Is your team able to spend more time on repetitive marketing tasks than they do money? Your team wants to scale efficient marketing channels, but only one person can handle them all? Do you want to increase your marketing efforts with a clearly defined strategy that includes better segmentation and targeting? Marketing automation tools can be of great assistance if you have any of these goals.
Google Trends shows that the search term “marketing automation”has been searched three times more than it was in the past five years. Instapages shows that 51% of companies use marketing automation tools.
This article will provide a list of the top marketing automation tools to help you communicate with customers effectively. We’ll explain why you need a marketing automation tool, and what the best criteria are to look at when selecting a solution.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation – This is an important process that involves the use of software to perform marketing and sales tasks, such as lead capture and nurturing; email marketing; social marketing; sales-boosting; SEO, digital marketing and analytics & reports.
Marketing automation is facilitating marketing operations in an exciting way. Statistics show that consumers are not likely to find your brand or salespeople. They prefer to learn about your product at their own pace, and to be able to reach you when they need it. This is the purpose and meaning of marketing automation tools.
Marketing automation tools: Why use them?
- Professional marketing templates can be designed: Most marketing automation tools include a selection of pre-built templates, which are tailored to your business and marketing goals.
- Automated tools ensure that every marketing action is executed according to a set schedule. They will automatically trigger your marketing actions at the correct time, even if you’re not there.
- You can save a lot of time by not having to do manual labor. Time is money. It is possible to reduce the number of repetitive tasks, and have your employees spend their time solving higher-order marketing problems.
- Marketing automation tools make it easy to track campaign results. They measure all figures and allow you to see how marketing activities perform with accuracy and ease.
- They can increase revenue because they allow you to deliver the right content at the right time to your audiences.
- You can increase your ROI by putting less effort and obtaining higher-value results.
Automation marketing is equally effective for both B2B as well as B2C industries. B2C businesses will have strong landing pages, email follow-up campaigns, and emails to abandon carts. B2B allows you to choose the right audience and determine when they are ready for the deal.
What is the best marketing automation tool?
This tool will assist you in identifying the right audience
Marketing automation tools won’t automatically tell you who your best audience is and what their interests are. This is your job at the start of your business. Marketing automation tools can help refine the prospect list that you have already drawn in based on your sketches of who you want.
Marketing automation tools help you segment and distribute the right content to your audience. An effective marketing tool is one that tracks the behavior of your audience, such as website visitors and email recipients. You can track their pages, what they read, which newsletters they subscribed to, which buttons they clicked on, which emails they opened, and the products they view/share/add/remove from the cart.
Assists in the design of the best content
Marketing is also built on content. Effective marketing automation tools will have ready-to-use templates for all types of content. If you use an email marketing automation tool, check to see if it offers pre-made templates that you can insert right into the layout, and then customize for specific events.
A key element is the creation of relevant content and messages for each brand touchpoint. A content marketing automation tool should be able to tell you what keywords or topics are most appropriate for your audience.
Automates customer behavior and schedules to trigger actions
Marketing automation tools are often used to trigger marketing. An effective automation tool can be the one that performs the right action at just the right time and place. You could display forms on a scroll, or pop-ups when you click or hover your mouse.
You can also design a workflow and expect it to perform the tasks. You can imagine a lot of conditions you want to apply to your workflow so you need a tool that is flexible and customizable.
It has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface
Yes, it is important to consider ease-of-use when selecting an automation tool.
Choose a tool that is capable of visualizing any part of your marketing campaign. It could be used to create a sales funnel or a free document subscription. When there is a complicated process, and when you need to share the chart with other members of your team, the visualized flowchart can be a great tool for marketing.
The user interface is another important feature that should be considered when creating your marketing tool. Although marketing research can be complicated, you’ll find it easier to use a drag-and drop design interface, whether it’s an email template, flowchart or lightbox layout. Apps that offer intuitive reporting and a user-friendly management dashboard are also a good choice. If you spend hours organizing elements or trying to figure out how everything works together in a chaotic interface, it can drain your energy.
