Marketing is what reflects your brand in front of your prospects and customers. Marketers spend most of their time connecting and engaging with prospects, managing customer information, and capturing more leads. And that’s where Marketing Automation enters the picture. 

If you still aren’t using marketing Automation for your business, you’re certainly missing out on many opportunities. 

In fact, 75% of the companies are using marketing automation, which proves that you need to implement the best marketing automation software right away if you want to gain a competitive edge! 

What is marketing automation? 

Marketing automation covers a broad spectrum of tasks; prospecting, engaging with leads, understanding their preferences, and maintaining lasting relationships to convert them into paying customers. 

Managing all these aspects of marketing isn’t an easy feat; you need a streamlined process that helps you increase your productivity. 

Marketing automation is software that enables you to put all your menial tasks on autopilot, so you can save more time and focus on high-intent leads. You can automate the prospecting process, maintain constant engagement with automated personalized emails, and nurture leads with useful resources. The below image represents what marketing automation can do for your business! 

A marketing automation tool streamlines the entire marketing process for you with advanced automation and eliminates the dependency on manual tasks. 

Essential features of an ideal marketing automation system 

Marketing automation takes an omnichannel approach that automates every single process, from prospecting to capturing leads. Though, in order for marketing automation software to work its full potential, it needs to possess certain features. Hence, here’s what ideal marketing automation should look like. 

• Visitor tracking – To provide a personalized user experience, you need to be aware of your prospect’s interest. The visitor tracking feature provides insight into the behavior-tracking of every visitor on your website to examine which prospect is interested in which aspect of your product or service. 
• Lead management and scoring – An ideal marketing automation tool help you focus on important leads by scoring them based on their actions and preferences. Lead scoring enables you to manage your leads based on their interest in your product or service and assign them further to close business. 
• Campaign management – Are you running an email marketing campaign? Then you can manage the campaign with email tracking, which provides a report on email clicks and opens so you can analyze the performance. 
• Lead nurturing – To encourage your leads into purchasing your product or service, it’s essential to nurture them at every touchpoint. So, you can use sequences to set up a series of emails that provides value to them. 
• Organized workflow – A prospect goes through multiple stages before they become a customer, and automation software helps you have a streamlined workflow by defining every step of the process. 
• Trigger responses – One of the main aspects of successful marketing is responding to prospects and customers in real-time. You can schedule a time and date when you want to interact with your clients, so you don’t lose them. 
• Personalized engagement – When dealing with prospects, personalization is the key. Personalized emails and messages make a vast difference in building your brand presence. 

So, with these essential features in a marketing automation software system, you can certainly achieve your marketing goals! 

Factors to consider when choosing a marketing automation software 

You want to adopt marketing automation software in your business, now what? Well, you need the best marketing automation software for your business, one that fits your requirement and works well with the team as well. So, below are the factors that you need to consider before picking marketing automation software. 

Pricing 

Automation software’s main role is to make your work easier. However, it should also be within your price range. After all, your main vision is business growth, which requires a marketing automation tool that’s affordable as well as scalable. 

You can start with a basic plan, and later on, you can upgrade it once your business starts growing. This ensures that the software will be accessible at every stage of your business without hampering the process. 

Integrations 

You must be already using a CRM or some other tool for managing all your leads and information. So, it’s imperative to find out whether the automation software you have picked integrates with your current system or not. Integration is important as you don’t want to spend your time in transferring the data and making the process more complex. Hence, pick a marketing automation software that works best with your existing tools. 

Usability  

Marketing automation should make your entire process simpler, not the other way around. Therefore, it’s crucial to inquire about the ease of using automation software, so your team doesn’t have any problem accessing the software. You can also ask for the screenshots of the UX so you have a clear idea of how the process and flow of the automation software will work out. 

Analytics and reporting 

Statistics and data drive every business, so you need marketing automation software that provides actionable insights on your drip campaigns, email marketing performance, and other metrics to track the performance. 

