Top 15 Marketing Automation Tools to Look at This Year

Marketing is the indispensable business function that powers up the visibility of the brand. Marketing enables it to acquire new customers and build business accounts. The success of every business depends on how powerful its marketing is.

Advantages of marketing:

1) It creates brand awareness

• There is no doubt that as a business owner you want your product or service must be known so that you will have potential consumers.
• If your product and service are unknown to the community then you should use marketing tactics to establish awareness for your service or product.
• Good marketing strategies provide you a chance to be discovered by many potential buyers.

2) It increases sales

•  Once you have created awareness for your product or service now it’s time to increase sales chances.
• If you properly use marketing strategies then there is a chance that new customers will tell their family and friends about your service and product. It will boost sales.

3) Gives you healthy competition

• If you use the marketing approach properly then it will create room in the marketplace for healthy competition.
• When you introduced your product in this market place it not only reaches potential customers but also other companies who are in the same industry.
• Marketing provides a chance for both small and new businesses to grow, enter and sustain in the marketplace.

Digital marketing and the need for automation

In digital marketing, you can effectively use marketing automation tools to automate marketing actions. This ensures faster and targeted results at a fraction of the cost of manual efforts in traditional marketing. Right from lead generation to ‘middle-of-the-funnel’ activities, marketing automation uses a strategic series of delivery of content and interaction at the right time to help boost conversion and sales.

Before checking out the different automation tools, let’s first understand what marketing automation tools are.

Marketing Automation Tools

Sometimes many marketing departments have to automate repetitive tasks like emails, social media, and website actions. The marketing automation tools make these tasks easier, impactful, and efficient.

Such software automatically manages marketing procedures and multifunctional campaigns across multiple channels. These marketing automation tools actually let you execute a digital marketing strategy without manually pressing “send” on each and every email, message, campaign, or web post you create.

Benefits of Marketing Automation Tools

• It helps in increasing revenue and maximizing efficiency.
• When effectively employed, these automation tools reduce the chances of human errors and help in lead generation
•  Employees can now spend more time on higher-order issues.
• It can save time and resources, drive revenue, and boost ROI.

Which are the Top Marketing Automation Tools?

If you are in search of new and easy ways to streamline your marketing functions then you can utilize the following marketing automation tools. These tools have power-packed features and automated workflows. So, it will not allow marketing to become a headache for you. Let’s have a brief overview of each tool one by one.

1) Customer.io

• Customer.io is an email marketing automation tool that lets you send more timely and targeted emails to your consumers.
• With customer.io, you can send one-to-one targeted messages, or broadcast messages, or you can win back your customers who have become inactive for a long.

Features

• It can easily integrate with a smartphone app or website. This assists in real-time data analysis. It also causes distinct actions by implementing rules that have already been configured with the tool.
• It adds a lot of personalization to the mail, to ensure effectiveness.
• It also incorporates split testing, client profiles, conversation tracking, and contextual customer engagement.
  You can also perform complete segmentation with the help of a visual segment builder provided by this tool.

Pricing

The cost of this tool actually depends on how many email lists you use.

Typically, there are two plan

A) $150/month (basic)

The basic plan includes,

• 12,000 profiles
• Send unlimited emails
• Send SMS, Push, Slack, Webhook
• Technical Support

B)$1000/month (premium)

The premium plan includes,

• Deliverability control + all basic features
• 175,000 profiles
• Dedicated IPs
• Dedicated customer success Mgr.
• Premium technical support

2) Constant Contact

• Constant Contact is a feature-rich automation tool specifically for email marketing. It can help you in keeping your audience engaged and builds strong customer relationships.
• Constant Contact helps marketers transcend beyond the routine with unique features.

Features

• It will allow you to enjoy Facebook fan promotions along with coupons, deals, donations, online surveys, and managing events.
• It also allows editing messages and can make use of an auto-responder to drive more traffic.
• You can also do tracking of your email marketing results in real-time and can improve results very quickly.