It provides accurate reporting and analysis
Build. Run. Measure. Learn. This marketing cycle is crucial for the successful implementation of marketing automation tools. You cannot underestimate the importance of measuring in this foundational stage.
It must first show key metrics for marketing actions. Let’s take, for example, that you are buying a sales and marketing automation tool. The report must calculate page views, submission, CTA clicks as well as popup clicks.
If you want to go further, the report will let you know which email, campaign, or content type has the greatest impact on your contacts.
Email notification is another useful feature. It is essential for updating your sales team about the performance of the sale or other metrics like click rate, open rates, or churn ratio.
Integrations with third-party companies
You can, for example, import contacts from third-party services or files to the tool’s list of audiences. This will help you save a lot of time on manual tasks.
If you are looking to expand your business using marketing automation tools, make sure the tool supports integration with your platform and third-party integrations. You don’t have to do simple integrations like export or import. If you want to achieve a better result, you should look into more complex synchronization scenarios. Sending the form completion statistics, passing the contact details to other applications, and synchronizing business information from one app to another are just a few examples.
Top 11 Marketing Automation Tools
Based on the key elements we’ve gathered, these are the top 11+ tools for marketing automation that will simplify and enhance your sales and marketing efforts this year.
AVADA Email Marketing
AVADA is an email marketing platform that makes it easy to create and manage email marketing campaigns. Avada is an email marketing platform that’s rapidly growing for marketers who need to automate their email workflows for greater ROI and better results. Let’s look at how this tool can improve your marketing automation.
Highlights of AVADA Email Marketing:
- Automated email marketing: Create an email workflow quickly with well-designed templates from the library. Marketers can apply the content immediately (welcome emails series, abandonment Cart series, order follow-up emails, up-sell/cross-sell emails).
- Email segmentation: Create smart segmentation based upon customer behavior or personal information. Plus, you can use pre-made segments (subscribers, post-purchase, repeat customer, engage/ re-engage, win back, exit intent).
- Email Builder: Create your brand emails using an intuitive creator or one of the available templates, without any IT requirements
- Automated website popups – Create engaging pop-ups that welcome and motivate customers who are about to leave.
Avada Email Marketing integrates intuitively with Shopify (and Shopify Plus) and Magento. This tool is ideal for small and medium businesses that need an easy-to use, yet powerful and efficient solution to their marketing needs. The all-in-one email solution is user-friendly and can help you reduce your workload and improve the performance of your campaigns.
Price:
- Free Plan, 1000 Contacts
- Pro: $ 9,00/mo; upto 20,000 contacts
Moosend
Moosend offers a great solution for people who need to quickly get things done. This brand claims to be the easiest email marketing tool ever. It has demonstrated that the tools can be used without having to know a single line code.
Moosend’s features:
- You can create unlimited conditions for list automation segmentation to filter the right audiences for each campaign
- Follow up autoresponders: Create a flowchart with emails to serve multiple purposes, such as cart abandonment recovery or driving subscriber.
- Email creator: Create, edit and preview email with hundreds of pre-designed layouts. Mobile mode preview of emails
- Landing page builder: A drag-and-drop editor interface allows you to quickly and easily create stunning, smart landing pages. This feature may incur additional fees.
- A/B email testing: Different tests a variety of elements, such as subject lines and content, send time, segmentation and sender names
- Reporting: You can easily compare two campaigns to determine which one is more effective on an intuitive comparison page
Moosend is a great choice because of its low price and extensive features. It is possible to create more impactful automated marketing campaigns in a shorter time frame and get better results.
Price:
- No Cost Plan
- Pro Plan: $10/ month
- Pricing for Enterprise Plans:
ActiveCampaign
Activecampaign is a powerful all-in-one marketing tool for entrepreneurs, sales staff, and marketers for a long time. The tool allows you to build automation workflows that are tailored to each customer, from sales to marketing. Let’s look at Activecampaign’s capabilities to improve your sales and marketing.
