"What can happen in less than a second?" asked Mitch Eisen, CTO and co-founder of Real Magnet, to start his session on marketing automation at last week's SIIA Digital Marketing Boot Camp in Chicago. "One thing is your customer decides whether to engage with [you].

Marketing automation. Predictive intelligence. Persona marketing. Social media that drives results, not just likes. And of course, breathing new life into the old workhorse, email.

Every publisher uses social media but few are actually making money on it. During a recent Connectiv Digital Media Council meeting, Farm Journal’s VP of digital sales, Jim Arnold, showed how the company was able to turn its data into action and actually monetize social media.  “We’ve seen the future of digital, and from product delivery to sales strategy, it’s all about data,” he said.

The days of batch and blast are over. Today’s marketing efforts require a targeted approach that understands the behavior of you customer, what they want and soon, what they will do next. “The marketing game has changed dramatically,” said Tom Pines, CEO at Real Magnet. “We’ve gone from batch and blast to a much more sophisticated way to do things. The main driver is the flood of e-mails being sent. Everyone is overwhelmed. Now it’s all about relevancy, segmentation and targeting. Marketing is currently moving from marketing segmentation to marketing automation. The next phase will be predictive—looking at your data and start making recommendations for you.”