In the current era of digitalization, where almost everything is getting automated, it is challenging for businesses to stand out from the crowd. Employing cutting-edge automation technology is the wisest move to thrive in the market. Marketing automation tools improve productivity and clear up time and energy that often is efficiently used for tasks that are on priority. Marketers can now spend time developing more individualized and efficient campaigns that produce higher-quality leads and conversion rates by automating processes like email marketing campaigns, posting on social media, generating leads, and much more.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is the practice of using software to automate marketing strategies and operations throughout the customer lifecycle, from initial user interaction to after-sales support. Based on information about a prospect lead and their interactions with the business, it enables businesses to establish the most efficient operations for every phase of the marketing funnel.

Types of Automation Tools for Marketers

There are multiple ways to implement marketing automation into your organizational processes. Based on your marketing stack, a business can reduce the tiring or monotonous work by integrating marketing automation tools into your business. The commonly known types of marketing automation solutions are as follows:

1. Email Marketing Automation Tools

Email marketing automation is a tool that employs emails to maintain and connect with potential customers.

Businesses may use email automation to enhance their marketing initiatives by sending automatic emails to prospective customers depending on their behavior or engagements with the organization.

Using email marketing automation tools, you could re-engage consumers who may not have done business with you in quite some time. Customized writing may increase user interaction and conversion rate.

2. Social Media Automation Tools

Having social media automation in operation can handle challenging job, like simply organizing and posting content throughout various marketing channels and providing automated responses.

You may even keep track of the number of people who visited your webpage from their social media profiles.

Rather than wasting precious time on repeated processes, your employees may continue focused thinking and developing relevant postings for your social networking sites by implementing social mediamarketing automation tools.

3. Content Marketing Automation Tools

Content marketing automation tools aim to convert manual content duties into automated procedures that could help your staff save time and money.

These solutions are not designed to eliminate manual work; instead, they increase the possibilities for targeted, innovative results from the marketing people.

Content marketing experts will find content automation tools valuable and necessary because of certain additional features.

Targeted interactions through a range of platforms are necessary for effective content marketing.

4. Lead Generation and Nurturing Automation Tools

Every business’s top responsibility is getting and nurturing leads, and lead management automation may benefit in automating the process of obtaining and validating leads.

Lead generation solutions contribute to creating a seamless customer experience and converting the highest possible number of consumers at every phase. Most significantly, this type ofmarketing automation platformassists you in deciding how much a lead is worthwhile for your attention.

Lead scoring is a process used by lead generators to rank each potential customer according to their worth. The tools assess the data that users share and evaluate their online activity.

5. Analytics and Reporting Automation Tools

An analytics and reporting automation tool is primarily an internal component of a business, making it simple for your marketing department to get analytics and outcomes without the hassle of sorting over infinite pieces of information.

Businesses may track many campaigns with marketing analytics automation, such as emails, social networking sites, blog posts, and advertisements.

Marketing analytic tools can provide valuable details about user actions and patterns. Additionally, it can collect information from many sources to simplify comparing efficient mediums.

Top 18 Tools for Marketing Automation

Severalmarketing automation toolsare available in the market. Here is a list of some of thebest marketing automation tools:

Top 5 Email Marketing Tools

1. HubSpot Marketing Hub

Hubspot Marketing Hub is an integrated approach tomarketing automation tools. It integrates your technologies and products to bring your teams together, all built on a system that incorporates your information.

Key Features

• Effective online form generator
• Customized greeting texts and messaging automation
• Integrate Salesforce with HubSpot
• Add business and contact information
• Track sales operations
• Campaign objectives are visible, manageable, and actionable right within HubSpot
• Store documents in bulk
• Nurture and evaluate leads
• Built-in metrics, insights, and infographics
• Unify all information and generate effective customized reports
• Integrate information from your current business tools into HubSpot

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an effective automation solution that assists in converting your website visitors into dedicated consumers. It is a solution for email marketing and automation for developing companies. Themarketing automation solutionsoffered by Mailchimp let users launch online businesses, build consumers, and develop multi-channel marketing strategies.

