Marketing automation platforms simplify marketing workflows, automates marketing tasks, and tracks the success of marketing campaigns. With the aid of these solutions, marketers may provide segmented, tailored, and timely marketing experiences for clients or prospects by providing a central marketing database for all marketing data and interactions. These platforms offer automated capabilities for various marketing activities, such as email, social media, lead generation, direct mail, digital advertising, and more.
The availability of analytics features to assess the success of an entire campaign across segments and channels is a crucial aspect of marketing automation solutions. The effectiveness of campaigns on marketing team KPIs, campaign ROI, and corporate income are all tracked via these capabilities.
Marketing automation platforms must:
- Automate at least two of the following: digital ads, SMS, social media, and email.
- Advanced email marketing features like A/B testing, spam filter testing, scheduling, segmentation, and thorough performance reporting should be offered.
- Serve as a central database for marketing data and communications.
- Permit dynamic targeting of marketing campaigns.
- After particular events, triggers, or amounts of time, get in touch with targets via various channels.
- Lead nurturing and lead scoring are part of lead management.
- Create landing pages and forms to gather prospect information.
- Offer analytics and reports that follow a campaign throughout its entire lifecycle, including links to revenue and/or campaign ROI.
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Most Recommended Marketing Automation Platforms
Options abound when choosing a marketing automation technology, that is the problem that the majority of businesses have. It can be challenging to comprehend how the tools and industry landscape differ from one another. We have experience because we know. Our top recommendations for marketing automation tools are, however, presented here (in no particular order).
Pricing: Starts from $75 monthly
We adore Customer.io mostly for its adaptability. This is a tool that will enable you to effectively achieve your goals. You can really tailor your Customer.io experience if you’re prepared to invest some developer effort, even though it’s not entirely out of the box. This tool’s lightweight user interface and quick, attentive customer service are both fantastic features. One of the newest companies, Customer.io, is expanding swiftly and is a company to keep an eye on. Customer.io, in contrast to most earlier solutions, is designed to send emails in response to events rather than merely pageviews.
Customer.io is excellent for two different types of uses: 1. Businesses looking to start using marketing automation who value a lightweight user interface (i.e., not your typical enterprise software); and 2. Businesses looking for some more advanced functionality which requires flexibility and customization and are prepared to devote the developer resources to implement it.
Pricing: Starts from $15 monthly
A well-known email marketing tool for small businesses is Constant Contact. It performs a fantastic job of offering fundamental functions in a way that even non-technical users can use. Its main selling points are how simple it is to use and how reasonably priced it is.
The small business owner who wants to manage their email marketing swiftly and doesn’t foresee needing any future requirement for sophisticated features should choose Constant Contact. If you meet this criteria, the tool is a terrific solution for you; however, if you intend to increase your marketing automation efforts soon, a different tool is required.
Pricing: Starts from $1,195 monthly
The marketing automation platform Marketo may be the most well-known, and for good reason. It’s one of the most developed tools, with a comprehensive feature set that not only aids in managing email campaigns for marketers but also offers top-notch solutions for sales teams. LaunchPoint, a marketplace by Marketo, features numerous integrations.
Marketo is excellent for businesses who plan to utilize the tool’s numerous features that go beyond simple marketing automation. It isn’t the most affordable tool, but it’s also not the most expensive either. If you’re not intending to use the system’s sophisticated features, you can get the same effects with one of the less expensive tools. To avoid having to migrate all of your data and campaigns later on, it might be a smart idea to start with a product like Marketo if you want to start with the fundamentals and progress into more advanced functionality in the near future. A terrific resource for new users, Marketo’s knowledge base is also one of our favorite features.
Pricing: Starts from $2,000 monthly
Eloqua is the Ferrari of marketing automation platforms. It is completely equipped, offers a high caliber of service, and has a price tag to match. The time Eloqua invests in educating and assisting its clients in making the most of the platform is one of its main differentiators. Eloqua, like Marketo, has a fantastic marketplace with many integrations with outside services.
