Best Marketing Automation Software
Are you looking for a reliable marketing automation software for your business? Here is a list of the best marketing automation platforms exclusively handpicked by GoodFirms after meticulous research and analysis. The marketing automation systems listed here offer A/B testing, customizable CTAs, email marketing, Google AdWords visibility, lead management, sales intelligence, search marketing, segmentation & targeting, social media marketing, campaign management, ROI tracking, analytics, and reporting. Leverage this list of the best marketing automation software with filters for features, business size, deployment type, and pricing model. Also, check the verified user reviews for the top marketing automation tools listed here.
List of the Top Marketing Automation Software with Reviews.
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MakeSales shows you where your next customers are, how to reach out to them, and assists you until the finish line. Find potential customers and their email with our LinkedIn extension. Own our data-backed sequences and reach out to your ideal prospects. Book quality meetings, move your deals forward and stay on top of your game. Close deals. Repeat. Scale. ... read more about MakeSales
Entry Level Price$100 Per MonthFree Trial14 DaysCategory Focus100% in Marketing Automation Software -
SalesIntel partners with Owler to bring you the best buying intel available. The company pages allows you to see the most recent information so you can create customized outreach. With the SalesIntel and Bombora integration you can identify and reach out to organizations already looking for a solution to quickly jump through the buying stages and shorten your sales cycle. ... read more about SalesIntel
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus33% in Marketing Automation Software -
Akero
Plug guaranteed student advertising performance straight into your CRM and attribute true ROI.Akero’s Artificial Intelligence and Automation features allow marketers to spend time on what matters most. Akero Advertising Platform and managed services increase performance across all digital advertising channels by up to 60%. Plan global campaigns using AI to predict performance against brief and budget. Track everything from the first advert served through to the enrolled student in a sing ... read more about Akero
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus100% in Marketing Automation Software -
eLink Pro marketing software is the best LinkedIn sales tool. eLink attracts and connects sales prospects to you LinkedIn, starting the top of the sales funnels. Quietly and professionally increase your network and successfully drive your online influence - turning your LinkedIn profile into a sales magnet. A perfect companion for users of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Sales Navigator for Gmail, Linke ... read more about eLink Pro
Entry Level Price$29 Per MonthFree Trial7 DaysCategory Focus40% in Marketing Automation Software -
Funnelfly helps you engage your leads and customers every step of their journey. Integrates with your website and other digital tools easily. Manage communication cadence with flexibility. Get automated lead and customer segmentation. Sync your marketing messages with the right sales stage. Create any data point you want to capture. Integrated task tracking and management for active and accurate f ... read more about Funnelfly
Entry Level Price$29 One-timeFree TrialAvailableCategory Focus80% in Marketing Automation Software -
Shape empowers your workforce. Its cloud-based software helps you grow your company with tools that streamline workflow, supercharge employee productivity, and automate everyday tasks. Shape’s features are tailor-made to solve your unique industry challenges. Shape CRM helps you manage your business on one easy-to-use platform. Shape's cloud-based software offers dozens of tools designed to mana ... read more about Shape
Entry Level Price$99 Per MonthFree Trial14 DaysCategory Focus25% in Marketing Automation Software -
LogiKlu identifies companies visiting a website and analyzes each visiting Company's depth of engagement and behavioral patterns over periods of time to qualify their interest. This is not limited to tracking of general interest by the visiting company but in-depth analysis of explicit interest in individual products and services. You can also delve into layers of details on each visiting company, ... read more about LogiKlu
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus50% in Marketing Automation Software -
Kennected is the #1 LinkedIn automation platform for engaging with potential customers. Automated prospecting, follow up sequences and smart reply detection. We power that up with our Lead Flow Mastery course which teaches you how to properly sell on social media. Provide value to your potential connections and watch the leads start pouring in. ... read more about Kennected
Entry Level Price$89 Per MonthFree TrialN/ACategory Focus50% in Marketing Automation Software -
Ecommerce retailers: Optimize Customer Post-purchase and generate 20-30X ROI, build brand loyalty and improve LTV by 100% or more, increase customer satisfaction and reduce WISMO support calls by upto 90% ... read more about WISMOlabs
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus33% in Marketing Automation Software -
