Marketing in the digital age can be a complex process, and not just because so many marketers are working at home, distanced from the office and in-person collaboration. Digital marketing means choosing the best route to specific customer audience segments and doing so across a constantly changing landscape of channels. Making those decisions means parsing a constant stream of customer success and satisfaction data, which means automating both the messaging stream and the subsequent data collection, not to mention altering both message and channel in response to that information.
What Is Marketing Automation?
When they’re built right, marketing automation solutions can be a lifesaver when it comes to doing your job. These solutions can handle the complex, grueling work that is integral to a marketing campaign while pulling from multiple data sources. Marketing automation software culls information like the number of opened emails, e-commerce carts left behind, and web form data to make your marketing decisions easier. If you truly take advantage of the features a marketing automation platform delivers, then you can boost your company’s bottom line.
Similar to standard email marketing software vendors, marketing automation software vendors have created workflow templates that help guide you through the automation process. This way, you don’t have to build new sequences from scratch. These templates usually start with a basic interaction, such as a “Welcome” or a “Thank you for making a purchase” message. Once a contact receives the initial email, he or she is guided through a sequence based on his or her actions. For example, if John receives a welcome message and he clicks a link to an offer, then that action automatically pulls him onto a distinct email marketing journey. Conversely, if Gwen deletes her welcome message, then she may automatically be pulled off the workflow to conserve your email output.
How complicated and how deep your campaigns run is determined by which vendor you choose. For example, HubSpot and Pardot both offer unlimited email and unlimited sequencing options. This means you can create a workflow with multiple branches for each stage of the sequence, and you can create an unlimited number of sequences (not that you would). Conversely, Zoho Campaigns is mostly designed for users who want to follow customary workflows that guide users on basic sequences. As a result, Zoho Campaigns doesn’t offer unlimited sequencing or branching. This tool is perfectly suitable for marketers who just want to make an offer after a welcome email or for marketers who want to wish people a happy birthday once a year.
More complex applications are tied in to potential sales. A customer who abandons a shopping cart on your online store will set off an alert. This can trigger an email to that customer with a generous discount code or other offers to sweeten the deal. Being able to deploy automated marketing messages on-the-fly speaks to the urgency of retaining a customer who has made a buying decision, but may be price sensitive or be looking elsewhere.
Email marketing is a great first step toward developing solid communications with your customers and prospects. But once you have moved past one-off messages and have decided to create prolonged, personalized messages powered by customer data, it’s time to try marketing automation. No tools better exemplify the simplicity, effectiveness, and scalability of marketing automation software than two of our three Editors’ Choice tools: HubSpot and Pardot.
Both HubSpot and Pardot offer a vast array of functionality that should suit your business regardless of how intricate your marketing strategy might be. We found HubSpot to be better equipped for small businesses that are steadily growing their marketing activity, whereas Pardot is ideal for large enterprises with complicated marketing plans already in place. In total, we tested 10 marketing automation tools, each of which offer some unique features that make them stand out from the field.
Pricing and Plans
Marketing automation software is typically priced one of two ways: by the number of contacts in your database or by the number of emails you send each month. For example, the Growth Pardot plan costs $1,250 per month for email marketing, prospect tracking, lead nurturing and scoring, reporting, forms and landing pages, and standard Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM). This plan can be upgraded to two higher tiers, each of which offers additional features, plug-ins, and add-ons. However, all three Pardot plans give you capacity for 10,000 contacts.
Don’t be alarmed by Pardot’s price tag as it’s easily the most expensive tool we reviewed. HubSpot’s Marketing Hub lets you store 1,000 contacts for $50 per month in its Starter plan, $800 per month for its second-most feature-rich plan, and $3,200 for the Enterprise plan.
On the lower end of the pricing spectrum, you’ll find products such as Infusionsoft, which costs $299 per month for five users, 5,000 contacts, and unlimited emails per month. The Complete package also includes Infusionsoft’s four core feature sets (CRM, e-commerce, marketing automation, and sales automation) at no extra charge. SendinBlue and Zoho Campaigns both offer free plans for anyone who is unwilling to spend even a dime for marketing workflows. Both tools scale upward for added capacity and complexity, and each offers pay-as-you-go plans for companies just dipping their toes into email marketing and marketing automation.
Unique Features
In addition to an organic integration with Salesforce, Pardot offers one of the cleanest user interfaces (UIs) and one of the largest variety of prebuilt templates on the market. But its best features are designed to improve your workflows once they’ve been created. For example, you can pretest the process of an automated program to see how it reacts. This is essentially a fire drill automation campaign to ensure your complex branching doesn’t lead to a dead end or a duplicate email. Pardot also lets you schedule social media campaigns and post in real time to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter simultaneously. If you really want to manage your marketing program from within one solution, then Pardot also offers a search marketing tool that plugs into Bing, Google, and Yahoo. You can check search engine rankings, monthly volumes, and ranking difficulties as well as run competitor analysis and monitor your paid search campaigns. No other tool we reviewed offers search marketing functionality.
HubSpot heavily relies on list building to help you manage your workflows. The tool lets you shrink (or grow) your lists in the same way you would narrow down products on Amazon or eBay, a feature which is incredibly straightforward and fast. When you add a URL to a contact record, HubSpot will automatically pull in demographic information, such as the contact’s company location and number of employees.
You can email a contact directly from the Contact Record, and you can make a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) call if you have turned on this paid feature of HubSpot Sales. This integration lets you log and save call information within each contact record so there is a transparent history of which marketers and sales professionals interacted with contacts. You can also schedule interactions with contacts. You won’t find these features on the other platforms we reviewed.
