Best Marketing Automation Software for Small Businesses
Today, you can find plenty of Marketing Automation solutions that can help your small business achieve its goals without breaking the bank. With the right Marketing Automation software, you can make better results with your marketing campaign while saving time and money. It can boost your sales and help your business become more profitable while keeping your energy to focus on matters that need your attention more.
In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the top Marketing Automation solutions for small businesses.
- HubSpot Marketing
- Marketo
- ActiveCampaign
- Pardot
- SharpSpring
- OntraPort
I should also note that the order in which the solutions represented is random and that because one solution is mentioned before another doesn’t mean it’s better than it. Instead, you should be looking at the features of each solution – which we will discuss – to see which one suits your business best and can meet your needs.
1- HubSpot
HubSpot Marketing is an advanced marketing solution that brings all your marketing efforts together, so you can grow traffic and increase conversions.
You can easily design and modify websites beautifully with the intuitive drag-and-drop functionality without needing help from a designer or an IT personnel and be sure that your site and all your pages will be responsive even on mobile devices.
You can also create personalized landing pages for your campaigns that can attract customers, and distribute static and dynamic HTML messages that will be able to get you the response you want. HubSpot will also help you design workflows, prepare content and format it for publishing, and integrate all data from other systems you are already using – all of this and more can be done without the need for coding or technical background.
HubSpot Marketing will also provide you with a variety of SEO and social suggestions for you to share your content with the influencers that can help you get the best results out of your marketing efforts. You will also be able to create engaging CTAs (Calls To Action) and personalize messaging to reach the right audience.
HubSpot Marketing’s free plan offers all the essential features such as Contact Forms, Traffic and Conversion Analytics, Integrations, and more. Their paid plans offer more premium features such as contact management and content creation tools and start at $50 per month.
Features
- Marketing Automation
- Contact Management
- Lead Management
- Analytics
- Website SEO
- Social Media
- Landing Pages
- Email Marketing
- Marketing Analytics Dashboard
- Insights
- Ads
- CTAs
- Phone & Email Support
- Integrations
- Content Creation & Optimization Tools
- Custom Form Fields
- A/B Testing
- User Roles
You can also check out the Best HubSpot Alternatives for Marketing Automation here.
2- Marketo
Marketo is one of the leading Marketing Automation Platforms on the market today. The solution has gained its popularity thanks to its ease of use and its ability to simplify even complex marketing processes and streamline most marketing-related tasks. This means Marketo can improve the efficiency of your business and help you make it more profitable and gain more revenue.
The Visual Drag and Drop interface is intuitive and allows you to create beautiful emails without the need for HTML Skills. Email Marketing is also easy, and you can send emails based on timing, actions, or a pre-defined set of steps.
Email Testing is super helpful, too, so you can try out different types of content and see which one can get you the best results, and you can dynamically change the content, so it better fits certain situations.
Marketo offers an extensive collection of features such as Lead Generation, Personalized Messages, Marketing Management, and many more, but the solution doesn’t provide a free plan. Their pricing is quota-based, so you need to contact them to get a quote for your business.
Customer Service is offered via Email, Phone, and a Ticket System.
Features
- Marketing Automation
- Lead Generation
- Customer Engagement Marketing
- Real-Time Personalization
- Personalized Messages
- Dynamic Content
- A/B Testing
- B2B Marketing & Lead Engagement
- Email Marketing Automation
- Inbound Marketing
- Budgets & Marketing Calendar
- Ads
- Email and Campaign Management
- ROI Measurement and Optimization
- Loyalty Marketing
- Event Marketing
If you like Marketo but need something just a little bit different, you should check out Marketo Alternatives for Marketing Automation.
3- ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign strives to provide users with a simple and easy to use platform that combines all aspects of small business marketing. This marketing automation tool allows you to seamlessly design and creates nice emails that can engage your customers, use social media marketing, learn more about your leads and contacts, and use the best marketing technologies available – all without breaking the bank.
ActiveCampaign doesn’t stop at the marketing automation features and goes a step further by providing built-in sales and CRM functionalities so you can take your business to another level. This will allow you to create unique workflows and automated follow-up sequences. You will also be able to track customer behaviors across multiple channels.
Other features and tools offered include Site Tracking, Event Tracking, Conditional Content, Automation Builder, Sales CRM, SMS Marketing, Live Commerce Email Split Testing, API, Advanced Lead Scoring,
ActiveCampaign will also integrate into your already-existing IT infrastructure easily thanks to its offerings of +150 integrations. Unfortunately, ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer a free plan, but their paid plans start at the relatively low $9/mo. (billed annually and goes up to $15/mo. if billed monthly). Fortunately, there are no set up fees, and you don’t even need your Credit Card to set it up.