Pricing

•  The tools charge $20 every month for less than 501 contacts for only email marketing. Users need to pay $45/month to access all its unique functionalities.
•  Between 501 to less than 2,501 contacts, the only email advertising service price is $45/month. All services are accessible at $70/month.
•  Users requiring between 2,501 to 5,000 contacts are charged $65 monthly for email advertising and $95/month to get complete access to services.
• Users requiring between 5,001 to 10,000 contacts are charged $95 every month. If users need full access for all services, the users are charged $125/month.

3) Pardot

• Pardot is an email marketing automation suite from the Salesforce Company.
• It is the perfect choice when you want to boost your revenue.

Features

•  It let you streamline lead management and smarter lead generation by improving your engagement. This is primarily driven by the seamless integration with third-party CRM solutions.
• It also provides email marketing and insightful ROI reporting. For seamless sales alignment and accelerating time to market, this tool is ideal.
• It also helps you in online marketing by supporting mobile-optimized emails, A/B testing, SEO, and dynamic content.
• You can also do digital marketing with this tool’s social media sharing features.

Pricing

This B2B marketing automation tool offers 3 plans.

A) Growth

• The standard price is $1250/month for up to 10,000 contacts which include features like email marketing, in-detail prospect tracking, and lead nurturing for optimal performance on major marketing KRAs.
• This plan is equipped with ROI reporting and different marketing collateral like landing pages.

B) Plus

• If you want to dive deeper into marketing automation and analytics then you can opt for the plus plan. It costs $2500/month up to 10,000 contacts.
• This plan includes all standard features + advanced features like advanced email analytics, spam tracking, Google Adword integration, and simplified landing page split testing.

C) Advanced

• The cost of this plan is $4000/month for up to 10,000 contacts.
• This plan includes all the features of a growth plan and plus plan. In addition, it includes professional highlights, client roles, integration of custom objects, and API access for around 10,000 daily calls.
• It also incorporates a unique IP address and customer care support via phone.

4) HubSpot

• HubSpot is a world-renowned tool and is a feature-packed resource for modern-day marketers.
• It specializes in content marketing and inbound marketing.

Features

• It helps in lead generation, boosts conversations, and closes deals in an automated way.
• With HubSpot, you can convert leads to sales with tactical inbound marketing campaigns.
• You can classify contacts with details about their business and relationships in HubSpot’s CRM
•  You can collect leads with an integral landing page, content marketing, form builder, and website tools
• As a business owner, you can also follow up on contacts with email automation.
• It helps you in building marketing workflows that help you target leads based on their communications with your website
• With HubSpot, you can manage customer support requests and build out a knowledge base.
•  HubSpot’s iOS and Android apps are accessible for CRM and Sales features.

Pricing

This marketing automation tool offers 3 types of plans.

A) Basic

• The basic cost is $200/month for 100 contacts.
• It includes features like content development and optimization, email marketing, a social media management module, and a comprehensive analytics module.

B) Pro

• Hubspot’s Pro will offset you by $800 every month and will allow 1000 contacts.
• It is the most preferred choice of plan for many marketers
• It incorporates all features of basic plan + marketing automation, and lead nurturing as per specific marketing objectives. It also offers features like split testing along with Salesforce integration.

C) Enterprise

• This plan costs $2400/month for 10,000 emails every month.
• The Enterprise features come with powerful features that take enterprise-level marketing to a whole new level. Users get custom reporting depending on the different events and automate actions based on predefined triggers. It also helps with lead scoring for a better lead management experience for the marketers.

5) SendPulse

• SendPulse is a multi-channel marketing automation platform.
• It is an integrated electronic message platform with the AI system and hyper-personalization.
• Customers can experience 50% to 100% + engagement in metrics.

Features

• It offers various communication avenues with consumers. Some notable instanced include email and web push notifications. Customers can also use SMS for this purpose. It allows you to reach your customers on all devices at any time.c
• Marketers get the flexibility to transmit different types of personalized messages or blend them with auto-response communication.
• SendPlus offers free unlimited browser support and 24*7 support.