ActiveCampaign’s features:
- Email marketing: Send multiple types of email, including abandon cart emails and post-purchase emails. Here are the details of what you get when you purchase Activecampaign
- Email Builder: Create compelling emails using a drag-and-drop email maker
- Conditional content: Add dynamic fields to email layouts in order to personalize the email for the receiver
- Conditions: These conditions are based on customer actions and other information.
- Split test: Test multiple variables to determine the best fit for your segmentation
- Marketing automation
- Automated nurturing: Add score and tags to every customer’s interaction with your brand. Automated nurturing: Add score and tags to each customer’s interaction with your brand.
- Drag-and-drop design allows you to easily create your workflow for customers
- Service automation:
- Integrated customer experiences: Customers are rewarded when they do desirable actions, such as leaving reviews
- Customer behavior monitoring: Identify the positive and negative reactions of customers to send a message immediately and avoid bad customer experiences
Activecampaign is known for its large pre-built automation library, from which you can select the best ones for your campaign. It offers many useful tools that will help you create a customer journey for any segment. For example, CRM, landing page builder, personalized Facebook ads, SMS marketing, etc. These features allow you to manage all customer touchpoints from one location. This is an excellent tool to automate marketing for all businesses, regardless of size.
Price:
- Lite plan starting at $9/mo
- Plus: Starting at $49/mo
- Pro: Starting at $129/mo
- Starter Enterprises starting at $229/mo
Omnisend
Omisend was born in 2014. It has steadily grown to be a popular tool for email marketing. This tool’s most notable feature is its emphasis on e-commerce. It also makes it easy to create essential email types, from cart abandonment to driving more subscribers.
What does Omnisend do for you?
- Email marketing: Create an email template using a powerful, dynamic email builder that has many impactful elements.
- Automated Omnichannel Workflow: Create an omnichannel workflow that includes email, SMS, and web push notifications. These channels allow you to connect with your customers synchronistically
- A/B testing: Only test the Sender’s name or subject line. Select the message that opens or clicks with your customer.
- Split A/B testing in Automation workflows: Test multiple versions of the automation sequences, such as send time, sequence of messages, and content. Discover the most effective route for your customers.
- Create sign-up forms: Design landing pages, pop ups, sign-up boxes, or wheels of fortune to engage customers
Omnisend is a great tool for anyone in entry-level positions or those who need basic automated marketing to drive customer journeys. Omnisend has a 4.6/5 rating from G2 and 4.8/5 from Capterra. You might have to look for something more flexible with more options, such as pre-built templates or campaigns.
Price
- Plan $0 Free
- Standard: Starting at $16/mo
- Pro: Starting at $99/mo
Pardot
Pardot is a Salesforce product. It offers powerful, scalable features that are designed specifically for B2B companies. It offers a complete solution for marketers and supports sales & marketing activities at all stages. Pardot is a leader in this area, focusing on building meaningful connections between leads and brands. This could be a powerful tool for B2B businesses.
What automation features are available in the Pardot powerful Pardot?
- Lead management & generation:
- Lead management: Create the journey, including trigger actions, based upon customers’ interactions on different channels. Use the score to qualify your customers for salespeople. You can also create automated segmentation rules using rules. Craft personalized content and display targeted offers via your website.
- Lead generation: Create landing pages using pre-built templates; create smart forms to collect information (with drag and drop creator); integrate Google AdWords for ROI analysis; analyze keyword performance; schedule posts to multiple platforms; track prospect interaction via social campaigns
- Email marketing: You can create an infinite number of customized email templates using an intuitive email builder. These emails can be placed on flexible sequences that allow you to set up every trigger based on the journey your customers want. You can also perform A/B testing .
- Sales alignment: Let the sales team create mini-campaigns for customers easily; let them keep track of all prospect actions in one consolidated dashboard. Track all actions of prospects that are related to the brand
- AI-powered marketing and sales automation: Provides out-of-the box features that give you insight into prospects to help you make the right decision about what, when, where, and how to reach/ motivate them
Pardot, an all-in-one, powerful marketing automation tool, streamlines and covers every aspect of your sales and marketing. Pardot can manage everything, including social media, email marketing and account-based Marketing. This platform is a great option for larger companies that have more sales and marketing operations.
