Marketing Automation Platform

Part of the worlds-biggest-software-project initiative.

An AI-native, open-source marketing automation platform for email campaigns, lead nurturing, behavioural triggers, and scoring — without per-contact pricing penalties.

Marketing Automation Platform is a candidate open-source project that brings intent-aware, AI-driven workflow orchestration to teams of any size. It targets B2B demand-generation managers, e-commerce growth marketers, and founders who are priced out of enterprise suites or under-served by today's open-source alternatives. The goal is to combine the data ownership of self-hosted software with the AI capabilities incumbents are only beginning to bolt on.

Why Marketing Automation Platform?

Commercial suites such as HubSpot Marketing Hub ($20/mo Starter to $3,600/mo Enterprise) and Adobe Marketo Engage ($895–$3,200/mo plus $10k–$50k+ implementation) price on contact count, penalising growth.
ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo offer strong SMB value but escalate sharply at scale and provide no self-hosting option, leaving customer data on vendor infrastructure.
The leading open-source incumbent, Mautic (GPL-v3), provides full data ownership but has a dated UI, no AI layer, rules-only lead scoring, and requires significant DevOps effort.
Existing tools bolt AI onto legacy rule-based engines; intent-aware automation that re-routes contacts mid-journey based on LLM-inferred signals is absent across the market.
Small teams cannot justify a marketing-ops specialist; automated segment discovery and campaign drafting from natural-language prompts is an unmet need.

Key Features

Workflow & Campaign Orchestration

Visual workflow builder with if/then/else logic and branching
Email campaign creation with template editor (WYSIWYG or HTML)
Journey canvas with multi-step, multi-channel orchestration
A/B testing on subject lines and content
Workflow performance reporting (opens, clicks, conversions)

Contacts, Segmentation & Scoring

Contact segmentation with dynamic filter rules
Lead scoring (rule-based at MVP, predictive/AI-augmented at v1.1)
Contact import/export with deduplication
Behavioural tracking across websites, emails, and landing pages
Account-based marketing (ABM) segmentation

Multi-Channel Messaging

Email-first with SMTP compliance and deliverability monitoring
SMS and WhatsApp channel support
Behavioural trigger automation (page visits, form fills, time-based)
Dynamic content personalisation at the individual contact level
Two-way inbox for inbound messages

Compliance & Deliverability

GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CASL consent tracking
Bounce handling and deliverability monitoring
DMARC alignment and BIMI-readiness for verified sender identity
OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect for CRM and third-party integrations

Integrations & Extensibility

REST API for campaigns, contacts, emails, and reporting
Native connectors for HubSpot, Salesforce, and other CRMs
Webhooks and custom HTTP callouts for event-driven workflows
Plugin architecture for extending functionality

AI-Native Advantage

Lead scoring today is universally rule-based or built on narrow predictive models; an LLM that synthesises CRM notes, web behaviour, email engagement, and firmographic data can produce explainable scores that outperform current approaches. Intent-aware journey routing, behavioural segment discovery from natural-language prompts, and AI-assisted email copy generation reduce the marketing-ops expertise needed to operate the platform. Compliance automation — inferring consent state from historical engagement — and real-time decisioning at point-of-contact are further AI-native capabilities absent from incumbents.

Tech Stack & Deployment

The project targets a self-hosted open-source deployment model in the spirit of Mautic, with managed cloud as a possible follow-on. Email transmission complies with RFC 5321 (SMTP); integrations use OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect; sender identity aligns with DMARC and BIMI. An API-first architecture with webhooks and a plugin system is anticipated, drawing from the Mautic precedent of REST APIs for campaign, contact, email, and report management.

Market Context

The global marketing automation market is estimated at $47B in 2025, projected to reach $81B by 2030 at roughly 11.5% CAGR. Pricing spans from free open-source (Mautic, Listmonk) through $100+/mo SMB SaaS to $100k+/yr enterprise contracts (Marketo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud), with most commercial tools billing by contact count. Primary buyers are B2B demand-generation managers, e-commerce growth marketers, marketing operations specialists, agency account teams, and founders at early-stage SaaS companies.

Project Status

This project is in the research and specification phase.
Contributions, feedback, and domain expertise are welcome.

Contributing

We welcome contributions from developers, domain experts, and potential users. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Important: All contributions must be your own original work or clearly attributed open-source material with a compatible licence. Copyright infringement and licence violations will not be tolerated and will result in immediate removal of the offending contribution. If you are unsure whether a piece of code, text, or other material is safe to contribute, open an issue and ask before submitting.

Licence

Licence to be determined. See discussion for context.