Marketers know that anything that makes your job easier is a good thing. Therefore, it is critical to know the best marketing automation software to make your marketing efforts more efficient and effective for your whole team.
What is Marketing Automation Software?
Marketing professionals use marketing automation tools to engage with their audience more effectively and personalize the experience for customers.
Marketing teams use various types of software to automate repetitive tasks. For example, some things you can do with marketing automation software are automatically send out emails to your customers or prospects, post on social media, and run tiered campaigns. Some of these products also offer email verification services, so you can avoid wasting time and money on duplicate or unusable email addresses.
What are the Key Features to Look for with Marketing Automation Software?
When looking for the best marketing automation software, it's essential to know what makes it the best. Overall, the program should include features such as customer/prospect management (CRM), social media marketing, workflow management, email marketing, and mobile marketing.
Some other key features to look for when reviewing popular marketing tools are:
Powerful Database
An easy-to-use database to enter customer or prospect information. You should be able to easily find, filter, and sort these into lists for target marketing. In some cases, your marketing tool may also be the best CRM software you can find.
Analytics
The software should also have a way to measure your efforts by showing you metrics such as how many customers opened, clicked, or deleted the message. These analytics are critical to your success because they provide a roadmap of what campaigns work and those that fall short.
Intelligence/Engagement Engine
The software should also have some sort of intelligence to help drive your efforts by seeing patterns in the results of your campaigns and the ability to predict behavior to some degree. Some of these programs use AI for predictive analysis.
Support
Any software worth its salt should also have excellent support if something goes wrong. Look for multiple ways to access support such as forums, chat, ticketing system, phone, and email.
Security and privacy
You should be able to control who uses the software easily and to what degree. A secure, private program is going to be better all around. Many of them work online in the cloud, so be sure to vet them properly to ensure the safety of your data.
Other nice-to-haves are integrations to use your marketing automation with other apps and programs you regularly use for business. A clean, easy-to-use interface is also valuable. Pricing will also be a concern. Find a program that provides you with the best value between price and features. The bottom line is, what are you getting for your money?
The Best Marketing Automation Tools
Below are the services that we think are the best marketing automation tools on the market.
- HubSpot Marketing Automation
- SendinBlue
- ActiveCampaign
- Keap
- Drip
- Mailchimp
- Bloomreach
- GetResponse
- Omnisend
- Klaviyo
1. HubSpot Marketing Automation
HubSpot Marketing Automation tops the list of the best marketing automation tools. Customers and critics love the software because it is packed full of features that all work seamlessly with HubSpot's built-in CRM.
Along with its many powerful features, HubSpot has a healthy blog and dozens of resources with helpful tips for users. For example, you could easily find something to help you get started on how to set up email automation in a CRM.
The tool uses powerful templates to set up email marketing campaigns. You can choose from canned emails or customize your own. The tool integrates seamlessly with the built-in CRM and helps to grow sales through social media marketing and customer management. The cloud-based service is a full-featured solution great for any marketing team looking to level up its game.
HubSpot Marketing automation costs $50/month and is great for small to medium-sized companies looking to create a marketing plan and specific workflows.
✅ PROS:
- Feature-rich.
- Email marketing.
- Sales building.
- Marketing automation.
- CRM integration.
- Social media marketing built in.
- A/B testing.
⛔️ CONS:
- Relies heavily on list building.
- Expensive.
- Not easy to learn for the beginner.
2. SendinBlue
SendinBlue's roots are steeped in digital marketing, and as they grew, they developed tools to help their customers work more effectively. Now SendinBlue is a reputable, trustworthy marketing automation software that's not only easy-to-use but affordable too.
SendinBlue makes it easy to segment your audience and create automated email marketing campaigns for targeted groups. Customers love their reporting and lead scoring features. Unlike other skimpy free plans, this one is very usable and includes a lot of great features.
The company also offers outstanding phone support if you run into trouble. Overall, SendinBlue is an excellent option for marketing teams focused on email and SMS-based marketing.
Along with its robust free plan, SendinBlue offers a $25/month plan with additional features, a full-fledged plan at $65/month, and provides enterprise pricing.
✅ PROS:
- Email and SMS marketing.
- Chat feature to connect with your customers.
- Consolidated inbox to keep everything organized.
- CRM built in.
- Marketing automation.
- Segmentation.
- Landing pages.
- Signup forms.
- Facebook Ads.
⛔️ CONS:
- No social media marketing.
- No sales intelligence (AI assistance).
- No search marketing.
- Other than documentation, not a lot of helpful resources to get started.
- Not available on every platform.
3. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a powerhouse of marketing automation (similar to HubSpot), and they serve more than 130,000 businesses in 170 countries. They offer email marketing, marketing automation, and a built-in CRM. ActiveCampaign gets high marks across the board for effective email campaigns.
The platform includes everything you need to create top-notch deliverable email marketing to your customers. However, the interface is not for everyone. Although this is a powerful solution, it takes some learning to use all the fancy features. However, if you want an effective way to really engage well with your audience, ActiveCampaign is the tool to use.
Pricing starts at $9/month for businesses with less than 500 contacts. They also have plans ranging from $49/month - $229/month with added features as you step up the tiers. Each pricing tier is geared towards specific marketing goals. For example, they have Sales Suite, a Marketing Suite, and a Service Suite combining all the features you need to get the job done.
✅ PROS:
- Comprehensive email marketing solution.
- High deliverability scores for emails.
- Relatively affordable.
- Plans geared toward specific goals.
- 14-day FREE trial.
- Tons of training resources (video, live, webinars, docs, etc.).
⛔️ CONS:
- No search marketing.
- No sales intelligence feature.
- Can't customize your CTAs.
- No free plan.
4. Keap (formerly InfusionSoft)
Keap, which started out as InfusionSoft, is an all-in-one CRM marketing automation tool designed to help you grow your business. The platform combines a powerful CRM with marketing, sales automation, and payments. Keap boasts of consolidating all your marketing efforts (lead capture, customer information, email and SMS campaigns, calendar booking, invoices, and payments, etc.) under one hood.
Keap wants your business and will migrate your entire marketing automation system over from a bunch of competitor's sites. Critics rave about Keap's support and training resources. The company is not a newcomer, it's been around for more than 15 years, and during that time, they have learned a lot about lead generation and marketing automation. A few weak areas, however, are their reporting features and too few templates to customize.
Keap has three pricing plans one for $40/month (up to 500 contacts and 1 user), an $80/month plan with added features, and a $100/month plan with all the bells and whistles. Each added user costs an additional $30/each.
✅ PROS:
- 14-day free trial.
- Includes payments and invoicing.
- Lead capture is a powerful feature.
- Good resources and support.
- Free migration from other platforms.
- Supports complex marketing automation.
⛔️ CONS:
- Weak reporting features.
- Expensive.
- Not enough templates.
5. Drip
Drip is another up-and-coming marketing automation company that caters to e-commerce brands. Unfortunately, they only offer a web-based tool with no apps for installs on other platforms. However, they do offer a free trial, so you can try it before you buy. Drip provides email and SMS marketing geared towards e-commerce sales techniques. They claim to have 30,000 marketers using Drip that have generated $1 billion using the tool.
The platform is easy-to-use and effective using templated email campaigns or SMS texts. The system has many canned marketing automations built-in, but you can customize them to fit your needs. You aren't penned in with any restrictions. The platform seamlessly integrates with BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Shopify, among others. Drip is an excellent tool for budding e-commerce companies looking to drive sales.
Pricing starts at $19/month for up to 500 contacts. They also offer a 14-day free trial.
✅ PROS:
- Plenty of training options.
- Multi-channel marketing campaigns.
- Market segmentation.
⛔️ CONS:
- No free version.
- Web-only version, no apps.
- Good support options (email, forum, knowledge base, and chat).
- Geared toward e-commerce users only.
6. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is another all-in-one marketing service geared towards helping small businesses grow. For a long time, Mailchimp has been the best email marketing service out there.
The platform offers a whole suite of tools for any sized marketing team to target specific audiences and automate email campaigns. As a bonus, the service also offers landing pages and postcards for even more ways to engage with your audience.
Mailchimp even uses AI to help suggest and create tailored content for your target market. Some big-name brands use Mailchimp because it has been a leader in the industry for a long time. As a result, customers trust Mailchimp to provide everything a marketing team needs to succeed. The bottom line is you can't go wrong with Mailchimp.
Pricing starts at $9/month and goes up to $299/month. However, they also offer a full-fledged free plan that small businesses can use to get started until they grow their audience.
✅ PROS:
- AI-powered insights.
- User-friendly interface.
- Landing pages.
- Postcards.
- Powerful reporting and analytics.
- Free plan is quite good.
- E-commerce support.
- A/B testing.
- Integrations with website forms.
⛔️ CONS:
- Campaign tracking needs work.
- Email templates could be improved.
7. Bloomreach
Another marketing automation company you may or may not have heard of is Bloomreach. The company boasts of powering 25% of U.S. and UK e-commerce experiences, notably Puma, Staples, and Bosch, to name a few. Bloomreach digs deep into the customer data space using sophisticated algorithms to predict buying behaviors and help businesses target customers even before they know they want to buy something.