Support 

After all, marketing automation does require a certain amount of time and effort. So, pick a marketing automation software that comes with a solid customer support team. You must be able to have access to the tutorials, downloadable resources, and demos for the marketing automation software. In addition, good automation software also has a ready-to-assist customer support team. 

Best marketing automation tools for growing business

1. Marketo

Marketo Engage by Adobe is a leading marketing automation tool that offers numerous automation features for every growing business. It’s a powerful marketing automation tool with salient features such as email marketing, lead nurturing and scoring, and analytics. 

Moreover, Marketo also offers advanced features like mobile engagement, web retargeting, and content personalization. This marketing automation system is mainly ideal for enterprise customers; however businesses of all sizes can implement Marketo. 

Price – Marketo provides a customer pricing plan based on Database size. Find out more here. 

2. Pardot 

Pardot by Salesforce is yet another robust B2B marketing automation tool. Pardot enables the marketing and sales team to collaborate, engage buyers, close more deals, and build lasting relationships. 

Pardot possesses powerful features including lead management and generation, email marketing, sales alignment, Artificial Intelligence, insightful ROI reporting to close more business and shorten the sales cycle. Pardot helps improve marketing efficiency and is preferred by large-scale enterprises. 

Price – Growth plan $1250/mo 

Plus plan – $2500/mo 

Advanced – $4000/mo  

Premium – $15000/mo 

3. ActiveCampaign

ActivveCampaign is an ideal marketing automation tool that offers simplified and advanced automation processes with automated follow-ups, powerful integrations, and contact segmentation. 

One of the best features of this marketing automation system is that it provides flexible marketing automation functionality. Hence, you can set up different marketing automation flows and personalize them with 500+ pre-built automation, email template library, and contact management. 

ActiveCampaign is an effective marketing automation software, though it certainly requires time and effort in learning the process. 

Price – Lite plan $9/mo 

Plus plan $49/mo 

Professional – $129/mo 

Enterprise – $229/mo 

4. Hubspot 

When it comes to marketing automation tools, HubSpot is the one leading the market. HubSpot marketing automation helps you create powerful automated workflows with a simple and visual interface. 

It automates repetitive tasks and helps your business grow with automated email drip campaigns, personalized workflows, lead scoring, analytics, and much more. HubSpot’s powerful marketing automation tool provides an all-inclusive plan that works for every business to scale their revenue and eliminate dependency for manual tasks. 

Price – Started plan $45/mo 

Professional plan $800/mo 

Enterprise plan $3200/mo 

5. Mailchimp 

Mailchimp is one of the best marketing automation platforms for growing businesses. It helps you automate the repetitive tasks so you can focus on closing more deals. 

Mailchimp offers features like automated marketing emails, targeted ad campaigns, building landing pages, personalized engagement, and reporting and analytics. Mailchimp is ideal if you want to build a lasting customer relationship as it offers a user-friendly tool that is AI-powered. 

Price – Free plan 

Essentials plan for $9.99/mo 

Standard plan for $14.99/mo 

Premium plan for $ 299/mo 

6. SharpSpring

SharpSpring is a simplified and robust marketing automation platform for businesses of all sizes. It’s focused on sales and marketing automation that helps companies boost their conversion rate and deliver enhanced customer experience. 

SharpSpring offers an omnichannel approach to automation with features like behavior-based email marketing, workflow builder, visitor tracking, CRM integration, and actionable reports to build a better marketing strategy. Basically, you can achieve every marketing goal as it automates your entire marketing process. 

Price – Starts at $399/mo and can be customized as per the requirements. 

7. Omnisend

Omnisend is an ecommerce automation tool with robust automation workflows, pre-built automation for cart abandonment, transaction emails, welcome series, and more. 

Omnisend is an omnichannel marketing tool with features such as customer segmentation, email and SMS marketing, and integrates with many ecommerce platforms like Bigcommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento among others. It’s the perfect marketing automation platform for automation email marketing campaigns.  

