10 Marketing Automation Tools for Growing Your Business

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is just what it sounds like: the process of setting up automated processes to streamline your marketing for leads and existing customers. Marketing automation software manages repetitive, time-consuming tasks to free up your team’s time to work on bigger-picture projects. You can use marketing automation across different channels and teams, including:

• Advertising
• Social media
• Lead management
• Emails

Marketing automation allows you to establish processes across multifunctional campaigns and multiple channels in one place to help you increase revenue, maximize your efficiency, and improve your ROI. 

Instead of manually monitoring leads as they move through the sales funnel, digital marketing automation allows you to create a curated journey for all of your leads and help keep them engaged— automatically. You can nurture leads with automated email sequences, connect on social media, and share relevant content. Once leads convert to customers, you can still use marketing automation to maintain engagement and attract loyal, long-term customers.

To skip ahead to any of the tools, click below: 

1. HubSpot
2. Campaign Wizard
3. Marketo
4. Mailchimp
5. Pardot
6. Salesmate
7. Constant Contact
8. Active Campaign
9. ConvertKit
10. Oracle Eloqua

How Marketing Automation Software Helps the Bottom Line

From eCommerce companies to SaaS platforms, companies of all types and sizes are using marketing automation to their advantage. And while learning the ropes of a new marketing automation platform or software can feel like a daunting task, businesses should recognize that the technology’s many benefits are absolutely worth the initial investment of time, effort, and cost.

First, marketing automation tools help to reduce overall marketing costs. By streamlining processes and creating efficiencies, companies can lower their overhead and maximize their marketing dollars. It also leads to increased revenue. You can create personalized nurture workflows for leads depending on their needs, including creating customized drip campaigns and other communications that help move leads down the sales funnel. Over time, this leads to increased conversions and, as a result, increased revenue. 

Additionally, it allows you to get more insights, thanks to increased data. The best marketing automation software tracks all of your leads and the performance of all of your campaigns, so you can track your efforts and directly tie marketing to revenue.

Top 10 Marketing Automation Tools for Any Business

Marketing automation can be effective across industries because, luckily, there is a wide variety of platforms with different features and functionality. Most platforms, however, aren’t one-size-fits-all. To choose the most effective option for your business, it’s vital to pinpoint your exact needs and determine what you want out of your marketing automation software.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is one of the most well-known and widely used marketing automation platforms. Designed for medium- and large-sized businesses, it helps marketers manage every aspect of their marketing strategy, from lead management to drip campaigns and everything in between. You can create custom workflows, manage your data, and streamline almost any process using Hubspot marketing automation so your team can get more done. The best part? It starts at just $45 per month but can range all the way up to $3,200 a month for the Enterprise plan.

2. Campaign Wizard

Campaign Wizard is the perfect tool for those who aren’t sure where to get started with sales automation. This platform offers a library of pre-designed infrastructure, so any business can easily launch sales campaigns, marketing, and operations, right within HubSpot, for simplified HubSpot marketing automation. It takes the confusion and complexity out of learning all of the intricacies of HubSpot so your ramp-up time is next to nothing. While Campaign Wizard works well for both B2B and B2C businesses of all sizes, it’s especially powerful for small and scrappy teams. The base plan is free, or there's a one-time $649 fee for the premium plan.

3. Marketo

Marketo is a comprehensive marketing tool that assists teams at every stage. Designed with every imaginable feature, it has dozens of integrations to ensure that your martech stack works together to help you achieve your goals. Perfect for medium and large marketing and sales teams, Marketo can send drip and nurture email campaigns, be used for outbound sales efforts, and track detailed metrics, for a one-stop-shop for digital marketing automation. While Marketo isn’t the most expensive tool out there, it’s also not the cheapest—prices start at $1,195 per month and scale from there.

4. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is user-friendly marketing automation software that allows users to send emails, deploy ad campaigns, create landing pages, and even personalize engagement. It’s ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses that don’t want a huge learning curve when onboarding their new tool. Mailchimp automation is intuitive, simple, and straightforward, so you can get it up and running in just a few hours. It’s also a low-cost option for those with a limited budget—you can choose from a free plan or their premium plan that costs $299 per month.

5. Pardot

Pardot is a powerful tool that enables cross-functional marketing and sales teams to get the most out of their marketing efforts. This collaborative marketing automation software combines lead management and lead generation, email marketing, sales alignment, artificial intelligence, and detailed reporting, so you can consolidate your tech stack and streamline processes across your org. Best for large-scale, well-established businesses, Pardot is a strategic investment in company-wide marketing efforts that starts at $1,250 per month and scales to $15,000 per month for the premium plan.

6. Salesmate

This powerful CRM platform is the perfect marketing automation tool for small businesses looking to get their simplified processes up and running for an affordable price. With features that allow you to create multiple workflows and processes with little effort, Salesmate includes sales automation, email automation, trigger-based automation, contact management, a team inbox, web forms, sales sequences, and detailed reporting, so it has everything you could need. It starts at just $12 per month and scales up to $40+ per month for enterprise clients.

7. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop email builder that simplifies the lead gen and lead nurture processes so you can more easily move prospects through the sales funnel. With endless template options to choose from, it’s the ideal option for small- to medium-sized businesses that don’t have time or budget to dedicate to onboarding a comprehensive marketing automation tool. Instead, Constant Contact allows you to trigger emails and customize messaging, starting at just $20 per month and maxing out at $45 per month.

8. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is simple and intuitive, but with advanced features and functionality. It’s designed to streamline every aspect of your digital marketing automation and empowers you to integrate your entire martech stack, easily segment, and automate follow-up workflows for a powerful platform that helps you simplify everything. Perfect for larger businesses with the resources to devote to training and deployment, this automation platform starts at just $9 per month and scales to $229 per month for its enterprise plan.

9. ConvertKit

This marketing automation tool has an intuitive visual editor that makes it fast and easy to get started. Users can choose from a wide range of pre-built automation templates, so you don’t have to worry about starting from scratch. Instead, ConvertKit is the perfect platform for beginners or small teams who don’t have the time and resources to implement a larger, more complicated tool. It’s also super affordable at just $29 per month, making it ideal for teams with a lean budget for digital marketing automation.

10. Oracle Eloqua

This fully loaded, enterprise-level marketing automation software has everything you need—and then some. Designed for large businesses that need plentiful tools and resources, it will help to streamline, simplify, and boost company-wide marketing efforts to help maximize your ROI. Oracle Eloqua also boasts a well-established marketplace with endless integration options, ensuring it works well with your existing tools. At $2,000 per month, however, it’s a sizable investment in your marketing automation software.

Streamline Your Efforts & Boost ROI With the Best Marketing Automation Software

From helping to create efficiencies to helping generate increased revenue, automation platforms are changing how businesses think about their marketing strategy—and we don’t think that will change any time soon. Fortunately, there is a wide range of different marketing automation tools out there, which means marketers are in a better position to find a solution that’s tailored to their business’s size, industry, budget, and other unique needs.

If you’re still intimidated by the idea of selecting and implementing the best marketing automation software for your business, it may be time to enlist the help of the experts. Campaign Wizard’s pre-designed workflows are the perfect place to start to ensure you build a strong foundation for your marketing automation.