Marketing automation is an essential part of any marketing strategy. In fact, the software market in this area will grow by over 43% within five years. In 2021, there will be more offerings than ever before. With so much choice, you have to consider a number of factors before choosing the right product for you. That’s why we’ve created a list of marketing automation tools in different sectors, looking at what the best marketing automation products in 2021 will have to offer.
The Best Marketing Automation Software 2021 – Markerly’s top picks for marketing automation software, providers, platforms and solutions for B2B marketers who manage a high volume of lead gen activities.
HubSpot
HubSpot was created in 2005 to provide small businesses with inbound marketing, sales, and customer service tools. The company serves nearly 114,000 customers in more than 120 countries. We chose it as the best overall because it offers a comprehensive suite of marketing automation in an easy-to-use platform with paid add-ons and free starter services.
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub suite of inbound marketing tools lets users create content, landing pages, and email campaigns, as well as manage leads, social media, SEO, analytics, and more, all in one platform. Its marketing automation features, however, can be used on an existing website and don’t require users to host or build their site with HubSpot.
HubSpot makes it easy to set up automated workflows using a simple visual editor that shows workflows in real-time. Users can create email drip campaigns with custom triggers, conditions, and actions tied to clear goals. Workflows also can be created to set up webhooks, score leads, move leads to sales, and even send notifications about a contact’s actions to HubSpot’s customer relationship management (CRM) or other CRMs, including Salesforce and SugarCRM. The platform also offers more than 500 integrations with third-party software through its App Partner Program.
Although HubSpot offers a Starter plan with free CRM, marketing, sales, and service tools, users will need the Professional plan to access its marketing automation features.
Starter Plan
- $50 per month
- Landing pages
- Ad management
- Live chat
- Conversational bots
- Forms
- Contact website activity
- List segmentation
- Email marketing
- Ad retargeting
Professional Plan
- $890 per month
- All Starter Plan features
- Marketing automation
- Smart content and reporting
- Blog
- SEO recommendations and optimizations
- Social media
- A/B testing
- Calls-to-action
- Video hosting and management
- Website traffic analytics
- Campaign reporting
- Custom reporting
- Filtered analytics view
ActiveCampaign
Founded in 2003 as a consulting firm, ActiveCampaign later transitioned to a software as a service (SaaS) business offering an integrated email marketing, marketing automation, and small business CRM for more than 150,000 customers worldwide. We chose it as our runner-up because, although it offers powerful marketing automation tools, it’s not as beginner-friendly and takes more time and effort to learn than HubSpot.
ActiveCampaign was the original creator of the visual automation sequence builder used by other marketing automation software. Users can choose from more than 200 pre-built automation “recipes” and more than 125 email templates to accomplish their goals. These include abandoned cart reminders, gathering feedback, creating a welcome email series, updating and tagging contacts, and more. ActiveCampaign’s automation recipes also integrate with more than 850 third-party apps, including WordPress, Zapier, and Shopify.
ActiveCampaign places a strong emphasis on using machine learning to create custom user experiences. Unlike other platforms that make things more complicated by overloading users with customer data, ActiveCampaign delivers insights to help make better decisions. From testing the best email send times to determining which leads are more likely to close, users can turn on the insights based on what matters most to them.
Although ActiveCampaign offers three pricing plans plus an enterprise-level plan, users will get the most out of the platform’s machine learning capabilities with its Professional plan.
Lite Plan
- $9 per month
- Unlimited sending
- Email marketing
- Send newsletters
- Subscription forms
- Marketing automation
- Chat & email support
- Up to three users
Plus Plan
- $49 per month
- All Lite Plan features
- CRM with sales automation
- Facebook custom audiences
- Lead & contact scoring
- Integrations
- SMS marketing
- Dynamic content
- Custom user permissions
- Up to 25 users
Professional Plan
- $129 per month Now
- All Plus Plan features
- Predictive sending with machine learning
- Predictive content with machine learning
- Customer attribution & path to purchase
- Conversion attribution reporting
- Split automations
- Site messaging
- In-depth onboarding consultation
- Automation strategy consultation
- Three one-on-one training sessions per month
- Up to 50 users
Marketo
Marketo was created in 2006 to help chief marketing officers and their teams track their return on investment (ROI). In 2008, the company launched a lead-management tool and was purchased by Adobe in 2018. It serves more than 500 enterprise-level businesses with its integrated marketing and sales platform, Marketo Engage. We chose it as the best for client engagement because it’s optimized for use with Salesforce as well as Adobe Experience Cloud, which offers powerful analytics and audience management tools.
