Are you looking for your next marketing automation tool to drive growth, but don’t know where to begin? Our experts have taken a look at some of the best marketing automation solutions currently on the market. Let’s dive in!
Marketing automation has been a buzzword in the past few years, but what is it really?
Marketing automation mainly refers to software suites and tools that are designed specifically to make your marketing actions – such as lead generation, email blasts, social media scheduling, and landing page creation – much easier. Essentially, marketing automation is a combination of well-designed software and effective tactics that will enable your company to nurture prospects – in other words, it lets you focus on leads that can later be converted into paying customers. The top marketing automation systems on the market will allow you to generate leads without straining your time and resources.
However, if you’re in the market for a good marketing automation platform, you must first understand that the software solution you choose is only as effective as your intentions – and your ability to use the system properly and to its full capabilities.
Many marketers today seem to be of the impression that all the marketing tools necessary for growth, including B2B lead nurturing and others, fall under the umbrella of marketing automation. Unfortunately, this way of thinking can be detrimental as it leaves many marketing specialists with highly sophisticated solutions to automate aspects of their funnel, but with no effective or sustainable solution for generating new leads to maintain the process in the first place.
Not all marketing automation solutions are created equal. As every business is different, with varying needs and requirements, you can’t really expect to find a one-size-fits-all solution.
Bearing this in mind, we’ve gathered up six marketing automation tools worth checking out in 2019.
Top 6 Marketing Automation Systems (2019)
Marketo
We’re starting off strong: Marketo is by many industry experts considered as one of the best marketing solutions available on the market. This robust software delivers on almost every digital marketing need our team could think of – not to mention that it boasts of unique lead generation practices.
Marketo’s special module, Customer Marketing, is one of its greatest advantages. This special module – which is meant to accompany the system’s lead management and email marketing tools – is designed as an independent tool for customer engagement and real-time personalization.
In addition to this, Marketo benefits from its user-friendly features, such as its highly visual drag-and-drop interface, which makes it system both simple and easy to use. And, best of all, this means that users don’t have to be fluent in HTML in order to create inspiring and professional email templates.
What sets Marketo apart from other marketing automation systems?
If you perform a quick marketing automation comparison, you’ll find that there are a few key points that makes Marketo different from its counterparts. As already mentioned, it allows you to create stunning landing pages and email templates, complete with data capture forms, without too much of a hassle. And by using the drag-and-drop interface, users can quickly and easily navigate through the process with very little learning curve.
Secondly, Marketo offers native integration with third-party applications, such as CRM solutions and other productivity service providers. The ability to install social media components to emails is another key feature that makes this software solution unique.
Finally, Marketo comes with standard analytics and reporting tools – something which can greatly benefit those of us working after individual KPIs and industry benchmarks.
LeadSquared
Like Marketo, LeadSquared is a marketing automation system that effectively combines marketing automation and CRM functionality. This can be a good choice for large, decentralized marketing teams that want a growth hacking tool to help them land more leads and sell more products.
LeadSquared’s unique selling point is its unique and efficient lead conversion practices: it essentially works by guiding and pushing prospective leads deep into the sales funnel independently.
Why should you choose LeadSquared over other marketing automation solutions?
LeadSquared has many great features. But what really separates it from other systems on the market is its fully automated and independent workflows: the solution is designed with an automation-first approach, allowing users to create independent workflows while syncing seamlessly with other modules and reporting tools.
In addition to this, you might benefit from the platform’s end-to-lead management. Unlike many other systems, LeadSquared will not just help your team pull leads into their system – it will also help you keep prospective leads engaged through various engagement and lead management tools. With LeadSquared, your team can send out notifications and enable auto-responders; they can make streamlined connections, and highlight relevant deals for customers who might be interested.
Following this, the drip marketing capabilities will ensure that your team can take the appropriate action for the right customer at exactly the right time. And if you’re having trouble with the system, LeadSquared offers a knowledgeable customer support team comprised of friendly professionals eager to help you out.
HubSpot Marketing
HubSpot Marketing is hailed as one of the top marketing automation systems on the market, and with good reason: it’s simple and all-round comprehensive functionality will help your team manage effective marketing campaigns. The system is specifically designed as an all-in-one solution for inbound marketing – with the ability to drive significant traffic to your website and landing pages.
When used properly, HubSpot can help your improve lead conversion rates and maximise ROI. Essentially, it’s a complete solution that provides tools that you can use to build and modify your campaign pages, as well as measuring the overall performance of your marketing campaign. With a strong content-led focus, HubSpot gives customers the opportunity to discover your business through channels such as blogs, social media, and SEO. The system is designed to favour quality over quantity by letting you share content that is relevant to your target customers and qualified leads.
