Much of the marketing automation we do now flows through a single system which tracks user activity end to end with minimal integration work. For example, this means that if a user signs up to receive a white paper it's much easier for us to customize the messaging based on their individual history. It can be done by integrating separate systems together but it gets messy.

I should add that I think we benefited hugely by doing things "the hard way" to start. By learning each and every digital marketing discipline separately we were much better equipped to deploy a big box solution like Hubspot in the end.

I'm more than happy to go deeper on this if you wish. Ping me at jsherry at cbinsights dot com.