Best B2B Marketing Automation Platform Shortlist
After researching their ability to handle multiple types of B2B marketing campaigns, I selected the following solutions.
- Adobe Marketo Engage - Best for enterprises
- Hubspot CRM - Best for automating inbound marketing
- ActiveCampaign - Best all-in-one B2B marketing automation platform
- Salesforce Pardot - Best for marketing analytics
- Mailchimp - Best for email marketing
- Drip - Best for customer segmentation
- Oracle Eloqua - Best for cross-channel marketing
- Leadfeeder - Best for lead generation
- GetResponse - Best for landing pages
- Zoho CRM - Best for customer relationship management (CRM)
- SuperBuzz - Best for AI-powered traffic generation
- Attentive - Best for SMS campaigns
Businesses of all sizes use or plan to implement some form of marketing automation solution to automate repetitive tasks, increase lead generation, scale operations, and simplify functions through integration with other tools. The significant amount of data needed to develop engaging and personalized experiences means B2B marketing automation platforms are the only way to create robust and cost-effective marketing campaigns. However, the number of B2B marketing automation platforms available makes examining and selecting the right solution challenging for marketers and decision-makers. So, in this article, I’ll help illustrate the top B2B marketing solutions for various use cases so you don’t commit to any software you don’t need.
What is a B2B Marketing Automation Platform
A B2B marketing automation platform is a specialized software tool that enables businesses to automate and manage various aspects of their marketing efforts directed towards other businesses. These platforms encompass a range of features, such as lead generation, email marketing, lead nurturing, segmentation, analytics, and more, all designed to streamline and optimize the B2B marketing process. By automating repetitive tasks and providing advanced targeting and tracking capabilities, B2B marketing automation platforms help companies effectively engage with potential clients, nurture relationships, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates and business growth within the B2B sector.
Overviews of the 12 Best B2B Marketing Automation Platform
Here, you’ll find my summaries of each tool, including my evaluation of specific features, unique points that set them apart, and pros and cons.
1. Adobe Marketo Engage - Best for enterprises
Adobe Marketo Engage is a B2B marketing automation platform that helps teams improve customer experiences at every touchpoint and simplify the customer journey.
Why I picked Adobe Marketo Engage: The platform helps enterprise-sized organizations track audience behavior, allowing them to find the right customers for campaigns. Adobe Marketo Engage also offers a complete toolset to help your business with account-based marketing, lead management, email marketing, and multi-touch attribution. It’s the perfect choice for organizations that need a solution to personalize experiences across multiple touchpoints and share information between your marketing and sales departments.
Adobe Marketo Engage Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include tools to help you build robust landing pages with data capture forms; it comes with customizable templates you can personalize, eliminating the need to start from scratch. The platform also offers all standard reporting and analytics capabilities that provide crucial summaries of the data you collect.
Integrations include connections with over 600 applications, such as Bynder, Domo, Hevo, Hubspot CRM, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Slack, Twilio, Wrike, Zoho CRM, and other software options. You also have the option of creating custom integrations with a paid Zapier account or through the platform’s API.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Intuitive to use
- Many tools for advanced users
- Excellent training tools
Cons
- Building campaigns can be challenging
- Interface is outdated
2. Hubspot CRM - Best for automating inbound marketing
Hubspot CRM helps B2B businesses attract audiences and convert them into paying customers by empowering them to create and automate inbound marketing campaigns.
Why I picked Hubspot CRM: This platform is a popular choice for businesses due to its inbound marketing capabilities and marketing automation tools. Hubspot CRM enables you to create simple workflows thanks to its visual system. You can use Hubspot CRM to develop and automate different inbound marketing goals and hand off customers to your sales department.
Hubspot CRM Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include a Hubspot Academy that helps train you and your team to effectively use the system for your inbound campaigns. With Hubspot CRM, you can create customized email drip campaigns your team can use to nurture prospects and use audience criteria to send the right message to the right lead at the right time.
Integrations include Aircall, Amplitude, Gong.io, Hootsuite, Mailchimp, Microsoft Teams, Qwilr, Salesforce, WooCommerce, Zendesk, and other software options. You can also create custom integrations with a paid Zapier account or the platform’s API.
Pricing: From $18/month.
Free Trial: Free plan available.
