Marketing Automation Tools

Marketing automation has gained huge popularity during the last few decades, the availability of latest technologies and functionalities helped us to manage various marketing processes effectively. The advent of the latest technologies and functionalities have shaped the future of marketing automation. For increasing, business sales businesses are spending a huge amount on the marketing process.

MarketingSherpa SEO Marketing Benchmark Survey represents that, a huge amount is spent on various internet marketing channels such as Content Marketing, Social Media, SEO, PPC, Email Marketing, Direct mail, Broadcast advertising, etc. Content marketing is at the topmost position with 64%, whereas the budget for landing page optimization was 60% in the year 2013.

Various Benefits Gained Using Marketing Tools and Platforms 

Numerous marketing automation tools and platforms are available in the market these days which helps us complete various marketing tasks effectively. Using this tools marketer can perform various marketing tasks such as SEO, Email marketing, PPC, web analytics, SMM, and many more easily.

Automation marketing tools not only help you to complete various marketing tasks effectively but it also helps businesses to enhance their business presence online. You need to choose the right automation marketing tool from various available options. Before moving ahead to any discussion you must compare features and functionalities of them and must also have a look at the pros and cons of each. This will surely help you to choose the right automation marketing tool for accomplishing all your marketing activities.

Use of Various Marketing Tools and Platforms 

Most of the marketers and organizations are using various tools and software to complete their marketing task accurately. According to a survey almost 45% of marketing organizations use CRM software to store valuable data of their customers.

Rest of organizations use one or other tool or software to store valuable information about their customers. Discussed below are few marketing tools and platforms which are used for carrying out various marketing activities.

#1. Ontraport

This software was introduced for small businesses, individual person and entrepreneurs. It poses marketing automation functionality and CRM. Apart from this Ontraport also have various other features which help users to complete all the marketing task easily. The biggest advantage of using this tool for marketing activity is that it offers a clear look at your campaign performance and mainly focus on insights and reporting.

Pros of Ontraport

  • Offers Flexible Block-Based Editor

Using this software user can develop the sign-up forms easily with the particular block-based editor. They can use the same block-based editor for landing pages as well as emails. This simply means that users just have to learn it for a particular purpose, once they learn they can easily go for the others too.

  • 14 Days Free Trial

Without providing credit card details, users can easily test various services offers by Ontraport without any risk.

  • Provides Contextual Help 

Ontraport provides contextual help to the users whenever they need, users need to just click on the info icon which appears on the right side corner of the screen. Once they click on this button pop up will open which will provide all the information about the current page.

Cons of Ontraport

  • Basic Plan Cost High

All the services offered by Ontraport are awesome but the basic plan starts from $79/month which is a little high for the uses. And due to its high price, most of the users avoid using this software for handling various marketing activities.

Pricing Model

There are 4 different pricing models for users but all cost very high. The first plan starts from $79/month for 1000 contacts. Even after purchasing this pan users does not get access to all the features of Ontraport. They are not able to accept lead scoring, online payments, affiliate management, etc. If they want to enjoy all these advance features then they must choose the pro plan or next level plan which starts from $147 a month for 2,500 contacts and Pro $297 a month for 10,000 contacts.

#2. SendinBlue

SendInBlue has started its journey as a digital agency but later it was used as one of the powerful email marketing tools. This marketing tool has various advanced features like lead scoring and reporting. Apart from this SendinBlue, offers an attractive and impressive plan to the users. The free plan of this marketing tool includes phone support, support 300 emails per day, and also offers basic marketing automation functionality. While using this tool users can easily run their SMS campaigns effectively.

Pros of SendinBlue

  • Low-Cost Plan

This email marketing tool offers low-cost plain to the users which can easily fit in their budget. It allows 40,000 emails at $25 only the value is pretty good for all the users.

  • Offers Email Automation

SendinBlue offers workforce based automation features to the users using which they can easily trigger various campaign actions. They can easily track the email and website engagement behavior of the users, they can also send a transactional message and assign a lead score, etc. Also, the tool allows you to customize API as well as set up an SMTP server, which is important for setting up smooth data exchange between platforms.

Cons of SendinBlue

  • Email Sending Limit

While using the free plan of this tool users can send only 300 mail per day to the customers. If they want to send more emails then they have to purchase the premium plan which offers advanced facilities to the users.

  • Offers Limited Templates

This marketing tool offers very limited templates to choose from, therefore users do not get many options.

