The Complete Guide to Marketing Automation Tools for 2023

Introduction

Whether you are running a big business or small business you must use marketing automation tools with essential features and functionalities as per the need of your business in order to increase leads and sales result.

Every business need to adopt a marketing method that works because it reflects your brand in front of your prospects and clients. Marketers spend maximum of their time in connecting and engaging with prospects, managing clients’ information, and capturing more leads. And that’s where marketing automation tools or software works.

If you don’t use marketing automation system for your business, then you’re missing out on many opportunities.

In fact, 75% of the companies are using marketing automation tools, which proves that you need to implement the best marketing automation tools or software right away if you want to gain a competitive edge!

In this article we are going to learn the complete guide on selecting the marketing automation tools or software.

The Complete Guide to Marketing Automation Tools for 2023

What is automation? What is marketing automation?

What do you mean by automation?

Automation is a creation and application of technology that monitors and manages the productions and delivery of the products and services. It’s a process or a system that operate automatically. Marketing automation covers a huge areas of tasks; prospecting, engaging with leads, to understand their queries, and keeping the long relationship to cover them into paying clients or customers.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation helps you to put all your manual work on autopilot, so that you can save your time and be focused on high leads, and conversions. Once you set up the automation system on the application you are using it will automate all the prospecting process, maintain engagement with automated personalized emails, and nurture leads.

The below image represents the marketing automation process for your business!

A marketing automation tool streamlines the entire marketing process for you with advanced automation and removes the dependency on manual works.

Why marketing automation tools?

Who should use marketing automation tools?

What type of marketing automation tools you need to use?

The types of marketing automation system you may need depends on what types of business are you dealing with. There are different types of automation system. These are the automation system you may need to use for your business:

• Social Media Marketing & Management
• Content Creation and Marketing
• Landing Page Building
• Funnel Building
• Lead Capture & Management
• CRM
• Email Marketing
• Chatbot or Messaging
• Social Proof

What are the essential features of marketing automation system that you need to look at?

Whenever you are looking for the marketing automation, you need to look at these few essential features:

• Visitor tracking – this feature is very much important because visitor tracking feature provides insight into the behavior-tracking of the visitors on your website to evaluate and know which aspect of the product or service the visitors are interested to.
• Lead management and scoring – best marketing automation software help you to focus on essential leads by scoring them based on the actions taken by them. Lead score helps you to manage the leads based on the interest of the clients in your service or product. and that leads to further closing business.
• Campaign management – If you are running the email marketing campaign then you can manage the campaign with email tracking, where you can evaluate the report of email clicks and opens so that you can analyze the performance of your campaign.
• Lead nurturing – nurturing lead is so important to turn your leads into buying the service or product. So you have to look for this feature when considering purchasing the automation tool.
• Organized workflow – your prospect do not become a customer unless until they check through the multiple stages, and in that point automation tool enables you to keep a streamlined workflow which defines the step of the process.
• Trigger responses – timely responding to your customer is an unavoidable because this is one of the essential aspects of a successful marketing. You have to schedule the time and date to interact with your prospects so that you do not lose them.
• Personalized engagement – improve your engagement with your prospects. Make it personalized when you deal with your prospects. Sending a personalized emails and messages will make a big different in building your brand.

Know that, these features are so essential in marketing automation system. You must look for these while you are adopting the automation system for your business, so that you can be more assured of achieving your marketing goals.

What are the key factors to consider when choosing the marketing automation tools?

Till now you know the essential features that you need in marketing automation system. But again, there are certain factors that you must consider before choosing the marketing automation tools. Below are the main factors that you need to look for:

Pricing

There are hundreds and thousands of marketing automation software available in the internet. Their prices, features and functionalities would differ from one company to another. You need to look for which one provide you the best service with affordable pricing. However, sometime you need to consider to choose the service with higher pricing if that is going to make your work more easier and fulfill the vision of your business growth.

It also depends on your budget. Initially you can start with basic plan and later on you can upgrade your plan once your business is growing. This will not hamper your business and the process.

Integrations

You must have already using CRM or some other software for managing all your leads and information. So, it’s important to know whether the marketing automation system you have taken integrates with your existing system or not. Integration is essential, your system must integrate with the tool you are going to use so that you do not need to transfer data and end off in complexity process. Therefore, choose the one that works best with your existing automation tools.

Usability

Marketing automation must be user friendly and easy to process. Look for the usability feature of the tool that do not create any problem to you and your team in accessing the tool.

