15 best marketing automation tools & platforms for 2023

Marketing is what reflects your brand in front of your prospects and customers. Marketers spend most of their time connecting and engaging with prospects, managing customer information, and capturing more leads. And that’s where marketing automation software enters the picture.

If you still aren’t using marketing automation for your business, you’re certainly missing out on many opportunities. 

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

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation covers a broad spectrum of tasks; prospecting, engaging with leads, understanding their preferences, and maintaining lasting relationships to convert them into paying customers. 

Managing all these aspects of marketing isn’t easy; you need a streamlined process that helps you increase your productivity. 

Marketing automation software lets you put all your menial tasks on autopilot, saving time and focusing on high-intent leads.

You can automate prospecting, maintain constant engagement with automated personalized emails, and nurture leads with useful resources. The below image represents what marketing automation can do for your business! 

A marketing automation tool streamlines your entire marketing process with advanced automation and eliminates the dependency on manual tasks. 

Best marketing automation tools for growing business

1. Salesmate

Salesmate is an all-inclusive CRM software that empowers teams and helps them drive more revenue by automating your entire business process. Salesmate’s robust marketing automation feature enables you to create multiple processes without any hassle and is considered one of the best marketing automation tool for small businesses.

Salesmate offers advanced features such as email automation, trigger-based automation, contact management, built-in calling, power dialer, team inbox, web forms, messenger, sales sequences, sales automation, and sales reports that help you forecast your revenue.

Price – The starter plan starts at $12/mo.

Marketing automation feature is provided by Salesmate as an add-on, which is compatible with every plan. You can check out more details about Automation Journeys on the pricing page.

2. Circleboom Publish

Editor’s Choice for Social Media Marketing Automation

Circleboom Publish is the most comprehensive social media automation and scheduling platform that supports Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and TikTok. You can automate your social media marketing for multiple accounts and multiple posts. You can increase your visibility on Google and get higher impressions and engagement for your marketing campaigns. 

There are many features on Circleboom. You can automate your social media posts with RSS Feeds. Also, thanks to the Queue scheduling feature, you can set time intervals and automate your social media posts for multiple social media accounts.  

Thanks to the built-in tools on Circleboom Publish: Canva, Unsplash, and Giphy, you can create, design, and edit amazing social media content that drives a remarkable amount of traffic to your marketing operations. You can publish your posts immediately or schedule them for a later date and time. 

Price: 

Entry: $4.78/month (Try free for 14 days) 

Pro: $18.99/month (Try free for 14 days) 

Premium: $44.99/month (Try free for 14 days) 

Business: $89.99/month (Try free for 14 days) 

Enterprise: $179.99/month (Try free for 14 days) 

3. Marketo

Marketo Engage by Adobe is a leading marketing automation tool that offers numerous automation features for every growing business. It’s a powerful marketing automation tool with salient features such as email marketing, lead nurturing and scoring, and analytics. 

Moreover, Marketo also offers advanced features like mobile engagement, web retargeting, and content personalization. This marketing automation system is mainly ideal for enterprise customers; however businesses of all sizes can implement Marketo. 

Pricing: Marketo provides a customer pricing plan based on Database size.

3. Pardot

Pardot by Salesforce is yet another robust B2B marketing automation tool. Pardot enables the marketing and sales team to collaborate, engage buyers, close more deals, and build lasting relationships. 

Pardot possesses powerful features including lead management and generation, email marketing, sales alignment, Artificial Intelligence, and insightful ROI reporting to close more business and shorten the sales cycle. Pardot helps improve marketing efficiency and is preferred by large-scale enterprises. 

Price – Growth plan $1250/mo 

Plus plan – $2500/mo 

Advanced – $4000/mo  

Premium – $15000/mo 

4. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is an ideal marketing automation tool that offers simplified and advanced automation processes with automated follow-ups, powerful integrations, and contact segmentation. 

One of the best features of this marketing automation system is that it provides flexible marketing automation functionality. Hence, you can set up different marketing automation flows and personalize them with 500+ pre-built automation, email template library, and contact management. 

