Marketing automation software will help your business work with multiple channels, publish content, and manage enormous amounts of data. These tools will help your teams manage repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on more valuable work. Nearly 80% of marketers noted marketing automation is the number one contributor to their success, so it makes sense to implement these platforms in your organization.
As reaching out to customers becomes more complex, there’s no longer a question of if you need a marketing automation tool or not - it’s a question of which software is right for your organization. Your marketing team’s heavy workload increases the need for automation tools to reduce their workload and increase productivity and efficiency. I put together this list of the best marketing automation software to help you solve multiple aspects of your future campaigns.
Best Marketing Automation Software Shortlist
Here’s the shortlist of the best tools that I’ll cover in this article.
- HubSpot Marketing Hub
- Eloqua
- Zoho CRM
- Drip
- AWeber
- Keap
- Marketo
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud
- ActiveCampaign
- Snov.io
What Is Marketing Automation Software?
Marketing automation software are solutions that help your business automate marketing activities. They enable your marketing team to simplify and manage various tasks, such as email campaigns, customer segmentation, social media management, lead nurturing, and many more vital functions. By using marketing automation, you allow the platform to handle all the repetitive and tedious tasks that would otherwise take your team’s valuable time and organizational resources.
How I Selected The Best Marketing Automation Software
Perhaps you’re wondering how I selected the best marketing automation software for this list? To build this top 10 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of marketing automation software with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of RevOps experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
If you have general questions about marketing automation software or how to pick the best marketing automation software for your organization, take a look at our frequently asked questions section below. Or, you can skip directly to my detailed software summaries, if that’s what you need the most.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best marketing automation software for this article:
User Interface (UI):
When looking for a marketing automation tool, the vendor should provide a demo or free trial, allowing you to look through the platform’s interface. The tool’s interface determines how the software looks and how you’ll navigate the platform. I look for an interface that’s clear and easy to understand. Also, it shouldn’t have a steep learning curve.
Usability:
Marketing automation software should help make your processes more manageable. So, it’s essential to understand how easy it is to use a marketing automation tool so your teams don’t experience any issues when using the platform. I look for easy automation software for everyone to learn so you can ensure your team members are comfortable using it.
Customer Support:
Customer support can vary from vendor to vendor, so I look for tools that provide various types of support, such as phone, email, or live chat. I also look at the level of support, such as dedicated, general, or 24/7 helpline. A dedicated support team from the vendor should be able to help you set up the software and provide technical support.
Software Integrations:
Not all marketing automation software integrates with the right set of tools. I look for platforms that work with your already-using systems, such as CRM, accounting, and other valuable tools. The software should also provide an API in case there isn’t a native integration with your systems. This will let someone on your team with developer expertise create custom integrations with your tools.
Pricing:
Marketing automation software’s primary goal is to make your work easier. But it should also fit your budget. I look for tools that provide different pricing tiers that allow you to upgrade as your business grows. This will ensure the platform is accessible through every stage of your business without disturbing growth.
Overviews Of The Best Marketing Automation Software
1. HubSpot Marketing Hub - Best for inbound marketing
HubSpot provides businesses with a marketing solution that helps with inbound marketing automation.
Why I picked HubSpot: The tool is a popular inbound marketing platform for many organizations. HubSpot allows you to plan marketing campaigns with its automation capabilities. You can track your website visitors’ behavior and create automatic triggers to send personalized follow-up emails to share offers and discounts. HubSpot can also automate workflows for different goals, such as encouraging visitors to sign-up for your newsletter.
HubSpot provides its Marketing Hub for any sized business that needs to automate repetitive tasks to help them grow. You can use the software to automate workflows, email drip campaigns, lead scoring, and more vital marketing tasks. HubSpot also provides a chatbot to help you automate live chat marketing on your website.
HubSpot Standout Features and Integrations
Features include content management, search engine optimization, ad tracking and management, social media management, live chat, landing page builder, form builder, lead tracking and management, and a workflow editor.
Integrations include monday.com, Miro, Wrike, Freshdesk, Domo, SendGrid, Pipedrive, ProjectManager, Recurly, Improvado, Odoo, GetResponse, and Zendesk.
HubSpot costs from $45/month. HubSpot offers a free forever subscription with limited features.
Pros
- State-of-the-art marketing automation features
- Easy to use drag-and-drop editor
- Flexible to meet users’ needs
Cons
- Steep learning curve
2. Eloqua - Best for B2B omnichannel marketing
Eloqua helps B2B businesses win audiences with personalized, omnichannel marketing campaigns.