Pros
- Many inbound marketing functionalities
- Simple user interface
- Excellent for small businesses
Cons
- Lack of artificial intelligence
- Reporting tools need improvement
3. ActiveCampaign - Best all-in-one B2B marketing automation platform
ActiveCampaign offers a range of tools that help B2B marketing teams automate a number of tasks that don’t need the human touch.
Why I picked ActiveCampaign: I added ActiveCampaign as an option for your B2B marketing team because it’s built around the fact that marketing automation tools can’t handle everything, but it does an excellent job of working automation into processes that your team doesn’t need to focus too much time on. ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation features empower your team to automate multiple tasks, such as sending email campaigns and tracking engagement using tags, custom fields, and more. The platform collects information about your audience from every channel they have access to, such as social media, web pages, live chat, and SMS, and automatically identifies the most engaged audience members.
ActiveCampaign Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include automated workflows, which you can use and turn into email drip campaigns where you can tag and label customers in your CRM. ActiveCampaign also provides lead scoring tools that help you see who’s responding to your marketing efforts, enabling your sales team to focus on the best leads and on converting them to customers.
Integrations include native connections with over 930 applications to help you enhance efficiency, such as AgencyAnalytics, ClickFunnels, Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Klipfolio, Salesforce, Slack, Trello, Unbounce, WordPress, and other software options. You can also use ActiveCampaign’s API or a paid Zapier account to create custom integrations with your current systems.
Pricing: From $29/month, billed annually.
Free Trial: 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Manages many aspects of customers’ journeys
- Powerful third-party connections
- Excellent reporting capabilities
Cons
- Downgrading or upgrading accounts is challenging
- Steep learning curve
4. Salesforce Pardot - Best for marketing analytics
Salesforce Pardot helps B2B marketing teams enhance their campaigns through high-level marketing analytics to help turn relationships into revenue.
Why I picked Salesforce Pardot: The platform uses marketing analytics to help your marketing team track all website interactions and build a predictive lead score based on your pre-set parameters. Salesforce Pardot’s marketing analytics can help you improve marketing efficiency and eliminate wasted time and effort from your sales department. All of this information from Salesforce Pardot will help your marketing and sales team collaborate, engage leads, and build lasting relationships.
Salesforce Pardot Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include segmentation tools that help you plan future email marketing campaigns so the right audience receives the right content. Salesforce Pardot also offers a Social Studio tool that enables you to post and interact with customers through social media channels.
Integrations include connections with over 200 tools, such as Attentive, Brevo, Driftrock, Google Analytics 360, Hubspot Marketing Hub, LeadsBridge, Pipeliner CRM, Tableau, Workato, Yotpo, and other software options. You can also use a paid Zapier account or the platform’s API if you need to create custom connections with your toolset.
Pricing: From $1,250/month, billed annually.
Free Trial: Free trial available.
Pros
- Effective A/B testing tools
- Advanced artificial intelligence
- Enables strategic customer engagement
Cons
- Not suitable for small businesses
- Dashboards aren’t customizable
5. Mailchimp - Best for email marketing
Mailchimp is an email marketing automation tool that helps marketing teams contact customers and prospects.
Why I picked Mailchimp: Mailchimp deserves a place on this list because it's one of the most used email marketing tools on the market. The platform provides everything your B2B business needs to collect emails and send email campaigns. Although Mailchimp is growing and offering other marketing tools you can implement in your company, its email marketing features include email templates, analytics, segmentation, A/B testing, and more.
Mailchimp Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include a customer journey builder that automates your marketing and converts more customers at scale with messages that fit their specific needs and behaviors. You’ll also have access to a content optimizer feature that compares your email content to other top-performing campaigns and offers practical suggestions to enhance results.
Integrations include connections with third-party applications and systems to make Mailchimp more beneficial for your business, such as Google Analytics, Help Scout, Instapage, Jotform, LiveChat, Mixpanel, QuickBooks Online, Salesforce, Typeform, Zendesk, and other software options. With Mailchimp’s API or a paid Zapier account, you can create custom integrations between the platform and your current toolset.
Pricing: From $20/month.
Free Trial: 1-month free trial + free plan available.
Pros
- Excellent email editor
- Enables fast campaign setup
- Simple to implement
Cons
- Creating complex automations is challenging
- Interface can be confusing
5. Drip - Best for customer segmentation
Drip provides effective segmentation capabilities that empower B2B marketing teams to create targeted email campaigns.
