Top 5 Marketing Automation Tools To Boost Lead Conversions
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Back in the day, marketing was about putting out ads in magazines, newspapers, radio, television, and billboards. It was mostly one-way communication with customers. But for a modern-day marketer like you, things have changed.
You need to have constant back-and-forth communication with customers across social media channels, search engines, and devices. And while you’re at it, you also have to ensure they’re opening and reading your emails, your pop-ups are relevant to website visitors, and your social media posts are targeted at the right audience.
With so much going on, things can fall through the cracks. For example, you may schedule a post for the wrong platform or overlook rising email unsubscribe rates. But if you use an automation tool to streamline the marketing process, you’ll not only save time but also prevent mistakes like these.
To help you pick the right marketing automation software, we’ve shortlisted the top five options from our FrontRunners report. The products are listed in descending order of their overall user ratings. Read our complete selection methodology here.
What is marketing automation software?
According to Gartner, marketing automation is software that assists marketers with customer segmentation, customer data management, and campaign management. It provides marketers the ability to offer real-time, targeted, data-driven campaigns along with enhanced efficiency and productivity.
*Note: In the comparison image above, the overall rating is rounded off to one decimal place. Complete ratings are mentioned in the product profiles.
Omnisend
4.77 out of 5 stars
Omnisend is a cloud-based marketing automation system that helps manage email and SMS campaigns, lead generation forms, website pop-ups, push notifications, and A/B testing. It also lets you handle marketing for multiple clients and brands.
The tool’s support options include a self-help portal, email, and live chat.
Creating an email marketing message in Omnisend (Source)
Key capabilities of Omnisend:
Its customer segmentation feature helps target marketing communication at customers most likely to respond or convert. You can segment customers based on various parameters, including their purchase behavior and preferences.
It offers email and SMS automation that lets you send automatic marketing messages to customers upon sign-up, order confirmation, cart abandonment, etc.
Automation reports allow you to analyze revenue, engagement rates, and conversion across marketing channels.
Pricing info: Omnisend’s starting price is $16 per month, billed monthly. The plan includes features such as SMS and email automation, audience segmentation, and A/B testing. The tool also offers a free plan that offers 15,000 free emails per month.
Platformly
4.76 out of 5 stars
Platformly is a cloud-based suite of sales and marketing automation tools. It helps manage processes such as data analysis, lead nurturing, link building and tracking, email marketing, and workflow automation. It also offers customer relationship management (CRM) functionality to help you take care of client interactions and relationships.
The tool’s support options include live chat, a frequently asked questions (FAQ) database, and support tickets.
Tracking digital marketing links in Platformly (Source)
Key capabilities of Platformly:
Its advanced sequences and tagging feature lets you segment contacts based on parameters such as location, behavior, actions, and transactions.
It offers pre-built automation templates that help launch automated confirmation campaigns, churn campaigns, onboarding campaigns, welcome series, etc. Automations are triggered based on customer actions such as a click on a link, website visit, or a purchase.
Its lead generation functionality allows you to create landing pages and lead capture forms to guide customers to the right resources and track conversions.
Pricing info: Platformly’s starting price is $19 per month for 1,000 contacts (billed monthly). The tool also offers a fifteen-day free trial. Pricing varies based on the number of contacts you want to manage.
Klaviyo
4.67 out of 5 stars
Klaviyo is a cloud-based marketing platform with data analysis capabilities. Its features include email marketing, benchmarking, social listening, and advertising. It also offers artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and predictive analytics-based marketing insights.
The tool’s support options include email, live chat, and a community forum.
Email templates in Klaviyo (Source)
Key capabilities of Klaviyo:
It offers data analysis capabilities to help predict events such as a potential customer’s likelihood to convert, the right time to send automated emails, and the probability of a customer leaving.
Its contact segmentation feature allows you to send personalized emails or ads to the right customers based on their interactions with your website, purchase histories, and preferences, among other parameters.
