Marketing technology, or “martech,” refers to the tools and software used to support marketing efforts, such as advertising, brand management, sales, customer service, and marketing operations. These tools often use data and analytics to improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and help businesses better understand and engage with their customers. Martech is a rapidly growing and evolving field, with new tools and technologies emerging all the time to help businesses better reach and engage with their target audiences. The following are general types and categories of marketing technology.

Ad Exchanges
Markets for advertising that connect multiple ad networks.

Ad Servers
Platforms that deliver ads including optimization and reporting features.

Analytics
Analytics is the discovery of meaningful information in data. Often specialized to a particular type of data, such as analysis of web traffic or social media.

Campaign Management
Tools that coordinate marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

Content Delivery Network
Cloud platforms that allow delivery of content from data centers in different regions designed to speed delivery by proximity to users. A content delivery network typically has significant capacity that allows traffic to scale up and down as required.

Content Management
Platforms for publishing and managing content and media.

Conversion Optimization
Tools that seek to optimize the number of website visitors that take a specific action such as buying something. Techniques may include A/B testing or algorithms designed to discover effective combinations of headlines, copy, images, videos and approaches.

Customer Relationship Management
Large platforms that can be used to manage marketing, marketing operations, sales and customer service functions. May include tools for social media management, multi-channel advertising, content management, analytics and workflow.

Dashboards
Reporting tools that provide a one page realtime view of metrics .

Database Marketing
A category of tools that support direct marketing such as email and direct mail.

Decision Support Systems
A generic term for technologies that support marketing decisions. For example, a decision support platform may provide market data to assist in pricing, product or advertising decisions.

Demand Side Platform
Platforms that allow advertisers to bid for digital advertising inventory in real time. Allows advertisers to target customers based on factors such as location, context, behavior and demographics.

Digital Asset Management
Technologies that manage digital assets such as media and marketing collateral.

Ecommerce
A broad term for any technology that supports electronic business models.

Enterprise Marketing Management
Large marketing packages designed to unify marketing functions on a single platform.

Event Driven Marketing
Event processing technologies that can be used to identify and respond to events such as reviews, social media posts, market changes and customer actions.

Gamification Techniques
The use of game techniques in marketing content, applications and merchandising displays.

Lead Management
Technologies for acquiring, qualifying and managing leads.

Marketing Automation
Automation of repetitive, high speed tasks and activities such as online advertising bids and direct marketing techniques using business rules or algorithms.

Marketing Intelligence
Data providers for customer and market information such as prices.

Marketing Resource Management
Platforms for marketing operations processes such as planning, budgeting, executing, and measuring marketing campaigns.

Mass Customization
A business model that allows customers to customize their products, often using interactive design technologies.

Media Production
Tools for production of media such as video editing software.

Publishing Tools
Technologies for publishing content such as a blog platform.

Remarketing
Advertising that targets customers who have visited your website or used your mobile app recently.

Sales Force Automation
Suites of productivity tools for salespeople including functions such as lead, opportunity, contact, proposal and order management. Orchestrates the sales process and often acts as the primary source of customer data for an organization.

Social Media
Platforms that allow users to create and share content. Allows you to engage customers by creating and sharing content or advertising. Also a critical source of data as a venue for customers to express their opinions about your brand.

Social Media Management
A dashboard and set of tools for managing social media marketing initiatives across a variety of accounts.

Social Media Monitoring
Tools that measure streams of social media data relevant to your brand. Can be used to measure factors such as brand awareness and reputation.

Supply Side Platform
Platforms for web publishers to offer advertising inventory in exchange for revenue.

Workflow
Technologies designed to choreograph or orchestrate processes that include human tasks. Often used to semi-automate marketing operations.