ActiveCampaign is an effective marketing automation software, though it certainly requires time and effort to learn the process. 

Price – Lite plan $9/mo 

Plus plan $49/mo 

Professional – $129/mo 

Enterprise – $229/mo 

5. HubSpot

When it comes to marketing automation tools, HubSpot is the one leading the market. HubSpot marketing automation helps you create powerful automated workflows with a simple visual interface. 

It automates repetitive tasks and helps your business grow with automated email drip campaigns, personalized workflows, lead scoring, analytics, and much more. HubSpot’s powerful marketing automation tool provides an all-inclusive plan that works for every business to scale its revenue and eliminate dependency on manual tasks. 

Price – Started plan $45/mo 

Professional plan $800/mo 

Enterprise plan $3200/mo

6. EngageBay

EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing automation software that helps small businesses generate more revenue and build better online interactions with their customers. As one of the most affordable marketing automation software tools on the market, it allows businesses to automate tasks like sending emails and SMS or scoring leads based on their actions.

Because it’s so affordable, even small businesses can use it to increase the volume and quality of their marketing efforts without breaking the bank. This makes it an ideal solution for solopreneurs too.

EngageBay also helps small businesses generate leads and convert website browsers into customers. It’s a powerful platform that can be customized, with custom nodes and code-your-own options for forms, email templates, and landing pages.

Price:

Free plan lasts forever, and Basic starts at $15 a month. For $30, you get a growth plan with many advanced features, and Pro costs $49.99 a month.

7. Flipsnack

Flipsnack is a tool that enables retailers and wholesalers to connect various data sources to their catalogs to automate the production of catalogs.

You can upload CSV or XLSX files or choose to connect to a Google spreadsheet to automate tasks that you now do manually.

Start designing your own branded product catalog templates to keep brand consistency while automating everything else. It’s the fastest way to produce an outstanding catalog from a data source.

Price:

Starter plan: $14/mo

Professional plan: $35/mo

Business plan: $79/mo

Enterprise plan: $210/mo

8. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the best marketing automation tool for growing businesses. It helps you automate the repetitive tasks so you can focus on closing more deals. 

Mailchimp offers features like automated marketing emails, targeted ad campaigns, building landing pages, personalized engagement, and reporting and analytics. Mailchimp is ideal if you want to build a lasting customer relationship as it offers a user-friendly tool that is AI-powered. 

Price – Free plan 

Essentials plan for $9.99/mo 

Standard plan for $14.99/mo 

Premium plan for $ 299/mo 

9. BIGContacts

BIGContacts is an all-inclusive business tool offering CRM and marketing automation. This tool is easy to customize, deploy and use, making it a reliable choice for businesses of all sizes and industries. 

You can use BIGContacts to create drip email campaigns, create segmented lists and personalize follow-ups. The tool also empowers you to track the performance of your marketing efforts with in-depth reporting and analytics. BIGContacts also lets you create email templates and set up automated sequences, saving you a lot of time.

Price –

Big- $5/user/month 

Bigger- $15/user/month

Biggest- $25/user/month

Enterprise- Custom pricing

10. SharpSpring

SharpSpring is a simplified and robust marketing automation platform for businesses of all sizes. It’s focused on sales and marketing automation that helps companies boost their conversion rate and deliver enhanced customer experience. 

SharpSpring offers an omnichannel approach to automation with features like behavior-based email marketing, workflow builder, visitor tracking, CRM integration, and actionable reports to build a better marketing strategy. Basically, you can achieve every marketing goal as it automates your entire marketing process. 

Price – Starts at $399/mo and can be customized as per the requirements. 

11. Omnisend

Omnisend is an ecommerce automation tool with robust automation workflows, pre-built automation for cart abandonment, transaction emails, welcome series, and more. 

Omnisend is an omnichannel marketing tool with features such as customer segmentation, email, and SMS marketing, and integrates with many ecommerce platforms like Bigcommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento among others. It’s the perfect marketing automation platform for automation email marketing campaigns.  