If you aren’t genuinely interested in enterprise-level software and don’t have the money for it, don’t look at Eloqua. Eloqua is a fantastic choice if you do, especially if you enjoy getting lots of advice from your IT vendors. Therefore, Eloqua should be top of mind if precise CRM connectivity is crucial to you.
Pricing: Quote based
Our attention was drawn to ExactTarget’s capacity to target communications across a variety of channels. ExactTarget goes beyond the typical email-centric focus of marketing automation systems by allowing you to target mobile app notifications or even messaging to a customer’s car’s dashboard (if, for example, you were a car manufacturer).
In case you’re wondering how ExactTarget and Pardot (which ExactTarget acquired) vary, the former is made for B2C businesses, and the latter is made for B2B businesses.
ExactTarget is for the business that wants to push the boundaries of marketing automation and has the funds to do it. It’s for any business that is really keen in the development of marketing automation and wants to communicate with its clients through a variety of channels.
Userfox
Pricing: Starts from $49 monthly
Userfox is an one of the many marketing automation platforms, and they were actually just acquired by AdRoll. We’re optimistic that the combined strength of the AdRoll and userfox teams will lead to new developments for their product in the future.If you operate in the technology sector, Userfox works largely with businesses in that sector, so you’ll be in excellent company. If you care about sending event-triggered emails rather than just pageviews, userfox is an excellent option because it offers a lightweight UI like Customer.io.
If you already use AdRoll, you might also think about switching to userfox since there will probably be close future integration between the two products as a result of the acquisition.
Pricing: Starts from $200 monthly
The system performs a little bit of everything, but it doesn’t specialize in any one area at a deep level, which is both its advantage and disadvantage. As “inbound marketing software,” which it identifies itself as, HubSpot provides a wide range of functions, including marketing automation. This all-inclusive strategy can be quite useful.
HubSpot is excellent for small business owners. Similar to Constant Contact, but it surpasses in terms of the extra capabilities it offers in addition to email marketing. HubSpot is an excellent choice if you’re searching for a “all-in-one” platform. Preferrably one that provides you with the most fundamental features of multiple distinct marketing systems.
Pricing: Starts from $9 monthly
A platform for email marketing automation called Moosend serves a variety of markets, including e-commerce and SaaS.
Hence the automation tool makes use of sophisticated website tracking and triggers to enable you to deliver the appropriate email campaign to contacts who have expressed interest in a particular good or service. To target potential customers who abandoned their shopping carts without buying anything, for instance, you may create a cart abandonment series.
Customer data management and collection might be useful for creating product recommendation campaigns based on product views. Using this information, you can also produce thorough reports on the campaign’s development and user behavior to enhance the potency of your advertising messaging.
Pricing: Starts from $16 monthly
Omnisend is an omnichannel marketing automation software specifically for e-commerce. You can start-off quickly with templates pre-built with online retailers in mind and offer strong automation workflows.
You may incorporate a number of channels into a single automation workflow using Omnisend, including push notifications, Facebook Messenger, email, and SMS. Additionally, Omnisend employs templates and a user-friendly visual builder to make it simple and quick to create workflows, forms, landing pages, pop-ups, and emails.
Pricing: Starts from $10.39 monthly
Another marketing automation tool created exclusively for small- to medium-sized organizations is EngageBay.
This software has a lot of functions, such as website chat, social media management, and email marketing.
Drag-and-drop builders for emails and landing pages, A/B testing, SMS marketing, push notifications, abandoned cart retrieval and reminders, autoresponders, prepared responses, and more are among the other excellent features.
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Software for marketing automation comes in a wide variety. The key is picking the appropriate one based on your technical know-how, financial constraints, and business needs. Want something that is infinite and incredibly powerful? Learning could end up being more expensive and time-consuming. The scope of the less expensive solutions might be too constraining. In the end, there is a trade-off.