We provide an all-in-one platform for you to generate, track, and manage new leads in your business. With our marketing dashboard you can track your leads all in one place. LeadEngines helps you get exclusive qualified leads and appointments without you having to lift a finger. At LeadEngines, we believe you should work smarter, not harder. That’s why we build lead tools to automate and simplify ... read more about LeadEngines
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus10% in Marketing Automation Software -
Acquigo is a revolutionary Algorithmic Marketing Platform that empowers brands to identify and act on hundreds of unique opportunities aimed at customer growth, engagement, retention and satisfaction. Acquigo delivers 10X marketing campaign effectiveness by generating responses in the range of 10-40% and by providing the ability to run hundreds of unique campaigns with just a few clicks. Acquigo, ... read more about Acquigo
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus50% in Marketing Automation Software -
Marketing Tech is a revolutionary online marketing and advertising agency solely focused on promoting small businesses products and services. We offer an online presence to small businesses and make local online marketing affordable and effective. Create videos, landing pages, and ads for small businesses in a few minutes No technical skills or prior knowledge is needed! ... read more about Marketing Tech
Entry Level PriceFree versionFree TrialAvailableCategory Focus100% in Marketing Automation Software -
The CampaignHero platform is both a web and mobile app that helps small-and-medium-sized businesses grow and build through advertising. Our award-winning technology and support team is designed to provide businesses and advertisers with features that help improve campaigns across Google, Microsoft and Facebook ads. ... read more about CampaignHero
Entry Level Price$35 Per MonthFree Trial30 DaysCategory Focus100% in Marketing Automation Software -
DailyStory is a marketing automation platform that helps turn your marketing team into superheroes (cape not included). We super-charge your marketing and give you the power to easily automate all your digital marketing with process, consistency, and measurability. DailyStory also integrates with a variety of popular platforms from Telligent Community, Salesforce, MINDBODY and more. And supports Z ... read more about DailyStory
Entry Level Price$79 Per MonthFree TrialN/ACategory Focus25% in Marketing Automation Software -
Automates outreach via email, text/sms and manages sales response and customer follow-up. The All in 1 solution for Sales Teams from 5 to 50. Designed by salespeople, for salespeople. SalesNexus is easy to tailor to your unique business processes and allows salespeople to manage more relationships by automating ongoing engagement campaigns. ... read more about SalesNexus
Entry Level Price$45 Per MonthFree Trial30 DaysCategory Focus20% in Marketing Automation Software -
Optimove is the leading Relationship Marketing Hub, empowering CRM Marketers to create and manage large-scale, customer-led journeys. Optimove autonomously surfaces valuable customer engagement opportunities, orchestrates self-optimizing customer journeys, and accurately measures the incremental impact of all marketing interactions. With Optimove leading brands such as Staples, JD Sports, Dollar S ... read more about Optimove
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus50% in Marketing Automation Software -
Resulticks is marketing automation redefined and realized. Create, manage, track, and report on campaigns across multiple channels. True omnichannel marketing automation realized. By Marketers for marketers. Plan, develop, deploy, and manage campaigns across all channels email, mobile, QR code, web, social media with unprecedented ease. Deliver your message where and when it matters most. ... read more about Resulticks
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus50% in Marketing Automation Software -
Growth for your hospitality business. Essential tools to get customers returning and grow your hospitality business. Time saving technology that helps you succeed. WiFi that brings customers back. By increasing repeat visits by just 5% you could increase profits by between 25% and 125%. Our system makes it easy to keep customers engaged without spending hours each week on marketing. If you have wi ... read more about Stampede
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus20% in Marketing Automation Software -
Imagine knowing in advance what each of your consumers will buy next, and be able to present those products to them at exactly the right time. This is predictive personalisation. SwiftERM, the on trend personalisation SaaS, when installed on your platform, delivers as much as 20x the return of segmenting, triggered and omnichannel software combined. Using a predictive analytics algorithm on all th ... read more about SwiftERM
Entry Level Price$139 Per MonthFree Trial30 DaysCategory Focus50% in Marketing Automation Software -
The Simplest CRM Platform Delivering Intelligent Customer Engagement in the Cloud. The World's First Cloud-Based CRM Platform Powered by Gamification. All-in-One Solution Run Marketing, Sales and Project Management. ... read more about CRM.me
Entry Level Price$35 Per MonthFree Trial30 DaysCategory Focus25% in Marketing Automation Software -
ConvergeHub