Why I picked Drip: With Drip, you and your marketing team can use segmentation tools based on audience behavior and preferences you can use in your email marketing automation. The platform analyzes your customer journey, allowing you to optimize your email segments and marketing strategies. Drip is built for ecommerce businesses, so you can create personalized and relevant content based on your segmentations using data from your other ecommerce tools.
Drip Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include tools to help you create and manage multichannel marketing strategies through a simple visual workflow builder. Drip also provides insight capabilities that empower you to see the impact of your marketing strategies, enabling your team to boost conversions.
Integrations include over 150 native connections with top business tools to help you gather the right information and increase productivity, such as ActiveCampaign, ClickFunnels, Gravity Forms, Hubspot, MailOptin, Segment, Sleeknote, Stripe, WebinarJam, Wicked Reports, and other software options. You can also create custom integrations through Drip’s API or by using a paid Zapier account.
Pricing: From $39/month.
Free Trial: 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Wide collection of templates
- Helpful AI assistant
- Excellent email segmentation capability
Cons
- Can be buggy and slow
- Steep learning curve
7. Oracle Eloqua - Best for cross-channel marketing
Oracle Eloqua is a popular B2B marketing automation platform for its cross-channel features that enable your teams to create and deliver personalized campaigns.
Why I picked Oracle Eloqua: The platform is a versatile B2B marketing automation platform that enables your team to efficiently manage cross-channel campaigns. With Oracle Eloqua’s cross-channel capabilities, your business can engage with buyers when they want to be engaged on their channel of choice. These tools and features empower you to intrigue and win over your target audiences with personalized campaigns across multiple channels and maintain complete data.
Oracle Eloqua Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include AI-powered capabilities that simplify customer data collection and interpretation, providing a holistic customer journey understanding. You’ll also have access to comprehensive educational resources to help you and your team learn the system and personalize it to your unique needs.
Integrations include connections with many business tools and systems, such as BigMarker, ClickSend, Domo, Driftrock, Dropbox, Kixie PowerCall & SMS, LeadsBridge, Opensense, OptinMonster, Zendesk, and other software options. You can also create custom integrations between Oracle Eloqua and your current systems through the platform’s API or with a paid Zapier account.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Flexibility to design complex campaigns
- Offers high-level statistics
- Better targeting and segmentation
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Not suitable for small businesses
8. Leadfeeder - Best for lead generation
Leadfeeder offers a lead generation tool that helps B2B marketing teams identify which companies are visiting their websites and reach out to decision-makers who are engaging with content and campaigns.
Why I picked Leadfeeder: You can use Leadfeeder to generate more leads by identifying exactly who is visiting your website. To start, you have to install a simple Leadfeeder Tracker script on your website, and the platform will tell you which companies are visiting your site. The platform will then send qualified leads to your CRM, where your sales team can follow up with visitors who don’t inquire about your products or services, and your marketing team can time your outreach to these leads.
Leadfeeder Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include account-based marketing tools that help you discover new accounts and when to target them after visiting your site. Leadfeeder also offers tools that send alerts to your sales teams when qualified leads visit your website so they can react in real-time.
Integrations include connections with your favorite marketing tools to help you simplify B2B campaigns, such as ActiveCampaign, Google Chat, Google Looker Studio, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Slack, and Zoho. You can also use a paid Zapier account or the platform’s API to create custom integrations.
Pricing: From $139/month, billed annually.
Free Trial: 14-day free trial + free plan available.
Pros
- Tracks and organizes website visitors
- Excellent for small and medium-sized businesses
- Helpful documentation filtering capabilities
Cons
- Some integration challenges
- Customer support needs improvement
9. GetResponse - Best for landing pages
GetResponse is a comprehensive marketing automation platform that provides a robust landing page builder tool that empowers businesses to collect leads and start the process of turning them into paying customers.
Why I picked GetResponse: The platform offers an AI-powered landing page builder that helps your marketing team create landers in a few quick clicks. GetResponse’s AI enables you to reach your target audience with landing pages that are tailored to your company and encourage signups. The AI within GetResponse uses your industry and the keywords you provide to generate optimized messaging throughout the landing page, a complete layout, and native content blocks.
GetResponse Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include tools that send personalized and relevant emails automatically to leads throughout the customer cycle. You can also use GetResponse to send effective SMS messages to reach your customers directly.
Integrations include native connections with over 100 popular business tools, such as Google Analytics, Jotform, LeadsBridge, Magento, OptinMonster, Outgrow, Salesforce, Shopify, WooCommerce, Zendesk, and other software options. You can also use the platform’s API or a paid Zapier account to create custom integrations with your current systems.
