The Best Digital Marketing Apps
Here’s the list of the best digital marketing tools that I’ll cover in this article.
Ecommerce marketers have a lot of plates spinning at any given time. Different audiences, different content types, different online channels, different KPIs and OKRs…there’s just no way to do it all without some type of help.
Chances are, you’re already using some type of digital marketing software, even if it’s just what’s built-in to WordPress or Facebook. But it may be time to go bigger and better.
According to Hubspot, 91% of marketers in 2021 were confident that the programs they invest in are directly influencing revenue for their company. So the question is: Are you ready to join them?
In this article, I will outline some of the best digital marketing software on the market right now and explain what each does well. Included are overviews of each tool, pricing details, screenshots to highlight the user interface, and a list of integrations (where applicable).
Digital Marketing Solution: Buyers Guide
Here’s what you need to look for when selecting digital marketing software.
- User Interface (UI): You should look for a tool that has a smart user interface for both beginners and experienced digital marketers alike. You will also want a UI that supports shareable reports and dashboards so that stakeholders can follow along at a glance.
- Usability: What is your experience level with digital marketing tools? You need to pick a software that is within your comfort level if you want to get the most out of what it has to offer. Or, dedicate some additional time to training and onboarding.
- Integrations: Your digital marketing tool must also connect with wherever your primary content lives—social media, your website, your digital storefront, and so on. Look for integrations with Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Wordpress, Shopify, etc.
- Value for $: What is your budget versus what are your must-have features? What value do you hope to get out of the tool? You’ll want to pick software-as-a-service (SaaS) that speaks to your unique ROI strategy.
Key Features
What key functionality should all digital marketing software have? What features are nice but not mandatory (and may come at an additional cost)? Here are my thoughts:
- Marketing Campaigns: The ability to plan different marketing campaigns and include/track different components in each.
- Ecommerce integrations: I mean, we’re an ecommerce site here. I’m looking for marketing tools that specifically connect to ecommerce products.
- Audience Segmentation: Critical for modern day marketing, you must be able to divide and conquer your audience based on strategic indicators (age, gender, sales history).
- A/B Testing: Marketing is all about experimentation + testing, testing, testing—marketing software must be able to launch, track, and compare strategies.
- Social Media Marketing: Nowadays, if you don’t have socials, you don’t exist so digital marketing software must include some element of social media marketing.
- Lead Generation: Being able to bring in new leads is one of the bigger components of digital marketing; bonus if the tool can track and optimize captured leads.
- SMS and/or Email Marketing (optional): You may be looking for a multichannel tool that can handle all of the above; or maybe something focused on one channel will do.
- Marketing Automation (optional): You may want to “set-it-and-forget-it” for some marketing tasks, or you might not. This may come with an additional cost.
- SEO Tools (optional): You might have a different set of tools for this but, hey, it doesn’t hurt if your digital marketing software has this built-in to some degree.
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Overviews Of The 10 Best Digital Marketing Platforms
Here’s a brief description of each digital marketing software solution to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.
Salesforce CRM
Best CRM to market and manage all stages of the customer journey
Salesforce CRM is a powerful digital marketing and sales software that supports the entire customer journey, from initial contact to a successful purchase. At its core, the software is a cloud-based software solution that helps businesses manage their customer relationships for discovery to conversion.
The software helps companies automate lead generation, sales tracking, customer service management, and analytics reporting. The software provides an integrated platform where companies can store all their customer data in one place and access it quickly and easily, including customer names, contact information, purchase history, and preferences. Users can also create product details and track which are performing best, based on item category, period, buyer, or other data, and construct a report with actionable insights.
Users can collect data from multiple sources, such as click-throughs, website visits, or social media interactions, and centralize it for easy access by relevant employees or departments. Sales representatives can use the system to track leads or follow up on potential customers. Marketing teams can identify trends or target specific groups with tailored campaigns. And customer service teams can provide personalized support.