Why I picked Eloqua: The software lets you plan automated marketing campaigns while personalizing them. Eloqua is an effective tool for automating marketing campaigns across various channels, such as email, video, and mobile. With this platform, you can automate offer campaign designs, lead scoring, and real-time data.
Eloqua is suitable for large, enterprise-level organizations that need more in-depth automation for their B2B business. The software will give you all the tools you need to segment your audience and manage leads to encourage them to buy from you. Eloqua provides your business with buyer’s journey insights and reports with a few clicks.
Eloqua Standout Features and Integrations
Features include campaign creation and management, historical data assessment, data-driven targeting, audience segmentation, lead scoring, lead management, artificial intelligence, asset management, and data dashboards.
Integrations include Domo, EventsAIR, ClickSend, Improvado, Driftrock, MediaValet, BigMarker, Opensense, LeadsBridge, 6Connex, Zendesk, Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, and OptinMonster.
Eloqua offers custom pricing upon request. Eloqua provides a demo to help you understand if the platform is right for you.
Pros
- Many out-of-the-box functionalities
- Automates marketing journeys
- Easily integrates with other systems
Cons
- Lead scoring needs work
- Large learning curve
3. Zoho CRM - Best for building customer relationships
Zoho CRM helps businesses automate the processes they need to build customer relationships.
Why I picked Zoho CRM: Unlike other customer relationship platforms that are all about data entry, Zoho CRM automates your marketing workflows, campaigns, processes, and customer journeys. Zoho CRM provides insights to help you analyze and break down your workflows to help you analyze them and see if everything’s performing well. The platform will automatically filter your leads according to various criteria, such as location, lead score, and source, and give them to the most suitable sales rep.
Zoho CRM is an excellent fit for any sized business that needs to enhance its team’s productivity. With this platform, you can manage every aspect of your business’s marketing automation. You can define custom actions to define what you want the system to do when customers reach key stages of your sales process.
Zoho CRM Standout Features and Integrations
Features include lead management, deal management, workflow automation, contact management, process builder, process rules, real-time reporting, analytical dashboards, territory management, and forecasting tools.
Integrations include Wrike, Freshdesk, CloudTalk, GoTo Meeting, Domo, Twilio, ProjectManager, PandaDoc, Jotform, ClickSend, Basecamp, ThinkAutomation, and GetResponse.
Zoho CRM costs from $20/user/month when paying annually or $14/user/month when billed annually. Zoho CRM offers a free 15-day trial for new subscribers.
Pros
- Comprehensive feature set
- Affordable pricing
- Allows for extensive customization
Cons
- Limited reporting
- The UI needs improvement
4. Drip - Best for ecommerce marketing strategies
Drip equips ecommerce brands with the marketing automation tools they need to reach new audiences.
Why I picked Drip: If you operate an ecommerce brand, Drip offers tools to help your business automate many marketing strategies. You can use the platform to automate personalized campaigns for every step of your customer’s journeys. Drip collects customer data and lets you create strategies that work. It also connects with other ecommerce marketing tools that will provide you with even more customer insights.
Drip is a comprehensive tool for any sized ecommerce brand that needs to enhance customer relationships and nurture customer loyalty. It allows your marketing teams to create automated campaigns, track website activity, optimize campaigns for success, and perform other vital functions. You can customize Drip’s workflow templates to meet your requirements and brand. Afterward, you can launch them and automatically engage with your customers.
Drip Standout Features and Integrations
Features include A/B testing, dynamic content, customer surveys, drip campaigns, reporting and analytics tools, campaign management, activity tracking, lead scoring, source tracking, and lead nurturing.
Integrations include Pipedrive, Recurly, Ticketsauce, HoneyBook, BigMarker, Outgrow, ZeroBounce, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Drift, HubSpot CRM, Shopify, and Zapier.
Drip costs from $39/month. Drip offers a free 14-day trial for new subscribers.
Pros
- Easy to use templates
- Excellent customer service
- Very affordable pricing
Cons
- The email builder needs work
- Workflows are complex at first
5. AWeber - Best for automating email marketing
AWeber is an email platform that helps businesses use autoresponders to automate email campaigns.
Why I picked AWeber: The software provides businesses with autoresponder functionality to send emails to customers or leads when they perform a specific action. Many organizations use AWeber because its autoresponder capabilities help them save time, which makes the platform a key part of their marketing campaigns. It’s easy for your teams to automate email follow-ups using the software based on time intervals. For example, you can set up a drip campaign after customers sign up for your mailing list, the first message being a welcome message; they can then receive a discount code a week later, and so on.
