Marketing automation is a time-saving process that promotes a small business brand through a consistent customer experience. Driven by a digitally transformed world, marketing automation has become an essential strategy in the growth plan of many small business owners. Using the right automation software optimizes the lifecycle of your marketing campaigns and allows you to manage lead generation all in one place.

It’s not a risky investment. Instead, automating repetitive tasks gives your marketing team the flexibility to channel their energy and time into creating campaigns and analyzing data to optimize your overall marketing plan. The benefits of investing in marketing automation are long-term; it saves time and boosts productivity in your marketing campaigns. In turn, it increases customer retention and generates new leads that convert to revenue.

To select the right tool, you must identify your small business’s marketing needs. Once you have a solid marketing strategy and understand what areas need to be optimized, it will help you maximize your investment and bring the full benefits of automation to your campaign. Listed below is a breakdown of the pros and cons of some of the most effective automation software.

Top Marketing Automation Software For Small Businesses

  1. Pardot – Smart Engagement
  2. Marketo – Captivating, results-driven campaigns
  3. Hubspot – Full Platform Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service
  4. Constant Connect – Stunning Data-Driven Newsletter Campaigns
  5. MailChimp – The Best Email Marketing for Small Businesses
  6. SendiBlue – The Best All-In-One Marketing Platform
  7. Funnel – The Best Data Collection & Marketing Reports
  8. Drip – The Best Email & SMS for E-Commerce
  9. Loomly – The Best Social Media Planner
  10. OptinMonster – World’s Best PopUp Builder
  11. SEMRush – The Top SEO Platform

1. Pardot

Pricing: it offers multiple pricing packages to customize for your needs. View a demo and pricing packages here.

Pardot by Salesforce is an easy-to-use marketing automation solution that generates leads and will help your business close its deals. In addition, it’s an intelligent tool that shows you the efficiency of your campaigns: what is working and what isn’t. This efficiency-based approach helps you craft targeted campaigns that increase sales revenue through optimized campaigns. As a result, your small business can reach a wider audience significant results in a bigger impact by leveraging the strategies offered in marketing tools such as Pardot.

Pros:

  • Workflows are easy to set up and offer analytics for each workflow.
  • Prospect tracking (Consolidated activities of each prospect)
  • Innovative landing pages functionality
  • Segment your target audience for personalized campaigns
  • Measure campaigns
  • Easy integration
  • Integrates with Google Ads, Zoom, and CRM

Cons:

  • Price is steep and doesn’t offer a free trial
  • The UI is not appealing
  • A/B Testing is available at $2,000/month
  • No social media management features
  • You need Salesforce to use Pardot

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2. Marketo

Pricing: you need to call a sales team member.

Marketo is a B2B platform that automates your client journey to make it simple and engaging. If you’re committed to building brand awareness, Marketo’s functionalities make it easy to reach your ideal customer and retain them as loyal customers. How? By automating lead management, email marketing, and customer workflow, you get accurate data on how your clients responded, allowing your team to optimize your subsequent campaigns based on data that will accelerate revenue.

Pros:

  • Marketo is intuitive and easy to navigate.
  • Flexible product offering to automate email and analytics
  • Integrates with Salesforce
  • Quick to set up
  • Excellent customer support team with an active community to help with technical issues

Cons:

  • Rapid price increases
  • No built-in CRM
  • Poor landing page & form builder
  • No solid reporting feature

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3. HubSpot

Pricing: It starts at $49 a month. Hubspot’s subscription model has three tiers: Free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. Each model has a different pricing guide.

Hubspot is a B2B inbound marketing and sales platform with a comprehensive approach to lead management integration. Hubspot includes content creation, social media management, customer management, lead capturer, and sales mapping all in one place. In addition, their user-friendly platform is designed to help you create unique workflows for your clients.

Pros:

  • Track insightful marketing initiatives, whether they are for driving traffic or converting leads.
  • Keep your marketing and customer data in one place.
  • Connects you to additional tools to meet your unique processes.
  • They offer training to maximize your use of the application.

Cons:

  • Rapid price increases
  • No contract flexibility
  • Templates are limited
  • Limited reporting
  • CRM is not easy to configure

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4. Constant Contact:

Pricing: Starts at $20 for a basic Email Plan or $45 for Email Plus. (Save 15% when you get billed for an entire year)

Constant Contact is an easy-to-use email marketing software that automates your email campaigns. This software has additional functionalities such as lead generation, bulk email tools, website and landing page building, and other great tools for building engagement and consistent marketing practices. In addition, their platform offers over a hundred ready-to-edit templates for your business; all you’ve got to do is customize and send.

Pros:

  • It offers a drag and drops email editor
  • Mobile friendly newsletters
  • Interactive marketing campaigns
  • Easy-to-manage contact metrics

Cons:

  • No feature to upload videos
  • Limited options for templates
  • No segmentation
  • Reported glitches in editing or scheduling

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5. Mailchimp

Pricing: Mailchimp is free with limited functionalities and has an as-you-grow payment option to add more functionalities.

Mailchimp is an integrated marketing platform that manages client relationships with multiple integration points and thoughtfully designed campaigns that result in robust data to optimize your next campaign. Mailchimp is excellent for businesses that are just starting or don’t want to invest yet. It’s a flexible option to get started in email marketing without the risk of a hefty investment.