Analytics and reporting

Every business needs statistic and data reports. That means you need a automation tool that provides you insights on your campaigns, email marketing performance, and other metric as well to track and evaluate the campaign performance.

Support

When you pick the marketing automation tool, you also need to look for two things; good customer support and documentation or tutorials. That will ensure that whenever you faced the problem that is fixed immediately by the support team of the service provider. And documentation or tutorials provided by the service provider will help you to get start right away without any hassle.

How does marketing automation tools work?

Marketing automation need manual set up initially. Once you have done all the set up then it works on automation.

• It builds relationship with your customers
• It helps you to do the follow up on potential sales
• It works on tracking customer to know the customer better
• It works to automate social media saving your time
• It automates performance reports
• It simplifies communication with chatbot to capture customer’s data

How much growth result can you expect using marketing automation tools?

The ROI of marketing automation system so is clear here. It allows the companies or organizations to save money and time, reduce marketing resourcing efforts, and grow revenue income efficiently.

• Marketing automation – optimizes the investment to reduce administrative overhead to a savings of 3.4% (on average), with most companies saving between 1.5% and 5.2%.
• Marketing automation – contributes to quick business and revenue growth. Companies that use lead scoring enjoy 28% better sales productivity and 33% higher revenue growth than companies do not use lead scoring.
• Marketing automation – saves your money and time. Done well, nurturing can result in 50% more sales leads at 33% lower cost per lead.

Look at the screen shot of top benefit of using the marketing automation software:

The best marketing automation tools

# 1 ActiveCampaign – The best automation for email marketing automation

Email has become one of the most essential aspects of digital marketing. In this section I am going to introduce you ActiveCampaign which is one of the best email marketing automation software.

If you want to grow leads and focus on improving email marketing strategy you should consider using ActiveCampaign. It provides numerous automation features for leads in your funnel. It also offer instant messaging, SMS, live chat etc. you are not limited to only email marketing.

Their most popular features are:

• Engaging – automating maps, tracking and subscription forms
• Nurturing – list segmentation and event tracking
• Converting – lead and contact score, split action
• Supporting – ecommerce, A/B split testing, predictive sending messages, SMS

ActiveCampaign offers 4 plans:

• Lite — $9 per month with up to three users – for the minimum contact number of 500
• Plus — $49 per month with up to 25 users – for the minimum contact number of 500
• Professional — $149 per month with up to 50 users – for the minimum contact number of 500
• Enterprise — $259 per month with unlimited users – for the minimum contact number of 500

Each plan includes more advanced features, and pricing is based on the size of your list, starting from 500 contacts. If your contact list  increase then pricing also increase. Ready to go with ActiveCampaign? Check out the features and pricing details on ActiveCampaign. 

# 2 Simvoly – All-in-One Platform and Automation

What is Simvoly? Simvoly is known as Clickfunnel alternative one-stop marketing platform with easy to use features. This is an all-in-one platform marketing tool for your business. Simvoly is extremely easy to use to create website, landing page, ecommerce store and funnels.

With Simvoly you can “Do-it-yourself” or build for your customers. Simvoly also provide you opportunities to start an agency business with white label rights. The best part is they provide you tutorial videos for everything. So that you find it easy to follow all the process correctly.

It works on smoothest drag and drop website builder system. You have 9 features to work with in simvoly:

• Page builder – smoothest drag and drop builder for building your page
• Building eCommerce – start selling your products in your own custom store
• Funnels building – create funnel flow, A/B testing and custom sale process
• Email & Automation – blast email campaigns and create automation flows
• Booking & Appointment – quick, smart and beautiful appointments
• CRM – manage all leads, members and forms in one place
• Custom Checkout – fully customized checkouts, upsells and subscriptions
• Membership – manage members and secure content custom area
• White Label – have your own branded version of the whole platform

Pricing:

There are 4 pricing table for website and emails:

• Personal – $12/mo if paid yearly or $18 month-to-month
• Business – $24/mo if paid yearly or $32 month-to-month
• Growth – $79/mo if paid yearly or $99 month-to-month
• Pro – $199/mo if paid yearly or $249 month-to-month

Email & Automation Service Pricing:

It starts from minimum number of leads +500 to +100,000 and minimum price starts from $9 to $399.

Check out the more pricing details here

# 3 SocialPilot – the best Social Media marketing automation

If you want to grow in social media then you can think of using SocialPilot. This is one of the powerful social marketing tools that can help your grow faster.

What is SocialPilot?

