Tools, usually software, that help you with streamlining tactics, workflows and measurement of marketing, to save time and money; automation tools are often behavior-based to trigger other actions , instead of you manually sending emails one-by-one after you learn of an action or intent. Many marketing automation systems deal heavily with email marketing, but others incorporate social media and other website actions.  Automation is also about the planning and strategy of designing marketing workflows so that they CAN be automated to degrees. Automation tools are often directed at large or enterprise companies with larger budgets.

e.g. your system automatically sends emails based on certain activity on certain pages of your website, or the system automatically sends one set of email messages to new list subscribers, another set to those who read a certain ebook, and another set to those who purchased a particular product.

Our favorite tool for automation is Activecampaign