Customer Lifecycle Management CRM with Sales, Marketing, Service and Billing to grow your business.ConvergeHub is an enterprise-grade CRM, with Sales, Marketing, Support, and Billing, for managing all customer-related activities from one unified platform. It is a high-horsepower business-growth platform built for small and mid-size businesses. ConvergeHub integrates with other software through many native integrations such as QuickBooks, DocuSign, PandaDoc, Ringcentral, Twilio, Office365, Box, ... read more about ConvergeHub
Entry Level Price$9 Per MonthFree Trial14 DaysCategory Focus33% in Marketing Automation Software -
Experiture makes it easy to create customer experiences with truly personalized omnichannel messages across email, web, mobile, social, and more. Experiture has pioneered a unified approach to enhancing the customer journey through targeted, real-time & trigger-based Email, SMS, Direct Mail, Social including Geo-location & push messaging from a single platform. We have deep experience in creating ... read more about Experiture
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus25% in Marketing Automation Software -
Acoustic Content is a cloud-based, hybrid content management system (CMS) and content marketing platform that leverages AI services to help marketers and front-end developers build engaging digital experiences quickly and easily across all channels. Our built-in digital asset management (DAM) and site-building capabilities provide users with the right solution to meet any need. Or, use it as a hea ... read more about Acoustic Content
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus50% in Marketing Automation Software -
Organize all of your classes and live streaming links to power automated texts and emails to your customers when they sign up and before class. The All-In-One Customer Communication Hub. Guide, convert, retain and delight more customers by reaching out to them when it matters most. BrandBot gives you the tools to build growth through deeper relationships, making every time you reach out easier and ... read more about BrandBot
Entry Level Price$99 Per MonthFree TrialN/ACategory Focus25% in Marketing Automation Software -
CustomFit.ai is a no-code website personalization and conversion optimization platform that enables marketers and sales professionals to customize website content and user journeys that result in higher engagement and conversions. For Marketers (Inbound)- For various audience segments, personalize at scale - customized web pages with optimized copy and images and CTA. Strategize visitor path an ... read more about CustomFit.ai
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree Trial7 DaysCategory Focus100% in Marketing Automation Software -
Vanizya Automation was built for you! Our humble beginnings as business automation opened our eyes to the needs of growing businesses, Small businesses need tools that can efficiently scale as they mature. Most ERP workflow is designed for large corporations and comes with an enterprise-level price tag. That’s why we created Vanizya Automation. Serving small and medium-sized businesses is in ... read more about Vanizya
Entry Level PriceFree versionFree TrialAvailableCategory Focus100% in Marketing Automation Software -
TubeSift's powerful video search supports multiple modes designed to help you quickly collate extensive lists of highly relevant monetized videos to advertise on. Enter keywords to search for relevant videos, use a video URL to search for related videos, key in a channel URL to extract videos from the channel, or use the "Trending Videos" and "Top Charts" search modes to uncover hugely popular and ... read more about TubeSift
Entry Level PriceContact vendorFree TrialN/ACategory Focus100% in Marketing Automation Software -
Swiftbrief focuses on the one piece of information that all writers need: briefs. By doing so, it gives you the tools to provide high-quality directions in less than half the time of traditional management via Google Docs, Word, or other word processors. Also, Swiftbrief helps you manage your entire content strategy by keeping your brand's tone of voice consistent across content pieces, providi ... read more about Swiftbrief
Entry Level Price$19 Per MonthFree Trial7 DaysCategory Focus50% in Marketing Automation Software
Buyer’s Guide
Marketing Automation Buyer’s Guide
Most businesses consider marketing automation to be inevitable. The advanced functionality resulting due to AI and machine learning has encouraged the marketers to believe that automating marketing activities would provide quick and better results than manual processes can leverage. As per the State of Marketing Automation 2019 Survey Report, 75% of marketers use marketing automation tools.
Selecting the best marketing automation software for a small business can not only add to its profitability but also enhance its reputation. Regardless of being a first-time buyer or intending to change the existing marketing automation software, if you are wanting to enhance your marketing strategies and achieve successful results, this buyers' guide to marketing automation software is for you.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is a smarter approach that helps sales and marketing personnel to automate the tasks like -
- Creating, launching, and managing online marketing campaigns
- Tracking and managing prospects, leads, and customers
- Measuring marketing efforts to make informed decisions
Marketing automation can revolutionize your marketing by minimizing the use of resources and maximizing the returns on investment. It can streamline your campaigns, improve accountability within the team members, provide better customer experiences, and generate accurate reports.
