Comparing The Top Marketing Automation Platforms For 2024

Whether you’re a small business or a larger company, there just never seems to be enough time in the day. That doesn’t mean you should let your business’s marketing strategies fall by the wayside. Look to automation platforms instead.

Marketing automation platforms have become one of the most important tools for digital marketers, especially with the rise of AI-powered marketing tools. They allow you to create automated messages, schedule emails, and much more.

Understanding Marketing Automation Software

There’s a lot of repetition in marketing tasks; finding the best marketing automation software is a great, or possibly even essential, move for your business.

Marketing automation tools are perfect for saving your marketing team time. You can also keep customer data, lead management, and follow-up correspondence in one place — you can even utilize these tools for email marketing campaigns and automatically send out emails.

On top of saving yourself from repetitive tasks, marketing automation software helps you effectively leverage data and metrics, giving you a competitive advantage.

Marketo Engage

Owned by Adobe, Marketo – a multi-channel example – is the world’s largest marketing automation tool that helps marketers create, manage, and optimize campaigns, especially for businesses marketing to other businesses.

SEO
A/B Testing
Email Marketing
Landing Pages
Social Media and CRM Integration (Customer Relationship Management)
Website Personalization
Lead Nurturing and Tracking
Campaign Analysis

Marketo is built on the Google Cloud and pricing depends on your database. You have to talk with their sales team to find out the cost.

Salesforce

Salesforce (formerly Pardot) is a comprehensive marketing automation platform for both B2B and B2C businesses. Salesforce is a Cloud-based CRM tool that offers many features, including email marketing, landing pages, and social media marketing.

The platform integrates with other Salesforce products so that all your data is in one place. This American-based software also has AI capabilities to help you manage leads, opportunities, and contacts.

Services

There are different services that Salesforce offers:

- PaaS – build your own websites and apps
- SaaS – use built-in software
- IaaS – use the cloud

There are various pricing plans depending on what you need from your system. Customer support can be difficult, along with purchasing add-ons and a confusing interface.

Oracle Eloqua

Geared toward B2B marketing, Eloqua is a jam-packed marketing automation platform that helps you build, automate, and measure campaigns across all your marketing channels. It also has integrations with many apps and services.

Great for large enterprises, other features include:

Social Media Management
Email Campaigns
List Segmentation
Email Content Database
Real-Time Lead Scoring
Drop Sequences
Reporting
Custom Security Roles

A free version can be used to create campaigns using email templates in a drag-and-drop editor or by using the APIs. Packages begin at a high price point, making this tool only a viable option for larger businesses.

Hubspot

HubSpot is a marketing automation platform that allows you to create and send emails, set up landing pages, and track your leads. The free trial lasts 30 days, but there’s no limit on how many contacts can be added during the trial period. Whether you’re a conglomerate or a smaller business, Hubspot can accommodate your needs.

HubSpot also has free virtual classes on different aspects of marketing, like lead generation, customer behavior, social media management, and other marketing efforts.

The free plan includes all of the features of their paid plans except contact management (a maximum of 1,000 contacts) and social media monitoring. Pricing is a pain point for smaller businesses, and there are limited designs for email marketing.

Brevo

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a French omnichannel email marketing platform. It offers both free and paid plans. The free plan is limited to 2,000 subscribers and 300 emails a day but comes with unlimited contacts.

Along with email marketing tools, this SaaS can also manage SMS messages and conduct A/B testing while getting real-time reporting. Some users have listed contact management as a frustration with this platform.

While they offer a free trial and plans start at $25, you can also customize your plan to fit your needs.

EngageBay

You can streamline your marketing, sales, and customer engagement with EngageBay CRM. It’s a marketing automation software that allows you to send personalized emails, automated emails, templates, and more. Segmentation options and drip campaigns are also available.

Integration with Xero and Zapier allows for easy third-party app usage. You can also use it on Apple, Android, and Windows devices.

Try a free demo before scouting out their packages, starting at $15 a month. While this is relatively inexpensive, you may also have to purchase other instruments, leading to additional costs.

Customer.io

Customer.io is a customer data and marketing automation tool that helps companies manage their customer lists. Their platform allows you to create detailed customer profiles, conduct lead scoring and A/B testing, and much more (like real-time behavior data). You can even send push notifications.

It also has a large user base with over 5,000 companies ranging from small to large businesses. Integrations include, but aren’t limited to, Slack, PayPal, Google Analytics, and Shopify.

Functionality on the mobile app and CRM integration can be challenging, taking away from the customer experience. There’s also no AI option within the software to help create content, nor a spam blocker. While there’s no free version, Customer.io has a free trial. Subscription pricing starts at $100 per month.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the most popular marketing automation platforms for small businesses, thanks to its simple and easy-to-use features.

It has a wide range of integrations with other services, like Salesforce and Hubspot (and even social media), as well as its own CRM system. There are also email templates for each stage of the customer journey. Keep your customer lists organized by tagging them, and uploading them from Microsoft Excel, Outlook, or Salesforce.

It is important to note that if you need extensive and advanced automation, their features may not fulfill your business needs. For example, A/B testing is limited to email subject lines.

There’s no free plan, but pricing begins at $10 a month for folks just getting started and increases on services you need.

Omnisend

Omnisend is a marketing automation platform that helps you manage email campaigns, landing pages, and social media marketing. It’s a popular inbound marketing option for ecommerce, with integration into apps such as Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce.

The dominant traits of Omnisend are workflow automation, email marketing, and SMS marketing, and they have great customer support.

While there’s a free plan for email and SMS marketing, pay plans begin at $16 a month. If you want unlimited user accounts and emails, those are offered in the Enterprise-level planning. Templates are also limited.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a great all-in-one marketing automation solution. Offering email marketing automation, CRM, data tracking & reporting, etc., ActiveCampaign satisfies a vast array of marketing needs.

While the price can be a dealbreaker for some, as even the lowest tier costs $29 per month, for many it is justified by the sheer scope of marketing automation features offered.

Stacking Against HubSpot

While HubSpot offers many different tools, ActiveCampaign has a lot of the same features, but at a lower price. These tools combined with an ease-of-use interface can make ActiveCampaign a favorable alternative.

MailChimp

MailChimp is excellent for sending newsletters and emails. It allows for audience segmentation by various criteria, offers campaign management, and you can optimize with AI. Many of its users say MailChimp is user-friendly, has great analytic capabilities, and favorable email templates.

MailChimp is good for both large and small businesses, and a free version is offered. Plans start at $13 a month after a free month.

Deciding on Your Marketing Automation Platform

As you can see, there are a ton of marketing automation platforms out there. Which one is the best for your business? Well, choosing your automated marketing software depends on your marketing strategy needs and goals.

If you still need help managing your marketing strategies, give us a call.