#3. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a powerful email marketing and marketing automation CRM which is used by small businesses worldwide. It offers flexible and powerful marketing automation functionality to the users and is proved as one of the best marketing solutions for marketers. ActiveCampaign is one of the best tools for startups who does not have much technical knowledge.

Pros of ActiveCampaign

  • Free Migration

If users are using any other marketing tool or platforms and want to migrate from that to ActiveCampaign then they can easily do that as it offers free and easy migration to all the users.

  • Offers Complete Report

Users can easily get the complete report about their marketing campaign using this ActiveCampaign. It offers a report on Geo-tracking, click maps, page visits, etc to the users.

Cons of ActiveCampaign

  • Simple Email Builder and CRM Design 

The design of the email builder and CRM of ActiveCampaign is very simple. Users need to scroll down the window to find the information in CRM and email builder is also very simple which gives the feel of the 90s.

  • No Native Integrations

ActiveCampaign does not allow native integrations with any of the third-party tools. There are more than 300 apps and extensions available in the market which requires an additional cost to be paid.

#4. InfusionSoft

It is one of the best marketing tools which had helped marketers to reach the targets, generates high revenue, leads, etc. There are 300 apps and integration available in the market which helps you to connect Infusionsoft with any of the tools that you want.

Pros of InfusionSoft

  • Great Support

InfusionSoft offers great support to its users which is praised by all its users.

  • E-Commerce

InfusionSoft is one of the best marketing tools which offers payment processing, order forms, inventory tracking, and fulfillment through the tool.

Cons of InfusionSoft

  • Starting Rate

Starting rate of Infusionsoft is $1999 which is too high for the users who want to use it for carrying out marketing activities.

  • Native Integrations

It does not offer native integration with any other third-party tools. InfusionSoft has a huge marketplace with 300+ apps and extensions which requires additional investment.

#5. Drip

Drip is marketing automation tools which mainly focus on e-commerce marketing. It offers one of the best platforms which allow the users to complete all the marketing task easily and speedily. It also provides effective marketing strategy using which user can easily achieve their targeted marketing goal.

Pros of Drip

  • Easy to Use

Users can easily use this tool, even the person who does not have much technical knowledge can use this marketing tool.

  • Excellent Templates

Drip offers excellent templates to the users. It allows the user to carry out a marketing campaign easily.

Cons of Drip

  • HTML Response

It’s very difficult for the users to find the HTML responsive templates from the available list of templates.

#6. Mautic

Mautic was found in 2014, it is an open-source marketing automation platform which was found for the new player.  It has been used by 200,000 users worldwide. It offers lots of features to the users which are integrated with CRMs multi-language.

Pros of Mautic

  • Pricing

Mautic is open source marketing automation platform hence users do not have to pay more for using it.

  • Extensive Functionalities

Various functionalities are offered to the users using which they can easily complete their marketing task easily and speedily, it also saves a huge amount of time of the users.

Cons of Mautic

  • Features Implementation

Some of the features offered by this marketing tool are hard to implement as the user have to understand first what is the feature about.

  • Hard to Handle 

It’s not very easy to use this marketing tool, the user will defensively face problem in the beginning when they start using this tool.

#7. Pardot

Pardot is a powerful cloud automation solution which is mostly used by users who are from a technical background. It offers advanced features such as email marketing, lead scoring, valuable ROI reporting functionality, etc to the users. It allows users to track all interactions on their website and also helps them to predict lead scoring. This all enhances users marketing efficiency and saves time and effort.

Pros of Pardot

  • Easy to USe

Pardot is easy to use for various basic purposes such as generating a list from the metadata, sending emails, tracking people’s journey with your website, etc.

  • Easy Customization

Pardot is one of the best marketing tools which can be customized easily. If the user faces any problem while customizing this tool they can hire dedicated developers who can help them to customize this tool as per their requirement.

Cons of Pardot

  • Pricing

The pricing of Pardot starts from $1000 per month but its charges are taken annually. A normal marketing person cannot afford the price as it too high for them to pay.

  • Need to Purchase Separate Tool for SMM

Even after purchasing this automation solution users have to invest separately on social media management (SMM) tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite or any other that help them to perform SMM effectively.

Author Bio

Manoj Rupareliya is the Online Marketing Expert and Blogger. He is an experienced writer with expertise in the field of technology, blockchain, crypto, AI, Digital Marketing and SEO. All the blogs he writes are aimed at providing credible help and insights for readers who want to stay updated all the time.

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