Businesses automate campaigns with personalized content based on individual customer profiles to ensure that customers receive messages that are tailored specifically for them. These features also enable marketers to automate labor-intensive tasks such as emails or social media posts to save time and focus on other aspects of their marketing strategy. Its integration capabilities allow businesses to access customer data from multiple sources in one place to get a comprehensive view of their customer's needs and interests.
HubSpot Marketing
Best for tracking campaign results
HubSpot Marketing is a comprehensive software that helps businesses grow their online presence through inbound marketing.
It gives businesses the ability to manage their entire customer journey from start to finish. The software includes features like SEO optimization, content creation, email marketing automation, social media management, and A/B testing capabilities. HubSpot Marketing also offers advanced tools for customer segmentation and personalization to maximize each campaign's effectiveness.
Users can create engaging forms that capture leads with ease with its form builder tool. The software includes a lead-scoring feature that helps businesses prioritize the most valuable leads in their database. It also allows users to automate certain processes such as follow-up emails so they don't have to manually send out messages every time someone visits their website or fills out a form on their landing page. HubSpot Marketing provides data insights that allow users to track how effective their campaigns are at driving traffic and generating leads, which can help them adjust their strategies accordingly. Its integrated CRM capabilities make it easier for businesses to personalize customer interactions by tracking customer data in one place so they can better understand whom they’re targeting with each campaign.
HubSpot Marketing offers integration with other popular software programs like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which allows users to sync customer data across multiple platforms easily. This ensures that all customer information is up-to-date and accessible from one place. Users can maintain better control over their sales process while gaining valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences. Its integrated blogging platform allows users to publish blog posts directly from within the CMS without switching back and forth between different programs.
Campaigner
Best for audience segmentation & A/B testing
Campaigner is an email marketing platform that helps businesses create, send, track, and analyze their campaigns with powerful features such as drag-and-drop editing, automated triggers, segmentation capabilities, real-time analytics, split testing, and A/B testing. The platform allows users to easily segment customers based on demographics such as age or location and target them with tailored campaigns that are sure to resonate with them. It also has a built-in CRM which helps companies keep track of customer interactions for a better understanding of customer behaviors and preferences.
Campaigner offers integration with popular ecommerce platforms like Magento and WooCommerce so users can easily sync up these product catalogs from these platforms into one central hub. This makes it easy for users to set up targeted campaigns directed at shoppers who have already purchased from their store or those who may be interested in buying from them in the future. Campaigner has tools that allow marketers to manage leads from various sources such as social media channels or web forms.
Campaigner has a drag-and-drop email builder that allows users to quickly create high-quality email campaigns with ease. The builder offers several different template options so that brands can customize the look and feel of their emails. Users can also add images, videos, and other content to make their emails stand out from the competition. Users can set up automated sequences based on customer behavior or create time-based triggers that will send out emails at predetermined intervals. This helps ensure that their messages always reach the right audience at the right time.
Features include email marketing, marketing automation, landing pages, A/B testing, reporting and analytics, and integrations with other marketing tools to help businesses create effective email campaigns, automate their marketing, and track their results.
Integrations include Shopify, Magento, Adobe Analytics, Surveytown, and Google Analytics. More can be unlocked through Zapier but this requires an account and may incur additional charges.
HubSpot
Best for beginners
Hubspot Marketing is one part of the digital enterprise that is Hubspot. With over 7 million monthly visits to their blog and 150+ user groups for their products, it’s probably safe to assume that they know what they’re doing. Be sure to make use of their free online resources for digital marketing learning. The Hubspot suite consists of inbound marketing, lead generation tools, an automation platform, analytics, advanced CRM, scheduling, quotes, tickets, customer feedback, a CMS editor, SEO recommendations, and more.
You can mix and match what products you want to use and only pay for what you need. Their free marketing platform is quite generous, with email marketing, forms, landing pages, contact management, social media ads, and traffic conversion metrics.
Overall, I’d recommend Hubspot Marketing for anyone just starting out—small businesses, freelancers, entrepreneurs, and startups.
They have everything you need to get started, learn, and grow. Hubspot costs from $35/month and offers a free version with limited features.