AWeber works for any sized business that needs to simplify its email marketing campaigns and grow its subscriber list. You can build landing pages, create custom emails with the drag-and-drop editor, and use the platform’s pre-stocked image library. If you’re in the beginning stages of your business, you can buy a website domain and build your landing pages from the platform.
AWeber Standout Features and Integrations
Features include email templates, an image library, a drag-and-drop builder, pre-built autoresponders, sign-up forms, a landing page builder, behavioral automation, and performance tracking.
Integrations include Jotform, Freshbooks, Outgrow, HoneyBook, Sitejet, LiveAgent, Zendesk, Salesforce, Google Analytics, WordPress, Zapier, and Shopify.
AWeber costs from $19.99/month when paying month-to-month or $16.15/month when billed annually. AWeber offers a free subscription tier for small email lists, up to 500 subscribers.
Pros
- Very affordable pricing
- Easy to use templates
- Video tutorial library
Cons
- Complex at first
- Some automations are difficult to start
6. Keap - Best for small businesses
Keap helps small businesses grow by enabling them to create new marketing strategies and automate repetitive tasks.
Why I picked Keap: Formerly known as Infusion Soft, Keap helps small businesses achieve lead, revenue, and customer acquisition targets. Keap makes it simple for small businesses to develop emails, landing pages, workflows, and other essential marketing assets from the platform’s pre-built templates. Depending on your customers’ behaviors, you can set up complex automations, such as follow up sequences, contact management, billing, and payments.
Keap is suitable for small businesses and solopreneurs that are looking to become more organized, increase sales, and save time. Keap combines sales and marketing processes to provide an integrated solution to simplify your company’s operations. The software offers effective CRM and automation integration, which enables your business to create excellent marketing campaigns.
Keap Standout Features and Integrations
Features include lead capture, appointment reminders, sales nurture, purchase follow-ups, CRM, pipeline performance tracking, reporting and analytics, email marketing, text marketing, and an appointment scheduler.
Integrations include Freshdesk, Domo, Twilio, Pipedrive, Recurly, Birdeye, Zendesk, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Slack, Zoom, Dropbox, Trello, Constant Contact, and Quickbooks.
Keap costs from $189/month when paid monthly or $149/month when billed annually. Keap offers a free 14-day trial for new subscribers.
Pros
- Automates interactions with leads
- An enormous number of integrations
- Simplifies email marketing campaigns
Cons
- Large learning curve
- The interface is complex
7. Marketo - Best for monitoring marketing automation
Marketo is a SaaS tool that will help your business analyze your marketing automation’s performance.
Why I picked Marketo: The platform’s tracking tools will help your business track your customers and leads’ behavior. The software provides real-time data showing how customers and leads engage with your campaigns and content. Not only does Marketo help you build marketing campaign workflows easily, it will analyze them to show you how they’re helping sales.
Marketo is an excellent fit for medium businesses and large enterprises that needs a marketing automation tool that covers any marketing channel. It’s a full-featured software that can handle everything from digital advertising to social media and account-based marketing. Marketo also offers robust content personalization capabilities that will provide a custom experience for each customer and lead through artificial intelligence optimization.
Marketo Standout Features and Integrations
Features include cross-channel marketing, social marketing, dynamic chat, digital advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing, sales insights, account profiling, lead generation, and predictive audiences.
Integrations include Wrike, GoTo Webinar, Domo, Pipedrive, Improvado, Bynder, Stripe, CallTrackingMetrics, Outgrow, OptiMonk, Salesforce, Slack, and Zoom.
Marketo offers custom pricing upon request. Marketo doesn’t provide any free trial information.
Pros
- Intuitive smart list builder
- Easy-to-use platform
- Quickly builds detailed customer profiles
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- UI needs improvement
8. Salesforce Marketing Cloud - Best for speeding up sales cycles
Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps businesses eliminate manual marketing tasks to help teams speed up their sales cycles.
Why I picked Pardot: The platform provides intelligent lead nurturing capabilities that will automatically send emails and perform marketing tasks according to specific triggers. Salesforce Marketing Cloud has enormous automation that speed up your sales cycle. You can also track your website interactions and create predictive lead scores based on the parameters you set. All of these capabilities work to improve your company’s marketing efficiency and eliminate wasted time and effort.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a better fit for larger enterprises that work in the B2B space in any industry. It gives your company B2B analytics and account-based marketing solutions that are tailored to your specific needs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud can enhance your business’s engagement through lead nurturing, lead scoring and grading, and in-depth prospect tracking.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Standout Features and Integrations
Features include event-triggered actions, email marketing, channel management, lead management, autoresponders, customer surveys, dynamic content, contact database, approval process control, reporting and analytics, and drip campaigns.
