Email marketing has gone through several transitions since the inception of the technology itself. In the beginning, in the late eighties, it was not that heavily used obviously, but B2B did find a use for it to a limited extent. And, it was handled like a small scale traditional mail campaign. History has lost the records of how effective this was. But, in the nineties, with the advent of more sophisticated web formatting and stronger, programmable server frameworks, automated email marketing became possible. Here’s the thing. When automated email marketing was first considered, back then, the internet was this modern marvel of novelty to people, as were PCs in general. There were no mobile devices, game consoles didn’t have online multiplayer, and things like video chat and VoIP were science fiction. There was only the forum, the email, and the not yet appreciated instant messenger. Email was a neat new invention to most, and as a result, they began using it just for that novelty alone. They, at first, appreciated the lack of junk mail that originally was the state of things. But, as the first campaigns of mass email like this began, the concept of spam was introduced, and for so many years, it was just considered white noise on the internet. All marketing seen as spam, and spam ignored and rejected as it was, it was like yelling at a heavy metal concert. Nobody will hear you. But, with the SaaS age, and a new ideology for how marketing email should work coming around, this is changing. Now, new technology allows for automated filtering and periodical transmissions of emails, but beyond that, it also allows for programming response systems for when customers reply. Leads and callback routines are then executed, to handle exchanges, and even tie in to new prospects and leads created in CRM like Zoho, Netsuite and Salesforce. Email marketing tools like these, examples being MailChimp and AWeber, are quite affordable and quite robust in their user experience, and the quality of the email you can send is fantastic. However, there’s no reason to stop here, because if you’re smart, you’re not just relying on email. You’re likely using lots of channels, like social media, viral videos, guerilla marketing and other things. And, all the other stuff ties in nicely through higher level automation systems like Hubspot and Marketo, which automate the metrics and analytics coming in from BI software, CRM software, statistics from various internet marketing platforms, and it can tie in with these powerful email systems as well. And, you came here for a technology guide for this, and what you got was an infodump on what the technology is, with a few example designs. But, knowing about these, and knowing that the trick to this working is to tie in all of your SaaS solutions and fully automate your entire marketing strategy digitally.