Best Marketing Automation Software

Digital marketing is now the key to the success of an organization. To effectively use digital marketing, companies need to implement good automation software. With so much marketing automation software in the market, it can be quite difficult to find the solution that works best for your business.

However, we have looked at a wide range of marketing automation platforms and have created a list that is guaranteed to help. Read on for more information on the best marketing automation software and how to make your brand successful.

Ranking methodology

The list above has been generated by following a set process. First, we looked at the rankings of the different marketing automation software on various software comparison websites. From this research, we compiled a list of the top 50-100 tools available in the market.

Next, we checked user reviews to get first-hand information about the different software packages. This enabled us to identify the top features and some key MetaData for each package. In addition, we reviewed any demos and took advantage of any free trials of the best marketing automation software. We also asked experts to evaluate the design and usability of each product.

Taking all of these factors into account allowed us to give each product a score that was used to rank each of the best marketing automation software solutions. The result is that our list includes only the very best of the best.

Conclusion

Marketing allows your organization or business to inform consumers of what is happening in that industry. It allows you to tell potential consumers about new products and offers that they can enjoy. The current markets rely heavily on using the internet through digital marketing. With so many channels available in digital marketing, automation software is crucial for the whole process.

The best marketing automation software allows your business to monitor its customers and provide personalized content about products and services. With so many automation tools available, it might be difficult to find one that works perfectly. However, the list above provides you with a great place to start as it covers the best marketing automation software solutions currently available.

As already mentioned, this list was generated after extensive research, covering more than 100 automation service products. Each of these received an overall score based on numerous criteria. Therefore, choosing one or more of these automation software solutions ensures that you get value for your money depending on the use case scenario.

However, we recommend that you test the solution you would like to use before committing to implementing it. This is possible thanks to features such as demo versions and free trials. You can implement your preferred solution in a real working environment to see if it has all the features you need. If it doesn’t, simply cancel and try your next choice software until you find the one that perfectly fits all your marketing needs.

Meeting the individual needs of each company or business is crucial. Some companies need certain features while others do not. The same also applies to the technology being used to develop the software. This is the main reason why most of these software solutions include demo versions and free trials. It allows your company to try the product before making a purchase.

Now, let’s take a deep dive into the topic.

Marketing automation software overview

The majority of businesses have implemented automated marketing software of some kind. Research shows that about 51% of businesses use this technology to grow the number of consumers and clients. Furthermore, more than 55% of marketing decisions are made as a result of digital marketing analytics. All these analytics need the best marketing automation software for optimization.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is simply using software to automate marketing activities in a business. Most of the activities are usually repetitive and time-consuming and therefore not an efficient use of manpower. With marketing automation software, key elements such as email marketing, ad campaigns, and social media posting can be handled more efficiently. Furthermore, all the marketing strategies can be combined into a single interface.

At its best, automated marketing software uses both software and strategy to allow the nurturing of prospects thus helping to convert them to customers. This is done by pushing personalized content across different digital marketing platforms to attract and capture customers. In this system, customers are more than just the endpoint of successful automated marketing. They are at the center of every business process.

In other words, most marketing automation strategies don’t consider consumers to be an afterthought – rather, they are the central flywheel of the whole process. Using successful marketing automation software reduces friction and speeds up that flywheel. This helps to build and nurture that relationship between the customer and your business.

What does marketing automation software do?

Although there are different opinions on how to define marketing automation, its benefits are agreed upon. These benefits include improved sales and marketing strategies. So, now that you have decided to implement marketing automation software, you need to understand its key functions. Here are some of the functions that automation software can bring to your business.

• Lead scoring — This is one of the most integral parts of marketing automation software. It involves finding leads based on online activity. For email and social media platforms, visits and clicks can be monitored based on a perceived intent to buy.
• Nurture leads — As soon as a lead is scored, the function of the software is now to nurture and encourage that lead to become a consumer. This is done through semi-customized trigger messaged informing that lead about offers and products available.
• Integration — Perhaps one of the greater values of marketing automation software is the ability to integrate other tools. Your official brand website can be integrated with a CRM platform and other digital advertising platforms. These integrations make it easy for set markers to trigger actions on a specific digital platform.
• Forms and landing pages — The genesis of email marketing is the use of a web form. This is a tool that allows businesses to capture information from leads and customers. This helps to build a profile that can then be used to generate personalized content. Forms live on the landing pages that a user is redirected to.

Marketing automation meaning

Marketing automation refers to a platform or software solution used by marketing departments in companies to effectively market that business on multiple channels. Specialists benefit since all tasks can be specified, interpreted, stored, and executed by the software with efficiency. Multiple marketing channels including email marketing, social media marketing, and other ad campaigns can be implemented using a single marketing automation software solution.