Price – Free plan 

Standard $16/mo 

Pro – $99/mo 

Enterprise – Custom pricing 

12. Oracle Eloqua

Oracle Eloqua is here to streamline your marketing and sales activities. It’s a versatile marketing automation platform that enables you to efficiently manage cross-channel B2B marketing campaigns and nurture leads at every step. 

Oracle Eloqua is one of the best marketing automation software with features such as customer segmentation, lead management, Advanced Intelligence, Sales and marketing alignment, and marketing measurement. If you want to scale your revenue and build strong customer relationships, Oracle Eloqua is perfect for enterprises that don’t have budget restrictions. 

Price – Basic plan $2000/mo 

Standard plan $4000/mo 

13. User.com

User.com is an advanced marketing automation platform for Enterprises, small businesses, agencies, and businesses of any size. It helps you increase your conversion rate by engaging with prospects and clients and streamlining the entire process. 

Its omnichannel functionalities include email marketing, visitor tracking, live chat, smart automation, analytics, and much more! User.com is affordable and effective for business growth. 

Price – free plan  

Personal plan for $49/mo 

Busines plan for – $249/mo 

Premium plan for $1349/mo 

14. GetResponse

GetResponse is one of the best marketing automation software for email marketing. It’s been in the market for over 20 years and provides excellent functionality to its users. 

The product features are all-inclusive – email marketing, marketing automation, autoresponders, email analytics, and personalized engagement. This marketing automation tool can certainly get generate desired results, and it’s user-friendly with solid customer support. 

Price – Basic plan for $15/mo 

Plus plan for $49/mo

Professional plan for $99/mo 

Max plan provides custom rates. 

15. SendX

SendX is an innovative software for marketing automation. This automation platform is one of a kind, with the simplest UI and efficient tool for increasing your outreach.

You can send unlimited email campaigns, automated email drip campaigns, segment audiences, and build your email list to grow your customer base. Moreover, SendX provides pre-built email templates, personalization, and much more.

Price – Business plan starting at $99.99/mo 

16. Autopilot

Autopilot is one of the best marketing automation software for every business. You can automate the entire customer journey with Autopilot’s advanced automation and engage better with your customers and prospects.

It’s one of the simplest marketing automation platforms with intuitive features such as lead segmentation, building automated customer journeys, real-time collaboration with teams, email marketing, and marketing automation. With Autopilot’s personalized emails and actionable insights, you can take your business to next level. 

Price – Silver plan for $49/mo 

Gold plan for $149/mo 

Platinum plan for 4249/mo 

17. Ontraport

Ontraport is a perfect combination with an advanced CRM and marketing automation platform. It provides a seamless user experience and helps you automate your entire marketing process without any hassle. 

With features like marketing automation, email marketing, CRM, reporting, landing pages, and eCommerce, Ontraport is one of the ideal marketing automation tools for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs. 

Price – Basic plan for $79/mo 

Plus plan for $147/mo 

Pro plan for $297/mo 

Enterprise plan for $497/mo 

18. Drip

Drip prides itself on offering advanced automation for ecommerce companies. It provides a unified channel for managing all your data, executing automated email marketing, and personalizing it as per your company’s requirements. 

The features of Drip include automation workflows, One-off emails, email campaigns, email builders multi-channel marketing, and insightful analytics to perform better. If you’re an ecommerce company, then you certainly need to check out Drip. 

Price – starting at $19/mo 

19. Moosend

Moosend is one of the best email marketing and marketing automation tools for SMBs and Fortune-500 companies, with simple features and a small learning curve.

Its robust Drag-and-Drop email editor and extensive template library, with fully customizable templates, ensure that you send the right message at the right time, every time.

Moosend also features an impressive list of lead generation tools, such as landing pages and subscription forms, while its reporting and analytics features allow users to make educated, data-driven decisions.

Lastly, Moosend’s platform offers more than 100 integrations with your favorite tools, ensuring that the transition will be smooth and easy.

