marketing automation

Definition

Software that automates repetitive marketing tasks like email campaigns, social posting, and lead nurturing, freeing marketers to focus on strategy—or more realistically, to set up even more automated campaigns. The robot uprising, but for email.

Example Usage

Since implementing marketing automation, we've sent 10,000 'personalized' emails this month, each addressing recipients by their first name like we're old friends.

Origin

Emerged in the 1990s with early platforms, became mainstream in the 2000s with companies like Marketo and HubSpot

Fun Fact

Marketing automation platforms can track every page visit, email open, and button click, creating customer profiles so detailed they'd make the NSA jealous.

Source: Marketing technology industry terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

tag management system

A platform that manages all the tracking pixels, analytics tags, and marketing scripts on your website through one interface, preventing your site from becoming a slow-loading surveillance nightmare. Because manually updating 47 different tracking codes is nobody's idea of fun.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

Engagement

The marketing world's favorite meaningless word, covering everything from a like to a share to someone rage-commenting on your post. High engagement can mean people love you or that you've accidentally started a flame war, and marketers celebrate both equally.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Advanced

roadblock

Buying all available ad placements across a platform or time period to dominate visibility and prevent competitor messaging. Subtle as a highway billboard collision.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

burner email

A temporary, disposable email address users create to access gated content without sharing their real contact information. The digital equivalent of giving a fake phone number at a bar.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

attribute

In marketing analytics, the act of giving credit to specific touchpoints in a customer's journey for making them finally open their wallet. It's like trying to determine which of your 47 advertisements actually convinced someone to buy, except everyone on your team has a different answer. Attribution modeling is where data science meets office politics.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

dwell time

The duration someone actually pays attention to an ad, especially in out-of-home or digital contexts. The uncomfortable metric that reveals most people ignore your billboard in 0.3 seconds.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Translate This Term

See “marketing automation” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Advanced

anominy

A linguistic gap where no native word exists for a concept, forcing a language to borrow from others. It's that awkward ...