Features
- Marketing Automation
- Sales Automation
- CRM Automation
- Integrations
- Drag-and-drop Email Editor
- Segmentation & Targeting
- Social Media Monitoring
- Social Media Reaction Automation
- Contact Tracking (Onsite & )
- Add Videos and Live Commerce Data to Emails
- Free Pre-designed Email Templates
- Automated Series
- Dynamic Email Content
- Analytics & Reporting
- Custom Forms for Landing Pages
- Newsletters
- SMS Marketing
- Search Contacts
4- Pardot
Pardot is a B2B Marketing Automation and Lead Management solution that help businesses set and manage their online Marketing Campaigns. The solution is AppExchange certified, and it integrates with some popular solutions including SugarCRM, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and others.
Pardot’s marketing automation tools give sales teams insights on the effectiveness of their campaigns and help them identify the areas that most improved as well as areas that need attention, so their campaigns can become more successful. The Advanced Web analytics and reporting tools provide users with insights from Google Analytics, so they can make better-informed decisions and be able to gain more from their marketing efforts.
Tracking and Monitoring campaigns, monitoring web traffic, generating leads, creating landing pages, and more marketing automation tools and features that are offered by Pardot make the solution a good option for small and midsize businesses.
Pardot is intended for businesses with a large number of contacts (10,000 and more), so you should consider that when choosing the option. You should also know that Pardot does offer an extensive collection of features, but as a small business, you should know what features you are looking for. I say this because Pardot is one of the more expensive options on this list, and even though some businesses may find it good value, those will be the ones with a large number of contacts and will be able to make use of most of its features.
Features
- Email Marketing
- Smart Lead Generation
- Lead Management
- Lead Nurturing
- Web Traffic Monitoring
- CRM Integration
- Sales Intelligence
- Social Media Marketing
- ROI Reporting
- Land Pages Creation
- Insightful Reporting
You can learn more about Pardot in this comparison Pardot VS Marketo.
5- SharpSpring
SharpSpring is an excellent Email Marketing Platform that is designed for small businesses and offers smooth integration with most third-party applications. The solution provides a large collection of features to help companies with all their online marketing efforts.
SharpSpring also offers CRM and Email functionalities to help its users communicate with their customers, and the solution also helps accelerate workflows as it stores all the key marketing and sales materials and one easy-to-access location.
Unlimited support, open API integrations, Dynamic forms, Drag-and-drop functionality, autocomplete options, lead engagement, and custom land pages are just some of the excellent features offered by SharpSpring and combined with the fact that they have no limit on users or support/training make this solution an attractive option for small businesses. The plans are all billed monthly so users can choose to leave anytime they want.
Features
- Marketing Automation
- Lead Nurturing
- Lead Scoring
- Dynamic Web Content
- Smart Emails
- Landing Pages Funnel
- Social Notes
- Robust Rules Engine
- Campaign Tracking
- Tracking
- Multiple-Device Tracking
- A large Number of integrations available
- Open API
- Custom Deal Stages
6- ONTRAPORT
ONTRAPORT is a business platform that combines content, sales, marketing, and information management in a single bundle to help businesses become more efficient and effective.
The solution includes useful tools and functionalities such as Lead Capture, Split Testing, Lead Capture, and more. It also comes with powerful Marketing Automation features, Task Management, and social media integrations. ONTRAPORT aims to become the single platform that entrepreneurs go to for all their marketing-related needs, including lead management, CRM, sales, and more.
It enables users to send emails, track campaigns, and even send physical postcards with the touch of a button so that you can focus your time and energy on more important matters.
The solution offers no free plans, and their basic plan starts at $79/mo., and all their paid plans come with a 90-day money back guarantee, so you can test the solution and its features to be sure it is the one for you.
Features
- Marketing Automation
- Email Marketing
- Email Tracking
- Social Media Integrations
- Secure Open API
- Powerful CRM
- Lead Management & Scoring
- Task Management
- Business Automation
- Beautiful Pre-designed email templates
- SMS Marketing Automation
- Web Pages
I hope this article has been helpful to you. If it has, why not share it with a friend who might find it useful as well?
If you have any question or a comment, we want to hear them! Just make sure to leave your thoughts on a comment below, and we will do our best to get back to you as soon as we can.
One more thing before you go, though. If you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you might be new to things like CRM and Marketing Automation, so we think it could be a good idea if you went ahead and spent a minute to know the difference between CRM and Marketing Automation here.