The rise in marketing automation is driven by one major trend; the buyers’ control of the buying process. The more they have access to the information they need, the more that marketers need to understand buyers and facilitate their buying, rather than pushing out largely undifferentiated messaging. Marketing automation is the technology that allows that understanding of buyers, and communication of the right message at the right time based on that understanding.

Socila media, in many ways, allows an even greater access to information by buyers. Insights and knowledge can be discovered and shared in social discussions and communities even more readily than with search engines alone. As this trend accelerates, the growth of marketing automation accelerates with it. Being able to share, track, and score based on social media activity is certainly an added synergy between marketing automation and social media, but the underlying trend is really about information access.