What are the Best Practices of Marketing Automation?
The 5 best practices of marketing automation include -
Knowing your buyers’ persona before implementing a marketing strategy is a must. Interviewing customers, conducting surveys, analyzing reports, etc., can give you information about your buyers and help you in designing an effective marketing strategy.
Building a Workflow
Building a workflow while implementing a marketing strategy is important. All the team members should be on the same page and should have complete information about the process to be followed.
Capturing the Right Information
Capturing the right information from your visitors is important to approach them effectively. With the correct information on hand, you can analyze the buyers' persona, their journey, and create personalized content accordingly.
Create Solid Content
Content is something that is a driving force to capture the attention of your customers. The content you create and publish should establish an impressive reputation for your business in front of your buyers.
Leads Segmentation
Neither all the buyers are the same and nor are their requirements. Segmentation of the customers based on their persona, journey, geographical location, age, gender, etc., is important before approaching them with an effective marketing strategy.
What are the Key Components of Marketing Automation?
There are four major key components that can make marketing automation successful -
Listing/Segmentation - Listing and segmenting the audience based on their journey, requirements, geographical location, gender, and other factors.
Lead Scoring - Lead scoring is assigning value to the leads based on their possibility of converting.
Trigger - Trigger is a specified time or condition when a marketing campaign should be launched — for example, sending a discount coupon to the customer who is close to the purchase decision.
Action - Action is something that comes after the trigger. For example, sending a welcome email immediately after the customer signs up.
How does marketing automation relate to the customer journey?
There are four stages of a customer journey - Introduction, Exploration, Purchase, and Retention. Marketing automation plays a major role in each stage of the customers’ journey.
Discover
At this stage, your buyers are not looking forward to buying from you. They are just discovering the products or services being provided by a brand. To engage customers at this stage, you need to post content on social media or send emails consistently, so that they can consider contacting you when they require the products or services you are providing. A marketing automation software can assist you in scheduling and automating the process of engaging your customers at the awareness stage.
Explore
At this stage, your customers are exploring, evaluating, and comparing your products and services with the available options in the market. For example, if one of your prospects is exploring your products on your website, you can send them the discount code to grab the opportunity. Marketing automation software helps you in monitoring the activities of your customers and acting on them immediately.
Purchase
At this stage, the customer is in the process of making the decision to purchase your products or services. Now, it becomes important to provide an excellent and seamless shopping experience to your customers, so that they give positive feedback about your business. Marketing automation software can help you in sending automated emails to the customers after a purchase, approaching them in a meaningful way, and assisting them at each step of their purchase decision.
Retention
Retaining the current customers and acquiring new business out of them, is one of the biggest achievements of any business. Competition being so fierce, it is difficult to stop your customers from getting attracted to other products and services available in the market. A marketing automation software can help in upselling and reselling to maintain the loyalty of your customers, ultimately accelerating the ROI of your organization.
What is Marketing Automation Software?
The software is an all-in-one marketing platform that is developed with the aim to automate, streamline, monitor, and measure marketing activities and processes so that businesses can gain operational efficiency, achieve their sales goals, and expand exponentially.
Whether it is about sending marketing emails, prioritizing your customers, creating landing pages, or measuring the success of your different marketing programs, marketing software can make your business processes and marketing efforts seamless ultimately resulting in improved productivity, reduced costs, and maximized conversions.
How Is Marketing Automation Software Different from CRM?
Marketing automation software is often confused with CRM. Many CRMs even have a marketing automation module, which makes marketers think about whether they should invest in marketing automation software or CRM. If you look into the features and capabilities of CRM, you would realize that CRM adds value to the sales department, but misses out on the requirements of the marketing department.
CRM is used to manage contacts and track opportunities. Marketing automation software is used for automating marketing programs, enhancing customer relationships, and measuring marketing efforts. This is the primary difference between both of them.
Click to go through the buyer’s guide to CRM.
Let’s go through the capabilities of marketing automation software and how it can help your business.
What Does Marketing Automation Software Do?