Price:
- Growth plan: $1250/month; 10,000 contacts
- Plus: $2,500/month; 10,000 contacts
- Advance: $4000/mo, 10,000 contacts
- Premium: $15,000/mo, up to 75,000 contacts
Sendinblue
Sendinblue was launched in 2012 as a solution to small-to medium businesses’ problems: automating email marketing without spending too much. It is still a feature-wise option that is being used by many companies.
Are you interested in its features? These are its features:
- Automate email workflows and send newsletters. Specific user behavior, such as clicks or opens in emails, can be used to build workflows.
- A/B testing: You can test two variations in your email subject lines and content to determine which works best for your audience.
- SMS: Send personalized SMS messages. Sendinblue can create SMS templates that include attributes. Customers will receive SMS messages with their personal information.
- Automated workflows allow you to automatically create audience lists based upon demographics, user behavior (email opened, clicked, and lead score). This feature is completely new and will speed up your testing to determine the best funnel.
- Sendinblue has a unique feature that allows you to send transactional emails. Emails designed for customers to interact with about transactions like order confirmations, password recovery, shipment notifications, and so on.
Sendinblue is a great tool for solopreneurs and small businesses. These features can be used to enhance your marketing efforts. You can continue using them until you need more advanced CRM or automation features.
Price:
- Unlimited contact for free
- Get Lite starting at $25/mo
- Premium starting at $65/mo
Klaviyo
Klaviyo has also been a popular name in marketing. The tool can be used as a multichannel marketing automation tool. Many users praise its intuitive interface and smooth operation. Klaviyo is an email marketing and SMS platform for ecommerce. This means that you can create emails and SMS using it with many personalized and optimized features.
So what are Klaviyo’s most important features?
- Email automation: Create automated email flows using behavioral data (email Click, Pop Up Click, Cart Abandonment, etc.), customer data (birthday and gender, location etc.) and integrated data (tracking, helpdesk, etc.).
- A/B testing: Test the subject lines and contents to refine your emailing.
- Email segmentation: out-of-the-box features. Segmenting emails on the basis of
There are many pre-made templates that have been well-designed.
Klaviyo is known for its easy and powerful segmentation, customization, personalization, and ability to create automated sequences. Klaviyo’s workflow, email, form and landing page builders are easy to use. Their development team is very familiar with their users. Klaviyo has a rating of 4.6 on G2 as well as a Capterra rating of 4.7.
Price: no plans. No charge for SMS and email contacts
Keap
Keap is another leading automation tool in the market for small-size-businesses. Its powerful and flexible automation capabilities, which guide leads to sales funnels, impress users. Let’s take a look at the features that Keap offers to help you save time and increase your marketing results.
Keap
Marketing automation features from Keap:
- Automated workflows are created to nurture and direct customers towards the sales funnel. “When and then” templates allow you to easily create workflows based on customer actions (clicking on a link, visiting pages, etc.).
- A/B testing: Test multiple email variables to determine the most appropriate usages (test subject lines and formats, as well as CTAs)
- Automate your sales pipelines: Use stages, scores and tags with a threshold for the best journey for all leads
Keap, a trusted provider in the automation field, has provided such reliable and efficient services to its users. Keap provided essential marketing automation for all ecommerce businesses. However, the solution interface was extremely user-friendly and lean. Both G2 and Capterra give Keap a score of 4.1/5.
Price:
- Plan for the future: Starting at $79
- Pro: Starting at $149
- Infusionsoft: Starting at $199
Wigzo
Wigzo , a SaaS-based personalized marketing automation platform that powers your ecommerce and retail brands at scale, is available as Wigzo . It’s a fully-featured customer database platform that allows e-commerce businesses to automate customer engagement via different touchpoints, such as SMS, Email On-site, WhatsApp and In-App.