Pricing

Free Trial: 30 days – No credit card required

Pro Plan: Starts at $9/mo, billed annually

Enterprise: Custom made plan to meet your individual needs

Credits: One credit equals to one email sent to one recipient. Ideal for users who don’t send newsletters as often, but would still need a powerful email marketing tool.

Essential features of an ideal marketing automation system

Marketing automation takes an omnichannel approach that automates every single process, from prospecting to capturing leads. Though, in order for marketing automation software to work to its full potential, it needs to possess certain features. Hence, here’s what ideal marketing automation should look like. 

• Visitor tracking – To provide a personalized user experience, you need to be aware of your prospect’s interest. The visitor tracking feature provides insight into the behavior-tracking of every visitor on your website to examine which prospect is interested in which aspect of your product or service. 
• Lead management and scoring – An ideal marketing automation tool help you focus on important leads by scoring them based on their actions and preferences. Lead scoring enables you to manage your leads based on their interest in your product or service and assign them further to close business. 
• Campaign management – Are you running an email marketing campaign? Then you can manage the campaign with email tracking, which provides a report on email clicks and opens so you can analyze the performance. 
• Lead nurturing – To encourage your leads into purchasing your product or service, it’s essential to nurture them at every touchpoint. So, you can use sequences to set up a series of emails that provides value to them. 
• Organized workflow – A prospect goes through multiple stages before they become a customer, and automation software helps you have a streamlined workflow by defining every step of the process. 
• Trigger responses – One of the main aspects of successful marketing is responding to prospects and customers in real-time. You can schedule a time and date when you want to interact with your clients, so you don’t lose them. 
• Personalized engagement – When dealing with prospects, personalization is the key. Personalized emails and messages make a vast difference in building your brand presence. 

So, with these essential features in a marketing automation software system, you can certainly achieve your marketing goals! 

Factors to consider when choosing a marketing automation software

You want to adopt marketing automation software in your business, now what? Well, you need the best marketing automation software for your business, one that fits your requirement and works well with the team as well. So, below are the factors that you need to consider before picking marketing automation software. 

Pricing 

Automation software’s main role is to make your work easier. However, it should also be within your price range. After all, your main vision is business growth, which requires a marketing automation tool that’s affordable as well as scalable. 

You can start with a basic plan, and later on, you can upgrade it once your business starts growing. This ensures that the software will be accessible at every stage of your business without hampering the process. 

Integrations 

You must be already using a CRM or some other tool for managing all your leads and information. So, it’s imperative to find out whether the automation software you have picked integrates with your current system or not. Integration is important as you don’t want to spend your time in transferring the data and making the process more complex. Hence, pick a marketing automation software that works best with your existing tools. 

Usability  

Marketing automation should make your entire process simpler, not the other way around. Therefore, it’s crucial to inquire about the ease of using automation software, so your team doesn’t have any problem accessing the software. You can also ask for the screenshots of the UX so you have a clear idea of how the process and flow of the automation software will work out. Some useful UX design tools can ease the process as well.

Analytics and reporting 

Statistics and data drive every business, so you need marketing automation software that provides actionable insights on your drip campaigns, email marketing performance, and other metrics to track the performance. 

Support 

After all, marketing automation does require a certain amount of time and effort. So, pick a marketing automation software that comes with a solid customer support team. You must be able to have access to the tutorials, downloadable resources, and demos for the marketing automation software. In addition, good automation software also has a ready-to-assist customer support team.

Examples of Marketing Automation

Examples of marketing automation?
Here are some of the use cases of marketing automation software:

1. Onboarding emails

Marketing automation software can help you send onboarding emails to new customers or leads. These emails welcome them to your company and help them get started with using your product.

2. Lead nurturing

If you have a lot of leads, it can be difficult to keep track of all of them and stay in touch. Marketing automation software can automate lead nurturing by sending out regular emails and keeping track of which leads are interested.

