Marketing Automation is Heating Up: 5 Best Tools to Save You Time in 2018
Integrate, automate, delegate — these words could become a new motto of the modern tech world. The companies seek to establish an all-in-one system which can handle every business operation.
This wonder-system should consist of seamlessly integrated elements and free people from doing an iterative job. Marketing is among major business activities where automation is in full swing, so more and more marketing automation software solutions emerge in 2018.
Today we are going to talk about the most relevant marketing automation tools to help our readers reduce time and cash spent on repetitive actions and invest it into something that really makes the world go round. But before we dig deeper, let’s answer the most common questions which can cross your mind when you hear the term “marketing automation”.
Revealing the true nature of marketing automation
WHAT? In short terms, marketing automation software eases the marketer’s daily grind by streamlining, coordinating and measuring repetitive tasks and workflows. In the broader sense, marketing automation is a part of CRM aimed at assisting you in moving your leads down the funnel. This process includes lead nurturing and scoring, segmentation, target content generation, sales documents creation, etc.
WHO? Let’s imagine: you need to send a bunch of e-mails to the group of clients. A small company may have an e-mail list of 10 people, but some large businesses deal with groups of 10,000 or more. It’s almost impossible to manage that number of e-mails by hand.
This leads to the conclusion: marketing automation is a killer-app for large businesses. Yes, but how can small companies use a sink when we have a dishwasher? No matter how large is your pile of dirty dishes — the dishwasher will handle them anyway faster.
WHY? It’s a proven fact that marketing actions and workflows become hassle-free when you use MA software. According to Salesfusion, 63% of companies that are currently outrunning their competitors rely heavily on marketing automation.
Another research conducted by Techaisle showed that it’s not a coincidence. Businesses that use marketing automation software are 51% more successful in managing leads, 54% — in generating new revenue from existing customers, 20% — in monitoring social media, and they have 45% better marketing ROI than those companies that bypass marketing automation. So, draw your own conclusions why you still need it.
HOW? As we mentioned above, the main goal of marketing automation is to simplify the lead moving along the pipeline. Thus, MA software allows you to:
- create lead generation, nurturing, and e-mail drip campaigns at short notice;
- easily identify and qualify website visitors;
- score leads and determine if they’re ready for sales;
- quickly craft personalized e-mails and conduct A/B testing;
- leverage cookies and track prospect’s actions;
- build custom landing pages;
- calculate individual campaign costs, etc.
That’s how software helps you on your road to success. But each marketing automation tool works best for different types of automation, so the set of available features can vary.
Let’s dive into the multifaceted world of MA software and take a stock of 5 viable tools as of 2018.
5 marketing automation tools to grow revenue faster
PandaDoc
PandaDoc is your portal to the paperless universe, where every document is created in a few clicks, contracts are signed using iPhone, and the sales close rate is increasing at light speed.
This helps you build marketing proposals and quotes, create legally-binding signatures, manage workflows, and address almost any issue related to digital paperwork. The strongest suit of the app is 15+ CRM integrations — with PandaDoc you can handle documents without leaving a CRM.
Pros:
- Robust document creator with drag-and-drop functionality, dozens of pre-made templates, and content libraries
- Cloud-based
- CPQ functionality allows you to know your revenues before making a deal
- Bank-grade security
- Advanced document analytics and audit trail
- Vast opportunities for workflows automation
- Unlimited eSignatures compliant in 42 countries
- 15 CRM integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, ProsperWorks, and more)
- The possibility to start the in-app discussion on the proposal
- Free lightweight tools to create online signatures like CreateMySignature
Cons:
- No customer support via phone number
- No free subscription plan (only 14-day free trial)
- The functionality is limited only to document management. No e-mail campaigns management
SocialDrift
If you use Instagram as a primary platform for your business, SocialDrift is just what the doctor ordered. This is an artificial intelligence marketing tool which can automate the growth of your Instagram brand profile.
Use smart targeting filters to customize your strategy, schedule posts, receive detailed progress reports, and automate likes, follows, and comments. The software claims to be absolutely safe: you won’t exceed Instagram limits and, therefore, won’t be banned.