Wigzo’s marketing automation tools:
- Mobile notifications: Get personalized mobile notifications to skyrocket your engagement
- Personalized notifications: Increase your website traffic by using personalized notifications. Get more people to visit your website with “Nudge” and get personalized offers and notifications via your browser and onsite. Your e-commerce website’s bounce rate can be reduced by creating custom exit-intent messages or nudges that are activated when a user leaves the browser or site.
- An onsite behavioral nudge is a way to engage anonymous site visitors by discovering and analyzing their behavior.
- Email personalization: Send personalized emails at the right time with the right content.
- Conversations: You can use Rope to chat with your customers via WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. Wigzo lets you send automated responses to your customers to support them on these platforms.
- SMS and RCS Marketing: Send timely and relevant SMS notifications based upon user identity and current behavior.
- Magic Link: Wigzo’s Magic Link is a 2-step opt-in that allows ecommerce brands to convert social media users into SMS subscribers.
- WhatsApp: Wigzo helps you to increase sales by up to 60% by recovering abandoned carts and personalizing communications.
- AI-based segmentation: Wigzo’s RFM segmentation creates efficient customer segments with purchase recency and frequency as well as monetary values.
- Voice: Use the power of your voice to increase customer engagement and conversion. You can send hyper-personalized voice calls to your customers.
Prices starting at $80/month
WebEngage
Are you searching for multi-channel marketing automation platforms? This could be a great candidate. WebEngage allows you to connect with customers and convert them into sales.
This tool has many amazing features. Let’s see:
- Email automation: Create email using a custom template maker and studio. Emails can be customized with images, videos and texts. Webengage also allows you to add personalized data to your emails, such as recommendations for products or data from the CRM.
- Web overlay designer: Create multiple customized website popups that engage customers and help them on their shopping journey
- Mobile marketing: Use push notifications to suggest products, cross-sell and upsell, or re-gain customers. In-app messages can be created with custom fields. When customers interact with your brand via mobile devices, the system will automatically fill in their personal information and send them to you.
- WhatsApp Marketing Automation: Connect with your customers using WhatsApp to help them learn about products and send offers.
- Facebook remarketing: Find promising customers on Facebook, and present them with powerful ads or messages that will take them to your online shop.
If you’re looking for a tool that is affordable and can be used to engage customers via multichannel, this could be it. This might be the tool for you.
Price:
- Solo: Contact us to receive a price
- Contact us for a price quote on Band
- Choir: Contact us to find out the price
- Orchestra: Contact us to obtain a price
Act-On
Act-On, another highly-rated marketing automation tool, is a good choice for beginners. The tool has basic and good features that can help users get to grips with automated marketing tools.
Let’s take a look at the top-point features highlighted by Act-On users:
- Automated Data Management: This allows you to collect data from many sources and channels, such as a survey, whitepaper or website, and then analyze it to predict customer behavior.
- Automated marketing program: Create workflows that include many conditions and touches in order to provide customers with an amazing experience and increase sales.
- Automated messaging: send messages based on event-related-triggered activities of customers
- Automated Lead Nurturing: Create a dynamic list of leads based on job title, engagement, or other criteria.
- Social media marketing: Create, curate and schedule social posts in one place. Analyze data from social media and listen to your audience
Act-On provides basic marketing automation services that can be used at the start of your business. The interface is easy to use for an entry-level team. It’s easy to use and can be used immediately for creating and running marketing campaigns.
Price:
- For as low as $900/mo, professional services
- Start ups: Starting at $2000/mo
Marketo
Marketo from Adobe is a powerful marketing platform. Marketo is a major player in marketing automation and offers solutions for businesses of all sizes. Marketo’s specialties include email marketing, personalization advertising and content created by AI.
These are some outstanding marketing activities this giant covers.
- Marketing automation: Automate, build, and measure workflows across multiple channels
- Account-based Marketing: Drive and engage the most important accounts from different sources using AI
- Email marketing: Create, automate, and follow up with customers to recover abandoned carts, upsell, or cross-sell
- Mobile marketing: Engage customers via their mobile devices to increase the buying cycle
- Social media: Connect with social media platforms so customers can log in and share your products to their networks. You can target the right audience based upon their interests, intent, and other factors.