Its marketing campaign feature lets you share personalized communication with customers at the right time, as well as track email open rates, click-through rates, and total campaign revenue.
Pricing info: Klaviyo is free for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails. For over 250 contacts, pricing starts at $20 per month and increases based on the number of contacts you add. Each SMS costs $0.01. You can use the email marketing plan or SMS marketing plan, or both.
Autopilot
4.62 out of 5 stars
Autopilot is a cloud-based marketing tool that assists with lead generation, content marketing, email marketing, and sales funnel management. It also lets you create personalized campaigns, track lead conversions, and send personalized messages to customers.
The tool’s support options include live chat, email, online training, and a self-help knowledge hub.
Adding a webpage tracking code in Autopilot (Source)
Key capabilities of Autopilot:
Its website tracking feature allows you to understand how visitors are interacting with your website. You can check if they’re a part of your contact list or anonymous. You can also add a tracking code to your website to monitor visitors’ browsing histories.
Its marketing analytics dashboard uses AI to track marketing activity, customer journeys, conversions, and email open rates across channels.
Its marketing collaboration feature lets your team members collaborate in real-time. They can write, annotate, and drag-and-drop images on an online whiteboard to discuss the marketing strategy.
Pricing info: Autopilot’s starter paid plan costs $49 per month (billed monthly) and includes up to 2,000 contacts, unlimited emails, and email and chat support. You can opt for add-ons such as VIP support and expert setup and training for an added fee.
SALESmanago
4.54 out of 5 stars
SALESmanago is a cloud-based sales and marketing automation platform with features such as social media management, email marketing, inbound marketing forms, lead management, and contact segmentation. It also offers AI-driven predictive analytics capabilities to help you predict sales and customer churn.
The tool’s support options include live chat, email, phone, support tickets, and an online education hub.
Email marketing dashboard in SALESmanago (Source)
Key capabilities of SALESmanago:
It offers a search engine turbocharger that uses natural language processing (NLP) to optimize on-site search for customers. It also uses AI-driven voice search to better understand website visitors’ search intent.
Its social media marketing feature helps manage your social media accounts across platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. You can create, edit, and schedule posts as well as monitor their engagement and performance.
It provides a data management platform (DMP) that lets you deliver highly personalized ads to your target audiences. The DMP collects user information, such as cookie IDs, from secondary sources to help you understand customers’ preferences and display ads accordingly. It also uses AI to predict the purchase intent of customers and retarget them.
Pricing info: SALESmanago offers three plans: Essential, Professional, and Enterprise. However, their pricing info isn’t publicly available.
Things to consider when choosing a marketing automation tool
In this article, we’ve suggested the five best marketing automation tools. To choose the one that best fits the needs of your business, follow these steps:
Read user reviews on third-party websites, such as ours, to learn more about the performance, features, and user-friendliness of the marketing automation solution you’re planning to purchase.
Speak to your marketing team, and check if they need any specific automation features to support their marketing effort. Double-check on the product website and with the vendor to ensure your shortlisted marketing automation tool includes these features.
Confirm with the vendor if there are any hidden charges or usage limits on the tool’s features.
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Methodology
We identified top products using Software Advice’s Marketing Automation Software FrontRunners report, published in April 2020. Each featured product was evaluated based on the following criteria (until we had the top five qualifying products):
Meets our marketing automation software market definition: Marketing automation software streamlines marketing functions by managing processes, workflows and multifunctional, omnichannel campaigns that can be automatically triggered by lead behavior and interactions. Marketing professionals use marketing automation software to automate repetitive campaign creation, distribution, and tracking tasks across emails, social media, and other website marketing avenues.
Offers at least two out of the four common features of marketing automation tools, namely, multichannel marketing, campaign management, social media management, and landing page creation.
Has a user rating higher than 4.5 (out of 5) on Software Advice and over 20 reviews (as of March 3, 2020).