Pricing

SendPlus has three pricing models for email service starting from $8.85/month.

A) Free Plan

• This plan includes less than 2500 subscribers, and up to 1500 email newsletters/month.

B) Monthly Subscription

• This plan is based on the number of subscribers, from $9/month for 100 subscribers to $8.40/month for 500,000 subscribers.

C) Pay-as-you-go

• This plan includes prepaid email packages from $32 for 10000 emails, up to $812 for 500,000 emails.

Pricing for web push service is free for any volume.

SMTP service also includes two plans.

A) Monthly subscription

• It starts from $8.85/month for 10000 messages and up to $275/month for 500,000 messages

B) Pay-as-you-go

• These prepaid email packages from $15 for 10,000 emails.

6) AdRoll

• With the help of AdRoll, you can attract more website visitors, convert your visitors into customers, and can measure marketing impact.
• It helps you for retargeting customers across different channels along with well-defined segmentation.
• Mostly by using AdRoll, customers get an average 5x return on their Ad spending. You can find new shoppers, sell more stuff, advertise smarter, and become a bigger brand by using AdRoll.

Features

• AdRoll allows you to create a customized ad budget and provide full control over Ad spending.
• It incorporates retargeting that covers multiple platforms and devices. It also incorporates LiquidAds, and flexible segmentation.
• Apart from these, it let you perform transparent analytics, and expert optimization and conversion reporting.

Pricing

• Adroll will not charge a monthly service fee.
• The price you pay will base on the number of people who engage with your ads and emails.

7) Marketo

• Marketo is a powerful and easy cloud-based marketing software suite.
• It not only helps in creating engaging customer relationships but also in maintaining it.
• This tool lets you drive returns with lead management.
• It also helps in automatically nurturing leads effectively with mobile marketing and more.

Features

• It offers robust mobile tools that help digital marketers to stay on top of the latest mobile trends.
•  It also provides precise A/B email testing to ensure your leads receive an email at appropriate times.
•  Marketo’s engagement engine is a powerful tool that helps its users to learn their customer’s behavior.
•  It allows organizations to customize their web pages based on user experience, location, and special promotions.

Pricing

This is a powerful marketing tool that offers a free trial and no set-up fees.

This tool offers three pricing packages.

A) Basic – $895/month
It includes SEO, a marketing calendar, A/B testing, CRM integration, and a customer engagement engine.

B) Pro – $1,795/month
It includes all basic features + digital ads, API and integrations, predictive content, and program and campaign analysis.

C) Elite – $3,195/month
This package includes all basic and pro features, anonymous retargeting, an advanced report builder, and a success path analyzer.

8) Infusionsoft

• Infusionsoft is a very useful automation marketing software for small business owners.
• It is the perfect tool for business persons who want streamlined marketing processes in order to get more done in less time.
• If you are an owner of a small business or blogger then this automation tool is the right choice for you.

Features

• Infusionsoft is the best tool to create a strategy for new sales or marketing.
• Infusionsoft helps you in executing marketing strategies appropriately. This, in turn, assists in lead nurturing and moving customers further towards successful conversion.
•  It facilitates you to organize client data, get insights on your marketing, and track new opportunities. So you can create a loyal client base.
• A marketer is plagued by routine yet time-intensive tasks such as prospecting follow-up, payments, and billing. It frees up time for you to better serve clients.
• Offers online and 24/7 live support.

Pricing

• Starting cost for 500 contacts is $99. This allows users to send 2500 Emails/month.
• The essential package’s pricing is $199/month. This allows users to send 12,500 monthly emails.
• Users can also opt for the ‘Complete package’ which is available for $299 per month. It allows users to send 50,000 emails every month.

9) Act-On

• It is one of the leading cloud-based marketing automation tools.
• It helps you effortlessly nurturing your inbound and outbound leads.

