Marketing Automation Tools: The Smart Bet Your Business Needs

Marketing is not easy.

Gone are the days when businesses could simply post an ad on the front page or plaster their brand across a billboard and expect their phones to start ringing.

Today’s consumers need more than shiny marketing toys to get their attention. They need to feel seen and heard.

In other words, as a modern-day marketer, you need to be able to own the entire buyer journey, regardless of where it begins. From email marketing to AR social filters, you need to understand it all.

But how can you manage every aspect of a diverse marketing campaign?

You guessed it — automation.

Today, nearly 56% of companies use marketing automation tools to streamline their workflows and manage various aspects of their campaigns.

If you’re not already familiar with marketing automation tools, it’s time for you to start capitalizing on their enormous potential.

What Are Marketing Automation Tools?

Marketing automation tools are specialized software that helps to automate repetitive tasks in a campaign.

So how do they work in practice?

Let’s say your goal is to get better at customer relationship management (CRM). However, there’s one big problem: your contact list is an absolute mess.

Using a marketing automation tool like Hubspot or ActiveCampaign could help you not only clean up your contact list but also gain significant insight into your customers and their behaviors.

By using these versatile tools, you can gain a significant advantage in your marketing efforts. For example, using an automation tool, you could create a sophisticated email drip system that allows you to nurture leads to learn more about your business and why they should purchase your goods or services. You can even start to experiment, creating A/B tests that can allow you to get the best open and click-through rates on your messages.

4 Things We Love About Marketing Automation Tools

1. It makes things easier

Marketing automation tools can help you streamline your marketing efforts by automating repetitive tasks such as sending cold emails, scheduling social media posts, and managing your advertising campaigns. With these tools, you can save time and focus on more important tasks, such as developing your marketing strategy and creating compelling content. By automating your marketing efforts, you can also ensure consistency in your messaging across all channels.

2. It gives you a deep understanding of your customer

Marketing automation tools can help you improve your lead-generation efforts by providing you with valuable insights into your audience's behavior. By tracking your audience's interactions with your website, emails, and social media profiles, you can better understand their needs and preferences. With this information, you can create targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience, increasing the likelihood of converting leads into customers.

3. It makes you a lot more money

Marketing automation tools can help you increase your ROI by optimizing your marketing efforts. By analyzing your campaign data, these tools can provide you with valuable insights into what's working and what's not. With this information, you can make data-driven decisions about where to allocate your marketing budget, which channels to focus on, and how to optimize your campaigns for maximum impact.

4. Your customers will love your emails

Marketing Automation Tools can help you create a standard design for every aspect of your email marketing campaigns, making sure your customers enjoy (and maybe even look forward to) your snazzy emails

Every customer wants just two things: a good deal and an easy purchasing process. Marketing automation tools can help you enhance your customer experience by providing personalized and timely communications. With tools like this, you can segment your audience based on their interests and behaviors, and send targeted messages that speak directly to their needs. By providing relevant and valuable content, you can build trust and credibility with your audience, and create a positive customer experience that leads to long-term loyalty.

It also ensures that your buyers don’t get lost in your marketing funnel, waiting to receive an email or discount code that will never arrive.

Above all, we love marketing automation tools because they save you lots of time and money. They’re also usually highly scaleable, allowing you to set an automation on day one and leave it to help nurture your leads no matter how quickly you scale.

Additionally, by saving all that money, you can transfer those savings to your products or services, giving your customers a better deal.

Case Study Spotlight: How TransACT Used Superside to Create a Seamless Marketing Process

When TransACT reached out to Superside, they had one major problem—exponential growth. As an education company offering online services, it had seen an explosion in business and revenue during the pandemic.

By 2022, TransACT had 13 subbrands, all with their own unique branding and style requirements. With a marketing team of ~70 employees, TransACT was having major issues with design guidelines and approval systems.

Working with Superside, TransACT was able to completely overhaul its brand guidelines and style guide, creating a more linked aesthetic to each of its subbrands. Now, they have a cohesive brand guideline and approval structure, allowing each member of their team to work and create independently, significantly increasing their productivity.

TransACT has now woven marketing automation tools into its creative process, allowing them to apply these new, structured brand guidelines to every single email, ad, and presentation its team creates, significantly boosting its brand awareness and consistency.

You can read the full story on how TransACT used Superside’s Design Services here

The 7 Best Tools For Automating Marketing Activities

Here’s the good news: there’s a marketing automation tool for pretty much any task you can think of these days—from setting up drip campaigns to generating accurate analytics reports, there’s something out there for every business.

With so many great options out there, we thought we’d round up seven of our favorite automation software products that can help make your life—and that of your marketing and sales team—much easier.

1. Marketo

If you’ve been struggling to keep your customers engaged, then you simply can’t go wrong with Marketo.

If you’ve been struggling to keep your customers engaged, then you simply can’t go wrong with Marketo.

This is a powerful tool that uses artificial intelligence and behavior tracking to personalize content and segment your target audience.

What’s more, it even has a nifty cross-channel engagement feature which means that you can engage with your customers on their preferred channel both online and offline.

Since the company was acquired by Adobe, you can easily connect Marketo to products in Adobe Experience Cloud.

Price:

While Marketo is helpful for building and sustaining customer relationships, it is a tad bit expensive, which makes it ideal only for large-sized businesses. Price differs according to each business and use case.

2. Sendinblue

Sendinblue offers a responsive and adaptable messaging and automation platform

It’s not every day that you come across software that lets you design mobile-friendly marketing campaigns. Sendinblue is the ideal solution to this marketing problem.

With its powerful SMS autoresponder feature, you can create a responsive and engaging messaging cadence with your customers. Additionally, they also offer a drag-and-drop editor for designing your next email automation.

