Scott Brinker

"Marketing automation" as the label for a major — if slightly amorphous — category of modern marketing software appears to be here to stay. Three recent points on the curve:

• The acquisition of Pardot by ExactTarget, labeled as a marketing automation deal.
• The IPO of Eloqua earlier this year, again labeled as a marketing automation offering.
• A recent IDC report that includes marketing automation as an explicit budget allocation.

The latter is perhaps the most significant, as having a line item in the marketing budget is the Holy Grail of any marketing technology. When the challenge shifts from trying to convince people that...

I accept that the relationship between marketing and IT is a complex one.

Although my opinion is that marketing should specify, recommend, select, purchase, and operate its own marketing technology — I believe it is now an integral part of what marketing is in a digital world — I also acknowledge that other organizational structures can work too. If IT and marketing have a highly collaborative relationship, then keeping more of the technology management responsibilities in IT's hands can make sense. This is especially true if marketing has yet to build out...

I had the pleasure of speaking this week at CreateTech, a conference run by the 4A's (America Association of Advertising Agencies). The gist of my talk was to introduce creative technologists — who work primarily in agencies — to the marketing technology movement that's happening in marketing departments at brands.

Those of you who are already familiar with the my talks about the rise of the marketing technologist will find much of this to be familiar, although I have updated it with the latest trends and research on rapidly evolving subject.

Here are my slides, followed by an essay version of my talk:

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If you were to take a poll of the hot topics in marketing these days, "social media" and "big data" would both be top contenders.

So when the folks at Viralheat, a provider of social media marketing software (covered in TechCrunch earlier this year), invited me to interview their Director of Business Intelligence, Erin Robbins O'Brien, on her perspective of "big data" and marketing, the hard part was narrowing my list of questions.

Tell us a bit about Viralheat and your role as Director of Business Intelligence.

Viralheat provides social media monitoring and analytics to businesses of all sizes, from individual contractors to agencies to enterprise clients. Viralheat was created with the belief that social media insights and management should be available to everyone, not just those with big...