marketing automation

Marketing automation allows firms to reach more people with fewer resources. But with great power comes great responsibility. When marketing automation isn’t leveraged correctly, customers can be alienated. Read our insights to harness these technologies in a customer-obsessed fashion.

Discover how Forrester supports B2B and B2C marketing leaders.

Insights

Blog

Agentic Advertising’s Productivity Paradox

Nikhil Lai 2 days ago
Agents don’t automatically make advertising more productive. Layering AI onto broken processes merely automates inefficiencies. The bigger opportunity is reengineering advertising around a new division of labor, where people set strategy and guardrails while agents orchestrate execution and optimization. Connected data provides the context both need to make effective decisions. We’ve seen this phenomenon before. […]
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Blog

Everything Is A Marketing Operating System

Emily Collins October 21, 2026
Why Does Everyone Want To Be An Operating System? The appeal of the operating system concept is straightforward. It meets marketers’ need for technology and service ecosystems that can manage and coordinate workflows across people, processes, tools, and AI agents, rather than simply execute isolated tasks. It also gives providers facing the SaaS-pocalypse a stronger […]
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Blog

The More Advertising Automates, The More Creative Matters

Nikhil Lai October 2, 2026
Automation is eating advertisers’ workflows. Media buying — once dependent on traders’ skills of budget allocation and bid management — has become the push of a button, where self-attributing platforms auto-optimize for advertisers’ desired outcomes. And customer understanding is increasingly cultivated by walled gardens like Amazon, Google, and Meta, which turn media planning into conversations […]
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From CRM To The Agentic Enterprise: Salesforce’s Biggest Dreamforce 2026 Reveals

Kate Leggett September 29, 2026
At Dreamforce 2026, Salesforce presented its most complete vision yet for the “agentic enterprise.” It shifted the core focus away from individual apps (such as those focused on sales, services, or marketing) and unified them through a single architecture built around data, logic and AI agents. This vision includes: (1) AIforce, Salesforce’s UX layer that […]
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Frequently Asked Questions

What is marketing automation?​

Marketing automation uses technology to execute, manage, and optimize repetitive marketing activities across channels. It can help organizations segment audiences, orchestrate campaigns, personalize communications, nurture relationships, and measure engagement at a scale that would be difficult to achieve manually.​

What are the benefits of marketing automation?​

Marketing automation allows firms to reach and engage more people while using resources more efficiently. When guided by a customer-focused strategy, it can improve personalization, campaign consistency, response times, and coordination across the customer lifecycle while giving marketers more time for strategic and creative work.​

How can companies use marketing automation without alienating customers?​

Companies should use automation to make interactions more relevant and convenient, not simply to increase message volume. This requires customer consent, reliable data, appropriate frequency controls, clear communication, and sensitivity to context. Marketers should continuously monitor feedback and performance for signs that automation is creating friction.​

How does marketing automation support cross-channel engagement?​

Marketing automation can coordinate interactions across email, websites, mobile applications, advertising, social media, and other touchpoints. Connecting customer data and journey context enables marketers to deliver more consistent experiences and select the most appropriate message, channel, and timing for each audience.​

How is AI changing marketing automation?​

AI can help marketers identify audiences, generate and adapt content, predict behavior, personalize experiences, and optimize campaigns. It can increase the speed and scale of execution, but marketers still need human judgment to protect brand meaning, verify outputs, manage risk, and ensure that automated decisions serve customers responsibly.​

How does Forrester help marketers improve marketing automation?​

Forrester helps B2B and B2C marketing leaders evaluate automation technologies, develop customer-focused strategies, and improve cross-channel engagement. Its research, frameworks, market evaluations, and advisory services help organizations select capabilities, strengthen data and governance practices, and connect automation investments to measurable outcomes.​

Blog

Ad Creative Is A Technology Problem And Opportunity

Nikhil Lai June 2, 2026
The market for creative advertising technologies should have boomed by now. Despite waves of innovation, it has struggled to translate technological promise into business outcomes. Its potential remains highly significant but constrained by cultural disconnects between creative and media subject matter experts (SMEs) and intransigent bottlenecks in creative and media processes. The market appeared poised […]
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Blog

