If you have your hands full with the fruits of Inbound marketing strategies and feel overwhelmed with managing all the progress, it’s probably time you consider using an Inbound marketing automation platform. Why do something alone, when you can do it with great support out there?
Harness the power from marketing automation platforms and add it to your inbound marketing campaign, and watch it grow as if throwing fuel on fire. But mind you, there are a range of great marketing automation tools out there, maybe even more than 100, and it’s easy to feel lost in the crowd of so many tools offering so many features. Choose the wrong tool and your marketing fire might die sooner than you expected.
Before we move on to our list of the top 5 Inbound marketing automation platforms that could help your business grow, Let me shed some light on what marketing automation tools are.
In the marketing department, there are many tasks that are repetitive like emails, social media campaigning and various other website actions. If you are generating steady organic leads, there comes a time when it becomes difficult to manually manage, monitor and track progress. Marketing automation tools are softwares that help you manage your inbound marketing techniques and automate repetitive tasks.
Our pick of the top 5 marketing automation tools are:
1: HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the most famously recognized inbound marketing automation platforms. It offers a variety of features and capabilities which range from a full suite of integrated marketing tools spanning from blogging, social media, search engine optimization, email marketing, and a lot more. You can greatly increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing strategy with HubSpot.
Key Features:
- All in one platform for monitoring leads, landing pages, and performance
- Free CRM – Content management system to streamline content creation
- Marketing hub – Use real-time data to provide relevant, contextual marketing experiences
- Sales hub – Automate your workflow process and achieve your business goals
- Marketing hub – Convert visitors into customers, track and grow traffic, and categorize leads
Cost:
- Free trial also available
- Basic plan: $200/month – all basic features of HubSpot but limited
- Professional plan: $ 800/month – Basic plan features with email marketing automation tools, customizable lead scoring rules and CRM integration and smart content tools
- Enterprise plan: $2,400/month – All professional package features with advanced reporting, A/B testing and custom event triggered lead scoring
2: Pardot
Pardot, one of the products from Salesforce, is a full-featured marketing automation tool for accelerating pipelines and generating sales through email marketing, lead generation and management. It also supports social media marketing, sales intelligence, and much more. Using Pardot with paid advertising platforms such as Google Adwords will be a great choice. You can track your ROI on campaigns very efficiently with Pardot.
Key Features:
- Branded templates for email marketing
- Landing pages, form builders, and search connectors
- “What You See Is What You Get” intuitive interface for landing page design
- Single platform for all search campaigns
- Lead scoring
- Segmentation wizard
- ROI reporting
- Real-time sales alerts and customer relation management integration
- Multi-channel social marketing
Cost:
- Standard: $1,000/month
- Pro: $2,000/month – Advanced analytics, dynamic content, A/B testing
- Ultimate: $3,000/month – Custom user roles, API access
3: ActiveCampaign
A great user interface with a seamless experience to improve on your marketing strategy, this one is the most easy-to-use automation platform that we have come across and with their comfortable pricing models,ActiveCampaign is ideal for a small business startup. It helps you grow your business with email marketing, marketing automation, CRM solutions and more.
Key Features:
- Contact Insights on personal and behavioral patterns
- Customized marketing automation
- Tracking and monitoring page visits
- Site visits/behavior based trigger actions
- Campaigns for dynamic content
- Real-time social analytics
Cost:
- Basic plan: $9/month – Email marketing, marketing automation
- Plus plan: $49/month – Content R Management with sales automation, lead scoring
- Enterprise Plan: $149/month – Custom mailserver domain, dedicated account rep
4: MailChimp
With smart, flexible features that give you well-organized email marketing, MailChimp helps automate marketing activities by creating and managing mailing lists, newsletter and keeping you in touch with the prospects (people in the MailChimp database) and your most valuable customers.
Key Features:
- Email marketing automation
- Personalized marketing via emails
- Automated welcome emails
- Trigger emails based on signup date, website activity, and more
- Behavior based targeting
- Provide product recommendations based on previous purchases
- Monitor customer engagement
Cost:
- Entrepreneur level: No cost for up to 2,000 contacts
- Mediocre Business Plan: Ranges from FREE to $25/month and more, based on # of subscribers
- Mature Business Plan: Plans range from $425/month to $525/month and up, based on # of subscribers
5: Marketo
Marketo is a multi-functional platform. You get customer engagement marketing, marketing management functionalities including budgeting tools and marketing calendars. You can also offer personalized messaging across marketing channels with the real-time personalization feature in Marketo.
Key Features:
- Email marketing and campaign management
- Lead generation
- ROI optimization
- Search engine marketing
- Landing pages and forms
- Tracking website visitors
- Personalization for web and mobile
Cost:
- Spark plan: $999/month for 30 campaigns and 1 domain
- Standard plan: $1,499/month for 60 campaigns and 1 domain
- Consumer plan: $1,499/month for 60 campaigns with 1 domain
- Enterprise plan: $2,999/month offering unlimited campaigns with 4 domain