Marketing automation platforms help businesses identify potential customers and automate the process of nurturing the leads using channels like email, social media, webpages and display ads. These platforms integrate tightly with CRMs and CDPs, collecting more data about leads to fuel insights and further personalization, often with the assistance of AI and machine learning.

They are often overlooked by marketers amid the chase after the shiny new thing. They are taken for granted in part because of their ubiquity and critical importance as the central hub of many businesses’ marketing stacks.