The platform specializes in event marketing, content creation, personalizing email campaigns, A/B testing, and product discovery. Customers give Bloomreach high marks for support and feel like the interface and setting up a marketing plan is quite easy.
Unlike competitors, Bloomreach does not list its pricing online. Instead, you must contact them for customized pricing based on the size of your audience and your needs.
✅ PROS:
- Marketing automation is highly rated.
- Event marketing specialty.
- Headless CMS with APIs.
- Powerful AI engine.
- B2B targeting.
- Dynamic landing pages.
- Excellent support.
⛔️ CONS:
- Users complain about landing pages and forms.
- SEO and analytics could be better.
- Poor social media marketing tools.
- No prices are listed online. Only offers customized pricing.
- No free plan.
8. GetResponse
GetResponse is a viable choice when looking for the best marketing automation software. They offer an easy-to-use platform that allows customers to set up email campaigns and target specific groups quickly. They have recently added chat and SMS to their lineup of features. You can even set up auto-responder emails quickly and easily using the platform. This company also supports e-commerce solutions.
The features are very usable, but if your main goal is analytics to get a better handle on your marketing efforts, GetResponse may not be the best choice. The weakest part of the service is in the analytics and reporting arena.
Pricing starts at $15/month for up to 1,000 contacts, and then they have a $49/month plan, a $99/month plan, and customized pricing for larger organizations.
✅ PROS:
- Chat and SMS messaging.
- A/B testing.
⛔️ CONS:
- No free plan.
- No 24/7 phone support.
- Analytics are lacking.
9. Omnisend
Omnisend is a genuine marketing automation service that positions itself as way more than an email platform. They help drive sales using pre-built automation, transactional emails, segmentation, SMS messages, and more. Samsung and Hallmark use Omnisend for their marketing automation. Omnisend stands out as being very easy to use, even for beginners.
Setting up is a breeze, and if you run into trouble, you have access to their excellent support team. Another huge feature is that Omnisend fully integrates with many popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, keeping everything in one place. They can even handle migrating all your data over for you. Omnisend has a solid customer base, and it keeps growing.
The company offers a robust free plan you can use, or you can pay between $16-$99/month for more features. They also offer enterprise pricing.
✅ PROS:
- Integration with e-commerce platforms.
- Automation workflows.
- Great support.
- User-friendly interface.
- Email marketing.
⛔️ CONS:
- Templates need some work.
10. Klaviyo
Customers find Klaviyo relatively easy to use and set up. The interface is clean, and the dashboard puts all the critical information in one place. Like many other marketing solutions, Klaviyo offers SMS messaging and email templates to get started with automated campaigns. It also easily integrates with some popular e-commerce platforms.
Along with great features, including live chat, Klaviyo offers tips and marketing trends resources for professionals looking for a leg up over the competition.
Klaviyo has a pricing calculator on its website, and you simply enter your list size, and it shows you the price. For example, 500 contacts will cost you $20/month. A list of 50,000 contacts will jump to $700/month.
✅ PROS:
- SMS text messaging.
- In-app notifications.
- Live chat function.
- Easy integration with e-commerce platforms.
- Powerful segmentation engine.
- Forms and personalized emails.
⛔️ CONS:
- Social sharing features are lackluster.
- Lacks advanced metrics without hard coding of your website.
- Needs better templates.
- No integration for Magento.
- Pricey. Cost is based on the number of contacts.
- They charge extra for SMS messaging services.
Marketing Automation FAQs
What is marketing automation software?
Marketing automation software is programs designed to automate routine marketing tasks such as email campaigns and social media posts. The goals of marketing automation software are to make your job more efficient while also providing insights to drive your marketing efforts and engage more tightly with your audience, essentially leading to sales.
Which is the best marketing automation tool?
The best marketing automation tool depends on your needs. Some are stronger in one area and weaker in others. Review the list above to decide which fits your needs and budget the best.
Who uses marketing automation software?
Marketing professionals and salespeople use marketing automation software. Managers also use it for analytics and reporting to see how specific advertising campaigns are doing and where to make changes.
What is an example of marketing automation?
An example of marketing automation would be you visiting a popular online store and looking at a product a few times. Then you receive an email about that product, or you see it pop up in your social media feed. Marketing professionals target customers who may be on the fence about buying and using marketing automation software; they can put that product back in front of the customer to help them decide to buy.
Regardless of the software you use, marketing automation can significantly enhance your marketing efforts and turn prospects into customers quickly and easily.