Pricing: From $11.30/month, billed annually.
Free Trial: 30-day free trial + free plan available.
Pros
- Quickly creates landing pages with AI
- Original email templates
- Fast customer support times
Cons
- Limited report customization options
- Advanced features have a steep learning curve
10. Zoho CRM - Best for customer relationship management (CRM)
Zoho CRM is a cloud-based customer relationship management platform that helps marketing teams develop relationships and enhance customer journeys.
Why I picked Zoho CRM: With Zoho CRM, your marketing team can automate routine tasks to ensure your business develops effective customer relationships while focusing on more productive work. You can use Zoho CRM to stay on top of how customers and potential leads interact with your business and capitalize on specific behaviors with workflows that automatically trigger actions when someone meets your particular conditions. The platform’s analytics and reporting capabilities can help you see where your customers are coming from, their preferences, and more, allowing you to create custom experiences that enhance relationships and increase conversion.
Zoho CRM Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include lead management tools to help you capture leads, automate lead scores, identify leads likely to convert and follow up. Zoho CRM also offers omnichannel capabilities that enable you to interact with customers and leads across multiple channels, such as email or social media.
Integrations include connections with many popular applications to improve your marketing processes, such as ActiveCampaign, Dropbox, GetResponse, Google Workspace, Mailchimp, PandaDoc, Proposify, Quickbooks, RingCentral, Slack, and other software options. Zoho CRM also allows users to create custom integrations through its API or with a paid Zapier account.
Pricing: From $14/user/month.
Free Trial: 15-day free trial + free plan available.
Pros
- Simple customer relationship management tool
- Quick set up
- Fast customer support
Cons
- Some customizations are complex
- Extensive feature set can be overwhelming
11. SuperBuzz - Best for AI-powered traffic generation
SuperBuzz uses ChatGPT AI to help marketing teams generate content, drive website traffic, and enhance retention efforts.
Why I picked SuperBuzz: I decided to add SuperBuzz to this article because AI is a hot topic these days, and the platform uses ChatGPT to help your business create traffic-generating campaigns. It uses ChatGPT AI to automate marketing processes, such as content creation, to help an organization grow its audience with a simple click. SuperBuzz will implement AI to optimize your campaigns and offer the data to prove its performance to all decision-makers.
SuperBuzz Standout Features
Standout features include the ability to send push notifications to leads and keep customers engaged with your organization. The platform uses advanced machine learning algorithms to help your teams easily create automated campaigns, reducing the time required for mundane marketing tasks.
Pricing: From $24/month.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Easy and straightforward
- Simple interface navigation
- Customization options
Cons
- No integration information
- No email campaign feature
12. Attentive - Best for SMS campaigns
Attentive is an SMS marketing platform that enables businesses to have one-on-one conversations with customers across the buying journey.
Why I picked Attentive: The platform empowers marketing teams to increase revenue through relevant and engaging SMS campaigns. Attentive uses a mobile-first approach to help your business boost engagement by allowing you to reach your customers where they are. The platform offers high deliverability rates when using Attentive, so you can be confident your messages will reach your audience.
Attentive Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include audience management tools that enable your team to personalize messages through comprehensive profiles and precise targeting. You’ll also have access to analytics that help you understand the impact of your campaigns and enhance growth.
Integrations include connections with third-party tools and applications to help your business scale faster, such as Aftership, Gorgias, Hubspot CRM, Mailchimp, Okendo, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Triple Whale, Zendesk, Zoho CRM, and other software options. You can also create custom integrations with Attentive’s API or a paid Zapier account.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Excellent user interface
- Easy to use
- Quick campaign setup
Cons
- Reporting needs improvement
- Some integration limitations
Other Options
As I mentioned earlier in this article, many B2B marketing automation platforms are available for you to choose from. So, to give you more selections, I added this brief list of other options that will also help you handle your marketing campaigns.
- monday CRM - Best for customer data management.
- Wrike - Best work management platform.
- Braze - Best for automating customer engagement.
- Twilio Segment - Best for making customer-based decisions.
- StackAdapt - Best self-serve advertising platform.
- Klaviyo - Best for optimizing multichannel experiences.
- Skai - Best for marketing insights.
- Dialpad - Best for AI-based automation tools.
- Seismic - Best for creating compelling content.
