Marketing Automation Software

What is Marketing Automation Software?

Marketing automation software automates typical marketing functions and workflows such as email marketing, social media posts, lead management, and ad campaigns to help companies streamline marketing efforts across various channels. Marketing automation solutions help organizations create efficient marketing workflows and provide tools that companies can use to customize the experience customers have with marketing campaigns and materials.

Marketing automation platforms are beneficial for companies of varying types and sizes, offering advantages such as:

  • Increased efficiency with automated tasks and streamlined marketing workflows,
  • Improved conversions with highly personalized and targeted marketing campaigns,
  • Enhanced lead management with prioritized, automated tasks,
  • Improved and streamlined omnichannel customer experiences.

Key Features of Marketing Automation Platforms

  • Lead Management: Marketing automation platforms provide lead management tools to help companies build automated, optimized lead flow processes. Using these tools, organizations can gather, track, and qualify leads and create lead nurturing sequences to help convert more customers. Leveraging lead data helps businesses understand customer behavior and create highly personalized marketing campaigns to boost conversions.
  • Campaign Management: Marketing automation software provides campaign management tools that help organizations plan, build, launch, track, and analyze omnichannel marketing campaigns. Monitoring and measuring results from marketing efforts helps businesses understand what marketing elements are performing best and gives companies insight into campaign performance, so that collateral or strategies can be adjusted to optimize conversions.
  • Social Media Management: Marketing automation platforms offer social media management tools to help companies support an active, engaged online presence with streamlined and automated social posts, content reposting, social post scheduling, and analytics. Social media management automation helps organizations focus on marketing and online engagement strategies by automating all the routine work that goes into fostering an active social media presence.
  • Content Management: Marketing automation platforms offer content management tools to help organizations create, organize, store, and share digital content with accuracy and efficiency. Content management tools typically include content creation, scheduling, personalization, and distribution across various channels. Marketing automation solutions also offer analytics to help companies track marketing content and campaign performance, with real-time collaboration capabilities further helping enhance efficiency within team workflows.
  • CRM Integration: Marketing automation platforms integrate with CRM software to bolster any existing customer data, providing sales teams with extra context on previous engagements and interactions across multiple communication channels. Inversely, CRM software integrations can also power marketing automation platforms by divulging trends through existing customer data, so campaigns can be targeted better.

To learn more about marketing automation software, please visit our marketing automation software FAQs.

Top 10 Marketing Automation Software

Phonexa / SharpSpring / Marketo Engage / SAP S/4HANA / Oracle ERP / Act! / Ortto / BenchMarkONE / Net-Results / Keap

WH Score
8.5
Act-On
63reviews
Starting Price:$1100 per contact / per month
Act-on delivers a complete marketing automation solution for those looking to approach their leads based on what they truly need. Segment and nurture leads to generate value-based revenue, which can be the stepping stone towards long-term customer retention. 
WH Score
8.5
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

505reviews
Starting Price:$0 per user / per month
Microsoft Dynamics Enterprise Resource Planning Software is a line of business management software consisting of four separate products owned and developed by Microsoft Corporation. The products include; Dynamics SL, Dynamics AX, Dynamics GP and Dynamics NAV. While each product has been engineered w...
WH Score
8.5
SALESmanago
51reviews
Starting Price:N/A
SALESmanago is a marketing automation solution which offers key capabilities that encompass lead nurturing and personalized messaging. Reach your customers where they are with multichannel marketing, while also automating manual efforts for added convenience.
WH Score
8.5
Zoho Campaigns
7reviews
Starting Price:$0 per contact / per month
Zoho Campaigns is a holistic email marketing and marketing automation suite that also connects with CRM systems for a total, all-round solution. Create bespoke emails with simple drag-and-drop modules as well as inbuilt templates, to target customers based on individual requirements.
WH Score
8.4
HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot Marketing Hub

221reviews
Starting Price:$0 per contact / per month
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub makes it easy to manage all operations pertaining to sales and marketing, from a single platform. There’s no need to toggle between different applications, when you have everything from ad management to live chat situated within one main application.
WH Score
8.3
Watson Campaign Automation

Watson Campaign Automation

14reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Watson Campaign Automation, while offering a comprehensive suite of marketing automation functionalities, stands out owing to its AI-powered assistant. Take advantage of predictive analytics to understand key customer trends, so your campaign can be personalized to target the right audiences at the ...
WH Score
8.3
Adobe Campaign
43reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Through its suite of email marketing and targeting tools, Adobe Campaign ensures that leads are approached with nothing short of the most relevant content, for maximum engagement and subsequent conversions.   
WH Score
8.3
Salesforce Pardot
31reviews
Starting Price:$1250 per contact / per month
Built for the B2B sector, Pardot consolidates sales and marketing by closing the loop between quality lead generation and marketing automation. Attract leads via numerous personalized touchpoints, which can include everything from basic email to custom landing pages.
WH Score
8.2
LeadSquared
12reviews
Starting Price:$400 per contact / per month
Specializing in all-round lead management, LeadSquared is a multichannel marketing automation solution. Connect with leads across their preferred communication channels with trigger-based marketing, while also evaluating campaign performance with reporting and analytics capabilities.  
WH Score
8.1
Sailthru
14reviews
Starting Price:N/A
With Sailthru, customize email campaigns based on unique customer preferences – and leverage the power of AI to understand more. Marketing campaigns go beyond basic email, by offering other platforms such as SMS and push notifications for a truly omnichannel experience. 

Learn more about Marketing Automation Software

What is the difference between marketing automation and sales automation?

The difference between marketing automation and sales automation is that marketing automation software is used to help grow a customer base and nurture potential and existing customers, while sales automation is about tracking leads and closing deals that have been funneled through marketing channels.

Marketing automation and sales automation software work well when integrated. Additionally, CRM systems and sales enablement tools can also be integrated to further serve any CX strategies that a business may have custom-created.

What is the difference between marketing automation platforms and CDPs?

Marketing automation platforms enable marketing teams to manage leads, orchestrate campaigns and test results within a single platform - while Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) facilitate centralized profiles of each customer.

CDPs can be integrated with any number of software solutions (including marketing automation platforms), as data therein can be leveraged to reach the right customers at the right time, as well as offer highly personalized product recommendations.

Can marketing automation platforms generate content?

Marketing automation platforms typically do not generate content for blogs or social media posts. However, many top marketing automation vendors may offer AI-powered content generation and summarization capabilities. On the other hand, many marketing automation platforms can also be integrated with AI-based content generators, for teams that require the same.

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