Main features of marketing automation software

There are many different marketing automation tools for your business to use. However, not all of these software solutions offer more than the core functionalities of automated marketing. With advanced features, you can optimize your marketing process to make it even better. Here are some of the main features that the best marketing automation platforms should have.

• Lead management — One of the main functions of marketing automation tools is to find and nurture leads. The software should allow the marketing team to easily find leads and nurture them for an increase in the lead to customer ratio.
• Email campaigns — Communication between a business and its customers is vital. Good marketing automation tools should include end-to-end email campaign features. This allows communication relating to purchases or product inquiries.
• Real-time alerts — Automated marketing should offer real-time analytics and alerts to the marketing team. This is important especially when any workflow needs human intervention. Leads may be required to perform an action that has to be seen by the team.
• Social marketing — The best marketing automation software should provide integration for social media. This will help you analyze and track customer presence on these platforms and also allow you to post on social media channels consistently.
• Personalized messaging — The best marketing automation software should allow you to send personalized messages depending on user behavior. The purpose of sending such emails is to ensure that they don’t appear canned or spammed.

Benefits of using the best marketing automation software

Marketing automation tools can have a great positive impact if a business capitalizes on its benefits. The primary function of this software is to provide a single communication platform for all your marketing channels. If you are still unsure of whether to include the best marketing automation software in your business, here is a use case scenario and benefits of the service.

Use case scenario

An example of a marketing automation scenario involves sending customers a special offer during an anniversary or birthday. This type of marketing is effective in driving revenue while also increasing your customer’s happiness. To benefit from this, you should first ensure that current and potential customers provide their birthdates. Most jewelry companies include this in their checkout process, for example. Add birthdate to your mailing list information, and you can automate an email for every customer’s birthday.

Lead nurturing

The whole process of lead nurturing can easily be simplified using marketing automation software. It can clip lead and prospect information from different social medial channels. This list can then be added automatically to your mailing list. Furthermore, using tools such as lead scoring, you can categorize the lead and send out personalized emails.

Create reports

All your marketing channels will be monitored using marketing automation tools. Using data collected from all these channels can help you create detailed reports on how people are interacting with your business. Based on graphs and other statistics from reports, you can, for example, evaluate an ad campaign or identify how to improve your business.

Maintain consistency

Marketing automation software delivers its services in a timely manner. This ensures consistency in terms of the processes being carried out by your business. Furthermore, you can use this software to schedule follow-ups to customer replies and also achieve timely social media channel posts.

Track contacts

Potential consumers use the internet to look for certain products or services. Using the best marketing automation software, you can track an individual’s web activities and buying behaviors. With this information, you can deliver timely marketing messages to potential buyers on different communication channels. This will help create awareness about your product or service.

Build relationships

The relationship between a consumer and a business is crucial to the success of that business. With automated marketing software, your business can establish good relationships through personalization. Data from daily customer activities can help you create individual profiles that will help to tailor messages on a personal level. Valuable communication with customers builds a strong and durable relationship.

Save time

By using marketing automation software, your business can automate repeated tasks to save time and concentrate on other marketing strategies. The software can create more than one campaign and can send out scheduled emails based on a number of triggers. These triggers could be auto-responses for follow-ups and automated social media messages.

Detailed profiles

The best marketing automation software helps you create a detailed customer profile using data from different marketing channels and web behaviors. Analyzing the information gathered about your customers helps include more reference points. These additional points can be used to personalize the type of advert a customer receives.

Which companies should buy marketing automation software

Many more businesses are becoming aware of the impacts that can result from adopting marketing automation software. However, some industries use this technology more than others. This is especially true of those in the digital marketing space. This marketing technology tends to favor organizations and companies that rely heavily on internet marketing. Here are some business sectors that would benefit from adopting marketing automation software.

Financial services

Automated marketing software can help financial institutions market their services and solve problems related to marketing. Some of the most useful functions of the software for this sector include behavioral triggers, automated nurture programs, and analytics. Such data would help a financial institution in decision-making on what the clients want.

Telecommunication companies

Technology is ever-advancing and telecommunication companies are constantly coming up with new ways of communication. For instance, companies create faster connections depending on how consumers review the current technology. With automated marketing software, telecommunication companies can inform users of new technologies and offer deals on a personal level.

The tech industry

The technology industry is much more evolved in terms of automated marketing software than many other sectors. Most tech companies have already included one or more automated marketing services compared to the manufacturing industry. While many other industries implement an email service provider in addition to automation software, tech industries use integrated marketing automation tools almost exclusively.

What does the best marketing automation software cost?

Marketing automation platforms are usually priced on the basis of two metrics — the number of people in your contact list and how many emails you want to send out. The fee can then be charged on a monthly or annual basis, but this does differ depending on the software package. The typical price range is between $15 to $50 for 500 contacts. Enterprise tiers have different pricing plans and many packages offer customized pricing for high-volume users.