Marketo offers a number of marketing automation features, including customizable website templates, automated emails, web analytics, lead nurturing, social media marketing, and more. The platform also makes it easy to create personalized customer messages across multiple platforms using content performance analytics and AI-powered insights.
Marketo offers multiple automation triggers as well as lead and account scoring and integrates tightly with multiple CRM platforms, including Salesforce, to keep prospects engaged and help sales teams create best practices and sales funnels. Finally, Marketo integrates with Adobe Experience Cloud to deliver more marketing, analytics, advertising, and commerce features. Marketo offers four service plans and requires customers to request a quote based on their needs. Third-party research shows that plans start at $895 per month and can be as high as $3,195 per month.
Omnisend
Join fellow ecommerce businesses who choose Omnisend’s email & SMS marketing to increase their sales, not the workload. Full integration with ecommerce platforms, pre-built automation workflows, and intuitive, no-code editing make it easy to get up & running without diving into the gritty details – unless you want to. More than 70,000 ecommerce brands use Omnisend to grow their businesses on autopilot, converting their customers with quick-to-build, highly-relevant emails & texts. Send newsletters and targeted campaigns Create beautiful, shoppable emails in minutes using our drag & drop email builder and a variety of ready-made email templates. Add coupon codes, automatically pick & insert products and automatically resend campaigns to the non-openers – all without any tedious manual work! Drive sales on autopilot with ecommerce automations Win (back) lost sales with pre-built workflows for cart abandonment, welcome series, transactional emails and more. Get pre-built, revenue-generating automations running in minutes or easily build your custom workflows using our no-code, drag & drop Automations Editor. Improve your targeting with robust segmentation Segment your customers based on their shopping behavior as well as other properties to improve conversions with well-targeted, personalized emails and texts. Create segments for high-value customers, for specific category/product shoppers or those that need to be reengaged and personalize your messaging. Combine email with SMS and more channels Add SMS and push notifications right next to your emails using the same platform and provide a consistent, omnichannel customer experience. Save time and costs – there’s no need to pay for separate email, SMS, and push apps anymore! Build your email & SMS lists Collect new subscribers using our mobile-friendly, fully customizable forms. Choose from popups, signup boxes, landing pages, or a wheel of fortune to seamlessly collect email and/or SMS opt-ins. Capture your visitors with exit-intent forms and improve popup engagement using form targeting options, all available within Omnisend. 24/7 Support We give you stellar support and helpful advice anytime you need it. We’re available 24/7. Start using Omnisend for free, upgrade anytime! Omnisend invites Freelancers and Agencies to join the Omnisend partner program. This program is created to help Freelancers and Agencies accelerate their growth, win more clients and receive industry leading revenue share for referred and managed accounts. Check the link and join the program: https://www.omnisend.com/partners/
Thryv
Thryv is an end-to-end client experience platform built for small businesses. Software that helps you get the job, manage the job and get credit, all from a single screen. Helping small business owners meet today’s expectations, from one simple platform. Include best in class support, available anytime – unlimited 24/7, with business specialists who understand the goals and unique needs of small business owners. Thryv automates tasks and puts customers at the center of your business, with one easy-to-use software, making it easy to reach more customers, stay organized, get paid faster and automatically generate reviews. Thryv makes it easy for customers to: • Find you online through ratings and reviews, social presence and accurate search results. • Interact easily and instantly, receive reminders, send texts and emails and schedule appointments. • Pay you effortlessly, receive receipts instantly, know it’s safe and secure and choose how to pay. • Stay engaged with automated messages that ask them back, stay in touch and request reviews. Thryv’s award-winning software is helping over 40,000 businesses transform how they do business and manage their customers
Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform
Mailchimp’s all-in-one Marketing Platform helps small businesses market smarter so you can grow faster. As the backbone for your customer relationships, they provide AI-powered, user-friendly tools anyone can use to be successful. Mailchimp puts your audience at the center so you can send marketing emails and automated messages, create targeted ad campaigns, build landing pages, send postcards, facilitate reporting and analytics, and sell online. Millions of businesses and individuals – from community organizations to Fortune 100 companies – trust Mailchimp to connect with their audience with the right message, at the right time, in the right place. Founded in 2001 and based in Atlanta, GA, Mailchimp has 1000+ employees and is privately held.