Price – Free plan 

Standard $16/mo 

Pro – $99/mo 

Enterprise – Custom pricing 

8. Oracle Eloqua

Oracle Eloqua is here to streamline your marketing and sales activities. It’s a versatile marketing automation platform that enables you to efficiently manage cross-channel B2B marketing campaigns and nurture leads at every step. 

Oracle Eloqua is one of the best marketing automation software with features such as customer segmentation, lead management, Advanced Intelligence, Sales and marketing alignment, and marketing measurement. If you want to scale your revenue and build strong customer relationships, Oracle Eloqua is perfect for enterprises that don’t have budget restrictions. 

Price – Basic plan $2000/mo 

Standard plan $4000/mo 

9. User.com

User.com is an advanced marketing automation platform for Enterprises, small businesses, agencies, and businesses of any size. It helps you increase your conversion rate by engaging with prospects and clients and streamlining the entire process. 

Its omnichannel functionalities include email marketing, visitor tracking, live chat, smart automation, analytics, and much more! User.com is affordable and effective for business growth. 

Price – free plan  

Personal plan for $49/mo 

Busines plan for – $249/mo 

Premium plan for $1349/mo 

10. GetResponse 

GeResponse is one of the best marketing automation software for email marketing. It’s been in the market for over 20 years and provides excellent functionality to its users. 

The product features are all-inclusive – email marketing, marketing automation, autoresponders, email analytics, and personalized engagement. This marketing automation tool can certainly get generate desired results, and it’s user-friendly with solid customer support. 

Price – Basic plan for $15/mo 

Plus plan for $49/mo 

Professional plan for $99/mo 

Max plan provides custom rates. 

11. SendX 

SendX is an innovative software for marketing automation. This automation platform is one of a kind, with the simplest UI and efficient tool for increasing your outreach. 

You can send unlimited email campaigns, automated email drip campaigns, segment audiences, and build your email list to grow your customer base. Moreover, SendX provides pre-built email templates, personalization, and much more. 

Price – Business plan starting at $99.99/mo 

12. Autopilot 

Autopilot is one of the best marketing automation software for every business. You can automate the entire customer journey with Autopilot’s advanced automation and engage better with your customers and prospects.  

It’s one of the simplest marketing automation platforms with intuitive features such as lead segmentation, building automated customer journey, real-time collaboration with team, email marketing and marketing automation. With Autopilot’s personalized emails and actionable insights, you can take your business to next level. 

Price – Silver plan for $49/mo 

Gold plan for $149/mo 

Platinum plan for 4249/mo 

13. Ontraport 

Ontraport is a perfect combination with an advanced CRM and marketing automation platform. It provides seamless user experience and helps you automate your entire marketing process without any hassle. 

With features like marketing automation, email marketing, CRM, reporting, landing pages and ecommers, Ontraport is one of the ideal marketing automation tools for small businesses, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs. 

Price – Basic plan for $79/mo 

Plus plan for $147/mo 

Pro plan for $297/mo 

Enterprise plan for $497/mo 

14. Drip 

Drip prides itself on offering advanced automation for ecommerce companies. It provides a unified channel for managing all your data, executing automated email marketing, and personalizing it as per your company’s requirements. 

The features of Drip include automation workflows, One-off emails, email campaigns, email builders multi-channel marketing, and insightful analytics to perform better. If you’re an ecommerce company, then you certainly need to check out Drip. 

Price – starting at $19/mo 

Other excellent automation tools you need for your business 

Every business has its unique requirements when it comes to automation and the marketing process. While some businesses work at an optimal level with an omnichannel marketing automation platform, certain businesses only need certain features to scale their business.  

So, we’ve also compiled a list of automation tools that offers value to your business and helps you grow at an exponential rate. 

1. Referral Candy 

Referral marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing channels out there. It essentially allows you to turn your customer base into your sales team, helping you acquire new customers while retaining your existing ones. 

Traditional referral programs offer an incentive for existing customers to refer their friend (typically a discount towards a future purchase) while also offering a discount to the referred friend on their first purchase. 