3. Drip campaigns

A drip campaign is a series of emails that are sent out over a period of time. They can be used to promote a product or service, or just to keep in touch with customers. Marketing automation software can automate drip campaigns so that you don’t have to send out each email manually .

4. Lead scoring

Lead scoring is a way of rating leads based on their interest level. This can help you prioritize which leads to follow up with first. Marketing automation software can automate lead scoring so that you can quickly identify the best leads.

5. Customer segmentation

You can use marketing automation software to segment your customers based on their behavior or interests. This allows you to send them more personalized emails.

6. Product recommendations

If you have an ecommerce store, you can use marketing automation software to recommend products to customers based on their past purchases.

7. Abandoned cart emails

If a customer adds items to their shopping cart but doesn’t complete the purchase, you can send them an abandoned cart email. This email reminds them of the items they are interested in and encourages them to complete the purchase.

8. Event marketing

If you’re hosting an event, you can use marketing automation software to send out emails and keep track of who is interested.

9. Birthday emails

You can use marketing automation software to send birthday emails to your customers. This is a great way to stay in touch and show them that you care.

Here are some of the use cases of marketing automation software. To learn more, check out our detailed article: 11 Stellar marketing automation examples for every business

Other excellent marketing tools you need for your business 

Every business has its unique requirements when it comes to automation and the marketing process. While some businesses work at an optimal level with an omnichannel marketing automation platform, certain businesses only need certain features to scale their business.  

So, we’ve also compiled an automation software list that offers value to your business and helps you grow at an exponential rate.

1. Traffic Booster

Traffic Booster is a full-service digital marketing and PPC automation tool designed specifically for eCommerce companies. It offers online retailers an all-in-one PPC management option that automates their entire PPC marketing strategy while simultaneously improving ROAS, boosting traffic, and increasing conversions.

Traffic Booster includes Google and Facebook ads for eCommerce, as well as TikTok, Bing, and Pinterest ads for enterprise clients, and all users get access to a dedicated marketing expert and account manager.

Further advertising and marketing features include real-time optimization, a multi-channel dashboard, an automatic bid optimizer, advanced machine learning, and the ability to monitor metrics from all channels on one dashboard.

Price: Costs depend on a brand’s advertising budget, starting with minimum total advertising spend of $120 per month.

2. Rebrandly

Branded link management is one of the new trends in digital marketing. Including the company brand (company domain name) in any link that is shared leads to many immediate benefits like Increased brand awareness, improved click-through rate, and enhanced message deliverability.  

Rebrandly custom URL shortener lets you use a domain you already have or register a new one to create and manage branded links. You showcase the company brand any time a link is shared with a branded link. This way, the user experience and trust with existing and potential customers are consistent, and the conversion rate is increased. 

Price: forever free for basic usage, starting from $29/month for pro users. 

3. Chargebee

When it comes to marketing automation, streamlining your revenue operations is one of the most effective ways to boost your profits while providing a seamless solution for you and your customers to manage billing and invoicing. Chargebee is a fully-featured automated billing platform that allows you to experiment with pricing models, capture new market segments, and drive more recurring revenue — with over 4500 brands already using the tool to optimize their billing and payment processes.

Want to introduce a subscription model to your business to open up new revenue opportunities and retain more customers? Chargebee’s subscription billing software lets you seamlessly manage subscriptions at scale, with a range of customizable pricing plans, a simplified recurring billing process, an optimized checkout aimed at boosting conversions, and multiple sales and marketing tools such as free trials, coupons and gift subscriptions.

Conclusion 

So you have gone through the list of top marketing automation software and tools that can enhance your workflow in tons of ways.

When it comes to the marketing aspect of a business, there’s a wide array of possibilities and tools. As It’s an essential step for any business, a marketing automation tool streamlines the entire customer journey to provide an enhanced user experience and increase customer retention. 

While there are a lot of options to choose from, you need to consider your company’s requirements and then pick the best marketing automation tool that caters to your business. The list of automation software we have provided covers all the criteria of an ideal marketing automation tool, so you can go with the software that fits your budget, requirements and provides additional support to your company.