Marketing automation can be used by organizations to transform marketing into a science. Email is the main communication channel for marketing automation but there is much more. It’s like email marketing on steroids. When you graduate from email marketing, you start using marketing automation. Many small businesses say they send a monthly email and can tell who clicked on what. That might be good enough lead nurturing for a mom and pop shop, but for a medium size and up company a little more insight is required. What is the point of marketing automation? 1. Lead Generation 2. Track Marketing Revenue 3. Automation of Tasks 4. All-in-one Marketing System 5. Integration with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems Marketing Automation is a middle of the funnel activity. If inbound marketing such as SEO brings traffic to your website, marketing automation is what happens next. Because a lot of the purchasing decision is made before your clients even establish first contact, therefore you need to make sure they are exposed to the relevant information. Main Marketing Automation Features: 1. Lead Scoring 2. IP Matching 3. B2B Data Acquisition 4. Progressive Profiling 5. Interaction History 6. Works Flows - IFTTT Lots of tools are available to choose from! Software like Eloqua, Silverpop, eMarketeer and Infusionsoft started more than 10 years ago, but more recently Marketo, Pardot, HubSpot and Act-On appeared on the market. In order to use these systems to their full potential you need marketing strategy knowledge, web/graphic design skills and database fundamentals at least. Having all these becomes a real problem for agencies and marketing departments. First presented at #InboundTO MeetUp on May 16, 2013.