- Decisions - Best for maximizing meetings.
- Customer.io - Best for creating data-driven campaigns.
- KIBO - Best for B2B ecommerce businesses.
- Freshmarketer - Best for automating website conversations.
- MarketDirect Cross Media - Best multichannel communication tool.
- Creatio CRM - Best for automating lead management workflows.
Selection Criteria For B2B Marketing Automation Platform
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best B2B marketing automation tool for this article:
Core Functionality
To be considered a B2B marketing automation platform worth considering, each platform needs to offer the same or similar core functionality. The following describes the functions I look for when adding relevant options to this list.
- Lead generation and nurturing; generate and nurture leads throughout the sales funnel. They allow businesses to capture leads through various channels such as website forms, landing pages, and social media.
- Campaign management and analytics; enable businesses to create, manage, and optimize marketing campaigns across multiple channels, including email, social media, and search.
Key Features
Automation is at the heart of the tools I added to this list, but some offer more features you can use in your business than others. Because marketing can involve many types of techniques and methods, many tools can focus on one or two of the following features or more if it’s more robust:
- Email Marketing: Robust email marketing features can come as a part of some B2B marketing automation solutions, enabling you to create, automate, and optimize email marketing strategies and tailor messaging according to your customer data.
- Multichannel Marketing: Top B2B marketing automation tools can support multiple marketing channels, such as email, social media, and SMS marketing, helping you provide a unified customer experience.
- Social Media Management: A crucial aspect of many marketing strategies is social media marketing, which means many B2B marketing automation solution vendors offer capabilities to effectively manage, schedule, and track social media content.
- Landing Pages and Forms: B2B marketing automation tools can offer simple drag-and-drop tools that empower your team to create professional landing pages and forms that significantly help your lead generation efforts.
- Personalized Campaigns: Personalization can significantly increase customer engagement through audience segmentation and delivering personalized messages based on preferences and behavior.
- Workflow Automation: Using B2B marketing automation platforms can help your business automate repetitive tasks and processes, allowing you to free your team’s time for other essential marketing aspects.
Usability
Using a B2B marketing automation tool with a user-friendly interface and simple functionality is essential. So, I ensured to add solutions with a favorable reputation of saving time and effort for anyone using it. These tools should have a minimal learning curve and allow quick navigation without requiring additional team training. Lastly, automation can be technical and challenging to implement, so I also added solutions that offer robust knowledge bases, tutorials, and other customer support options.
Software Integrations
When creating this article, one of the most essential factors I considered is integration capabilities with your existing systems, such as CRM and analytics tools. Many leading B2B marketing automation platforms offer native integrations with various sales and CRM applications. I also look for solutions that integrate with multiple marketing tools and channels that many B2B organizations use, such as A/B testing solutions, data warehouses, ecommerce platforms, live chat platforms, sentiment analytics applications, and more.
Customizable Workflows
Every business is different from the other, so having a tool that can handle scenarios that are specific to your business is crucial. I look for B2B marketing automation platforms to react to particular audience actions in your workflows. You’ll likely want to create multiple complex triggers based on different customer actions and journeys. Many B2B marketing automation solutions I added to this article allow you to customize complex workflows when operating a small-to-medium business. Enterprise-sized businesses can benefit from the flexibility of comprehensive marketing automation software that enables you to fine-tune your marketing operations.
People Also Ask
When searching for new B2B marketing automation platforms to implement or looking for a system to replace the one you’re already using, you might have some questions that need answering to help you make the best decision for your business. There are many people in this exact scenario, so I added this section to answer the most frequently asked questions marketers have when looking for B2B marketing automation solutions.
How much do B2B marketing automation platforms cost?
What’s the easiest B2B marketing platform to use?
What are the benefits of B2B marketing automation platforms?
Other Marketing Platform Reviews
There are other tools you can use to handle different aspects of your marketing strategies worth considering. The following are some marketing platform reviews that can help you find tools to manage and optimize your marketing campaigns.
The Takeaway
When you automate repetitive marketing tasks, your team can focus on creating great content that connects with your audience and simplifying customer experiences on their way to sales. Automating your tasks is necessary to thrive in a fast-paced business environment. Weighing a marketing B2B marketing automation platform’s functionality, usability, and affordability will help you identify the best option for your needs. Before choosing a specific solution, evaluating your business’s requirements and researching each option is essential to ensure it meets your requirements—both now and as you grow.
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