Types of the best marketing automation software

When using marketing automation, having both external and internal strategies will be crucial for the smooth running of your business. Internal marketing mainly focuses on employees while external marketing emphasizes consumers. The purpose of internal marketing is to encourage employees to work as a team. Below are some types of marketing automation tools and why they are crucial to the survival of a business.

Email automation

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, and it still provides an efficient way to improve ROI in business. However, an issue that arises in email marketing is the scalability of the technology and this is where automation comes in. Email automation sends emails to your contact list based on a trigger. This is otherwise known as an email blast.

Landing page automation

Landing pages are crucial in improving the conversion rates of leads. If a platform lacks a landing page, chances are the site is not optimized. A good marketing automation software solution gives you the chance to create a landing age easily without coding knowledge. By using drag and drop features, businesses can create designs and layouts and customize them with CTAs.

Social media automation

Another type of digital marketing involves social media platforms. Traditionally, this involves following up on posts, followers, and reactions. By utilizing social media marketing automation, you can save time and manpower on these repetitive tasks. Automated social media marketing also ensures that content is published on a regular basis across different platforms.

Webform automation

Using forms as a way to engage with leads and customers is a marketer’s way of getting information from those leads and consumers. Furthermore, it keeps users busy when visiting your site. Webform automation is similar to landing page automation. It involves generating dynamic user-friendly webforms that can include customizable fields. You can use the information collected to create personal profiles of potential customers.

Blog automation

A common theme among all these types of marketing automation tasks is that they benefit both internal and external strategies. Blog automation is no different. Although it does not generate content for you, such a tool makes it easier to create and manage blogs. Moreover, no coding skills are required, and it takes only a few minutes to have your blog up and running.

Trends in the best marketing automation software

Marketing automation software can save your company both time and money. However, if you want to get the most out of it, you need to have up-to-date knowledge of the latest trends in marketing automation software. New technologies are set to revolutionize how businesses find leads and communicate with their consumers. Here are some trends that are expected to appear in the best marketing automation software.

• Integrated cross-channel marketing — Looking into the future of marketing automation, marketers will have a better chance of succeeding by using multiple channels. The process would involve huge amounts of data that sort the best channel to use for a particular lead. This type of campaign would require different layers of both user management and conversion action.
• Mobile-first approach — Mobile marketing will be among the major driving factor for business growth. Marketing automation tools will need to leverage other tools such as web notifications, mobile wallets, SMS, and in-app notifications effectively. With the increase in the number of mobile device users, this trend will have a significant impact on how businesses communicate with potential consumers.
• User retention — Acquiring customers is expensive but keeping them is 5x more expensive. Most businesses now concentrate on finding new customers rather than retaining the ones they have. The future of marketing automation tools aims to both attract and keep consumers. It involves tracking the journey of anonymous users and creating their profiles, which will be important for personalization.
• Machine learning and AI-based platforms — The best marketing automation software will soon include AI and machine learning technologies to boost efficiency. This technology follows up user clicks and behavioral data to come up with potential future campaigns. Furthermore, technologies like Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing are set to automate the responses to the behavior of potential customers.
• Predictive marketing analytics — Another crucial trend in marketing automation platforms is the inclusion of new technologies and recommendation engines. Technology combined with a strong data baseline allows users to model future events. Changes in customers’ preferences and needs can easily be met using predictive analysis. This ensures an enhancement for both customer experience and retention.

Which is the best marketing automation software

Choosing one of the best marketing automation platforms is not an easy task considering that the market offers hundreds of these programs. The best way to find one that works for you involves testing the tool in a real environment. Our list is a great starting point, since it provides the best marketing automation software on the market right now.

How to choose the best marketing automation software

Finding what works for your business comes down to the specific features of these marketing automation platforms. Each product listed above has the same purpose, just different features. As stated earlier, we’re here to help you find the software that works best for your business.

Before making the decision to pay for marketing automation platforms, ensure that it has everything that you need. Check the tools included in the system, pricing plans, and user-friendliness. Take advantage of a demo version or free trial. Furthermore, most marketing automation platforms providers have a money-back guarantee over a specified period if the software doesn’t work for you.

Summary

Marketing automation platforms have amazing features that would benefit most businesses. Tools included in the software provide a central database for all marketing information. Each of the products listed offers different functionalities but the same purpose. To get what works for you, consider what your business needs and find a product that offers matching tools.

The key component of marketing automation tools is the provision of data analytics that determine how successful any campaign is on different channels. Most of the marketing automation platforms listed have integrated CRM software, CMS tools, and social media management software. If you’re yet to include it in your business, then you’re missing out on some huge opportunities.