Tag managers are evolving as times as goes by. There are also paid tag managers, which are designed to be able to set more advanced “variables” and “triggers”.
For example, when tags fired, you can send email automatically by connecting APIs of the e-mail distribution software.
Therefore, a user who logged in as a member came to the shopping cart and left it, marketing . solutions could send a mail.
It is also possible to publish cookies on the tag manager and connect multi-device users behavior. When a user puts User ID or email etc in the form, it can identify cross devices behavior and stitch this user profile.
You can switch the contents on the website when the session meets a certain rule, if you want.
As you might notice, such tag manager works like marketing automation ( MA ) or the A / B test (switch screen display according to sessions).
So, some clients use fee-based tag manager to install MA, but there are some cases that they no longer need MA since fee-based tag manager can support every clients’ requests without MA.
Which is better MA or tag manager? Since MA is a dedicated service created for marketing automation, it is possible to implement solutions even without setting up complicated tags and programmingJavaScript. However Tag manager has a better point than MA that Tag manager can use existing resources.
In principle MA uses their own original system for marketing (Customer DB, mail system and A/B test tools), it is necessary to migrate from software used before to MA system. However, tag managers can do a part of functions of MA, by connect existing resources as they are, so they are able to reduce the cost and risk of migration.
So it makes me feel that advanced tag managers are not only “tags” and “management”.