Marketing automation platforms can help you streamline your business in powerful ways. Many of the tasks involved in growing your business online can be repetitive, tedious, and time-consuming. Automating these tasks will ensure important tasks get done efficiently and free up valuable time and money needed elsewhere. In this post, we’ll discuss marketing automation and the best platforms you can use for your business.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation platforms can reduce the number of tasks that a person has to do. This means that time-consuming or repetitive aspects of your business happen with less human involvement. Some marketing processes you can automate include:
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Lead generation
- Customer support with AI chatbots
Clearly, a marketing automation platform can help you stay better organized. As a result, better organization impacts workflows, teams, and projects. For example, some marketing automation platforms let you schedule automatic email sequences; this keeps your audience engaged.
Best Marketing Automation Platforms
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Depending on the size of your business and the amount of support you need, there’s a tool out there that is right for you. Unfortunately, they come in a range of prices. Therefore, features vary from one tool to another. Luckily, you can easily combine some of them with other popular platforms.
So, let’s look at some of the best marketing automation platforms on the market.
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1. HubSpot
HubSpot CRM is one of the most well-known marketing automation platforms available. For instance, it has powerful capabilities for:
- Marketers
- Sales and customer service teams
- Sales and operations managers
- Business owners
HubSpot boasts email marketing and lead-generation tools to help businesses grow. Therefore, they can easily nurture their leads and maintain communication with customers. However, it’s not just a tool for organizing a database of customer contact information.
HubSpot lets users chat with leads in real time and set up chatbots for automated, conversational marketing. It also features forms, ad management tools, analytics, and landing pages. Best of all, it’s free.
Hubspot can be integrated with WordPress and Divi, providing users with more marketing tasks.
Why Use Hubspot? Hubspot packs a lot of features into a free platform. So, it’s great for small business marketing, sales, or customer service. It’s also a good choice for business managers or solopreneurs who want to scale their businesses. Finally, if you’re ready to get started with marketing automation but don’t have a big budget, this is a great place to start.
Price: Free tools with paid plans starting as low as $18/mo
2. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is one of the more prominent marketing automation tools. It combines email automation with essential CRM functions. Beyond email marketing, ActiveCampaign includes detailed analytics. Therefore, it can help you set automation goals for your business.
Key Features:
- The ability to set Facebook custom audiences through the app
- Custom subscription forms
- Website tracking to determine customer behavior
- Dynamic and predictive content
- Lead scoring and win probability
- SMS messaging
- E-commerce automation
ActiveCampaign works well with several different sales and marketing platforms. Some of these include Shopify, PayPal, Salesforce, Facebook, and Divi, for instance. Additionally, ActiveCampaign provides businesses with detailed analytics and reporting, allowing them to track the performance of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
Furthermore, ActiveCampaign is known for its exceptional customer support, with a team of experts available to answer any questions or concerns that users may have. To put it in short, ActiveCampaign is a comprehensive marketing automation tool that can help businesses improve their customer engagement and drive growth.
Why Use ActiveCampaign? ActiveCampaign combines many of marketing’s moving parts on one clean interface. Its low price and the ability to integrate with e-commerce solutions make it a strong choice for small businesses.
Price: Starting at $29/month for Lite
3. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an all-in-one marketing platform that assists businesses in fostering customer relationships and achieving growth. Firstly, it incorporates email marketing, social media management, and website-building features. Constant Contact is renowned for its user-friendly interface and exceptional customer support. Automation+ plans (using Sharpspring, an acquired business) bring even more automation features. But the Constant Contact that small businesses use affords them simple automation in one place.
Key Features:
- Access to hundreds of email templates
- Custom subscription forms
- Real-time reporting and analytics
- Social media management tools
- Email automation and visual builder
- WooCommerce integration for store-based automations out of the box
Constant Contact integrates with several e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and Bloom. It also integrates with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Moreover, Constant Contact provides businesses with real time reporting and analytics, allowing them to track the performance of their campaigns and optimize their marketing efforts.
Why Use Constant Contact? Constant Contact is a straightforward and easy-to-use marketing platform that’s ideal for small businesses. With an affordable cost and a user-friendly interface, it is an excellent option for users who want to begin their email marketing journey.