Drip
Best for integrations
Drip is an ecommerce-centric digital marketing software solution (yay!) with multichannel campaign management, abandoned cart touchpoints, and post-purchase campaign templates. They can handle both email and SMS marketing and charge you based on the number of contacts in your system + the number of messages you send monthly.
Drip integrates with over 100 digital tools and apps, including Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Big Commerce, any custom online store, Facebook Custom Audiences, Gobot, Thrivecart, WisePops, Chargify, DRift, E-Junkie, PayPal, and others. A paid plan with Zapier will get you even further, unlocking hundreds more connections. Drip is a perfect solution if you need a digital marketing solution that speaks to all of the other tools in your tech stack.
This ensures scalability, as it’s super easy to add new products into the mix as needed.
Drip costs from $39/month and comes with a 14-day free trial.
MailChimp
Best for design newbies
Thanks to their memorable audio ads (“mail…kimp?”), Mailchimp has become one of the most well-known email marketing tools around. Their generous free plan means that almost every digital marketer has tried them out at least once. However, did you know they do way more than just email marketing nowadays? Mailchimp has grown into an all-in-one marketing platform that offers custom domains for websites and stores; design tools for emails, social ads, landing pages, and postcards (with AI-powered design assistance); audience management tools; and marketing campaign automations.
Mailchimp is a great option for those of you who don’t have a dedicated graphic designer on your marketing team. They really make building aesthetically pleasing digital marketing content so easy. This can save you from looking amateurish in a sea of beautiful online content.
Mailchimp is free to use for a list of up to 2000 contacts. Paid plans cost from $9.99/month and unlock additional marketing features.
You can try out any paid plan for free for 30 days.
Morphio
Best PPC automation tools
Morphio is a digital marketing reporting suite with customizable dashboards with which to manipulate, view, and share your campaign insights. They can help you track things like organic vs paid search results, backlinks, display advertising, engagement metrics, and keywords for your site. Morphio can also audit pay-per-click campaigns (PPC) automatically and will monitor digital ad budgets and pacing so that you don’t have to do it manually.
The platform can auto-exclude ineffective placements, provide alerts for 404s and website errors, and leverage machine learning to make campaign next step suggestions. PPC is a pain in the butt and Morphio can save you a ton of time monitoring and optimizing your ads.
It’s one of those tools that will eventually make sense to have in your marketing tech stack alongside other content and campaign software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Morphio costs from $39/month and comes with a free demo.
Marketo
Best for design experts
Adobe Marketo is a hefty digital marketing program with a price tag to match but it really is worth its weight in gold. This incredible comprehensive digital marketing software integrates nativesly with other Adobe programs you might already be using: Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects, and Lightroom. If you are a design-centric team already in the Adobe ecosystem, then Marketo is the natural next step. With Marketo, you’ll get audience behavior tracking, automated marketing campaigns, channels-vs-revenue reports, sophisticated customer journey flows, and content management and personalization.
Marketo is also great for digital marketers working solely in a MacOS/iOS environment, as Adobe products have always worked seamlessly with Apple hardware and software.
Marketo offers customized pricing upon requests, estimated to start around $3298 the first month (fee + setup) and then $1299/mo going forward for a basic plan.
Sprinklr
Best for marketing workflows
Sprinklr is a customer experience management platform (CXM) that uses artificial intelligence to produce data-backed insights for smart marketing moves across over 30 digital marketing channels. They are used by industry-leading brands like Microsoft, L’Oréal, McDonald’s, Marriott International, Honda, and Netflix. Sprinklr’s key features include customer data capture, multichannel integration, AI-powered insights, agile marketing with automated workflows, personalized ad experiences, enterprise-grade auditable governance and approval structures, performance vs. benchmarks reporting, and customizable dashboards to visualize all of the above.
As you can see from the screenshot above, Sprinklr handles marketing campaign scheduling, project management, and approvals in a Kanban-like task list. This is a great system for ecomm managers who want to build campaigns and track milestones and tasks in one platform.
Sprinklr offers customized pricing upon request.
Salesforce Marketing
Best marketing for sales teams
Salesforce Marketing is the digital marketing software branch of the sales and CRM platform Salesforce. They offer email templates, a digital marketing campaign builder, B2B demand generation, marketing analytics, and digital advertising help. Salesforce Marketing connects right into other first-party Salesforce tools, like Customer 360, Sales, Service, Commerce, Analytics, and Integrations. Therefore, so long as you can stomach the cost, it truly is an all-in-one enterprise solution for digital marketing, sales, and customer service.
Salesforce Marketing makes the most sense for large, multi-departmental organizations that can make use of their many interconnecting platforms without flinching at the price tag. Salesforce has different marketing packages at different prices. I would recommend the Email, Mobile, and Web package to start at $400/month (billed annually).
Then, you can add suites for automations ($1250/month), social media management ($1000/month), advertising ($2000/month), and/or data ($3000/month) if needed.
The 10 Best Digital Marketing Platforms Summary
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Salesforce CRM Best CRM to market and manage all stages of the customer journey | 14-day free trial | From $25/user/month (billed annually) | Visit Website |
2 | HubSpot Marketing Best for tracking campaign results | 30-day trial + free plan available | From $50/month | Visit Website |
3 | Campaigner Best for audience segmentation & A/B testing | 30-day free trial | From $59/month | Visit Website |
4 | HubSpot Best for beginners | 14-day free trial + freemium version available | From $45/month | Visit Website |
5 | Drip Best for integrations | 14-day free trial | From $39/month | Visit Website |
6 | MailChimp Best for design newbies | Freemium version available | From $13/month | Visit Website |
7 | Morphio Best PPC automation tools | Free demo | From $39/month | Visit Website |
8 | Marketo Best for design experts | Not available | From $895/month | Visit Website |
9 | Sprinklr Best for marketing workflows | Not available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
10 | Salesforce Marketing Best marketing for sales teams | Not available | From $400/month | Visit Website |
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Other Digital Marketing Systems
Looking for even more ecommerce marketing options? Here are a few more digital marketing tools that didn’t make the top list.
- ActiveCampaign - Ecommerce email marketing & CRM platform with one of the best AI-powered automations solutions on the market.
- SharpSpring - Marketing/sales/CRM platform with a special focus on dynamic content and personalization.
- Insightly Marketing - Digital marketing solution designed to be a real time, single source of truth for customer data across company departments.
- Freshmarketer - Perfect for those already in the Freshworks ecosystem and looking for some marketing add-ons.
- Maropost - Multichannel marketing automation software designed to tackle email, SMS, web, and social media all at once.
- Keap - Specialised digital marketing that has a landing page builder and payments system built-in, which is very ecomm friendly.
- GreenRope - All-in-one marketing platform with everything from a website builder to marketing automations and email tracker.
- Ascent360 - Enterprise-grade B2C marketing with a focus on audience segmentation and smart business intelligence (BI).
Digital Marketing Support Services
So you’ve picked a digital marketing software: But what now? You may still need additional tools for planning, analytics, graphic design, and PPC optimization. Here are some tools you might consider adding to your marketing arsenal.
- Monday.com - For marketing strategy and content planning calendars, as well as workflow dashboards & reporting.
- Google Analytics - For website analytics tools; a free to use resource that every e-seller should learn.
- Google Keyword Planner - Free keyword research tool from Google to kick off any SEO marketing.
- Canva Pro - Graphic and video design made for non-designers to complement social media, blogging, and email campaigns.
- Ahrefs - Search engine optimization (SEO) research and traffic analysis services. Also good for backlinks.
- Quartile - AI-powered pay-per-click (PPC) optimization platform for online ads.
- Unbounce - A landing page builder for hyper-targeted, bottom of the funnel advertising campaigns.
What do you think about this list?
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Now it’s your turn: Let us know in the comments what online marketing tools you are loving these days. Are you doing multimedia content marketing or focusing mainly on SEO for your web pages? Do you use a marketing agency or handle it all in-house? Have you tried using influencers for marketing or is that hard no—and why? What are your marketing efforts going to look like in the coming 30, 60, and 90 days?
We’d love to hear from you!
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