Bloomreach
Exponea was acquired by Bloomreach in 2021. Bloomreach is the leader in Commerce Experience™ — empowering brands to deliver customer journeys so personalized, they feel like magic. Bloomreach Experience, the digital experience platform built for commerce, includes three pillars: Discovery, offering AI-driven search and merchandising; Content, offering a headless CMS; and Engagement, offering a leading CDP and marketing automation solutions. Together, these pillars form the only platform that combines the power of unified customer and product data with the speed and scale of AI-optimization, enabling measurable digital commerce experiences that drive real results. Bloomreach serves over 700 global brands including Albertsons, Bosch, Puma, FC Bayern München, and Marks & Spencer, and powers over $250 billion in commerce annually. For more information, visit Bloomreach.com. Our digital experience platform, connects deep customer data with deep product data, enabling brands to drive engagement and optimal commerce experiences through the delivery of dynamic, and targeted content (e.g. offers, products, campaigns), and product discovery across all digital touchpoints. For example, as a customer engages with marketing, their personalized experience continues on the brand’s website through highly contextual product recommendations and AI-driven search. Following their purchase, their customer profile is updated with additional preferences and creates an even further enriched experience to improve loyalty and increase retention – creating a virtuous cycle of engagement and commerce experiences that drives marketing and business success.
Drip
Drip is the email and SMS marketing automation platform for growing ecommerce brands who want to take their email marketing to the next level. Unleash the power of your ecommerce customer data and deliver perfectly personalized email and SMS marketing strategies that will grow your revenue—like targeting customers on what they buy, browse, and click across your store. Want to email people who bought a pair of shorts last summer? Or who viewed that hat that just went on sale? No problem! With Drip you can easily target the right audience using pre-built or custom segments that update in real-time. Thousands of ecommerce brands all over the globe use Drip to engage customers with pre-built playbooks – like welcome series, abandoned cart, and post-purchase emails. Sign-up for a free trial today – no credit card required.
Marketo Engage
Marketo Engage helps marketing teams be the drivers of demand and growth in their companies by delivering exceptional experiences in concert with sales at every stage of the customer journey. The challenge these teams face is that everyone today expects a personalized experience whenever they interact with a company – they don’t have patience for generic marketing and the last thing they want is a cold call from sales. So to stay competitive, marketing teams are scrambling to understand customers better, so they can give them a better experience, because this is disrupting entire industries. And a big part of what’s needed is figuring out how marketing and sales can do a better job together. Marketo Engage is redefining a category of software called Marketing Automation by helping these companies bring together the customer data, content, automation and analytics needed for marketing and sales to coordinate engagement with customers that’s personalized and measurable at every touchpoint – and do it with efficiency and scale.
Emarsys
Emarsys, now an SAP company, empowers digital marketing leaders and business owners with the only omnichannel customer engagement platform built to accelerate business outcomes. By rapidly aligning desired business results with proven omnichannel customer engagement strategies — crowdsourced from leading brands across your industry — our platform enables you to accelerate time to value, deliver superior one-on-one experiences and produce measurable results… fast. Emarsys is the platform of choice for more than 1,500 customers around the world. Join thousands of leading brands who trust Emarsys to deliver the predictable, profitable outcomes that their businesses demand and the highly personalized omnichannel experiences that their customers deserve. For more information, visit www.emarsys.com
Conclusion
The future appears to be moving rapidly with technology. The truth is that the rate at which things change is not decelerating. For marketers, what does it really mean? You need to make sure your practice is staying up-to-date with the latest trends, otherwise you will get left behind. There are some predictions for marketing automation in 2021. Are you ready?