Marketing Automation Challenges Often Begin With Strategy

Marketing automation challenges often reflect problems beyond the software itself, according to HubSpot Marketing. Its analysis points to unclear strategy, poor-quality data, disconnected tools and weak coordination between teams as recurring sources of underperforming workflows. Automation can execute those underlying problems more quickly and across a larger audience, rather than resolving them.

Measuring return on investment remains the leading challenge identified in HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report, at 33%. The report also found that 86.4% of marketing teams use artificial intelligence somewhere in their workflows. Together, those figures show that the use of AI and the ability to assess marketing performance are separate issues.

HubSpot says many automation difficulties begin when teams lack a clear go-to-market strategy. Without defined goals and logic for how contacts move through the customer lifecycle, a team can produce more emails, workflow branches and alerts without generating more sales pipeline. The volume of automated activity, in other words, does not by itself establish whether a workflow is working.

Several signs can point to that gap. Contacts may enter the same nurture sequence regardless of their lifecycle stage or fit with the ideal customer profile. Workflows can also remain active for years without documentation explaining their purpose or whether they should continue. Another warning sign is increasing campaign volume accompanied by conversion rates that do not improve.

HubSpot’s guide also identifies data quality, sales and marketing misalignment, siloed tools, customer experience and compliance as areas to examine. These issues are connected to workflow performance: a team reviewing an automation program needs to consider the information and processes behind it, not just the platform executing it. Measuring results and improving workflows are part of that broader review.

What this means for marketers

Start by checking whether each active workflow has a documented purpose and a clear connection to marketing goals. Review how contacts are grouped, whether sales and marketing are aligned, and whether the data and tools supporting each journey are reliable. Then assess performance against the intended outcome, rather than treating higher campaign volume as evidence of progress.