Basically, the software includes inbuilt applications that are designed to optimize & streamline marketing tasks efficiently and effectively. It can help your employees to focus on strategic activities instead of monotonous activities, and eliminate human errors. Moreover, it helps increase customer engagement, grabs more sales opportunities, and stays ahead of competitors. Some of the key activities of marketing automation software include -
Lead Capturing, Tracking & Monitoring
The software can capture the leads based on the visitors on your business website, track their information, monitor their activities, and perform marketing activities accordingly to achieve successful results.
Email Campaign Management
A successful email campaign management requires storing and accessing accurate customer information, consistency, and professional design. Marketing automation software includes features that can help in sending professionally designed emails to the right people at the right time.
Social Media Marketing
A marketing automation software can schedule your posts on various social media marketing platforms. Posting effective updates on social media platforms can help in better conversions and benefit the business consistently.
Resources Management
The task of managing resources in an optimum manner is highly significant to run a business with high profitability. The marketing automation software facilitates you to minimize your overheads and maximize ROI.
Landing Page Creation
The software includes design templates that allow you to create appealing landing pages helping to attract new customers and retain the present ones.
A/B Testing
A/B testing helps in determining the user’s reaction to two different products or services. Marketing automation software can make the process of A/B testing easy and evaluate the results accurately.
Integrations
No more juggling between different software and excel spreadsheets. Marketing automation software easily integrates with 3rd party tools like email, CRM, social media, to provide the user with everything from a single interface.
Analytics & Reporting
A marketing automation software generates comprehensive and accurate reports which help businesses to make informed decisions and prepare successful marketing strategies for the future.
How Does a Marketing Automation Software Work?
The way marketing automation software works depend on the tasks to be accomplished. For example, if you are trying to run an email marketing campaign, the below-mentioned tasks can be sorted by using marketing automation software.
Step 1 - Segmenting based on activities and buyers' journey.
Step 2 - Selecting the target audience.
Step 3 - Designing a professional email.
Step 4 - Feeding the email content.
Step 5 - Executing the campaign.
Step 6 - Measuring the open & click rate.
Step 7 - Shortlisting warm and hot leads.
Step 8 - Moving warm and hot leads to CRM.
Step 9 - Reengaging the leads and prospects.
What are the Types of Marketing Automation Software?
Based on Deployment
On-Premise Software is hosted on the server of the business organization. It requires specific hardware configuration and complex installation.
Software-as-a-Service is a web-based software that is hosted by a service provider and made available to clients using multiple devices and platforms using the internet.
Based on License
Open-Source Marketing Automation Software provides free code that can be customized as per the business requirements. It is free to download and deploy.
Free Marketing Automation Software is free software that is available on the cloud or can be downloaded with the source code, which cannot be customized.
Paid Proprietary Marketing Automation Software can be used on the cloud or can be downloaded after paying weekly/monthly/subscription or one-time charges.
How Did Marketing Automation Tools Come Into Use?
Marketing is the fuel of any business. Regardless of the type and size of the business, it requires marketing its products and services to survive and grow. At one point in time, due to increased consumer awareness, and their buying habits, marketing is required to get infused to technology to cope up with the rising competition in all the sectors. So, let's have a look at how marketing automation software came into use.
In earlier times, spreadsheets were used for storing the data of leads and potential clients and access it while contacting them through phone or email. It was in 1992 when Unica - a subset of CRM came into existence. The Internet was at its initial stage at that time. In 1999 Eloqua was introduced, which was transformed into a marketing automation service in 2003. Later on, in 2005-2008, new marketing automation tools like Hubspot, Marketo, Ontraport, etc., were introduced, which included email marketing automation, social media optimization, and many other marketing automation tools.
Upcoming Trends in Marketing Automation Software
Marketing software has evolved with time and is continuously growing due to the simple reason that businesses know the potential positive effects of marketing automation, which is adding up to their profits. So, here are the upcoming trends in marketing automation software, you must be aware of to pick the right one for your growing business.
Personalized Content
Personalized content helps in providing a better customer experience, which ultimately leads to increased sales. People always appreciate recommended products based on their past purchases, or an email addressing their first name instead of a common term. Personalized context is definitely a driving force to business growth, and marketing automation software can help in deploying this strategy.
Machine Learning
Once a user clicks a link or an ad, the behavioral data is consumed by Machine Learning systems, which can then be used in future marketing campaigns and while approaching the buyers during their entire journey. This would not only help in marketing effectively but also enable you to provide better customer experiences.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) would help in studying user behavior, engaging the customers, encouraging cross-selling, ensuring customer retention, and retargeting the customers in a highly effective manner. Artificial Intelligence can take marketing automation to the next level in an era when customers demand quick and personalized services.
