Is "Marketing Automation" an Oxymoron?

I like the term "Marketing Automation" - sounds great.... This is going to automate my world of Internet visibility, demand management, lead generation - fantastic. I will simply plug in a trusty CRM tool like Eloqua or Marketo, hook it into my salesforce.com application... and - like magic - next week, the leads will start to poor in. Right?

I don't think so....

Marketing Automation is incredible technology. I love it!  However, I see it as only a small part of the overall solution. There are two broad elements of the category according to Wikipedia - demand generation and marketing workflow automation. I think the workflow automation part is pretty nice to have... taking care of repetitive tasks with software tools... But it takes a lot more than technology to get it right. Demand generation also requires a lot more than automation. What are the underlying values of the brand experience? The offer?  Actually, using the software is a very small part of what makes integrated marketing and sales successful. There are a lot of questions to consider.. here are just a few:

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