Why should you choose HubSpot over other marketing tools?
With is simple and built-in-features, HubSpot is the perfect options for those of you looking for a compact, out-of-the-box marketing automation system. In general, you can start using it with very little technical experience: all you have to do is create an account, allocate contacts in the right stage of the funnel, score them, and then start distributing tailored content to the right customer. It really is as easy as that.
The system also has a fully functional CRM that integrates seamlessly with Salesforce. This integration means that you have full access to traffic data and other valuable statistics, which will allow decision-makers to obtain reports and insight to gauge the performance of each marketing campaign.
To conclude, HubSpot Marketing is the ideal marketing automation solution for marketing teams and professionals with little to no experience with marketing tools.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation system backed by a team of developers who value simplicity just as much as efficiency. While this solution isn’t exactly focused on being unique, it’s still a rather nice addition to a market already filled with user-friendly and highly effective platforms.
Essentially, ActiveCampaign is a simple, no-clutter marketing tool. It allows you to send out relevant and straightforward messages to prospective leads and then convert them into satisfied, paying customers. At the moment, this software caters to more than 100,000 users worldwide, thereby giving them easy access to a plethora of modern marketing avenues. The platform also offers an astonishing 150 hands-on integrations for undistributed data migration.
What sets ActiveCampaign apart from other marketing automation systems?
One of the main features of ActiveCampaign is its on-site tracking capabilities of all your contacts’ activity patterns and behavior – this means that you can actually view what contacts are doing while they’re browsing your website. The individual contact’s record will contain their entire page view history, making it easier for you to personalize your marketing approach so you can successfully convert them into paying customers and not just passive website visitors.
ActiveCampaign also has an intuitive automation builder for users that don’t have much experience or training with marketing automation systems. Their automation builder features a drag-and-drop flowchart tool that is intuitive and simple to use, allowing users to create robust automated processes and workflows without IT assistance or expertise.
The marketing automation solution also comes with a feature-rich sales CRM suite. ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation tool covers a whole lot including CRM, which allows for a smoother transition going from marketing to sales processes.
SharpSpring
SharpSpring is another robust marketing automation system, designed by a team that firmly believes in efficient data delivery and streamlined communication as major components in driving growth and improving conversion rates. With this approach, the SharpSpring team has come up with a system that focuses all features and capabilities on facilitating customer relationships and making sure those relationships last. This solution offers a simple yet effective functionality, allowing users to deliver the right message to the right prospects at the right time.
What sets SharpSpring apart from other marketing automation systems?
Firstly, SharpSpring presents users with a simplified and highly personalized email marketing experience. It provides marketers with personalized email message options, rather than simply offering email blasting functionality. With more personalized messaging options, users can fine tune their emails to better suit their target market – thereby leading to a higher conversion rate.
In addition to this, SharpSpring also offers dynamic forms for effective lead capturing, streamlined social media integrations for simple and efficient social media marketing, top notch customer support, and reasonable pricing. All of these elements make SharpSpring an ideal option for SMBs wanting a moderately priced, yet fully functional and feature-rich solution to facilitate their marketing efforts.
Exponea Marketing Cloud
Our last marketing automation recommendation, Exponea Marketing Cloud, is another robust and functional tool. In addition to automating your marketing processes, it will also effectively simplify omni-channel communication thus allowing you to make the most of your marketing efforts.
Exponea seamlessly integrates a wide variety of marketing automation tools and merges their functionalities using practical AI capabilities and comprehensive insights to help improve conversion rates and customer satisfaction. That said, the system is arguably one of the best options for organizations looking to maximize customer value and ROI, regardless of their resource limitations.
What sets Exponea apart from other marketing automation systems?
Exponea provides users with a remarkable tool, known as the Scenario Designer, which allows for complete control over marketing campaigns and strategies. With this tool, marketers can design scenarios to come up with potential outcomes of specific campaigns, thus helping them identify potential weaknesses in their strategy and to maximize results.
The system gives users access to user-friendly features such as the drag-and-drop campaign editors, premade professional templates, A/B testing tools, WYSIWYG email editors, and more. The data tracking and long-term storage capabilities are also among the many features that make this particular marketing automation system rise above its counterparts.
Plug-and-play accessibility, modern ad management, and result-oriented attribution modelling are also available to all users, further enhancing the process automation and marketing experience.