Price: Plans start at $9.99/mo with advanced Marketing Automation+ starting at $449/mo
4. Keap
Keap is a customer relationship management (CRM) software that offers an array of features designed to help small businesses automate their sales and marketing processes. With Keap, businesses can efficiently manage their customer data, sales pipeline, and marketing campaigns in one centralized platform. You may recognize their old name, Infusionsoft.
One of the primary benefits of Keap is that it provides businesses with a comprehensive solution for their sales and marketing needs. For instance, with its lead capture, email marketing, and appointment scheduling features, businesses can streamline their sales funnel and reduce time spent on manual processes. Moreover, with its online payments feature, businesses can accept payments easily and securely, saving them the hassle of handling payments manually.
In addition, Keap offers an intuitive user interface and a wide range of customizable templates that enable businesses to personalize their communication with their customers. Furthermore, Keap provides exceptional customer support, with a dedicated team of experts available to answer any questions or concerns that users may have.
Key Features:
- Keep records of contacts
- Lead Scoring
- Check their sales pipeline
- Contact customers
- Invoice and accept payments
- Integrates perfectly with Divi
Why Use Keap? Keap is a fantastic tool for businesses that need an integrated tool. It’s essential if they want to combine marketing automation and sales.
Price: Starting at $189.00/mo
5. Adobe Marketo
Marketo is a marketing automation platform by Adobe that helps businesses attract and convert leads. It boosts revenue by zeroing in on the most engaged prospects. Therefore, it can also help you nurture and grow your relationships with your customers.
Key Features:
- Landing page builder
- Embeddable forms
- Website personalization based on CRM data
- Behavior tracking
- Social media posting tools
It lets users build and scale marketing campaigns across many channels. Therefore, it keeps leads and customers nurtured and engaged. It also works well with CRMs. In addition, Marketo provides users with a range of educational resources to help them learn the platform.
Marketo also lets users analyze how their marketing channels and campaigns are impacting their bottom line. Moreover, Marketo also offers social media management tools that enable businesses to manage their social media accounts and publish content across multiple channels from one central platform.
Why Use Marketo? Marketo is a great tool to use if you want to track your marketing channels’ impact alongside customer engagement. Of course, you’ll still need an email automation tool or a CRM integration. However, Marketo is an excellent way to work on lead conversion while also watching analytics in one place. Lastly, It’s best for larger, enterprise-sized companies.
Price: Custom pricing; contact Adobe sales
Are Marketing Automation Platforms Right for You?
| Plugin | Price | Free Option | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | Hubspot | $18/mo | ✔️ | Visit |
| 🥈 | ActiveCampaign | $29/mo | ❌ | Visit |
| 🥉 | Constant Contact | $9.99/mo | ❌ | Visit |
| 4 | Keap | $189/mo | ❌ | Visit |
| 5 | Marketo | Custom | ❌ | Visit |
A marketing automation platform can help you stay organized. It can also streamline your work processes. As your business grows, you’ll need a platform like this to help you keep up with leads, your content calendar, and so much more.
In conclusion, if you’re looking to get started with marketing automation, we recommend starting with HubSpot or ActiveCampaign, as they are great jumping-off points for marketing professionals.
Are you using a marketing automation platform yet? If so, which one? Are you thinking of trying a new one? Let us know in the comments!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Before we wrap up, let’s answer some of your most common questions regarding marketing automation platforms. Did we miss one? Leave a question below and we will respond!
What is the best marketing automation platform?
What is the best free marketing automation platform?
What is the purpose of using a marketing automation platform?
How do I choose the best marketing automation platform?
How much do marketing automation platforms cost?
What are the different types of marketing automation?
How does marketing automation reduce sales costs?
What is the best marketing automation platform for email campaigns?
How can I use marketing automation for small businesses?
What is the best marketing automation platform for social media campaigns?
Featured image via RoseRodionova / shutterstock.com
HubSpot
ActiveCampaign
Constant Contact
Valuable insights shared in this article. We are using mail chimp for email marketing. Going to use hubspot in future. Thanks for sharing these marketing automation platforms. 🙂
Great effort!! We are using Hubspot, and it is helpfull, althoug values differ from those of Google interfaces.
Fantastic – I’m glad it’s helping. 🙂 Thanks for reading!