Key Features

• Drag and drop interface to create HTML emails
• Optimize emails and landing pages for smartphones
• Test dynamic content
• Customize emails, content and landing pages
• Experiment with different aspects and test campaigns
• Create and manage contact lists
• Schedule the emails with events
• Get email delivery reports

3. ActiveCampaign

The platform offers 500+ pre-built automation that integrates email marketing,marketing automation tools, and CRM for effective categorization and personalization across social networking sites, emails, messaging, chats, and text to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Key Features

• Broadcast emails to the contacts
• Trigger-based emails
• Segment your audience and send target emails
• Send automated email response
• Schedule emails according to an event calendar
• Ensure the delivery of emails in the inbox

4. GetResponse

This platform is a marketing automation platform designed specifically for small businesses. It integrates online campaign management tools and email marketing into a single all-in-one platform for controlling sales, optimizing ROI, and leveraging digital marketing successfully.

Key Features

• Send a newsletter with updates and offers
• Create auto-responses to nurture the customers
• Design trigger-based responses
• Deliver at the perfect time with the scheduling
• Send reminders or receipts
• Build, customize and create your email template
• Enhance emails with GIFs and images
• Try multiple CTAs to increase clicks

5. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is an appealing email marketing solution that enables business owners of emerging businesses to deliver attractive, essential newsletters, establishing a trustworthy channel to increase contact with customers and encourage devoted engagement.

Key Features

• Easy-to-use email builder
• Mobile optimized templates
• Customize the emails according to your brand
• Manage the template along the team
• Timely delivery of emails

Top 4 Social Media Automation Tools

6. Hootsuite

Brands can use Hootsuite’s services and insights to start social media campaigns, provide social shopping solutions, and handle consumer interactions all in one platform. Users of Hootsuite may administer organic and paid social posts simultaneously, arrange posts over numerous social networks, and monitor consumer conversations.

Key Features

• Use complex keywords to search conversations
• Filter irrelevant search results
• Assign sentiment to the posts
• Covers several networking sites
• Streamline the process with bulk actions
• View customer histories
• Content scheduling and optimization
• Target audience
• Manage workflow

7. Buffer

Buffer is a user-friendly, simplified platform for managing social media that businesses, companies, agencies, and people use to promote meaningful interaction and success on social media. The business offers a range of tools for effective collaboration, blogging, interaction, and statistics.

Key Features

• Share assets from the library
• Assign tasks
• Approve and edit posts
• Customize posts
• Schedule content on all social media
• Analyze campaign metrics
• Easy smartphone access
• Reduce complexity in administrative tasks

8. Sprout Social

The Sprout platform is made to be simple to use, making social posting, involvement, feedback, metrics, and monitoring easier for our users. To consistently provide quality to all users, Sprout offers customer service, satisfaction, and technical services. Sprout Social provides personnel involvement, promotion, customer service, analytics and insight, and social media management services.

Key Features

• Boolean keyword searches to analyze sets of conversations
• Automated assigning of sentiments
• Monitor multiple marketing channels
• Post scheduling
• Target your desired customers
• Manage content workflow
• Optimize content
• Prioritize mentions and direct them to the team member
• Perform bulk actions
• Analyze customer interactions
• Generate and nurture leads
• Manage paid content on social media

9. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is the advertising sector’s premier source of content calendar, content strategy, and marketing learning solutions. More than 50,000 marketing companies globally benefit from its innovative collection of flexible management and marketing technologies, which helps them stay organized, complete projects on schedule, and highlight the importance of the marketing team.

Key features

• Plan, managed, engaged and analyzed tasks
• Maximize resources through resource management
• Schedule and create timelines
• Visualize tasks using Gantt charts
• Integrated email
• Centralize all project documents
• Easy mobile or tablet device access
• Track billable and non-billable hours
• Manage your expenses
• Track customer requests
• Allow teams to collaborate

Top 3 Content Marketing Tools

10. Kapost

Upland Kapost is one of themarketing automation toolsthat assist companies in handling marketing strategies. For users to efficiently plan, implement, promote, and evaluate material and promotions across the customer lifecycle, Kapost attempts to integrate teams, services, and platforms.

Key Features

• Creative development
• Collaborate on commissioned content
• Layout and manage workflow
• Talent network for authenticated content creation
• Create content calendars
• Central location for organizing content
• Promote and distribute content on social media platforms
• Automate content posting
• Forms for lead generation
• Create an embedded call to action
• Determine audience based on behaviors and demographics
• Analytics reports and insights

11. Uberflip

Uberflip is a centralized platform for managing content. Uberflip allows users to provide key information that more effectively engages with potential consumers by producing customized content experiences at volume. It enables users to stand out from the competition and fosters deep connections with customers and potential clients.

