In recent months, marketing automation has continued to attract a growing number of companies. It must be said that they understood that it could save precious time and therefore considerably increase the productivity of employees.

Also, after having quickly recalled the main fields of action of marketing automation, we invite you to discover the main tools that exist on the market to automate its marketing campaigns.

While many decision-makers have understood that marketing automation could be beneficial to them, few have really understood what its fields of action are.

In reality, marketing automation will concern:

• Your email marketing campaigns. A marketing automation tool will effectively allow you to segment your database according to the criteria of your choice so that you can in just a few minutes personalize your emails, send your newsletters, do A / B testing but also automate actions. according to predefined scenarios (example: sending an email when an Internet user has not validated his shopping cart)

• All of your content. This tool allows you to create all types of content (call-to-action buttons, personalized content, forms, etc.) to meet user expectations

• Managing your leads. Via the segmentation of your databases, automation is able to carry out for you what is called nurturing, that is to say, the procedure aimed at strengthening the link between your company and the prospect.

• Social media marketing. A good marketing tool is capable of monitoring social networks and should allow you to automate your publications and your campaigns on these media.

• Analysis. Because you must be able to know if what you have done has been beneficial or not and to what extent, a powerful tool must allow you to carry out analyzes. The results of the latter should help you set up a strategy for continuous improvement of your web services.

As you can see, there are a lot of benefits to be gained from investing in marketing software

Today, professionals have a wide choice when they want to acquire a marketing automation solution, but subscriptions to these are often relatively expensive.

Yes, even if a few tools are available under the freemium business model, it will be complicated to automate your marketing for free. 

It remains to be seen whether the cost is really justified with the presentation of some tools:

1. Active Campaign

This is arguably the fastest-growing marketing solution provider today.

It must be said that Active Campaign has achieved the feat of offering a particularly complete and efficient tool without exploding costs. Proof of this is the Lite subscription is available at $ 17 per month and the Enterprise subscription at $ 229 per month, which is ten times cheaper than Hubspot.

Particularly relevant for small businesses, choosing Active Campaign guarantees that you can automate your email marketing campaigns, manage your content and social networks, nurture your leads, but also have a powerful tool for analysis.

If this tool integrates with more than 150 third-party software, it is especially its user interface that is unanimously welcomed, the latter can be used by a beginner.

Obviously, some flaws exist such as an email editor that is not always efficient or a dashboard that deserves to be able to be more personalized.

2. Hubspot

Designed by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah and launched in 2006, this solution is often considered the benchmark in the field. Its vocation is to increase the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns through the personalization of the content of the sites to adapt them to each visitor and the constant acquisition of new prospects.

A blog platform equipped with very powerful SEO tools is available as well as a module to automate your marketing campaigns on the social networks where your company is present. A CRM accompanies the whole.

Extremely comprehensive, Hubspot allows you to do absolutely everything that was presented in the previous part of the article since the automation of lead management and email marketing are obviously at the heart of this marketing tool.

Integrating easily into many third-party software, Hubspot nevertheless has a cost that can be prohibitive. Indeed, if freemium is offered, the business package sees its price soar to 2200 € per month.

3. InfusionSoft

This solution is intended primarily for small businesses.

However, nothing is left to chance and the onboard features are numerous since it automates lead management, social media marketing strategy, content publication, and of course email marketing campaigns. In other words, everything is there!

More than 300 integrations into third-party software are possible and InfusionSoft has the advantage of being very intuitive and therefore very easy to learn. This tool is thus particularly renowned for its “builder” of marketing campaigns accessible even to beginners.

Despite its well-established qualities, this solution suffers from some drawbacks such as a lower deliverability rate than competing tools or excessive start-up costs ($ 1999). Subscriptions are available for $ 50 per month.

4. Marketo

Recently bought by Adobe to boost the functionality of its own products, Marketo is a mid-range tool primarily intended for large companies.

Very intuitive and therefore relatively easy to learn, this solution can be integrated into many third-party platforms, which also explains its success on a global scale.

If it shines in the automation of lead management – its first vocation – it has on the other hand more difficulties when it is necessary to build landing pages or forms, the tool sometimes showing some clumsiness.

In terms of analysis, the reports are also limited and can prevent to go to the end of the exploitation of the potential of a website.

Despite these caveats, Marketo is worth the detour but beware, the price of this tool may slow down some enthusiasm (850 to 3195 $ per month).

5. Ontraport

Admittedly, this is not the most famous marketing automation tool on the market but, like Active Campaign, it deserves to be looked at for its excellent value for money.

Aimed mainly at small businesses, this solution offers a wide variety of functionalities since it is really possible to automate all its marketing campaigns but also its sales force. Many features specific to e-commerce are also available, which explains why this sector of activity particularly appreciates this highly competitive tool.

Recently, Ontraport updated its graphical interface to respond to critics who found the dashboard unattractive, proof that the US publisher is listening to its customers.

For the rest, it’s its pricing that makes all the difference since the basic package is available at a price of $ 79 per month. However, it is generally towards the “pro” plan that customers turn, this one allowing access to all the functionalities, having 10,000 contacts, and sending unlimited emails for $ 297 per month.

6. Pardot

 Acquired in 2013 by SalesForce, this marketing automation tool is mainly intended for B2B companies, whatever their size.

It must be said that Pardot is halfway between a marketing automation solution and a powerful CRM. In other words, to bring your marketing and sales teams closer together, there is nothing better.

For the rest, this tool makes it possible to design particularly effective marketing campaigns. It is thus possible to generate new leads and nurture them until each prospect chooses the purchasing journey that best suits them. Analysis tools are also present and allow you to continuously improve your ROI.

However, where the shoe pinches, it is at the level of the tariff. It actually takes $ 1000 per month to have this tool in a lighter version, $ 2000 per month even if you want to take advantage of all the features.

If all of these tools are published by American companies, know that there is also a marketing automation solution since Maarketer has developed its own marketing software. Thanks to an intuitive interface and therefore easy to learn, it allows you to automate your entire digital marketing strategy.

It even goes further since this marketing software allows you to have a 360 ° approach to your strategy. Thus, thanks to dedicated features, you can easily plan your digital strategy and marketing campaigns. Then, you can implement them by taking advantage of the inbound marketing and sales tools offered by ultra-powerful CRM. This software will thus allow your team of marketers to save precious time in actions aimed at increasing your website traffic, converting more visitors, and, more generally, improving the performance of your business on the Web. Finally, it will provide detailed analysis reports allowing us to know the return on investment (ROI) of the various actions carried out. It will thus be possible to know what works and what does not.

This Swiss-made marketing automation software therefore appears as a great alternative to the best tools available on the market, its quality-price ratio being even much better. What is more, thanks to him, you will understand that marketing is not an expense item but a real source of profit.