B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
B2B marketing automation platforms (MAPs) enable marketing teams to manage demand generation programs for leads and accounts and orchestrate customer engagement. CMOs can leverage this research to assess market maturity and AI innovations and to identify optimal vendors for strategic growth.
Market Definition
Gartner defines B2B marketing automation platforms (B2B MAPs) as software applications that support demand generation processes at scale. B2B MAPs help marketers capture and qualify leads and accounts, orchestrate multichannel engagement across the full customer journey, and use analytics to optimize and measure performance.
B2B MAPs enable marketers to automate a wide range of activities intended to drive new customer acquisition, retention and growth. To support the pursuit of new commercial opportunities (from current or prospective customers), marketers use B2B MAPs to generate, prioritize and manage contacts, leads and account buying groups across the revenue lifecycle. This includes the distribution of marketing-generated qualified leads to sales teams for further pursuit.
In addition, B2B MAPs are used to personalize, orchestrate and measure multichannel customer engagement campaigns and programs, often employing generative and agentic AI.B2B MAPs enable marketers to design and activate some communications channels natively – most notably, email and web landing pages — and orchestrate customer engagement through other channels via integrations with other tools/platforms.
Lastly, marketers use B2B MAPs as a tool for collecting, analyzing and reporting performance analytics. Performance analytics enable both tactical measurement, such as marketing channel and content engagement metrics, and strategic measurement, such as the attribution of marketing activities to commercial outcomes.
B2B MAPs are optimized for B2B marketing use cases. They may also be applicable to B2Corganizations selling high-consideration products with lead management needs or B2B2Cmodels.
Report 2026
Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2026 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report
here
and view the magic quadrant graphic
here.
| MQ Position | MQ Vendor |
|---|---|
Leader |
Salesforce |
Leader |
HubSpot |
Leader |
Adobe |
Leader |
Oracle |
Leader |
Creatio |
Niche Player |
HCLSoftware |
Niche Player |
Act-On Software |
Niche Player |
LeadSquared |
Challenger |
BUSINESSNEXT |
Challenger |
Zoho |
Challenger |
Microsoft |
Report 2025
Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2025 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report
here
and view the magic quadrant graphic
here.
| MQ Position | MQ Vendor |
|---|---|
Leader |
HubSpot |
Leader |
Adobe |
Leader |
Creatio |
Leader |
Salesforce |
Leader |
Oracle |
Visionary |
Microsoft |
Niche Player |
BUSINESSNEXT |
Niche Player |
Act-On Software |
Niche Player |
Freshworks |
Niche Player |
LeadSquared |
Niche Player |
SugaCRM |
Challenger |
Zoho |
Report 2024
Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2024 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report
here
and view the magic quadrant graphic
here.
| MQ Position | MQ Vendor |
|---|---|
Leader |
HubSpot |
Leader |
Salesforce |
Leader |
Adobe |
Leader |
Creatio |
Leader |
Oracle |
Leader |
Microsoft |
Niche Player |
Act-On Software |
Niche Player |
SugaCRM |
Niche Player |
Freshworks |
Niche Player |
BUSINESSNEXT |
Niche Player |
LeadSquared |
Challenger |
Zoho |