Features

• It is an adaptive marketing platform through which you can reach the right customers and convert more leads.
• It is the best-suited marketing automation software for SMEs and startups.
• It helps companies to integrate inbound, outbound, and lead nurturing programs together which are running simultaneously. It maximizes their ROI.

Pricing

Act-On offers 2 types of pricing packages.

1) The Professional Package

• This package starts from $900 per month for 2,500 active contacts, 3 marketing users, and 50 users in sales.
• In this package, you will get 30,000 API calls per day.

2) The Enterprise Package

• The cost of this package is $2,500/month. It is for 2,500 active contacts, 6 marketing users, and 100 users in sales.
• With this package, you will also get 30,000 API calls per day.

10) ActiveCampaign

• ActiveCampaign is an ideal marketing automation tool for use in a business with contact-driven purposes.
• It is affordable, innovative, stable, extremely user-friendly, and offers responsive support.
• With the help of this tool, you can automate the complete life cycle of a subscriber or customer.

Features

• This tool comes with an in-built CRM and provides a multi-channel marketing facility.
• Using this tool you can track website activities and events and get real-time analytics based on the results.
• This tool facilitates a simplified search for existing contacts. It helps to add new contacts from multiple platforms such as e-commerce portals or CRM.
• You can send customized emails art pre-defined schedules for better marketing efficacy.
• This tool facilitates better targeting depending on different factors social data, and behavioral analysis.
• The tool allows users to try it for free for the first 14 days and then sign up for the plans.

Pricing

• ActiveCampaign starts at $9/month. It remains reasonable as your contact list grows.
• There are no hidden costs.
• This tool comes with a 14-day free trial period.
• It is one of the leading marketing automation tools that provide a good solution for under $100/month.

11) Ontraport

• Ontraport is a marketing automation tool that helps you to automate your entire marketing journey.
• It is a preferred tool that serves the marketing needs of startups and SMEs.
• It saves your time by automating your day-to-day marketing tasks and customer follow-up.
• With Ontraport, all your leads and customers receive the right message at the right time which gives them a seamless and cohesive experience that drives results.

Features

• Ontraport offers a host of optimization options across different channels like CRM and online payments. It also allows users to tap into content management and SMS marketing.
• It offers an omnichannel experience blending the best of offline and online. This ensures that the marketer delivers a comprehensive campaign for less.
• With Ontraport, you can build an e-commerce page.
• It provides insights into customer behavior.
• There is no limit on the automated emails and SMSes when users sign up for this tool.

Pricing

There are main 4 types of pricing packages offered by Ontraport.

1) Basic

• This package is for small businesses that are getting ready to grow.
• This package starts at $79/month. It includes 1000 contacts, 1 account user, and unlimited emails.

2) Plus

• This package is for businesses that are going from startup to scale.
• Plus package starts at $147/month. It includes 2,500 contacts, 2 account users, and unlimited emails.

3) Pro

• This package is the best choice for scaling businesses that need to manage all.
• It starts at $297/month. It includes 10,000 contacts, 3 account users, and unlimited emails.

4) Enterprise

• This package is for established businesses that require advanced customization.
• The enterprise package starts at $497/month. It includes 20,000+ contacts, 5 account users, and 200,000 emails per month.

12) Userfox

• Userfox is a new player in the field of marketing automation.
• This email-focused automation tool is designed to send emails to subscribers according to the events instead of page views.
• This automation tool was bought by the AdRoll Group in 2014.

Features

• It is a SaaS product that helps companies improve user retention.
• It helps owners to pull their customer data from various sources like CRMs, email lists, and mobile IDs.
• It offers A/B email testing to make emails effortless.

13) SendinBlue

• SendinBlue is a comprehensive marketing automation tool that blends the best of two marketing channels – email and SMS.
• It helps businesses create and look after customer relationships using transactional emails, SMS, and email campaigns.
• This tool is easy to use and offers a drag and drop facility. With it, marketers need not have the deep technical knowledge and yet create highly engaging emails for sending out at pre-determined schedules.
• This tool is best for a small business that is a new player in the field of automation.

