Having worked with people who use marketing automation tools, I have always had a curiosity of how they worked.  I understand the concepts, e.g. the “funnel metrics” from Sirius Decisions, have defined the drip campaigns to nuture prospects to sales opportunities (MQL’s to SQL’s), and have created tons of content (engaging emails, landing pages, website copy, SEO keywords, …) over the past few years to feed the marketing automation machine. But my knowledge was limited as a one-time casual Aprimo user and working with Marcom teams who used Eloqua and Marketo. (Also, I did go to Hubspot’s recent  Inbound conference, which was awesome by the way). I became quite excited to learn more  when the opportunity came to review and select a tool for one of my clients (plus as a software marketeer it is always fun to be on the other side of the sale).  So this is my journey.  Not a comprehensive one, but hopefully can help others who are taking the same trip.