- Digital ads: Personalize digital ads for potential customers via multiple channels to increase sales
- Web personalization: Respond and interact dynamically to website visitors
- AI-powered content creation: Recommend the most relevant content based upon popular web journeys, personal interests, measured content performance, and so forth.
- Sales Engage: Identify the most promising prospects to optimize your sales pipeline
Marketo can be overwhelming for new or small businesses who have not yet defined their marketing as a revenue-generating driver. Marketo is not the right tool if you’re looking for an email marketing automation tool.
Price:
- Contact us to find out the price for your selected plan
- Prime: Contact us to obtain a price
- Ultimate: Contact us to obtain a price
Hubspot Marketing Hub
Hubspot was founded in 2006 and has been a well-known name in marketing when it comes to inbound marketing. Hubspot Marketing Hub helps businesses to improve their marketing efforts and streamline their sales funnel. Let’s take an in-depth look at the feature categories of this well-known tool and see what we can do with them.
The outstanding automation features of Hubspot Marketing Hub:
- Optimize the content of multiple marketing channels such as blogs and landing pages with content optimization
- Blog creator: Create, edit, beautify, and schedule blog posts easily
- SEO tips: Get automated SEO advices to optimize SEO on your website
- Ads tracking and management: Automatically route leads to the correct track and salesperson. You must ensure that no leads are lost.
- Automate your email marketing to create targeted automated workflows that will attract and convert leads. The email workflows can be set up based on the actions of customers (submit a Form, view a Page, Click on an Ad), and customer information (pageviews or email/social media clicks etc.).
- Chat: Create personalized chatbots to engage customers. These bots can be used to answer popular questions, book video calls, and qualify leads.
Hubspot Marketing Hub offers a great solution for both medium and start-level marketing teams. Hubspot’s blog generator can be used to create a foundation for your inbound marketing or SEO. The workflows builder can be used to create customer journeys that convert and boost sales. The SEO feature is only available to Pro plans, and will run you $800 per month. The plan is expensive for many new users, which could lead to a lot of people being disappointed.
Price:
- No cost plan
- Starter: $45/mo
- Professional: $800/mo
- Enterprise: $3,200/mo
LeadSquared
LeadSquared provides an end-to–end marketing automation tool that is suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. Although the tool is primarily focused on one use, it can be used by businesses in many other ways. This tool is great for drip marketing campaigns in most cases. LeadSquared offers both basic and advanced email marketing tools that will allow you to save time and effort when it comes to one of the most crucial marketing strategies. Let’s take a look at what this package includes.
Highlights of LeadSquared:
- Marketing automation can also be known as a workflow builder. To tailor the customer journey, create a prospect workflow. From the beginning to the end, one lead is needed. Communication can be done via multiple channels, including email, SMS, social media, and other.
- Action trigger: Customers can trigger actions based upon their actions, such as opening an email or visiting a pricing page. However, there are no additional actions.
- Segmentation of prospects and leads: This is done using collected information, such as demographic profiles, interest products, wishlist products, etc.
- Recurring communication: Set up recurring email addresses for customer events. This is a great way to nurture customers or prospects.
LeadSquared also offers a powerful sales automation and management system that allows users to create automated sales workflows in order to prevent leads from being lost and increase conversion. This tool is a powerful yet simple solution for email marketing campaigns. This tool received a score of 4.5/5 in G2 and 4.2/ 5, in Capterra.
Price:
- Basic plan: $ 200/month, 10000 contacts
- Standard: $600/month; 50,000 contacts
- Enterprise: $ 1,800/month, 200,000 contacts
Select the best marketing automation tool
You should base your selection on your strategy and marketing priorities. None of the marketing tools listed above offer every feature you may need. All of these tools include the essential features for marketing automation, such as workflow creation (with tag and score and “if/then” conditional statements) and marketing assets creation (email landing page, form). These elements allow you to create your own automation system and then enrich your customer base with data from automation campaigns. You can make your marketing more effective by understanding your customers better.