SocialPilot is a social media marketing automation software that enables you in scheduling and analyzing your marketing activities in social media. And that way it helps you to increase your social media efficiency and reaching to more traffic.

What you can do with SocialPilot?

1. Connect over 9 social media networks – like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google My Business, Linkedin, Pinterest, TikTok, Tumblr and VK.
2. With just one SocialPilot account you can share 500 posts and connect to 100 plus profiles.
3. You can manage social media conversation with social inbox.
4. Add team members up to 10 team in your SocialPilot account to manage sharing and scheduling with the team collaboration.
5. With the bulk scheduling feature you can schedule 100 plus posts at a time with uploading a CSV.
6. Create a customized posts for individual account to increase engagement.
7. Analyze your social media marketing activities by reviewing the analytics and reports.
8. Get new content ideas.
9. Manage social media accounts easily with the client management feature.
10. Use URL shortener for more visibility and recognition.
11. Boost your Facebook posts with SocialPilot.

This is how SocialPilot can help you grow your business and get more leads to increase sells. So, investing your money on SocialPilot is not to increase expenses rather it is to increase conversion.

You get 14 days trial to test out yourself. No credit card required. 

Like to give a try? Check out the pricing details here

Pricing:

SocialPilot has 4 pricing editions;

• Small Team – $50/mo
• Studio – $100/mo
• Agency – $150
• Enterprise – custom price

Look at the screenshot below:

Look at the Features under each pricing plan:

► 25 Social Media Accounts

► 10 RSS Feeds

► 2 Team Members

► Bulk Scheduling

► Content Curation & RSS Feeds

► White Label PDF Reports

► Facebook Ad

► Social Inbox

► Analytics and Reports (Web)

► Unlimited Client Management

► 24 x 5 Support

► 50 Social Media Accounts

► 5 Team Members

► 15 RSS Feeds

► Analytics and Reports (Web)

► White Label PDF Reports

► Content Curation and Feeds

► Bulk Scheduling

► Social Inbox

► Unlimited Client Management

► 24×5 Support

► 75 Social Media Accounts

► 10 Team Members

► 15 RSS Feeds

► Analytics and Reports (Web)

► Bulk Scheduling

► White Label PDF Reports

► Content Curation & RSS Feeds

► Social Inbox

► Unlimited Client Management

► Facebook Ads

► 24 x 5 Support

► Concierge Setup

# 4 SproutSocial – one of the best all-in-one social media management tools

What is Sprout Social?

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool that automates social marketing and empowers the customers to do better with their social media strategy. This is the best software for small agencies. It makes extremely easy to publish social media content on different platforms.

Is Sprout Social Reliable?

Sprout Social software is a reliable for the business of all sizes. It is a reliable platform for publishing and managing the contents all across different social media networks.

What are the companies use Sprout social?

There are 30,000 + world wide organizations and brands of all sizes use sprout social. Companies like Evernote, Edelman, Subaru, NBC Universal, Shopify and many more.

Summary of Sprout Social Features: 

Social Management

• • • Social Analytics
    • Social Publishing
    • Campaign Optimization
    • Social Engagement

Reports & Dashboards

• • • Report Customizability
    • Report Exporting
    • Scalability

Social Analytics

• • • Competitor Analysis
    • Follower Analysis
    • Post Performance
    • Attribution

Channels

• • • Social

Monitoring & Listening

• • • Social Measurement
    • Influencer Identification

Data Management & Analysis

• • • Social Reporting

Pricing –

• Standard – $89 per user/mo
• Professional – $149 per user/mo
• Advanced – $249 per user/mo

# 5 OptinMonster – The Powerful Customer Acquisition & Lead Generation Software

What is OptinMonster?

OptinMonster is a must have automation tool. It is the most powerful leads and conversion generation tool for every bloggers, eCommerce, marketing agency website.

This is a Powerful Customer Acquisition & Lead Generation Software  Without the High Costs.

Look what – Cole Joseph, Entrepreneur & Business Owner has been benefited after using OptinMonster:

Hope this article is giving you some sorts of information on using marketing automation tools. If you have not already using any of the tools then you must give a try to any one as per your requirement.

My final recommendation for you is, if you are looking for funnel building and landing page building then you must consider using Simvoly. This tool is very easy to use and it is a Clickfunnel alternative tool.

For social media management, SproutSocial is the best one however, you can also consider to use SocialPilot.

When it comes to email marketing or lead generation then ActiveCampaign is what you need.

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