Marketing automation
Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks. Marketing departments, consultants and part-time marketing employees benefit by specifying criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes which are then interpreted, stored and executed by software, which increases efficiency and reduces human error. Originally focused on email marketing automation, marketing automation refers to a broad range of automation and analytic tools for marketing especially inbound marketing. Marketing Automation platforms are used as a hosted  or web-based solution, and no software installation is required by a customer. The use of a marketing automation platform is to streamline sales and marketing organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions. A marketing automation platform allows marketers to scale lead management activities, such as coordinating and managing marketing campaigns, both online and offline), nurturing leads, and scoring leads appropriately to determine if / when it is ready for sales to engage. Overview. Marketing Automation is a subset of customer relationship management (CRM) or customer experience management (CXM) that focuses on the definition, segmentation, scheduling and  tracking of marketing campaigns. The use of marketing automation makes processes that would otherwise have been performed manually much more efficient and makes new processes possible. Marketing Automation can be defined as a process where technology is used to automate several repetitive tasks that are undertaken on a regular basis in a marketing campaign. Marketing Automation platforms allow marketers to automate and simplify client communication by managing complex omni-channel marketing strategies from a single tool. Marketing Automation assists greatly in areas like Lead Generation, Segmentation, Lead nurturing and lead scoring, Relationship marketing, Cross-sell and upsell, Retention, Marketing ROI  measurement. Effective marketing automation tools leverage data from a separate or integrated CRM to understand customer impact and preferences. There are three categories of marketing automation software: Advertising Automation Advanced workflow automation Effects of GDPR on marketing automation. As of 25 May 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation came into effect in the EU, this has had a large impact on the way marketing teams and organizations can manage their consumer data. Any organization using marketing automation tracking is required to ask consent from the consumer as well as provide transparency on how the data will be processed. Impact of  marketing automation on consumers Consumers are directly impacted by marketing automation. Consumers provide data for companies, and companies use algorithms to determine products and services to market towards the consumer. The products and services are personalized based on the collected data for each individual. The use of marketing automation is interpreted as an efficient customer experience while others interpret a loss of autonomy for the consumer. Functionality. In order to effectively aid marketers in fully understanding customers and subsequently developing a strategic marketing plan, marketing automation platforms (MAPs) are designed to perform eight key tasks: Market. According to Gartner, the  B2B marketing automation market grew 15% in 2020 and was valued at $2.1 billion. Gartner identified the following vendors as B2B marketing automation platform leaders as of August 2021: