There has been fierce competition since businesses found marketing as a means of promoting their products and services to potential clients. As a result, marketing became integrated with technology at some point, giving rise to modern marketing as we know it. Consumers had already begun to use this technology, allowing marketing to improve dramatically.

Radio, television, and the internet have all been used by generations of marketers to reach out to their potential clients. Most marketers used to have trouble keeping up with an ever-growing customer base.

It was here that marketing automation technology first appeared. It allowed marketers to reach out to customers through a growing variety of media outlets.

Beginnings

It all started in 1992. The marketing automation sector did not begin to take shape until the middle of the 2000s. It has grown from a $225 million sector to a $1.62 billion market with over 142,700 users worldwide in the last few years.

And what are the other important events for growth?

• 1999, Eloqua – pioneers in web analytics, email and marketing resource management
• 1999, Salesforce – revolutionized the industry with a monthly licensing fee model
• 2006-08, Hubspot, Act-On, etc. – social media networks, mobile commerce, and landing pages
• 2010-14, Time of acquisitions – big companies started buying smaller “players”, which turned the industry into an almost oligopoly (Oracle, Salesforce, IBM…)

What is marketing automation now?

Nowadays, marketers can’t imagine a life without automation tools. The main reason to use it is to save time, reduce costs and decrease human errors. It provides a personalized experience to everybody that comes in contact with the company’s brand and optimizes marketing strategy by automating marketing tasks such as email marketing, social media posts, campaigns and much more.

Smart Octopus Solutions and marketing automation

We specialized in connecting our solutions for gift cards, loyalty programs, and event management with a simple and user-friendly tool to provide you with a great contact engagement tool that enables segmentation and personalization of communication. It also provides automation of various marketing activities like popular email marketing.