Gartner defines B2B marketing automation platforms (B2B MAPs) as software applications that support demand generation processes at scale. B2B MAPs help marketers capture and qualify leads and accounts, orchestrate marketing-driven engagement across the full customer journey, and use analytics to optimize and measure performance. B2B MAPs enable marketers to automate a wide range of activities intended to drive new customer acquisition, retention and growth. To support the pursuit of new commercial opportunities (from current or prospective customers), marketers use B2B MAPs to generate, prioritize, and manage leads and account buying groups across the revenue life cycle. This includes the distribution of marketing-generated and qualified leads to sales teams for further pursuit. Also, B2B MAPs are used to orchestrate and measure multichannel customer engagement campaigns and programs. B2B MAPs enable marketers to design and activate some communication channels natively — most notably, email and web landing pages — and orchestrate customer engagement through other channels via integrations with other tools/platforms.
Gartner defines email marketing as the use of the email channel to deliver and optimize marketing messages — such as brand newsletters or contextually relevant, real-time and personalized communications — in support of engagement across the customer journey. Email service providers often bolster their technology platforms with supplementary managed services to improve the value and scalability of the email channel. Email marketing helps marketers deliver information to their audiences after obtaining an email address. This can take the form of product or service updates, new promotions, transaction updates and more. As a relatively inexpensive method for communicating at scale with contacts, email provides value for different use cases across the full customer-engagement life span. Email is the most effective channel for several marketing objectives, including demand generation, conversion to sales, and customer loyalty and advocacy.
Gartner defines mobile marketing platforms (MMPs) as software solutions that help organizations create, activate, execute, analyze and optimize mobile marketing campaigns and experiences. The platforms target audiences on their mobile device through multiple message types such as SMS/text, push notifications, messaging apps and in-app messages. These platforms enable marketers to engage customers and prospects through a range of mobile-specific tactics — spanning mobile websites, mobile applications, smart device engagement, messaging (such as SMS and native applications), push notifications (such as on mobile apps and off websites), location-triggered interactions and mobile wallet cards. Mobile tactics are particularly suited to, for example, providing time-sensitive notifications to audiences, whether that’s in response to a live event, location-specific moment or a fulfillment update. MMPs also help measure and optimize the effectiveness of mobile strategy. MMPs can operate as stand-alone solutions within a marketing organization’s tech stack, or operate alongside other marketing technology. These technologies can include a set of capabilities within a multichannel marketing hub (MMH), marketing automation platform (MAP), customer data platform (CDP) or other marketing automation applications. Stand-alone MMPs are a more specialized solution, often used in conjunction with an MMH, email platform or B2B MAP.
Gartner defines multichannel marketing hubs (MMHs) as software applications, primarily delivered as SaaS, that orchestrate personalized campaigns and event-driven customer journeys across marketing channels. These applications leverage customer data, predictive models and real-time insights to optimize the timing, channel and content of interactions. MMHs apply advanced analytics, AI and prescriptive intelligence to help marketing and technical teams manage the end-to-end life cycle of customer journeys. Although MMHs overlap with customer data platforms (CDPs) and personalization engines, their primary focus is enabling marketing users to manage large-scale consumer interactions, particularly in owned media channels such as email and app push. Multichannel marketing hubs empower marketers to deliver personalized media and orchestrate customer journeys, thus driving revenue, engagement and loyalty. These SaaS applications unify customer data, predictive insights and real-time decision making to optimize interactions across digital channels. MMHs enable multidisciplinary teams to manage campaigns and event-driven journeys via advanced analytics, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and prescriptive intelligence.