Infusionsoft is the only drag-and-drop tool we tested, which is a nifty feature for marketers who may wish to work on touchscreens or don’t have time to deal with lengthy drop-down menus. It also provides unique tag removal that automatically pulls contacts from campaigns if they perform a certain action. For example, if contacts don’t open three emails in a row, then you can set the tool to remove all such contacts from the workflow.
This way, you’re not sending messages into a vacuum. The tool also gives you the most useful real-time alert dashboard of any that we tested in this class. It lets you see every contact interaction with anyone in your database. So, if you sent an email to someone a week ago but they just opened it this second, then you’ll see their name pop up at the top of your dashboard. From this tab, you can send a follow-up email or adjust the contact’s standing within the specific workflow.
Some solutions such as Infusionsoft have solidified their lead management offerings. Infusionsoft’s Pipeline lead management tool lets companies organize and manage prospects and deals in a single dashboard. Using Pipeline, you can customize sales stages, add a contact or business to a card, follow up with leads, and prioritize your work. The use of pipelines and funnels makes it easier to grasp how leads can be optimized and converted to sales.
We currently have three Editors’ Choice picks for marketing automation solutions here at PCMag. One of them, Campaigner, impressed me with its intuitive UI and its wealth of online resources. Another Editors’ Choice, the aforementioned Pardot, excelled due to its built-in search and social marketing functionality. Lastly, the aforementioned HubSpot had an impressive set of prebuilt workflows that also got our top nod. While all of these are fantastic solutions, they are all quite different, and it’s definitely worth taking the time to research the best solution for your needs. This, of course, also applies even to the other products that did not get an Editors’ Choice designation.
The Bottom Line
These are just some of the amazing features you’ll find when using marketing automation software. As a result, it’s important for you to determine your most needed features before making a purchase decision.
None of the tools we tested are bad. In fact, each of them will provide you with more power than your standard email marketing platform will. However, some are better than others, some are more expensive, and some do a better job letting you customize your workflows to suit your specific needs.
Juan Martinez and Oliver Rist also contributed to this story.
Where To Buy
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Campaigner
Pros: Accessible 24/7 customer support
Productivity-focused UI
Wide range of templates and options
Comprehensive onboarding and online resources
Cons: Requires credit card for free trial
No free version
Migrating from other solutions isn’t easy
Bottom Line: Campaigner leads the competition with well-priced email marketing, automation, and reporting features that serve well as the lynchpin to a businesses’ marketing hub.
HubSpot
Pros: CRM integration is included
Vast selection of social media management options
Stellar marketing automation
Offers integrations with other HubSpot solutionsCons: Expensive
Steep learning curveSEO features could use improvement
Bottom Line: If you’re looking for and end-to-end martech solution, it’s tough to beat HubSpot Marketing. This platform has a generous feature set that combines marketing automation with email marketing, sales, and CRM.
Act-On
Pros: Act-On offers organic plug-ins with social media and social marketing tools.
The tool’s well-designed workflow creator makes designing automations a snap.
Its open API lets you bring in anything you’ll need to make your workflows and emails more intelligent.Cons: Among the most expensive tools on the market.
Functionality designed to drive cross-channel intelligence is only available at a higher-priced tier.Bottom Line: Act-On does it all.
It’s an expensive marketing automation platform but, if you value marketing insights to drive better CRM, social media, and search marketing tactics, then you’ll want to include Act-On in your first round of trials.ActiveCampaign
Pros: Many third-party integrations and auto-responder options.
Excellent online support.Cons: Comparatively short free trial.
No phone support.
Busy dashboard.Bottom Line: ActiveCampaign offers a lot of marketing features, which results in a cluttered interface, though that’s balanced by its high quality online support.
Constant Contact
Pros: Intuitive and elegant UI
Offers social media campaign integration
Selection of commerce and event integrations
Cons: Templates don’t offer much flexibility
Pricing will add up once you have thousands of contacts
Bottom Line: Following the industry trend of expansion, Constant Contact now tackles popular marketing channels like social media and media buying. This is a great fit for any SMB marketer’s short list
GetResponse
Pros: Easy to use
Powerful auto-responder options
Solid email marketing features
Cons: Analytics are underwhelming
Lacks 24/7 phone support
Bottom Line: GetResponse is versatile, easy to use, and can cover most small businesses marketing needs in one affordable and fairly feature-rich interface.
Infusionsoft
Pros: Combines CRM with email marketing.
Makes it easy to add contacts
Great coaching and support options
Cons: Expensive
Reporting could use some refinement
Template designs are limited
Bottom Line: Ideal for small businesses where managers wear multiple hats, Infusionsoft by Keap is both the launchpad and the control center for various email marketing and CRM activities.
SendinBlue
Pros: Now features basic CRM functionality
Impressive range of automation
Wealth of auto-responders and transactional email features.
Cons: Initial account setup can be tedious
Basic templates could use improvement
Bottom Line: SendinBlue is evolving from email marketing to a more comprehensive solutions hub with expanded automation and built-in CRM functionality suitable for most small businesses.
Zoho Campaigns
Pros: Powerful integration with Zoho CRM
Well-designed campaign and marketing toolsVery good reports feature
Cons: Initial setup takes time
Costly solution for some SMBs
Some email templates look dated
Bottom Line: Anchored by solid integrations with the Zoho suite of SMB solutions, Zoho Campaigns is an excellent email marketing solution that also enjoys a long list of integrations with Zoho’s stable of other SMB software products.
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