Data is the currency of the digital age. Our Marketing Automation Platforms are built around powerful marketing automation software that allows you to find, grow, and engage your customers. It’s the only marketing platform that offers robust data analytics, personalized lead scoring, email nurturing that brings new leads into your sales funnel, predictive marketing capabilities, all with seamless integrations to your existing technologies.
Marketing automation software provides a variety of software platforms that allow you to orchestrate a marketing workflow, but choosing the right one for your needs can be a daunting task. HubSpot provides the Pro products in three platforms: Click-to-Inbox, Click-to-Lead, and Click-to-Conversion. Each platform has been developed to address a different need based on user engagement type. Understanding how they differ will help you choose the right platform for your business.
Omnisend
Pricing: Includes a free plan for basic email marketing. Automation ranges from $16/month to custom Enterprise pricing, based on features and number of contacts.
For marketing automation, it’s hard to find a more comprehensive tool than Omnisend. What sets this platform apart from the others on this list is the omnichannel functionality: you can add several channels to the same automation workflow: email, SMS, push notifications, Facebook Messenger, and more. This means that you can create an immersive omnichannel experience for your customers, which automatically sends them the message via the channel they’ve opted in for. With advanced targeting, split automations, and an easy drag-and-drop builder, Omnisend is definitely a marketing automation tool worth a look.
Eloqua
Pricing: Contact Oracle for pricing information.
Eloqua, now part of the Oracle suite of tools, sets itself apart by working with nearly every other tool in your marketing belt. Eloqua boasts more than 700 integrations, meaning it can make every step of your marketing process more personalized and streamlined. It’s also one of only a few all-in-one tools with an explicit emphasis on serving B2B marketers and companies.
Pardot
Pricing: Ranges from $1,250 – $4,000 per month, based on depth of automation and analytics.
Pardot (now part of Salesforce) is another marketing automation tool that’s tailored to the needs of B2B marketers, with support for things like B2B analytics and account-based marketing solutions. The partnership with Salesforce makes Pardot part of a robust suite of products that work together to help sales and marketing teams be more effective, together.
Mailchimp
Pricing: Ranges from $14.99 – $299 per month, based on features and contacts.
Mailchimp is in the process of growing from an email marketing tool to a full-blown marketing automation solution. While their expanded features remain to be tested, Mailchimp is one of the original email marketing tools, and they’ve turned that experience into a rock-solid and capable email automation tool that’s a breeze to use.
Constant Contact
Pricing: Ranges from $20 – $335 per month, based on features and list size.
Constant Contact is email marketing automation designed for smaller businesses. With their tool, you can create automated trigger campaigns, collect new emails automatically, and send segmented follow-up messages. With Constant Contact, your email program has all the features you need, without the clutter some other tools drown you in.
HubSpot Marketing Automation
HubSpot’s marketing automation functionality is one of the most powerful tools in this list in terms of features. It’s also one of the most popular in terms of customer sentiment, occupying the upper right portion of the G2 Crowd quadrant:
Of course, HubSpot has a full growth suite that includes sales software, marketing software, and support software, which all integrate automatically with HubSpot’s CRM. The combination effect of having all of your data and growth activity in one place can unleash tons of creative automation possibilities that would be difficult or impossible if you use separate tools.
As a standalone, HubSpot’s marketing automation functionality includes an easy-to-use visual board where you can craft simple or highly sophisticated conditional workflows:
It can take time to master the tool (you’ll scale-up more quickly with the help of HubSpot Academy), but once you get a grasp on it, the creative possibilities are endless. You can set up simple email list autoresponders, or build a smart and complex network of rules designed to target specific users with the exact right email, live chat, website experience, and more.
Basically, the workflows tool is automation beyond email, so you can scale your growth and spend less time on repetitive tasks.
Moosend
Moosend is an email marketing automation platform that caters to various industries, including ecommerce and SaaS.
Moosend’s automation uses advanced website tracking and triggers that allow you to send the right email campaign to those in your contacts who are interested in a specific product or service.
Customer data comes in handy, allowing you to create product recommendation campaigns based on product views. This data also allows you to create detailed reports of the campaign’s progress and the users’ activity so you can make smarter, data-driven decisions.
All of the above options, including automation recipes and 80+ integrations, are included in Moosend’s Free Forever plan for up to 1,000 subscribers.
Email marketing automation
Email is one of the oldest forms of digital communication, and it remains extremely effective. Although consumers have grown somewhat jaded to email marketing due to spam, email remains one of the most effective means of communicating with your audience. This makes it an excellent starting place for marketing automation.
Email marketing is one of the core components of what marketing automation vendors offer, allowing you to send emails en masse to segmented audiences. Advanced platforms automatically send emails after prospects take desired actions, like filling out a form or downloading a piece of content. Marketers can also use these tools to create, edit, and embed forms on their website for lead generation and email outreach.
The features below are common in most marketing automation solutions. Use them as a checklist when doing a basic marketing automation software comparison.
Segmentation and batch emails
As a base-level feature, marketing automation vendors include features that allow users to send emails en masse to segmented groups of customers. Templates and a native email design are also common features. These functions make your marketing efforts more personal if you use them to send segmented and targeted emails.
By segmenting your prospects and communicating with each group in a way that’s relevant to their interests, you build trust. And as a key benefit, one MailChimp study found that segmented campaigns had a 23 percent higher open rate than non-segmented campaigns.
Behavioral trigger emails
A behavioral trigger email sends designated content to prospects if they take an action on your site such as downloading content or completing a form if they’ve given an email address or are logged in. Follow-up emails offer your audience reassurance by confirming that their action was noticed by your organization and that you are currently in the process of responding to their request.
While most email marketing tools and MA platforms have the ability to trigger automatic emails, 49 percent of marketers don’t use these tools, so using these features gives you a competitive advantage.
Forms
A form creator gives you the freedom to build and edit your own email marketing forms. The tool provides code that you embed on your website pages, and the information the user enters will show up in the marketing automation tool. This code lets you collect email addresses and other lead data from visitors in exchange for content, promotions, or an email newsletter.
Mobile Optimization
Most people check email on their phone, so ensuring that your email content is readable and just as eye-catching on a phone as it is on desktop is essential. Most email and MA tools have made the switch to mobile optimization, letting you view an email in mobile and desktop view before sending.
Dynamic Personalization
Personalization of marketing emails has come a long way since we first started making different lists for different types of customers. Using dynamic personalization, marketing automation tools can pull pretty much any type of customer information from your CRM or contact list to build a tailored email.
These tools use dynamic tagging to select, match, and include content in the email. Marketing teams often use dynamic personalization to send mass emails while still keeping a personalized feel for the email.
Split Testing
Synonymous with A/B testing, this email tool lets you run different versions of the same email campaign to a test audience, analyze which version of your email has a better engagement rate and even automatically send the best performer to the rest of your list.
Teams often use split testing to find the best subject line, content, design, send time, or to test pretty much any element of the email you can change.
Conclusion
Marketing automation platforms bring together a powerful suite of marketing tools, which can be utilized to transform your company’s sales funnel. These solutions integrate with various business systems, including CRM and e-commerce applications, to streamline the customer experience mapping process.