Gartner: iPad Adoption in Marketing Automation to Surge by 2016

Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company says half of the world’s major marketing automation vendors are poised to develop applications that specifically cater to the iPad by the year 2016.

The research firm specifically acknowledges that 50 percent of all major marketing automation vendors will develop applications that specifically target Apple’s post-PC device. This will go down in under five years, the company says.

This is happening because of obvious reasons - people are buying more tablets to consume media on them, but they are also becoming “icreasingly prevalent in the workplace and enterprise vendors are responding accordingly,” Gartner says.

The company’s analysts looked at the situation and concluded that CMOs and senior marketing leaders will be the first to adopt iPads as the exclusive tool for getting work done.

Another key observation from the Gartner report is that iPad apps will be used “fully”, as opposed to partial functionality from existing applications used in the office.

“New marketing vendors may develop iPad-only applications for internal use by marketers,” Gartner forecasts.

E-commerce tablet and e-reader applications are described as “nascent and evolving quickly”, which clearly indicates that “e-commerce organizations are also being lured by the appeal of tablets and e-readers”, Gartner observes.

Commenting on their findings, Kimberly Collins, managing vice president at Gartner, said: "The initial use of iPads and tablets by marketers will be the extension of existing marketing applications, such as campaign management and marketing resource management (MRM) functionality, to be supported by the device, either disconnected or connected to the network and home-based application."

"By 2014, 65 percent of major marketing automation vendors will extend 25 percent of their functionality to the iPad. MRM vendors will lead this charge with adaption of functionality for reviews and approvals,” said Collins.

“Marketing fulfillment vendors are likely to enable access to content via tablets as well," she added.