Chatbots
Chatbots can make your business work 24/7. You don't need to be at your desk all the time to keep your customers happy. Chatbots would talk to your customers even if you are not around. It can capture entire information from the customers like their preferences, queries, etc., and help you to take quick action on it. Chatbots are already playing a very important role in customer service and marketing departments and would be highly used in the majority of organizations very soon.
Customer Retention
In the coming future, the retention of the customers would be more important along with acquiring new customers due to the increasing competition and new products/services being introduced every day. With the right marketing automation platforms having the latest features, it would be easy for marketers to innovate and execute strategies that help in customer retention.
Benefits of Using a Marketing Automation Software
If you are considering a marketing automation service for your business, it becomes significant to understand what to expect and the benefits it can deliver before you start looking out for the options. So, here are some key benefits of using marketing automation software -
Reduces Staffing Costs
A marketing automation software can set up marketing campaigns that can be automatically triggered based on certain criteria. Moreover, posting social media posts, and sending personalized emails can also be automated. In short, a single employee can do the job of 50 employees with the help of marketing automation tools, resulting in reduced staffing costs.
Increases Sales
Marketing automation platforms can automate the process of customer follow-ups, not letting you miss even a single opportunity. Moreover, it can help you cross-sell and up-sell in an effective manner. Proper lead management and prioritization with the help of marketing automation software, obviously would lead you towards increased sales and high revenue generation.
Saves Time
Most of the marketing automation platforms allow scheduling & posting social media posts for different platforms from a single interface. Though there may be different software for this task, it would be great if you have a single platform for tracking leads, posting social media posts, and triggering email marketing campaigns all from a single platform.
Improves Accountability
Using marketing automation tools means clearly defined processes and accurate reporting, which shows the performance of each team member. This makes everyone involved with sales and marketing responsible for their tasks and tries their level best to perform well and display their caliber.
Encourages Creativity
By using marketing automation software, you are replacing manual processes with automated processes. So, now your email campaigns, social media posts, lead nurturing, and many more marketing tasks are being managed using computerized rules. This frees up the time of your staff to focus on creative tasks that can enhance productivity and efficiency in your organization.
Streamlines Processes
Implementing a marketing automation solution allows you to visualize the entire customer journey and provides you the opportunity to streamline the processes accordingly. This helps in refine targeting and nurturing the leads, for example, automatically sending an email about the product information as soon as the customer completes the purchase on your online store.
Improves Productivity
Your marketing automation software provides you the complete information about your team about who is doing what. You can manage your resources and assign tasks to people based on their skills and qualifications. This way, you can improve productivity and make the most out of the hours you have.
Augments Customer Retention
A marketing automation solution helps you in targeting your customers at all stages of the customer journey. Moreover, it also allows triggering marketing campaigns over multiple platforms. Updating present customers with the latest updates in your products would help you in augmenting customer retention and achieving higher returns.
Helps in Making Better Decisions
The reports generated by marketing automation platforms tell you about the success of your marketing efforts, target audience, returning customers, marketing expenses, returns. Precisely, it can provide important information that can help you in making better decisions that can be remunerative for your business in the long run.
Must-Have Features of a Marketing Automation Software
Marketing automation software is beneficial for improving the marketing and sales of your products and services. But, to select the right one which suits your business, it becomes essential to know the features to consider in a marketing automation solution as mentioned below -
Lead Management
Lead management would help you in identifying prospects, capturing leads, tracking their journey across the sales funnel, personalizing content, targeting potential customers, and ensuring high conversions.
Email Marketing
Email marketing automation would help you in scheduling email campaigns, sending personalized emails, categorizing email recipients, tracking email marketing strategies to reduce bounce rate, recording communication, and analyzing results like open & click rate.
Social Media Marketing
Marketing automation software can maintain your social media accounts, schedule your posts and updates, track the performance of your social media campaigns, respond to your customer queries, build targeted advertisements, and respond to your customer queries promptly.
Segmentation
The marketing automation solution you select should allow you to segment the leads and prospects, to select your target audience suiting to the marketing campaign. Triggering emails or sending messages without targeting the right audience can result in a fiasco wasting your valuable time and money.