Pros:
- Lots of smart filters for precise targeting
- User-friendly and highly-customized interface
- Weekly/monthly detailed growth reports help to track your progress
- Out-of-the-box proxy support
- Unlimited autolikes, follows, and comments
- Advanced scheduled posting module
- Graphics and image generation support
- Full compliance with Instagram terms & conditions to keep your account safe
Cons:
- Focused only on Instagram, doesn’t support other social media platforms
- Pricing is higher than average
- Lacks long videos support
MailChimp
MailChimp is leading software to automate your marketing campaigns, e-mail newsletters, and social media advertisement. Design beautiful e-mails using a built-in drag-and-drop editor, code your own templates, and instantly follow-up with qualified leads.
What’s more: MailChimp integrates with Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and other major eCommerce platforms as well as other apps you may use such as Salesforce CRM, Google, Facebook, Eventbrite, etc.
Pros:
- Powerful analytics (A/B & multivariate testing and detailed reports)
- Full automation of e-mail campaigns
- Beautifully designed drag-and-drop template editor
- Free subscription plan with up to 12,000 e-mails per month
- User-friendly dashboard with a multitude of marketing automation features
- Salesforce CRM integration + integrations with other frequently used applications and eCommerce platforms
- Native mobile application
- Google, Facebook, and Instagram ad campaigns are available
- Simple in-built landing page constructor
Cons:
- MailChimp uses its own marketing automation terms instead of industry standards
- A difficult procedure of changing defaults
- Very frequent updates (every 4 weeks) may be annoying for non-frequent users
- Too simple basic subscription forms
- No 24/7 customer support
HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one automation service for business which will assist you in walking your leads through the whole pipeline from start to finish and make them eventually buy. The primary HubSpot’s product is its free CRM, but they also have 3 so-called marketing, sales, and service hubs which allow you to cover the majority of tasks so hated by your employees.
The company offers various solutions starting at $0 per month, what’s especially appealing to small businesses. Yes, it is that wonder-system we were talking about at the very beginning of our review.
Pros:
- This is full-cycle marketing automation software with the ability to integrate with third-party tools
- Free of charge CRM + sales, marketing, and customer service software packages
- An abundance of tools combined with simple design and ease of use
- Hassle-free web design and landing pages creation. No coding experience is required
- Out-of-the-box extended customization
- SEO, social media, blogging, and other features for advanced content marketing
- All-in-one analytics system which measures the whole marketing funnel and provides you with detailed reports for each marketing channel
- Seamless integrations with CMS, e-mail, collaboration, customer success, advertising, and other tools
- An ability to design custom branded e-mail and CTA templates
Cons:
- It takes time to figure out every feature and learn how it works (there are too many features)
- Some third-party integrations can be used only tied to HubSpot marketing
- Lack of customer support, according to some reviews
Optimizely
Optimizely is probably the most extraordinary hero of the day. This software claims to be one of the finest online experimentation platforms — here you can test decisions you make and improve the customer experience of your website.
No more need to guess what will work and what will not. Make sure in the effectiveness of your actions by receiving statistics through Optimizely. You can easily create experiments using visual editor and sort them by various parameters including geography, ad campaign, cookies, and many more.
Pros:
- Quick test setup: only a single line of code is needed to start
- No programming skills required — you can create tests using a user-friendly visual editor
- Convenient out-of-the-box analytics display — all stats come in a form of the chart
- Creation of custom user segments which can be reused
- A variety of testing tools (A/B, multivariate, funnel,
- Audience targeting & segmentation based on URL, referral information, Javascript conditions, etc.
- Integrations with Google Analytics and other third-party analytics
- Mobile testing support
- Experiment scheduler
Cons:
- Analytic goals for testing are not available
- Pricing is slightly higher than average
- Slow Javascript frontend
In essence, our review is not the chart, where we define the best marketing automation service. Each software mentioned above can be a part of the whole. Together these MA services will bring much more benefit than separately.
Yes, you will finally get the complete automation system you could only dream of a couple years ago. But now in 2018, the technology became so sophisticated that you can make your dream come true just in a few clicks.
Create marketing campaigns with HubSpot, design e-mails with MailChimp, sign documents with PandaDoc, manage Instagram with SocialDrift, and test customer experience with Optimizely. Let your business go off without a hitch.