Key Features

• Organize and centralize a content library
• Deliver and manage content
• Use AI recommendations for more engagement
• Get insights on the content posted
• Get a clear idea of the customer cycle
• Real-time follow-ups with the team

12. Contently

Contently is a SaaS content advertising platform with tools including a collaboration area, calendar, workflow management, interaction data, and quick access to an extensive amount of quality content from freelancers, scholars, and content creators.

Key Features

• Creative development through ideation tools
• Collaborate on content from external sources
• Track the workflow
• Scheduling of content
• Database of content that can be licensed
• Organize content in the repository
• Forms to generate leads and registrations
• Post content on multiple media platforms
• Promote content through paid media channels
• Automate, personalize and curate content
• Attach CTAs to content
• Analytics report on content performance
• Optimize your campaigns

Top 3 Lead Generation and Nurturing Automation Tools

13. Marketo

Adobe’s Marketo is a marketing automation application. This comprehensive software program manages digital advertising and marketing activities. It understands, involves, and enhances the consumer experience, and it creates and expands automated marketing campaigns.

Key Features

• Content customization
• Multi-channel engagement
• Sales collaboration and analysis
• Behavioral and demographic data of consumers

14. Pardot

Pardot is a platform taken by Salesforce, a marketing automation technology that assists businesses in creating meaningful relationships and generating more funnels to boost sales. Lead management, lead creation, online marketing, and email marketing are some of its primary features.

Key Features

• Drip email campaigns for lead nurturing
• Assign lead scores and grades
• Notification of lead activities
• Reduces redundancy, manages and organizes lead data
• Set up calendars for campaigns
• Personalized invites, reminders for events and webinars
• Create and customize dashboards for insights and analytics
• Built-in metrics report
• Easy interface for connecting third-party system
• User-based access to the tasks
• Integration with salesforce.com provides improved reports, data syncing, etc.
• Integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

15. LeadSquared

Leadsquared is another platform that streamlines the execution of marketing campaigns and unifies both marketing and sales operations. It specializes in finding solutions to sales problems for businesses with several marketing channels, employees along with a good number of leads, and high capacity.

Key Features

• Automate lead nurturing using timed emails
• Score leads on different parameters
• Handle quality data
• The alert sales team for lead action
• Customize your reports and infographics
• Use API for third-party systems collaboration
• Reduce the administrative complexity
• Standard reports on data metrics

Top 3 Analytics and Reporting Tools

16. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an online application platform that provides various tools for enhancing marketing strategy. It assists in consumer comprehension and boosts return on investment (Return on Investment). Google Analytics offers real-time analytical solutions using statistical information regarding user behavior on business applications or websites.

Key Features

• Create elaborate reports for advertisement, audience, conversion, etc.
• Funnels analysis of various media channels
• Fetch data from websites or ad campaigns using a tag manager
• Set specific goals using Smart Goals
• Predictive analytics

17. SEMrush

SEMrush has grown to be among the most powerful SEO solutions for businesses that need support enhancing their internet presence for search engines and performing online marketing efforts. It’s a comprehensive all-in-one business monitoring tool that benefits small business owners in improving the organic search website traffic they receive.

Key Features

• Discover the right keywords to optimize your website
• Tracks your website position in search results
• Manage backlinks
• Score your webpages
• Analyze your website performance
• Audit your website
• Structure improvements for the website
• Manage and assign tasks
• Optimize your website on local, mobile, social and global SEO
• Integrated with web analytics for detailed reports

18. Moz Pro

Moz Pro is an SEO tool for thoroughly monitoring the effectiveness of all internal marketing initiatives. It offers a wide range of tools for search engine optimization to discover outdated or poorly built site sections and displays how information is spread via social channels and how it affects website traffic.

Key Features

• Analyzes the site to provide the right keywords
• Grades your pages for SEO
• Tracks and measures backlinks on the website
• Timely tracking of your website’s ranking on search engines
• Comparisons with competitive websites
• Recommends sites for structure improvement
• Manages SEO tasks
• Integrated with analytics tools such as Google Analytics

Bottomline

Marketing automation tools have been proven to be a boon to both small and large businesses worldwide. There are hundreds of marketing automation tools available in the market. There is no such tool that is perfect, and every device has its pros and cons. These tools save the marketing staff’s time and effort and deliver good and effective results with detailed reports. You can choose the best marketing automation tool for the above mentioned list based on your company’s size and marketing team’s requirements. Keep following Analytics Vidhya blogs to stay updated with the latest news in the world of AI!