customers with sequenced, segmented messaging. But as automation grows, it risks losing the human touch. 

Generic, one-size-fits-all automation fails to fully engage customers who now expect personalized experiences based on their behaviors and preferences. Brands that don’t (or can’t) tailor their messaging will stand out for the wrong reasons.

Tips and practices to overcome this challenge 

Basic automation may lead to generic messaging, but the solution isn’t to abandon it—it’s to refine it. 

• Use market segmentation and behavioral triggers to build more personalized marketing journeys.
• Incorporate dynamic content to tailor messages based on customer interactions and make them as personalized as possible.
• Continuously test and optimize automation initiatives to identify what resonates most.

Personalization doesn’t need to be perfect at launch. Test in sandboxes, then adjust based on real-world engagement.

5. Choosing an automation platform that scales with your business

Setting up automation workflows, integrations, and segmentation rules can be time-consuming and technically complex. Not every platform is built for every business—some are easy to use but lack the depth enterprises need, while others offer advanced features but are difficult to implement.

The challenge? Choosing a solution that meets your business needs today and scales for future growth.

Tips and practices to overcome this challenge 

Selecting the right automation platform is essential to moving from campaign chaos to marketing clarity. Implementing automation in phases ensures that each element functions properly before layering in additional complexity, reducing the risk of workflow breakdowns. 

Many businesses also turn to expert support or consultants to set up automation systems in a way that’s sustainable, adaptable, and aligned with long-term growth. 

Need implementation support? Tenon works with several top-tier implementation partners. Learn more here.

6. Managing consistency in brand presence

Inconsistent messaging across automated campaigns can weaken brand identity and create confusion for customers, offsetting the marketing gains automation provides. 

This challenge spans multiple channels: email campaigns, SEO content, social media, corporate communications, and traditional media. Wherever your brand speaks, it needs a consistent voice. The wider your marketing footprint, the harder this becomes.

Tips and practices to overcome this challenge 

Marketing automation shouldn’t be a free-for-all. For example, copy and creative should still go through approval workflows to catch off-brand messages before they reach customers.

Other best practices include:

• Building a centralized content library
• Implementing a content management system
• Creating brand automation guidelines (similar to a brand style guide, but focused on automation)
• Setting up approval workflows

7. Over-automation leading to impersonal experiences

Poorly executed automation can feel robotic and impersonal, diminishing a brand’s value over time. 

It’s easy to see why businesses over-automate: Email marketing delivers an average of $36 for every $1 spent, and automation allows companies to communicate with their email lists at scale. As a result, brands flood inboxes daily, sometimes multiple times a day.

While impersonal emails may still convert (especially in fast-paced industries like retail), personalization fosters stronger customer experiences and drives higher conversion rates over time.

Tips and practices to overcome this challenge

Automation doesn’t have to feel cold or detached. Dynamic personalization tools use AI-driven insights to create contextual interactions, while audience segmentation ensures messaging is more relevant.

It’s also essential to balance automation with human touchpoints. The right mix depends on your product and customer journey, but non-automated interactions should remain a core part of your marketing strategy. 

8. Inconsistent lead nurturing and follow-ups

Automated follow-ups are a key part of marketing automation, allowing businesses to re-engage customers and prospects with additional offers and touchpoints. But setting these up isn’t always straightforward—the wrong message at the wrong time can cause confusion and even damage credibility. 

On the other hand, missed follow-up opportunities can result in lost leads, wasted lead generation, and disengaged prospects.

Tips and practices to overcome this challenge 

Setting up automated yet customizable follow-up sequences is a great first step. This ensures automation works effectively while allowing your team to intervene when needed. 

Other best practices include: 

• Integrating CRM data for real-time customer engagement tracking
• Using lead scoring to prioritize outreach based on interest and intent
• Monitoring performance to refine nurturing strategies over time

Navigate marketing automation and align your organization with Tenon 

The benefits of marketing automation are undeniable. Enterprise businesses rely on it to engage target audiences more consistently, streamline lead management, drive conversions, and promote customer retention. However, maximizing its potential comes with challenges. From data quality issues to misalignment between marketing and sales, optimizing automation requires the right approach and tools.

Tenon streamlines the marketing tech stack with a clear visual pathway built on ServiceNow, eliminating silos and enabling seamless collaboration between marketing, sales, and the front office. 

Designed by marketers for marketers, it provides real-time data access, centralized automation workflows, and built-in reporting—helping teams stay on track, execute more targeted campaigns, and easily demonstrate ROI when it matters most.

Ready to get more from your marketing automation? Book a demo now.
‍