Analytics and Reporting
To make informed decisions, you need to pick the marketing automation tool that allows you to collect and analyze comprehensive data, generate customized reports as per your business logic, monitor campaigns, measure performance, and ROI.
How to Choose the Right Marketing Automation Software for your Business?
In addition to the features to be considered while selecting a marketing automation software, below are some factors that you need to consider before you decide to invest in one -
Costs - In many cases, the marketing automation software vendors may charge some hidden costs, extra fees to deploy, or future maintenance costs. You need to check the exact cost of the marketing automation tools and decide whether it suits your budget or not before selecting one.
Limitations - Many marketing automation platforms have limitations in terms of features, email recipients, social media platforms, or it is not scalable as per your requirements. You need to check the limitations of the marketing automation tools before you purchase them.
Mobile-Friendly - In this era, when everything is done using mobile, starting from buying groceries to booking flight tickets, it would be difficult if you are not able to manage your business marketing on the go. So, you need to ensure that the marketing automation solution you choose is mobile-friendly.
Integration - Before you purchase a marketing automation software, you need to analyze whether you require it to integrate with the other tools you are currently using for your business for updating social media posts, email campaigns, maintaining customer database, etc.
User-Friendliness - If your employees and team members don’t use the marketing automation software you have purchased, then that investment would be a waste. Ensure that the marketing automation tool you buy is user-friendly so that your staff adopts it easily and makes optimum use of it.
Support - The marketing automation solution provider should be offering prompt support so that you can easily resolve problems if stuck in the middle of a task due to a technical issue.
Reviews - Check the reviews of the users who are already using the marketing automation software you are about to buy to select the best one.
Average Cost of a Marketing Automation Software
The price of a marketing automation software varies depending on the features it offers, the number of users it allows, and other scalability factors. The cost of marketing automation platforms can be as low as $9/month to $1250/month. For example, you can use ActiveTrail, which costs $9/month, or Pardot, which costs $1250/month depending on the features you require, and the number of users who would be using it.
If you are looking for marketing automation software for small businesses, you can go for eSputnik, which costs only a $1.99 one-time charge. You don't require to pay every month to keep on using it. The features in this tool specially used for marketing automation for small companies might be limited, but if your budget is a constraint, this option can suit you.
Also, there are free and open-source marketing automation platforms available like Mautic or OpenEMM, which you can also customize as per your business requirements. You can view the list of the top free and open-source marketing automation software here.
If you are looking for advanced features in your marketing automation solution which cheap or free software cannot provide, we would suggest you go for the marketing automation tools that offer free trials like Marketo, Act-on, ActiveCampaign, Keap, and many others mentioned in the complete list of marketing automation software intricately curated by the GoodFirms’ Team.
When Is The Right Time To Invest In Marketing Automation Software?
Before investing in marketing automation software, you need to conduct a self-assessment test within your organization and get answers to the below-mentioned questions.
- Do you have more leads than your business can handle?
- Do you have more leads but a low conversion rate?
- Do you want to generate more leads?
- Do you want to implement a highly effective marketing strategy?
If the answer to all the above questions is yes, then this is the right time to invest in marketing automation software for your business.
How to Ensure Successful Implementation of Marketing Automation Software?
Buying the best marketing automation software is significant, but implementing it in the right manner is still more important. Failing to implement the marketing automation tool correctly can be disastrous for a business in terms of finance, productivity, and overall reputation. So, here are some vital points you need to consider to ensure the successful implementation of marketing automation software.
Define your goals
You need to know exactly what your organization is wanting to achieve by implementing marketing automation software. Most organizations hope to grow revenue, but there may be other reasons like improving customer experience, streamlining the buying process, analyzing buyers' journeys, and many more.
Ensure Compatibility With Marketing Strategy
Having the best marketing automation software, but a poor marketing strategy can never yield the expected results. Marketing automation software can only automate the process; it cannot guarantee success if teamed with an ineffective marketing strategy.
Drive for Excellent Content Strategy
Content plays an important role in conversions. Make sure that you get fresh & crisp content posted for marketing your products and services. The quality, volume, and frequency of the content you post online can help you in the marketing automation process highly effective.
Provide Training to your Staff
Introducing a new marketing automation system in the organization would not be enough. You need to train your staff and ensure that they use it. Tell them the benefits and motivate them by showing the successful results achieved by using the marketing automation software.
Why Does Marketing Automation Fail?