CMOs’ “AI Creative Leap”: From Making Ads To Designing Meaning

Keith Johnston April 1, 2026
As AI absorbs execution at scale, creativity returns to its highest value. The brands that win will automate production while doubling down on insight, narrative, and the judgment that protects meaning.
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Blog

When Fixing Security Vulnerabilities Breaks Your Customer Email Program

Shar VanBoskirk March 2, 2026
In January 2026, Salesforce changed how its Marketing Cloud Engagement platform encrypts tracked email links. The fix addressed a vulnerability that could have exposed CloudPages content, such as landing pages, microsites, forms, subscriber data from preference and unsubscribe centers, and email content via web view links. But the fix created a new problem: All tracked […]
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Blog

B2B Hyperpersonalization Is Not A Feature — It Is An Expectation!

Christina Schmitt February 25, 2026
A procurement manager logging in at 10:47 p.m. isn’t there to browse — they need to reorder the right SKU, at the right price, under the right contract terms, and get back to keeping operations running. Hyperpersonalization makes that possible by removing friction the buyer never asked for, using AI to surface only what they’re allowed to buy, what fits their context, and what matters now — so digital self‑service feels effortless instead of obstructive.
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Blog

Seven Roles, One Goal: How To Organize For Answer Engine Optimization

Nikhil Lai December 19, 2025
AEO demands broader, more intensive collaboration than SEO. Learn how roles should change and where they should intersect in a zero-click world.
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Blog

The Next Wave: DSPs Become Omnichannel Ad Platforms

Nikhil Lai October 16, 2025
The conditions that sustained demand-side platforms (DSPs) are no more. Learn what's changed, and how we evaluated vendors in our recent Landscape report.
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Blog

Today’s Leaders Must Heed AI Advice For Future Disruptors

Brendan Witcher September 18, 2025
Startup founders, investors, technologists, and operators are all working frantically to get an early jump onto the AI train. Find out why and get more of the key takeaways from the recent Startup Boston Week event.
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Blog

The Secret To Martech Success? Think Like A Product Manager

Joe Stanhope July 23, 2025
Marketing technology is the backbone of modern customer engagement. It enables businesses to generate customer insights, personalize experiences, and orchestrate campaigns.
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Blog

GenAI Reshapes Shopping And Revives SEO

Nikhil Lai July 9, 2025
The multibillion-dollar question I’m often asked is: Will a critical mass of consumers shop and check out on Google’s AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity? Consumers’ loyalty to convenience makes a “yes” most likely. Thirty-eight percent of US online adults, according to Forrester’s Retail Topic Insights 1 Survey, 2025, checked how fast products would arrive before […]
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Blog

SEO Must Solve Its Marketing Problem

Nikhil Lai February 7, 2025
SEO remains critically important, despite its challenges. The market for SEO solutions is growing to meet marketers’ evolving needs, including adapting to the rise of generative AI and diversification of search beyond Google. Our new Landscape report delves into the SEO market’s maturity, dynamics, notable vendors, and more.
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Blog

Choose A Cross-Channel Marketing Hub That Amplifies Your Customer Obsession Strategy

Rusty Warner November 18, 2024
An effective cross-channel marketing hub (CCMH) can position marketing as an indispensable component of an organization’s customer-obsessed growth engine. Think of your CCMH as much more than a campaign management platform. Instead, leverage it for next-gen customer engagement based on compelling, contextually relevant experiences. Forrester defines a CCMH as: Enterprise marketing technology that supports customer data management, […]
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Blog

The Future Of GenAI Is Increasingly Agentic

Subhendu Pattnaik October 8, 2024
A key theme of Forrester’s recent B2B Summit APAC in Singapore was the need to break down silos within revenue processes and reimagine a customer-centric approach that aligns with the customer throughout the entire lifecycle. Learn how agentic AI is accelerating this transformation in three critical ways.
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Blog

Accelerating Advertising With AI Comes At A Cost

Nikhil Lai May 7, 2024
It’s mathematically obvious to apply AI to advertising, but its efficiencies can come at the expense of advertisers’ control and transparency. Learn more about how AI benefits the advertising process and why advertisers must curate AI.
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