Traditionally, businesses have employed marketing automation solutions strictly for email campaigns. But this has started to change in recent years, with companies utilizing marketing automation capabilities for tasks such as website personalization. According to Meghan Anderson, vice president of marketing at HubSpot, using marketing automation solely for email marketing fails to unleash the power of the solution to put companies “in lockstep with customer behavior.” Hoffmeier adds that marketing departments have begun to think of marketing automation solutions as members of their organizations because they help them exceed expectations by assuming responsibility for significant portions of their workload.

Personalizing website content has become perhaps the most essential use for marketing automation technology. Five or six years ago, customers didn’t expect websites to adapt around them, but since then they have become habituated to the customized experiences delivered by companies such as Netflix and Amazon, Anderson says. For this reason, more companies are starting to incorporate marketing automation into their inbound marketing strategies. Bruce Culbert, chief service officer at the Pedowitz Group, agrees, saying that while marketing automation solutions improve email communications in lots of different ways, using marketing automation as part of an inbound marketing strategy can enable the tracking of unknown visitors, so that when they reveal themselves, significant data on them has already been compiled.