It is almost a truism that marketing has become highly technology-intensive. Even while IT spending in other categories remains flat or has declined, the marketing function's spending on technology has held up--even in the recessionary environment.
A nearly ubiquitous component of any marketing technology portfolio is email marketing. In fact, there is a high probability your company is already using some form of it, even though you might not be aware of it.
A related component is marketing automation. Customers often talk of these in the same breath. In fact, some would argue that marketing automation is what email marketing wants to be. In other words, marketing automation is an evolution of email marketing. In reality, it is an adjacent-but comparable-set of tools.
In this article, we will look at this distinction in some detail and also summarize what marketers should know when evaluating these technologies.