Pros:

  • Free account for lists of up to 500 subscribers
  • Multiple pricing packages
  • Open/Click metrics
  • Time optimization
  • Audience segmentation

Cons:

  • It doesn’t integrate with affiliate marketing
  • Awkward interface
  • Create your templates

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6. Sendiblue

Pricing: Free plan with a 300 emails/day limit. Three pricing options: Lite, Premium, or Enterprise.

Sendiblue automates business production and social media services for improved and engaging client relationships. They offer intuitive email design tools with solid reporting that allow you to use the data to customize future campaigns and replicate successes while avoiding the things that didn’t work. Sendiblue helps you scale your business and our customer base at affordable pricing while managing teams and customers in one place.

Pros:

  • Integrates with 50 apps (Facebook, WordPress, Shopify, Stripe, Paypal)
  • Pay-as-you-go packages
  • A/B Testing
  • Drag and Drop Email Designer
  • Template Library

Cons:

  • No search marketing features
  • No synchronization for interactions through text or phone calls
  • Difficulty transitioning mailing list
  • No 24/7 customer service support

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7. Funnel

Pricing: Their essential package starts from $399 a month and goes as high as the enterprise package for $1999. You can explore and compare packages for the funnel here.

Funnel lets you collect, prepare, and analyze marketing data the way that you want. It automates manual processes such as spreadsheets. They have connectors that integrate with all your platforms and lets your team act with agility without breaking the data model. Data can be gathered from any platform: google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram, Linked In, Shopify, and more. If they don’t have the forum you want to integrate into their library, they’ll build an integration with you. Self-serve data import lets you import data easily from Google Sheets or excel. Funnel also stores your raw, historical data so you can always have access to it.

Pros:

  • Great lead generation
  • Tracks quality
  • Easy to use platform

Cons:

  • Reported challenges with Google Adwords
  • No standard connection for SQL databases
  • Limited dashboard features

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8. Drip:

Pricing: Depends on the volume of customer base. It starts at $19 for a basic plan per month.

Drip is a marketing automation software designed to grow the revenue of e-commerces. This tool lets you build powerful email, SMS, and social media marketing campaigns. It also integrates with online platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce. They completely automate your campaigns, whether it’s a welcome email for a new client or a triggered email for an abandoned cart reminder. In addition, you have the flexibility to create workflows to activate the marketing actions you want.

Pros:

  • Great customer service
  • Good eCommerce email system
  • Effective data reporting

Cons:

  • No fixed price.
  • Occasionally buggy with RSS feed
  • Limited integrations

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9. Loomly

Pricing: The pricing depends on the number of users and social profiles you want to add. With a base of $25 per month for up to 10 social profiles and two users, up to o$199 per month for up to o35 social profiles and 16 users.

Loomly is a simple social media calendar and collaborative platform dedicated to helping build your business brand to grow your business revenue. Their software automates social media management, but their platforms provide workflow and tools such as content generation ideas, community engagement, and more so that you never run out of inspiration and can keep the conversation going. Loomly is perfect for mid-sized teams

Pros:

  • Affordable pricing
  • Submit posts food approval
  • Preview posts on social media

Cons:

  • Reported connection issues between accounts and calendar
  • Preview capabilities not user friendly
  • Software tends to run slow

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10. OptinMonster

Pricing: Basic with essential tools starts at $9 a month. Their most popular package is priced at $29 and goes as high as $49 with all the tools to transform conversions.

OptinMonster is a platform to build pop-up forms and email campaigns. They generate leads for food marketing agencies, bloggers, eCommerce, and small businesses. OptinMonster can create engaging opt-in forms to turn visitors into email subscribers and ultimately email subscribers into paying customers.

Pros:

  • Easy to set up
  • Multiple ready-to-use templates
  • Customizable CSS

Cons:

  • Reporting analytics is not good
  • Can’t end campaigns automatically
  • Limited integrations

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11. SEMRush

Pricing:

SEMRush is a visibility management platform that offers SEO, PPC, content, social media, and competitive research solutions. It’s the go-to platform for organic growth. If you’re struggling with visibility, this may be the tool you need for marketing analysis. SEMRush provides well-researched reports to help you grow your business with services such as SEO, PPC, SMM, Keyword Research, Competitive Research, PR, Content Marketing, and Campaign Management. With these offerings, you can create campaigns that rank well in the search bars.

Pros:

  • Local SEO
  • Technical audits for SEO issues
  • Link Building
  • Competitor analysis

Cons:

  • The pricing structure
  • Reported difficulties with the social content poster
  • Inflated keyword search volume
  • Keyword Magic Tool doesn’t show metrics for the seed keyword

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In a rapidly digitized world, the key to growth is data. When you invest in inclusive software based on your marketing requirements, look for a solution that offers solid reporting and analytics so that you can continuously improve the user experience of your campaigns without compromising productivity. With the right tool, time-consuming tasks are automated, enhancing lead generation aligned to your marketing goals.

Automation isn’t meant to replace your tea but to improve its productivity by allowing them to focus on the human side of their campaigns. Ultimately, all tools have one goal: to streamline your company’s processes to support your growth vision while providing an improved and customized customer experience. As a small business owner, time is of the essence, and when you increase revenue but reduce time WHILE delivering a successful experience to your clients, isn’t that a win for all?