What is marketing automation?

A social selling automation system that uses customer relationship management software to automate the lead generation and sales processes, enhancing customer engagement and retention through the automation of marketing tasks. The best marketing automation platforms combine marketing, sales, and customer relationship management to establish a unified Martech stack (Martech = marketing technology).

Why is an automation tool required?

Small business marketing is a cost centre. Thus every action has a measurable return on investment. The marketing department must provide a Martech suite to save time, optimize processes, and maximize the effect. A marketing automation system empowers a business to gain intelligence and customer engagement and deliver targeted content at scale to accelerate sales and improve overall marketing performance. Hence marketing automation systems are the need of the hour.

Omnichannel Marketing is now going to be more automated in 2023. Check out these digital marketing trends for 2023 ↗ and know more.

How to select a marketing automation platform?

When evaluating marketing automation software suppliers, remember that solutions are not necessarily specialized for a specific industry or sector. A poor decision might make the tasks of your marketing staff more tiresome and lead to marketing horror—we recommend you avoid the shiny object syndrome.

The first step in selecting MA software is identifying your team’s requirements and conducting a marketing automation tool comparison. We suggest starting with this marketing automation requirement and features list that will provide a comprehensive baseline of what marketing automation tools can do for you. Additionally, ensure that your potential provider has the experience and skills to tailor a marketing automation software solution that addresses your specific business requirements.

What are the top Features of Marketing Automation Software?

Marketing automation software is an umbrella term for software that assists with the following tasks:

1. Email marketing and B2B Marketing
2. Conversion rate  enhancement
3. Digital Marketing Management
4. Social media marketing
5. Forecasting and Analytics
6. Lead generation
7. WhatsApp and SMS marketing
8. A/B segmentation testing
9. eCommerce marketing
10. Email campaign and email automation

Check out the top 19 features of marketing automation platform ↗. These functionalities should be in your marketing automation solution.

Time is required to choose among the best marketing automation platforms. You’re likely learning this right now! To assist, we have compiled a comparison chart of the most desired aspects of these systems. The table compares Lead Guerrilla to some of its most prominent competitors, including Marketo, Pardot, Hubspot, InfusionSoft, and MailChimp, in terms of the feature set and price for various capacity needs.

Hubspot

Several different tools are available for marketers to use when creating a campaign. These range from simple email templates to more complex platforms that allow users to build custom workflows. One of the most popular options is HubSpot, which offers free and paid plans. However, other options exist, such as MailChimp, which has a free plan with limited features. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, designed to help marketers manage various parts of their campaigns.

Every lead is unique. Nonetheless, they may all be addressed similarly. HubSpot helps organizations collect data on their sales leads to construct a profile of their “behaviour.” With this critical information at your fingertips, you know how to approach each lead to optimize the likelihood of conversion. This robust lead management software is provided and assists in creating marketing messages tailored to each information.

The best marketing automation platform should be able to help you create personalized emails, track customer behaviours, and optimize sales funnels. You can use it to send targeted messages to customers based on their interests and behaviours.

Marketo

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use platform that allows you to automate tasks, then Marketo is a good option. It’s also one of the oldest marketing automation platforms today. You can start a trial account for free, and it will give you access to its full suite of features.

Marketo simplifies generating more interest via SEO and capturing those leads using list-building tools. The given analytics tools make it simple to evaluate the efficacy of specific campaigns and nurture individual leads and guide them through the sales funnel. With mobile software, you may access your campaigns directly from your smartphone. The software allows users to create automated campaigns that send emails, text messages, and social media posts at scheduled times. These campaigns can be triggered based on customer behaviour, such as when a user makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter, or fills out a form.

The best thing about MA is that it saves time and resources. With MA, you can easily manage multiple campaigns at once, track results, and analyze data. You can use it to send emails, text messages, social media posts, and other types of content.

Eloqua

There are three main categories of marketing automation tools: Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Marketing Automation, and Demand Generation. While each of these categories serves different purposes, they all focus on helping businesses gather and organize customer data. Marketo has a more robust feature set than Eloqua, focusing on sales and marketing automation. Eloqua, on the other hand, is more B2B focused and specializes in lead management, analytics, and marketing automation

However, Eloqua offers much flexibility in creating campaigns and automating processes. Both tools provide similar functionality, so whichever you choose depends on how much customization you need. Eloqua is best for organizations that want to integrate multiple marketing and sales automation tools into a single platform. So if you’re looking for flexibility and an established presence in the market, go with Eloqua.

While it’s true that both Eloqua and HubSpot offer similar functionality, I find HubSpot easier to use and customize

Pardot

Salesforce’s CRM is tightly integrated with Pardot, which sets it apart from other platforms. Marketing’s role is to help sales and vice versa; hence, the more tools marketing has to communicate with (and qualify) prospects, the better. Pardot is packed with features. In addition to the standard MA features, the platform provides ROI reporting and analytics, which come in handy when using the sales-marketing alignment tools. Pardot is one of the most comprehensive platforms available, as it offers email marketing, reporting, sales intelligence, social marketing, and numerous lead generation features. It also includes simple CRM integration to ensure that your customer and lead data are always synchronized. Pardot covers all bases, whether you’re looking to build a simple campaign or an extensive marketing operation. Salesforce helps small businesses and nonprofits measure ROI with sales, marketing, and advertising alignment through a single platform

Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is one of the most popular software platforms used by marketers today. The platform offers a variety of features that help businesses manage their customer relationships, generate leads, and create personalized campaigns. With Infusionsoft’s email marketing tool, companies can send automated emails to customers based on their behaviour. For example, if a customer buys something from your store, you can automatically send them a thank you message. Automated emails may be sent to leads who have abandoned their shopping carts or to customers when they perform specific actions, such as signing up for your mailing list. Infusionsoft also features a blog and landing page builder, allowing businesses to build online communities.

What should be the next step?

Most tools offer similar features, such as lead scoring, email marketing, social media management, and analytics. However, each has its unique strengths and weaknesses. For instance, Marketo offers an enterprise-level platform that allows you to build custom workflows and integrate with third-party applications. This means you can automate tasks across multiple channels and platforms.

We provide marketing automation services to small businesses in India. Contact today if you’re interested in learning more about our services.

We assist small businesses in India with marketing strategy, consulting, setup, and management of the best marketing automation platforms. If you are interested in learning more about our services, please get in touch with us immediately.