Features

• Its main features include marketing automation, trigger marketing tools, contact management, and reporting.
• This tool lets you import contacts. You can also make use of behavioral filters, and categorized lists.
• When you purchase any monthly plans vendor offers good customer support which can be accessed through phone or email.

Pricing

• SendinBlue offers various monthly email plans, IP plans, and SMS plans.
• In its free plan, you can access 300emails/day and unlimited contacts.
• Basic email plans start from Rs. 1535/month and SMS plans are based on how many SMS you want to send and in which country. According to that, you can buy SMS credits. It starts from Rs. 12.12/day.
• If you want to access unlimited automation workflows then you have to choose a $49/month plan or above.

14) Prospect.io

• Prospect.io is a marketing automation tool that helps you in automating lead generation, sales activity, and marketing outreach.
• It is one of the most powerful sales automation tools for modern sales teams. It helps in increasing the productivity of your sales teams.

Features

• It provides standard automation functionalities such as drip email campaigns. Users can also explore other important features such as mailbox automation and comprehensive performance reporting.
• It also offers CRM integrations and campaign stats features. It actually helps in knowing how each email is performing and you can also compare your results to the rest of your industry or to other companies of the same size.
• In Prospect.io, it becomes possible for marketers to shoot automated emails from your server. This way, the emails will look and feel consistent with manual mailing.

Pricing

To use up to 2000 credits each month, you have to pay $129/month. Everything is included in it and also unlimited.

All plans incorporate unlimited access to features such as:

• Unlimited users, prospects, templates, and drip campaigns.
• Zapier integration
• Slack integration
• CRM integration
• Google Chrome extension
• Tracking
• Reporting
• Import/export

15) Omnisend

• Omnisend is an all-in-one e-commerce marketing automation tool with an omnichannel approach.
• It helps you sell more by converting your audience into customers and retaining your consumers.
• With this tool, you can send more relevant messages on any channel to maximize the growth of your business.

Features

• SMS, Facebook Messenger, Web Push notifications.
• Dynamic categorization and exact targeting
• Predefined email automation workflows.
• Website tracking, cross-sell, follow-up, and customer reactivation.
• Omnisend’s email marketing features include A/B testing, auto-responders, drip campaigns, dynamic content, event-triggered email, CAN-SPAM compliance, mailing list management, template management, and reporting.
• This tool’s marketing automation features include A/B testing, ROI tracking, sales intelligence, website visitor tracking, drip campaigns, customizable CTAs, and segmentation.

Pricing

This tool offers four pricing plans.

1) Standard

• This plan starts at $60/ month.
• It includes 60,000 emails per month.

2) Pro

• The Pro plan includes unlimited emails for $199 every month.

3) Enterprise

• This plan is starting from $2000 per month.
• It includes unlimited emails.

4) Free

• This plan is the best for merchants who are new to promoting their products with email marketing.
• You can have access to 15,000 emails per month in it.

Conclusion

With the help of a good marketing strategy, you can amp up the degree of competitive edge your business receives. However, for the marketer, it can get overwhelming to keep up with the performance of multiple marketing campaigns going on. Also, you risk spreading yourself thin if you try to focus on many activities at the same time, thus lowering your marketing efficacy.

This compilation of the different marketing automation tools will seek to solve this problem and help you achieve better ROI from your marketing campaigns. It also frees up the time to let you focus on other mission-critical aspects of the business.

As discussed above, you can try these marketing automation tools as per your budget and marketing strategy. Keep a close eye on these tools and then choose one which closely aligns with your specific business and marketing requirement.

Which of these tools is your preferred one for boosting marketing ROI? Do write to us and let us know your comments below.

If you are interested in accelerating your digital transformation strategy with the help of the above tools in an impactful way, feel free to hire our digital marketing services and boost your business bottom lines to the epitome.