5 Best Marketing Automation Platforms for Your Business
Marketing automation platforms can help you streamline your business. Automatic marketing tasks can save you significant time and money.
Using a marketing automation platform for your business can help you get your time back from time-draining tasks. Something every business owner (or marketing person) posting manually can attest is a must.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation platforms remove all or part of the human component. This means that time-consuming or repetitive parts of your business happen with less human involvement. Some marketing processes you can automate include:
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Lead management
- Customer support
A marketing automation platform can help you stay better organized. As a result, better organization impacts workflows, teams, and projects. Some marketing automation platforms let you schedule automatic email sequences. This keeps your audience engaged. Others let you automate chats between your business and your customers.
Best Marketing Automation Platforms
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. They come at a range of prices. Therefore, features vary from one tool to another. You can easily combine some of them with other popular platforms.
Let’s take a look at some of the best marketing automation platforms on the market.
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. It’s not just a tool for organizing a database of customer contact information.
HubSpot lets users chat with leads in real-time, as well as set up chatbots for automated, conversational marketing. It features forms, ad management tools, analytics, and landing pages as well. Best of all, it’s free.
Hubspot can be integrated with WordPress, which is a bonus for Divi users looking to streamline more marketing tasks.
Why Use Hubspot? Hubspot packs a lot of features into a free platform. 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. 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 | More Information
2. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is one of the prominent marketing automation tools. It combines email automation with CRM functions. Beyond email marketing, ActiveCampaign includes detailed analytics. Therefore, it can help you set automation goals for your business.
Some of ActiveCampaigns most prominent features include:
- 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
- Ecommerce automation
ActiveCampaign works well with several different sales and marketing platforms. Some of these include Shopify, PayPal, Salesforce, Facebook, and more, for instance.
Why Use ActiveCampaign? ActiveCampaign combines many of marketing’s moving parts on one clean interface. Its low price and the ability to integrate with ecommerce solutions make it a strong choice for small businesses.
Price: Starting at $9.00/month for Lite, with Plus, Professional, and Enterprise options | More Information
3. Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft is a CRM for small businesses. It integrates marketing, business automation, sales, and contact management in one dashboard. Users can build automatic email sequences. They can also:
- Keep records of contacts
- Score leads
- Check their sales pipeline
- Contact customers
- Invoice and accept payments
Infusionsoft is a content management system, marketing automation software, and sales automation platform. Users can see their Infusionsoft dashboard from any device.
Why Use Infusionsoft? Infusionsoft is a fantastic tool for businesses that need an integrated tool. It’s really important if they want to combine marketing automation and sales.
Price: Starting at $199.00/month | More Information
4. Pardot
Pardot is one powerful marketing automation tools geared toward larger businesses. For instance, it features:
- Lead capture forms
- A central dashboard for your marketing automation
- Email marketing
- Customizable landing pages for bringing in more leads
The catch: you need to be a Salesforce customer to access Pardot.
The Pardot dashboard lets users:
- Deliver dynamic content
- Track engagement
- Optimize marketing campaigns
- Personalize communication with leads
Pardot features lead scoring that shows you your strongest leads. It can also track lead activity. In addition, its alerts help you know when to get in touch with each one. Additionally, Pardot includes templates to help make your marketing easier.
Why Use Pardot? If you have a mid- to large-size business, then Pardot could be a great pick for you. Pardot is only available to Salesforce customers. As a result, if you’re considering or already using Salesforce, choosing Pardot could be a step in the right direction.
Price: Starting at $1250.00/month | More Information
5. 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 help you nurture and grow your relationships with your customers, too.
Some of Marketo’s features include:
- Landing pages
- Forms
- Web personalization
- Behavior tracking
- Search marketing
- Social media
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.
Marketo also lets users analyze how their marketing channels and campaigns are impacting their bottom line.
Why Use Marketo? Marketo is a great tool to use if you want to track your marketing channels’ impact alongside customer engagement. 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. It’s best for larger, enterprise-sized companies.
Price: Price based on size of database | More Information
Are Marketing Automation Platforms Right for You?
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.
Are you using a marketing automation platform yet? If so, which one? Are you thinking of trying something new? Let us know in the comments!
Featured image via RoseRodionova / shutterstock.com