Integrations include Accelevents, ProjectManager, Driftrock, Opensense, Hevo, Google Analytics, Zoom HubSpot CRM, Zapier, Contently, and OptinMonster.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud costs from $1,250/month. Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers a free trial upon request.
Pros
- Straightforward landing page creator
- Simple Salesforce integration
- Creates very detailed reports
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- No customizable dashboards
9. ActiveCampaign - Best for customer engagement
ActiveCampaign enables businesses to grow by helping them enhance customer engagement.
Why I picked ActiveCampaign: The platform does some of the best work automating the process of real people. With this software, you can create and manage automated workflows, track leads, monitor visitor behavior, optimize campaigns, and other crucial tasks that helps you develop deep relationships with your customers and leads. This means you can use ActiveCampaigns to build very effective, personalized campaigns to increase customer engagement.
ActiveCampaign works well for any sized business that needs a way to build advanced automation processes. One feature that stands out most is the marketing automation functionality. Here, you can establish multiple marketing automation flows and personalize them with over 500 pre-built automations, an email template library, and contact management.
ActiveCampaign Standout Features and Integrations
Features include automation maps, automation goals, dynamic content, event tracking, automation optimization, lead tracking, email templates, lead generation, sales analytics, and lead scoring.
Integrations include Freshdesk, Pipedrive, ProjectManager, Recurly, Improvado, SlickText, Jotform, ClickSend, Honeybook, Basecamp, Outgrow, Nutshell, OptiMonk, Zendesk, and Salesforce.
ActiveCampaign costs from $39/month. ActiveCampaign offers a free 14-day trial.
Pros
- Excellent customer support
- Build powerful automation
- Quickly identifies sales opportunities
Cons
- Challenging to learn
- Can be slow at times
10. Snov.io - Best for lead generation
Snov.io helps businesses simplify their lead generation and cold outreach efforts.
Why I picked Snov.io: The platform allows you to collect leads from anywhere on the internet. Snov.io can help your business find leads from sources such as company websites, LinkedIn, Google search results pages, blogs, and anywhere else on the web. The software will validate the emails you collect to ensure their quality.
Snov.io is an excellent choice for any sized business focusing on cold outreach and needing a solution to automate their outbound marketing tasks. It provides an email marketing service where you can create and send complex email sequences and autoresponders that the recipient can trigger when they perform a specific action. The bulk email sender in Snov.io ensures each message is highly personal, and you can track your campaigns’ performance in real-time.
Snov.io Standout Features and Integrations
Features include an email finder, drip campaigns, lead generation, email capture, email warm-up, sales CRM, a technology checker, and an email verifier.
Integrations include Twilio, Pipedrive, Slack, HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM, Asana, Trello, Zapier, Calendly, Intercom, Wufoo, Google Forms, Stackreaction, Hyperise, and Rephrase.ai.
Snov.io costs from $39/month when paying month-to-month or $30/month when billed annually. Snov.io offers a free subscription tier with 150 credits and allows users to have 100 email recipients.
Pros
- Organizes entire outreach campaign
- Automates email campaigns
- Provides a free CRM
Cons
- Needs more email templates
- Could provide more features
Other Options
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best marketing automation software list.
- SharpSpring - Best all-in-one marketing automation
- Metadata.io - Best for automating paid campaigns
- Mailchimp - Best for data-driven recommendations.
- Klaviyo - Best for growth marketing.
- Constant Contact - Best for simplifying social media.
- Ontraport - Best no-code marketing automation tool.
- Sendinblue - Best for creating targeted and meaningful communications.
- GetResponse - Best conversion funnel creator tool.
- ConvertKit - Best for audience optimization.
People Also Ask
Here are a few popular questions answered for your convenience!
What are the Different Types of Marketing Automations?
What are the Key Features of Marketing Automation Software?
What Other RevOps Software Should I Use?
Getting Started with Marketing Automation Software
There are many options when it comes to marketing automation software. There are many conflicting opinions regarding the best option for each business, especially when considering that many businesses need several tools for their requirements. It’s all about deciding which one is right for your budget, business purpose, and technical expertise.
If you’re looking for more tools for your business’s revenue operations, remember to look through our different tool lists for specific organizational aspects, such as business intelligence, data visualization, and sales automation. We regularly add new tool lists with the latest software to enhance your operations and grow your business.