Integration lets one module inform another and makes automation easier. I don’t want to send email in tool A; build the landing pages in tool B; set up analytics in tool C; set up A/B tests in tool D then repeat when I learn things from the results. Life’s too short (and I’ll miss opportunities).

Bottom line: None will win, many customers will lose if they put too much trust into single platform tool vendors. It looks nice on paper though…

We’ve seen this in other tech markets — lots of ‘best of breed’ innovationsthat ultimately coalesce into integrated suites.

While I can see all three players existing for a long time, it does feel to me that marketers will want a single interface to learn, a single view of all their online activities and everything integrated to speed automation and share the insight.

So CMS as the mother dashboard, CRM to hold the profiles & behaviours — and automation tools getting snapped up by one or the other (though, who knows — they may do the consolidating).

Thanks again for contributing to the conversation..

Effectiveness of a tool depends on the use of it, rather than it’s feature list. For example, most of the CRM provide a good set of functions for lead nurturing, email campaigns, and other marketing automations. But most of the companies use CRM for list management and management reporting purpose only. May be it’s meant to be like that. More integrated services and products emerge in the marketplace – more we see fragmented, customized use of more than one tools by the companies.

CMS will be (and should be) the heart of the B2B marketing, but I don’t see other tools loosing out either.

As to whether CRM or CMS vendors will eventually be the winners, it’s hard to say. CMS vendors do control the Web site, but there are other channels to consider. CRM systems already has some marketing automation capabilities and the big ones (Oralce/Siebel, SAP) already sell to marketers too. CMS vendors sell to IT, not marketing, although that may is changing slowly. Perhaps more critically, CRM systems are built on identifiable customer databases (name, address, email) while CMSs are just beginning to add some personalization capabilities that involve tracking simple profiles (often of other-wise anonymous cookies).

Regarding CMS vendors with marketing automation capabilties: SiteCore and Marqui definitely belong on the list. I’m sure plenty of others are barking up the same tree.