Best Marketing Automation Software

What is Marketing Automation Software?

Marketing automation is simply using marketing software to automate marketing activities in a business. Most of the activities are usually repetitive and time-consuming and therefore not an efficient use of manpower. With marketing automation software, key elements such as email marketing, ad campaigns, and social media posting can be handled more efficiently. Furthermore, all the marketing strategies can be combined into a single interface.

At its best, automated marketing software uses both software and strategy to allow the nurturing of prospects thus helping to convert them to customers. This is done by pushing personalized content across different digital marketing platforms to attract and capture customers. In this system, customers are more than just the endpoint of successful automated marketing. They are at the center of every business process.

In other words, most marketing automation strategies don’t consider consumers to be an afterthought – rather, they are the central flywheel of the whole process. Using successful marketing automation software reduces friction and speeds up that flywheel. This helps to build and nurture that relationship between the customer and your business.

What Does Marketing Automation Software Do?

Although there are different opinions on how to define marketing automation, its benefits are agreed upon. These benefits include improved sales and marketing strategies. So, now that you have decided to implement marketing automation software, you need to understand its key functions. Here are some of the functions that automation software can bring to your business.

• Lead scoring — This is one of the most integral parts of marketing automation software. It involves finding leads based on online activity. For email and social media platforms, visits and clicks can be monitored based on a perceived intent to buy.
• Nurture leads — As soon as a lead is scored, the function of the software is now to nurture and encourage that lead to become a consumer. This is done through semi-customized trigger messaged informing that lead about offers and products available.
• Integration — Perhaps one of the greater values of marketing automation software is the ability to integrate other tools. Your official brand website can be integrated with a CRM platform and other digital advertising platforms. These integrations make it easy for set markers to trigger actions on a specific digital platform.
• Forms and landing pages — The genesis of email marketing is the use of a web form. This is a tool that allows businesses to capture information from leads and customers. This helps to build a profile that can then be used to generate personalized content. Forms live on the landing pages that a user is redirected to.

How We Rank the Best Marketing Automation Software

Our ranking methodology for the best marketing automation software includes a comprehensive evaluation of pricing, features, ease of use, customer support and overall value. We consider user reviews, conduct thorough testing, and analyze industry trends to create an unbiased rating. Check out our evaluation methodology page to learn how we rank the best marketing automation software options and empower you to make informed decisions for your business.

Main Features of Marketing Automation Software

There are many different marketing automation tools for your business to use. However, not all of these software solutions offer more than the core functionalities of automated marketing. With advanced features, you can optimize your marketing process to make it even better. Here are some of the main features that the best marketing automation platforms should have.

• Lead management — One of the main functions of marketing automation tools is to find and nurture leads. The software should allow the marketing team to easily find leads and nurture them for an increase in the lead to customer ratio.
• Email campaigns — Communication between a business and its customers is vital. Good marketing automation tools should include end-to-end email campaign features. This allows communication relating to purchases or product inquiries.
• Real-time alerts — Automated marketing should offer real-time analytics and alerts to the marketing team. This is important especially when any workflow needs human intervention. Leads may be required to perform an action that has to be seen by the team.
• Social marketing — The best marketing automation software should provide integration for social media. This will help you analyze and track customer presence on these platforms and also allow you to post on social media channels consistently.
• Personalized messaging — The best marketing automation software should allow you to send personalized messages depending on user behavior. The purpose of sending such emails is to ensure that they don’t appear canned or spammed.

Benefits of Using Marketing Automation Software

Marketing automation tools can have a great positive impact if a business capitalizes on its benefits. The primary function of this software is to provide a single communication platform for all your marketing channels.

Let’s take a closer look at benefits that come with using marketing automation software.

Lead Nurturing

The whole process of lead nurturing can easily be simplified using marketing automation software. It can clip lead and prospect information from different social medial channels. This list can then be added automatically to your mailing list. Furthermore, using tools such as lead scoring, you can categorize the lead and send out personalized emails.

Create Reports

All your marketing channels will be monitored using marketing automation tools. Using data collected from all these channels can help you create detailed reports on how people are interacting with your business. Based on graphs and other statistics from reports, you can, for example, evaluate an ad campaign or identify how to improve your business.

Maintain Consistency

Marketing automation software delivers its services in a timely manner. This ensures consistency in terms of the processes being carried out by your business. Furthermore, you can use this software to schedule follow-ups to customer replies and also achieve timely social media channel posts.

Track Contacts

Potential consumers use the internet to look for certain products or services. Using the best marketing automation software, you can track an individual’s web activities and buying behaviors. With this information, you can deliver timely marketing messages to potential buyers on different communication channels. This will help create awareness about your product or service.

Build Relationships

The relationship between a consumer and a business is crucial to the success of that business. With automated marketing software, your business can establish good relationships through personalization. Data from daily customer activities can help you create individual profiles that will help to tailor messages on a personal level. Valuable communication with customers builds a strong and durable relationship.

Save Time

By using marketing automation software, your business can automate repeated tasks to save time and concentrate on other marketing strategies. The software can create more than one campaign and can send out scheduled emails based on a number of triggers. These triggers could be auto-responses for follow-ups and automated social media messages.

Detailed Profiles

The best marketing automation software helps you create a detailed customer profile using data from different marketing channels and web behaviors. Analyzing the information gathered about your customers helps include more reference points. These additional points can be used to personalize the type of advert a customer receives.

Who Should Use Marketing Automation Software

Many more businesses are becoming aware of the impacts that can result from adopting marketing automation software. However, some industries use this technology more than others. This is especially true of those in the digital marketing space. This marketing technology tends to favor organizations and companies that rely heavily on internet marketing. Here are some business sectors that would benefit from adopting marketing automation software.

Financial Services

Automated marketing software can help financial institutions market their services and solve problems related to marketing. Some of the most useful functions of the software for this sector include behavioral triggers, automated nurture programs, and analytics. Such data would help a financial institution in decision-making on what the clients want.

Telecommunication Companies

Technology is ever-advancing and telecommunication companies are constantly coming up with new ways of communication. For instance, companies create faster connections depending on how consumers review the current technology. With automated marketing software, telecommunication companies can inform users of new technologies and offer deals on a personal level.

Tech Industry

The technology industry is much more evolved in terms of automated marketing software than many other sectors. Most tech companies have already included one or more automated marketing services compared to the manufacturing industry. While many other industries implement an email service provider in addition to automation software, tech industries use integrated marketing automation tools almost exclusively.

How Much Does Marketing Automation Software Cost?

Marketing automation platforms are usually priced on the basis of two metrics — the number of people in your contact list and how many emails you want to send out. The fee can then be charged on a monthly or annual basis, but this does differ depending on the software package. The typical price range is between $15 to $50 for 500 contacts. Enterprise tiers have different pricing plans and many packages offer customized pricing for high-volume users.