Marketing Automation Solutions vs. Direct Marketing Solutions

What is the key difference between a Marketing Automation solution and a Direct Marketing Solution. I was having lunch with a colleague of mine and we were discussing why Market2Lead's (the company I work for) solution is different from other direct Marketing solutions. The one difference that stood out from our conversation is Marketing Automation solutions are Contact/Prospect centric whereas Direct Marketing solutions are Campaign centric.

If we take an Email Marketing solution for example, launching a campaign typically begins with importing a list. The next Campaign needs another List. It is very possible that the system can have more than one record for the same Prospect in the database. The Prospect's responses to different Campaigns are spread across these records defeating the purpose of "Nurturing the Lead" over time.

Marketing Automation solutions, on the other hand, support a Contact database that can be used to consolidate all Prospect interactions into one record. This includes ability to merge and consolidate Activities and Responses from both online and offline campaigns.