Marketing Automation's Next Frontier: Madison Avenue

Marketers have invested in marketing automation, content and, in many cases, creating complex business rules to determine what content and message to deliver when.

This represents a significant investment but, for many companies, the application has been limited to emails and landing pages.

The real value is in the rules and logic used to deliver the right message at the right time. The next evolution in marketing automation will be extending the application of these rules across the full spectrum of digital and addressable marketing channels.

Marketing Automation's Baby Steps

Last week we saw the first meaningful step in this direction with the announcement of Eloqua's AdFocus offering, extending marketing automation's segmentation and messaging to online display programs with Demandbase and Bizo. [Disclosure: Demandbase is a client of my employer.]

This week Marketo announced that AdRoll, a provider of retargeting ads, is part of their LaunchPoint ecosystem.

Extending marketing automation into display advertising with specific vendors is the first small step. This lets you take the demand generation or nurture program, for instance, and 'send banners' to the same people you are sending emails too.

It doesn't integrate your marketing automation with the full spectrum of your digital advertising. Not yet.

Marketing Automation Integration

What if a nurture stream could touch every element of your marketing? Every tablet sponsorship, online video ad or even TV ad? Instead of adding banners to your marketing automation program, your marketing automation platform will become the nerve center for all advertising messages.

Here are a few of the new partnerships and capabilities firms like Eloqua or Marketo will need to make this a reality. If it happens, today's marketing automation platforms could drive the next revolution on Madison Avenue.

Integration with DMPs
Data management platforms (DMPs) like BlueKai bring together first party (like with marketing automation firms have) and third party data (like with Bizo or Demandbase have). When the marketing automation players partner with today's major DMPs, or build their own solution, all of the targeting rules and logic of marketing automation will be extended across the entire spectrum of digital advertising.

Incorporation of Dynamic Creative
Creative platforms like Flite allow advertisers and agencies to customize creative on the fly. As marketers continue to create content, dynamic creative platforms that can build the most appropriate creative in real time will remove limitations imposed by creating and managing more creative.

Expansion of Data Partnerships
As marketing automation firms integrate with DMPs, they will be integrated with entirely new data sets. Rather than push the business rules and logic over to the DMP, marketing automation firms need to bring this information into their platform, allowing it to improve today's right message right time algorithm.

All of these capabilities already exist and large marketers, primarily in consumer marketing, are making use of them today. However marketing automation platforms are home to the most advanced information in most marketing organizations about what individual should receive what message and when, based on role, stage in the buying cycle, previous behavior and other information.

Given the opportunity, Madison Avenue will do amazing things with these capabilities.

Your Turn

This is one possibility. What do you see as the next frontier for marketing automation? Share your view in the comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake).