Using marketing automation tools is an effective way for your business to increase revenue by handling repetitive tasks so you can focus on more important things.
To help you make the best decision possible for your company, I put this list together that details the various aspects of the best marketing automation tools, including pricing, features, and third-party integrations.
Best Marketing Automation Tools Shortlist
Here’s the shortlist of the best tools that I’ll cover in this article.
- HubSpot Marketing
- Adobe Marketo Engage
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud
- ActiveCampaign
- Mailchimp
- Social Champ
- Constant Contact
- Eloqua
- GetResponse
- Keap
- Omnisend
- Ahrefs
What are Marketing Automation Tools?
Marketing automation tools are software that removes the human component from various marketing tasks. This means that repetitive, time-consuming parts of marketing campaigns will have less human involvement, so your business can stay better organized. As a result, your teams, projects, and workflows will experience a positive impact.
Marketing automation ensures your business sends the right message to consumers. For example, you can create customer journeys where a website visitor’s actions, such as buying a product or signing up for a newsletter, trigger a specific reaction, such as automatically sending an email. Throughout the process, the automation software will lead customers to start a path where they engage more with your brand.
Overviews of the 12 Best Marketing Automation Tools
You can use the simple overviews of each tool below to understand how each tool stands out from other marketing automation tools.
1. HubSpot Marketing - Best all-in-one tool
HubSpot Marketing is an all-in-one automation tool that provides the features businesses need to scale effectively.
Why I picked HubSpot Marketing: The platform provides everything you need to manage any type of marketing campaign. HubSpot Marketing centralizes all marketing campaigns in one area, and you can use it to automate various tasks, such as lead scoring and nurturing, email campaigns, and bulk data management and analysis. You can use the tool to create blog content, improve your site’s search engine optimization (SEO), and monitor brand mentions on social media.
HubSpot Marketing is an excellent choice for any sized business, but it’s a better fit for larger businesses that need a tool to simplify marketing processes. The email marketing and lead generation features in HubSpot Marketing are useful tools to help your company grow. These capabilities will help you nurture leads and maintain communication with customers easily. HubSpot Marketing’s live chat tool also helps you speak with leads in real time and set up chatbots for conversational marketing campaigns.
HubSpot Marketing Standout Features and Integrations
Features include form generation, live chat, email marketing, landing pages, contact management, ad retargeting, omnichannel marketing automation, search engine optimization, custom reporting, account-based marketing, and predictive lead scoring.
Integrations include Zapier, Outlook, Mailchimp, WebinarGeek, GoToWebinar, Aircall, Qwilr, Databox, Lucky Orange, monday.com, Wrike, Freshdesk, Pipedrive, Nutshell CRM, Zendesk, and Slack.
HubSpot Marketing costs from $20/month when paying monthly or $18/month when billed annually. HubSpot Marketing offers a free forever subscription tier with limited features.
Pros
- Excellent email template interface
- Easy to use
- The platform is constantly improving
Cons
- It costs more for the most useful features
- Navigation requires a lot of steps
2. Adobe Marketo Engage - Best for lead management
Adobe Marketo Engage helps businesses automate lead engagement tasks to effectively engage with potential customers.
Why I picked Adobe Marketo Engage: The software is an automation tool that will help you attract and convert leads. Adobe Marketo Engage can help you build and scale marketing campaigns across multiple channels and nurture leads. It offers a range of tools for lead nurturing, lead scoring, and lead prioritization. You can use the platform to analyze your lead generation campaigns and analyze how each marketing channel is impacting performance.
Adobe Marketo Engage is suitable for large, enterprise-sized organizations that are focusing on implementing a tool that can manage extensive marketing campaigns. The automation capabilities within Adobe Marketo Engage can handle everything from social media account-based marketing to digital marketing. The platform also provides AI and machine learning features that will help your marketing teams build predictive target account lists.
Adobe Marketo Engage Standout Features and Integrations
Features include engagement monitoring, progress tracking, target account identification, customer segmentation, campaign personalization, analytics, activity tracking, lead nurturing, source tracking, A/B testing, lead segmentation, performance metrics, and ROI tracking.
Integrations include Wrike, Domo, Twilio, Pipedrive, Improvado, Bynder, Stripe, Yellowfin, Pipeliner CRM, CallTrackingMetrics, Outgrow, Salesforce, Slack, HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM, and Hootsuite.
Adobe Marketo Engage offers custom pricing upon request. Adobe Marketo Engage doesn’t provide any free trial information.
Pros
- Intuitive list-building tools
- Very flexible
- Easy-to-use interface
Cons
- Data importing is slow
- No easy way to filter leads
3. Salesforce Marketing Cloud - Best for pipeline management
Salesforce Marketing Cloud enables businesses to take advantage of automation features to manage sales pipelines.
Why I picked Salesforce Marketing Cloud: You can use Salesforce Marketing Cloud to build dynamic and comprehensive marketing campaigns thanks to its AI. Salesforce Marketing Cloud enables you to engage with audiences by sending automatic emails based on behavior and track everything with real-time alerts. It’s one of the top platforms that can help you manage sales pipelines by marketing to audiences at the right time.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a better fit for medium to large businesses that need a solution to enhance sales experiences and encourage more people to convert into paying customers. You can use the tool’s lead-scoring capabilities to show you who your strongest leads are and track lead activity. The platform also alerts you and your teams so you know when to reach out to each lead.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Standout Features and Integrations
Features include channel management, event-triggered actions, email marketing, A/B testing, customer surveys, dynamic content, drip campaigns, an image library, reporting and analytics, template management, mailing list management, and autoresponders.
Integrations include Pipeliner CRM, BigMarker, Agility CMS, Teamgo, Shopify, Sendinblue, Zapier, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Workfront, CallRail, Formstack, Google Analytics 360, Instapage, and Yotpo.
Salesforce costs from $1,250/month, billed annually. Salesforce Marketing Cloud doesn’t provide any free trial information.
Pros
- Straightforward landing page creation
- Extensive drip campaign building functionality
- Detailed interaction views
Cons
- Sometimes the alerts don’t work
- Reporting features need work
4. ActiveCampaign - Best for enhancing workflows
ActiveCampaign helps businesses enhance marketing automation efforts by optimizing workflows.
Why I picked ActiveCampaign: The tool helps you get a better understanding of how all your automation connects and identifies bottlenecks in the customer journey. ActiveCampaign provides a way for you to view all automation in one centralized area. When using ActiveCampaign, you can edit, remove, or add new automation with the automation tool and create high-level reports.
ActiveCampaign is an excellent choice for businesses of any size that want to automate a range of tasks. It provides an automation goal feature that allows you to establish and track marketing campaign goals. This feature can automate things such as sales and follow-up emails based on customer actions. ActiveCampaign also helps you segment audiences based on the completion of various goals to allow you to add more personalization to campaigns.
ActiveCampaign Standout Features and Integrations
Features include document storage, lead scoring, email marketing, audience segmentation, internal chat, task management, A/B testing, autoresponders, drip campaigns, event-triggered email, reports and analytics, and subscriber management.
Integrations include Freshdesk, Pipedrive, ProjectManager, Recurly, Jotform, ClickSend, Basecamp, Harvest, Nutshell, Outgrow, Zendesk, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Slack, HubSpot CRM, and Zoho CRM.
ActiveCampaign costs from $29/month, billed annually for one user. ActiveCampaign offers a free 14-day trial for new subscribers.
Pros
- Good user interface
- Previous emails can be used as templates
- Excellent customer support
Cons
- Moving contacts between lists is complex
- The platform freezes sometimes
5. Mailchimp - Best for email marketing automation
Mailchimp is the top email marketing automation tool that will help businesses launch, build, and grow their email campaigns.
Why I picked Mailchimp: The platform is one of the earliest email marketing automation tools that allow you to automate any email campaign. Mailchimp is a cloud-based email marketing solution that allows you to send personalized emails, welcome messages, order confirmations, cross-sells promotions, and many more vital email campaigns. When you initiate a campaign, you can then use Mailchimp to analyze its performance and see how many clicks and opens your emails get.
Mailchimp is an ideal choice for any sized business that needs a solution to help manage audiences and analytics to simplify workflows. Other than creating email campaigns, Mailchimp can help you create websites and set up an online store. The software also provides creative templates to help you get everything started right away.
Mailchimp Standout Features and Integrations
Features include marketing customer relationship management, signup forms, audience segmentation, behavioral targeting, predictive demographics, creative assistants, a content studio, subject line helper, campaign templates, personalized customer journeys, and smart recommendations.
Integrations include Quickbooks, Shopify, Zendesk, Mixpanel, WordPress, SurveyMonkey, Formstack, Typeform, Chargebee, Recurly, Canva, AgencyAnalytics, LiveChat, and ShipStation.
Mailchimp costs from $13/month. Mailchimp offers a free one-month trial for new subscribers.
Pros
- Simple setup
- Easy to design emails
- The segmentation tool is very effective
Cons
- The user interface needs work
- Not a lot of templates are available
6. Social Champ - Best for social media automation
Social Champ can help businesses automate social media management across all major social networks.
Why I picked Social Champ: The platform is one of the top social media automation tools that can help you revamp your business’s marketing strategy. Social Champ supports nine social media networks and enables you to create dynamic digital presences on each one. Within a single platform, you can manage all conversations, schedule posts, and track performance.
Social Champ is well suited for any sized business operating in any industry. When using this tool, you can get access to an AI Content Wizard and AI Imaginator within the dashboard to help optimize your social media content. Social Champ’s content suggestions feature will give you the advice to help you stand out from the competition in the most straightforward way.
Social Champ Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a data dashboard, an image editor, sentiment analysis, performance tracking, smart automation, post collections, a bulk uploader, a visual planner, post filters, team collaboration tools, team performance tracking, and audience engagement tools.
Integrations include Flickr, Dropbox, Google Drive, Canva, Giphy, Wave.video, Imgur, Crello, WordPress, Bitly, and Social Media Hammer.
Social Champ costs from $26/month. Social Champ offers a free forever subscription tier and a free 7-day trial for new, paid subscribers.
Pros
- Adding and editing images is easy
- Easy to schedule and reschedule content
- The free forever plan supports up to three networks
Cons
- No preview after scheduling posts
- The analytics needs more work
7. Constant Contact - Best for lead nurturing
Constant Contact can help businesses connect with leads and nurture relationships wherever they are.
Why I picked Constant Contact: The platform can help your company engage with leads and help you develop robust relationships, and create powerful results. Constant Contact allows you to engage with leads across multiple channels, such as text messaging, email, or social media. With Constant Contact, you can easily create a buzz around your brand with your targeted audiences and accomplish your goals.
Constant Contact is suitable for small businesses that need a simple marketing automation tool that can handle social campaigns, email marketing, and audience growth. Thanks to the tool’s event management and registration capabilities, it’s especially helpful for organizations that plan events. The software provides everything you need to handle crucial marketing functions.
Constant Contact Standout Features and Integrations
Features include autoresponders, an image library, event-triggered emails, customer surveys, reporting and analytics, pre-made templates, a text editor, a drag-and-drop editor, A/B testing, audience segmentation, team management, and an event calendar.
Integrations include Wrike, Freshdesk, Pipedrive, ProjectManager, Recurly, Freshbooks, Jotform, Chargebee, Basecamp, Nutshell, 1CRM, Zendesk, Salesforce, WordPress, HubSpot CRM, and Zoho CRM.
Constant Contact costs from $12/month. Constant Contact offers a free 60-day trial for new subscribers.
Pros
- Simplifies all aspects of campaign building
- Clear and concise error notifications
- Excellent templates are available
Cons
- Cleaning segmentation lists isn’t intuitive
- A/B testing doesn’t check subject lines
8. Eloqua - Best for omnichannel marketing automation
Eloqua helps businesses win over customers through customized campaigns across multiple channels.
Why I picked Eloqua: The software is a marketing automation tool that will help you monitor customers’ journeys across multiple channels, such as email, video, search, and mobile. Eloqua allows you to plan automated campaigns while personalizing them simultaneously. Its lead management tools enable you to efficiently manage data and maximize your organization’s sales. The platform is a versatile automation tool that helps you build and maintain long, valuable customer relationships.
Eloqua helps large-sized brands and marketing teams that need a solution to personalize and simplify all stages of their marketing process. It can personalize and simplify each step of the process because of its multiple data connectors. Thanks to its real-time reporting and insights, you can use Eloqua to determine when to engage with audiences in their buying journey.
Eloqua Standout Features and Integrations
Features include A/B testing, sales intelligence, analytics and ROI tracking, customizable CTAs, dynamic content, search marketing, website visitor tracking, audience segmentation, lead scoring, landing pages, web forms, and email drip campaigns.
Integrations include Domo, ClickSend, Opensense, BigMarker, Zendesk, Dropbox, Contently, Veelo, Chili Piper, SnapApp, Kaltura, Synthio, and SurveyMonkey.
Eloqua offers custom pricing upon request. Eloqua provides a free demo.
Pros
- Users can gather and evaluate customer information
- Excellent reporting capabilities
- Rigorous nurturing features generate high-quality leads
Cons
- Lack of AI and machine learning
- Support documentation is overwhelming
9. GetResponse - Best for automating customer engagement
GetResponse can help businesses engage with their audiences by delivering personalized experiences.
Why I picked GetResponse: By collecting data in your GetResponse account, you can communicate with your audiences by taking action based on pre-selected conditions. GetResponse enables you to create automation events based on customers’ behaviors and engage with them at the right time. You can use the software to track and rate your customers’ actions and create custom segments based on this information.
GetResponse is suitable for businesses of any size that need effective tools to grow, engage, and convert audiences. It offers powerful email marketing tools that include AI-enhanced content creation capabilities, templates, design features, and proven deliverability. You can use GetResponse to set up simple or complex campaigns with its drag-and-drop workflow builder.
GetResponse Standout Features and Integrations
Features include email marketing, autoresponders, a website builder, landing pages, audience segmentation, SMS marketing, web push notifications, conversion funnels, live chat, AI recommendations, and transactional emails.
Integrations include Recurly, SlickText, Jotform, FreshBooks, Outgrow, OptiMonk, LanderLab, LiveAgent, Zendesk, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Slack, HubSpot CRM, and Zoho CRM.
GetResponse costs from $19/month when paying monthly, $15.58/month when billed annually, or $13.30, billed every two years. GetResponse offers a free forever subscription tier.
Pros
- Simple user interface
- The multiple prices match different budgets
- It offers a wide range of automation features
Cons
- There are limited template options
- Users can’t test different marketing automation workflows
10. Keap - Best automation solution for small businesses
Keap offers simple and complex marketing automation for small businesses.
Why I picked Keap: If you’re operating a small business or a startup, you can use Keap to quickly start automating your marketing efforts. Keap will enable you to establish quick-win automation that you can set up right away and get big gains in performance. These automations include lead capturing, automated reminders, sales nurturing, and post-purchase communications. For more advanced automations, Keap’s Advanced Automations feature provides a drag-and-drop builder that can quickly help you develop custom automation processes.
Keap primarily focuses on helping small businesses grow with sophisticated technology. It integrates marketing, sales, contact management, and business automation in one platform. Keap provides everything you would typically find in an enterprise-level marketing automation tool that will help you convert more leads into customers.
Keap Standout Features and Integrations
Features include appointment reminders, online booking, a client database, customizable invoices, payment processing, email marketing, audience segmentation, task management, mobile access, event-triggered actions, lead management, and sales pipeline management.
Integrations include Freshdesk, Domo, Twilio, Visual Visitor, Pipedrive, Recurly, Contractbook, Zendesk, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Slack, HubSpot CRM, Quickbooks, and Zapier.
Keap costs from $189/month when paying monthly or $149/month when billed annually. Keap offers a free 14-day trial for new subscribers.
Pros
- Automates personalized customer interactions
- It helps users understand their target market
- It handles all specific marketing automation
Cons
- Customer support needs work
- The template builder isn’t intuitive
11. Omnisend - Best for ecommerce businesses
Omnisend is an omnichannel marketing automation tool that focuses on ecommerce businesses.
Why I picked Omnisend: The platform is an ecommerce marketing automation platform that provides multiple ways to grow across multiple channels. Omnisend unifies multi-channel marketing efforts, including email, push notifications, and SMS, so you can see all campaigns from a central dashboard. After connecting your store’s website, you can implement your marketing automations from the pre-built template library.
Omnisend helps any sized ecommerce organization that’s searching for a solution to increase sales. The platform integrates with a wide range of ecommerce store builders, making it simple to automate marketing processes and improve your customer engagement. After implementing Omnisend in your business you will have access to automation workflows for welcoming new customers, cross-selling, shipping confirmation, rescuing abandoned carts, and personalizing customer journeys.
Omnisend Standout Features and Integrations
Features include email templates, a drag-and-drop email builder, dynamic discount codes, pre-built workflows, a drag-and-drop automation editor, automation splits, lifecycle stages, message engagement, landing pages, pop ups, and a sales dashboard.
Integrations include Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix, Opencart, Zapier, Google Ads, Typeform, Yotpo, Intercom, Mailchimp, Recharge, Zendesk, and Ecwid.
Omnisend costs from $16/month. Omnisend offers a free forever subscription tier.
Pros
- Easily integrates with multiple store builders
- It pinpoints where people click on an email
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- Customer support needs improvement
- There’s a significant learning curve
12. Ahrefs - Best for automating brand mentions
Ahrefs helps businesses monitor every time their brand is mentioned online.
Why I picked Ahrefs: The platform allows you to monitor how people are mentioning your brand online. When using Ahrefs, you can understand what people say about your business or your competition and use that knowledge to grow. You can also set up mentions for relevant keywords to your business, enabling you to discover whoever is talking about the things you do but hasn’t discovered your brand yet.
Ahrefs helps organizations and SEO professionals that need a tool to simplify their marketing efforts. You can use the software to identify your competitor’s organic keywords and marketing strategies to replicate their results. Ahrefs can also audit your website to help you identify any issues your site has and understand how to fix them.
Ahrefs Standout Features and Integrations
Features include SEO auditing, keyword research tools, link management, competitor analysis, mobile search tracking, keyword tracking, and rank tracking.
Integrations include Rambox, Reportz, Marketing Miner, GuinRank, Google Search Console, AgencyAnalytics, DashThis, Klipfolio, Databox, Linkody, Pipedream, and SEO Review Tools.
Ahrefs costs from $99/month when paying monthly or $83/month when billed annually. Ahrefs doesn’t provide any free trial information.
Pros
- An essential tool for SEO marketing
- Effective site auditing capabilities
- Easy-to-use interface
Cons
- No free trial is available
- The data isn’t always accurate
Other Options
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best marketing automation tools list:
- Autopilot - Best for visual marketing automations.
- Drip - Best for automatically sending emails based on behaviors.
- Ontraport - Best for service businesses.
- SharpSpring - Best for automatically capturing marketing data.
- Mautic - Best open-source automation tool.
- SendinBlue - Best for sending transactional messages.
- Campaign Monitor - Best for delivering targeted content.
- LeadSquared - Best for capturing leads from multiple channels.
- Zoho Campaigns - Best for importing data from a CRM.
- Agile CRM - Best for automating customer retention processes.
- Customer.io - Best for real-time behavioral data.
Other Types of Marketing Tools
Other than automation tools, there are other marketing solutions that will help you promote your brand. You should consider platforms that will help you with functions such as website analysis, campaign management, and other crucial marketing aspects. Here are some other marketing resources to think about implementing in your business.
- Marketing Automation Software
- Marketing CRM Software
- Marketing Dashboard Software
- Best SEO Tools
- Email Marketing Software
How I Selected the Best Marketing Automation Tools
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best marketing automation tools for this list? To build this top 12 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of marketing automation tools 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 marketing experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
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 tools for this article:
Core Functionality:
Each marketing automation tool will have its own specialty, from email to data. But here are the core functionalities I require from each tool to be considered for this list:
- The tool should be marketing-focused and be able to justify their use by marketing teams
- Automations should be easy to use and able to handle basic tasks as well as the ability speak between tools (ie. Salesforce Marketing Cloud being able to send notifications to Slack)
Key Features:
Here are the key features I look for in marketing automation tools:
- Email Automation: This helps you manage email campaigns efficiently by sending emails after visitors perform specific actions and reducing the number of repetitive tasks from your team’s schedule.
- Landing Page Automation: A landing page is essential to conversion optimization, and marketing automation software should help you build effective landing pages quickly without using code.
- Form Automation: Engaging web forms are critical to encouraging visitors to take specific actions, and excellent marketing automation platforms will quickly generate form after a few clicks and enable users to customize them to fit the organization’s brand.
- Social Media Automation: Your social media efforts can take a lot of time to reply to posts, followers, and comments, so using a robust marketing tool will help you create effective social media strategies and free you from repetitive tasks.
- Marketing Analytics Automation: Reporting and analytics are essential aspects of your marketing strategies because they help you access data, statistics, and results without manually digging through resources to find them.
- Lead Management Automation: This feature helps your business monitor, categorize, and connect with leads so your teams can convert them from a prospect to paying customers.
- Digital Marketing Automation: You can use marketing tools to automate different forms of digital marketing, such as search engine optimization and paid media, to help you execute campaigns from a controlled, centralized area.
Usability:
The software’s usability is a crucial criterion to consider when searching for a new marketing automation tool. The tool should be easy to use so everyone on your team won’t experience any difficulties using the platform. You can always train employees to use the software, but if it’s too complex or requires a significant amount of time to get familiar with, it will hinder productivity. I look for options that are easy to navigate with clear menus and views that are easy to understand.
Software Integrations:
I look for marketing automation tools that can integrate with your current marketing systems and software that other areas of your business are using. Unless your teams like operating in silos, the last thing you need is two datasets that don’t integrate with each other. If your business is already using other systems, such as a CRM platform, you’ll want the marketing automation tool you’re using to integrate with those platforms.
Value for Price:
The final price of your marketing automation tool will depend on the software and its features. I look for tools that show the features that influence the price and inform you about how much data or contacts you can save before you need to upgrade to a higher subscription. Using a platform that can provide a clear pricing structure for a specific period is ideal because these can change year over year.
People Also Ask
Here are a few popular questions answered for your convenience.
How much do marketing automation tools cost?
What are the benefits of marketing automation tools?
What are the different types of marketing automation tools?
Start Automating Your Marketing Efforts
77% of marketers using automation reported a digital engagement increase. So, choosing the best one to grow your business from all the marketing automation tools available can ensure you meet your goals.
Try out some of the marketing automation tools I listed above to help you get greater efficiency, cost savings, improved productivity, and insightful analytic data. But if you need more marketing advice and software suggestions, sign up for The CMO newsletter. As a subscriber, you’ll get the latest marketing advice and software lists to help you promote your brand and grow your business.