Referral Candy allows ecommerce brands to set up and run referral programs on autopilot. Referral Candy provides each customer with a unique referral link so they can refer their friends. Once a friend has successfully been referred and has made a purchase for the first time, Referral Candy sends out referral rewards automatically. 

Price: 30 day free trial, then $49/month + commision on referral sales (from 5% to 0.25% as referral sales grow) 

2. Biteable 

Biteable is an online video maker and slideshow maker that’s super easy to use and gives you the power to make jaw-dropping videos in minutes. Streamlined and feature-packed, Biteable is the best way to make pro-looking videos or slideshows for your business. Whether you’re a beginner at making videos and slideshows, or a seasoned expert, Biteable empowers you to create stunning content for your business in minutes.  

Get started by picking a template — there are hundreds to choose from, all created by Biteable’s team of industry-trained copywriters and designers who know what makes a compelling video or presentation. Whether you need a video to market your upcoming sale or an accompanying video for your company update to your team, there’s a template for just about everything. All that’s left for you to do is tweak the text, throw in your brand colors, and export.  

Or you can start with a blank canvas. There are 1.8 million stock images and clips for you to make the perfect video. An in-house team of animators regularly updates biteable’s library of fully customizable animations. Each animation can be customized in a snap to suit your brand and message. 

Check out Biteable without spending a dime. Sign up for a basic membership to start creating and exporting videos. And upgrade to a premium membership later on if you’d like to remove the watermark. 

3. WebinarKit

With marketing automation, there are tons of top-of-funnel tools and tactics to generate quality leads. But if we’re talking about that bottom-funnel near-purchase decision, we need a tactic to engage and close the lead. One of the best tools for that is WebinarKit. It’s a lightweight and cheap automated webinar platform. It enables you to direct your lead into the automated webinar and attractively present your offer at exactly the right time.  

The beauty of automated webinars is that you can set up a pre-recorded session, set up some chat messages and polls for interactivity. And most importantly – set up your offering exactly when the attendee is at their highest peak of interest. This naturally follows the pre-recorded presentation video. The webinar sessions are usually launched every 15 minutes, so whenever a lead arrives on a landing page, the webinar is always just about to start. 

4. Niftypm 

Nifty is an all-inclusive workflow management solution to ensure that your team can stay organized with all of its ongoing marketing activities. In Nifty, teams can create milestones to ensure marketing plans are on schedule, manage daily and recurring tasks in a kanban, scrumban, or agile fashion and lastly manage all essential documents as well as create new creative content in the Nifty docs module.  

The beauty of Nifty is that it’s incredibly easy to use, and if you’re working with freelancers and guests, they don’t count on your software subscription, making it an incredibly affordable solution for marketing organizations with a focus on client management and results. 

5. Respona 

Marketing automation doesn’t mean you have to automate an entire process. Marketing automation can mean streamlining a currently manual process to help you scale and become more efficient. This is what Respona does when it comes to link building and public relations outreach. Scaling the rate at which you build backlinks can do wonders for your off-page SEO. 

 
When actively link building, you rely on a lot of manual research to find the right opportunities to reach out to. Additionally, finding contact information is a whole other monster. By centralizing the process of building an outreach campaign into just four steps, Respona can be used by all levels of marketers. Start by either finding content through a live search engine or import your own lists of prospects. Then create your own custom pitch with automated follow-ups. Before you personalize and launch your campaign, use contact automation to find email addresses and social media profiles, all on auto-pilot. 

Conclusion 

When it comes to the marketing aspect of a business, there’s a wide array of possibilities and tools. As It’s an essential step for any business, a marketing automation tool streamlines the entire customer journey to provide an enhanced user experience and increase customer retention. 

While there are a lot of options to choose from, you need to consider your company’s requirements and then pick the best marketing automation software that caters to your business. The list of marketing automation software we have provided covers all the criteria of an ideal marketing automation tool, so you can go with the software that fits your budget, requirements and provides additional support to your company. 

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