The below quote by Bill Gates would clearly define why marketing automation fails for many companies;
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
Besides that, there are 6 common reasons due to which marketing automation fails -
- Lacking human efforts
- Misinterpretation of buyers’ journey
- Implementing the same marketing strategy for different buyers
- Blasting emails at the wrong time
- Not publishing impressive content
- Posting updates or sending messages at the wrong time
Why Referring to GoodFirms’ List of Marketing Automation Solutions Can Help?
Picking the best marketing automation software can be overwhelming when there are a plethora of them available in the market. There might be several questions coming into your mind while selecting one; after all, it is about investing your valuable time and money. We would recommend you to go through the list of the best marketing automation software listed by the GoodFirms' team, as it includes the reviews of the users and a detailed description of each one of them, which can help you in selecting the right one for your business.
Why GoodFirms?
- GoodFirms team follows a highly intricate research process and has been successful in providing the listing of around 9000 software being used in different business sectors.
- The list of software curated by the GoodFirms team can make your selection process easy, as it includes unbiased reviews of the users who are already using these tools.
- The in-depth research conducted by GoodFirms has proven to be highly reliable and has won the trust of renowned companies and software vendors, as it is based on the latest technologies trends prevailing in the current market.
Key Take-aways
The use of the word "automation" means to set it and forget it. But, in the case of marketing automation, we need to manage changes on an ongoing basis constantly. Several disruptions are going on externally in the market and internally in the organization. We need to continually review the rules, processes, and strategies we have implemented along with the marketing automation software. Also, we need to ensure that sales and marketing departments are aligned and on the same page. The perfect combination of the best marketing automation software with perfect marketing planning and strategies can result in the consistent growth of a business.
So, if you are not using a marketing automation software, or looking forward to going for an advanced one, you need to act now, as we are in an era that requires our business to be sound in terms of technology, and strategy both to compete and stay ahead of the time.
Marketing Automation Software Tools Comparison: ActiveCampaign, Zoho Marketing Automation, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Marketo Engage, and Oracle Eloqua
Feature | ActiveCampaign | Zoho Marketing Automation | HubSpot Marketing Hub | Marketo Engage | Oracle Eloqua |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Company Background | ActiveCampaign is developed by ActiveCampaign, LLC, a marketing automation platform company founded in 2003. | Zoho Marketing Automation was developed by Zoho Corporation, a software company that provides a suite of business tools. | HubSpot Marketing Hub is developed by HubSpot, Inc., a technology company providing marketing, sales, and customer service software solutions. | Marketo Engage is developed by Adobe Inc., a multinational software company known for its creative, marketing, and document management solutions. | Oracle Eloqua was developed by Oracle Corporation, a multinational technology company that provides cloud-based software solutions. |
Target Audience | Businesses of all sizes focus on automation | Businesses of all sizes | For businesses of all sizes, inbound marketing focus | For large enterprises, complex marketing automation needs | Very large enterprises with highly complex marketing needs |
Pricing | Freemium (limited features), paid plans start at $15/month | Freemium (limited features), paid plans start at $10/month | Freemium (limited features), paid plans start at $50/month | Paid plans | Paid plans |
Strengths | Powerful automation workflows, lead scoring, personalization | Integrates with other Zoho products, good for marketing ROI tracking | User-friendly, strong inbound marketing tools, CRM integration | Scalable, robust features for complex marketing automation | Enterprise-grade platform, advanced analytics, and lead nurturing |
Weaknesses | Can be complex for beginners compared to HubSpot | Limited features in the free plan | Less powerful automation compared to ActiveCampaign or Marketo | Expensive, requires significant IT resources | Very expensive, complex to implement and manage |
Best for | Businesses seeking powerful automation and lead nurturing capabilities | Businesses using other Zoho products, value for money | Businesses prioritizing inbound marketing and ease of use | Large enterprises with complex marketing automation needs | Very large enterprises requiring advanced features and scalability |
GoodFirms Notes: | ActiveCampaign offers powerful automation features but can be complex for beginners. | Zoho Marketing Automation is a budget-friendly option that integrates well with other Zoho products. | HubSpot Marketing Hub is user-friendly and strong in inbound marketing tools. | Marketo Engage offers powerful automation workflows but can be complex for beginners. | Oracle Eloqua is a powerful platform for large enterprises with complex marketing needs, but they are expensive and complex to implement. |