With an entire library of free email templates that are optimized for both desktop and mobile devices, you can get creative and develop your own customized email marketing template as well.

Price:

For those on a tight budget, Sendinblue offers a free plan that includes 300 marketing emails per day along with limited marketing automation services. Paid plans start at $25/month.

3. Constant Contact

Constant Contact has the added bonus of an excellent event management system.

As the name suggests, Constant Contact is a tool that’ll help you manage customer relationships by segmenting your buyers based on their information. This includes their purchase preferences and online behavior patterns.

You can also build any type of automated email campaign that can target potential customers for weeks or months without having to lift a finger.

But what really makes this automation software stand out from the rest is its event management capabilities.

Constant Contact provides marketers with the option of designing customizable registration forms, email invites, social posts and landing pages in no time. If your business relies heavily on events or webinars, this can be a hugely helpful tool.

Price:

You can opt for a 60-day free trial before signing up for any of the paid plans that start from $9 per month.

4. Moosend

This is one of the best automation tools in the industry for creating drip email structures

Moosend is one of the best all-in-one marketing automation solutions. You’ll love this one, particularly if you’re in the e-commerce industry.

This advanced automation software allows you to track customer data on your website and set up triggers that will choose the right email campaign for them.

For instance, you can send a welcome email each time a new customer signs up for your product or service. Or send a follow-up if they leave a shopping cart halfway through a purchase.

There’s even an option to view customers’ activity on your website. You can use this data to recommend other more suitable products along with analyzing it to understand user behavior and possible points of improvement.

Price:

For $9 per month, this platform is quite affordable. But if you want to test it out first, they have a 30-day free trial.

5. Keap

An industry standard, Keap provides one of the most accessible and popular automation tools in the business

Keap (formerly known as Infusionsoft) is a great way to simplify complex tasks as it allows you to build smooth automation workflows, integrate sales and marketing operations, and improve CRM Software.

Don’t be surprised to find that a lot of marketers swear by Keap: it has been in the market since 2001 and has developed a solid fanbase.

In Keap, you’ll find everything you need under one roof, including an easy-to-use reporting and analytics tool that’ll help you keep track of your progress as your business grows.

Price:

A 14-day free trial is perfect for finding out what the software is all about. Once you’re ready to commit, you can choose from three paid plans starting at $129 per month.

6. HubSpot

Probably the hottest marketing tool in the world now - this is the service that all other tools should be aiming to beat.

There’s no denying that HubSpot is one of the most popular names in marketing automation at the moment.

With a full growth suite that takes care of all your software needs, you’ll find yourself with time to think more creatively as you gain access to all your data in one place and can automate all the repetitive tasks.

A simple visual board makes it easy for you to plan and build different stages of the buyer’s journey. While the focus is more on inbound marketing, HubSpot’s CRM capabilities are legendary.

Price:

Big brands don’t come cheap, and HubSpot is no exception. Certain tools are free, but prices increase for more advanced features starting at $45 per month.

7. ActiveCampaign

A technical marketer's dream, ActiveCampaign can let you take a deep, deep dive into your audience and their behavior

If you’re looking for something a little more technical, ActiveCampaign will be right up your alley.

Perfect for those with an advanced understanding of marketing automation tools, you’ll have no problem personalizing your emails and messages to create the most effective content for your target audience.

You don’t need to stop there, though. ActiveCampaign can build automated follow-up email campaigns to ensure your customers never feel forgotten.
Marketers will find it easy to create events such as webinars and other virtual events based on customers’ online activities.

Event tracking also allows you to virtually track contact behavior, including video views, button clicks, orders, etc.

Price:

There are four premium plans available for different types of businesses, starting at $29 per month.

How To Make The Most Of Marketing Automation Solutions

While marketing automation may not be rocket science, it can feel like it as you try and navigate your way through its choppy waters.

Luckily, there are certain hacks that should make it easier for you to automate marketing tasks and generate leads.

1. Understand your buyer

This should be the starting point of all your marketing automation strategies. Marketing automation will give you the data you need to think like your customers, putting you in a better position to build a campaign that actually delivers results.

2. Craft engaging content

Marketing automation should not be used as an excuse to create spammy emails. Once you take the time to understand your customers, you should focus on making content that they’ll actually look forward to receiving.

3. Streamline your workflow

The point of automating tasks is to help you get more organized. If you still find your workflow confusing, remember to eliminate all the clutter and keep it simple. This will help you optimize your marketing campaigns.

4. Personalize as much as you can

Your customers want to feel understood. The best way to do this is to personalize their journey throughout your website. With marketing automation, you’ll have the data you need to achieve this. For instance, if they show an interest in a certain product or service, customize recommendations based on this information.

5. Manage relationships better

In the end, your business is nothing without your customers. Marketing automation provides numerous opportunities to manage leads and build relationships with customers. So don’t forget to integrate your B2B CRM platforms with your marketing automation software.

Choosing the right automation tool can go a long way in helping you deliver efficient marketing campaigns. While making such a decision may seem daunting at first, remember to consider factors such as budget, company size, product features, user interface, etc., before settling on the perfect software for future campaigns.

The Future Of Digital Marketing

There’s no doubt about it, marketing automation is here to stay.

With more brands jumping on the automation bandwagon, you can’t afford to ignore this powerful resource for lead generation and customer relationship management. From social media to email marketing, you can now rely on marketing automation tools to take care of all your campaign needs.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting out in the digital world, understanding how advanced technologies are shaping the future of online marketing activities can go a long way in helping you outpace your competitors.

Additionally, you can get a lot more from your marketing automation strategy by combining the strengths of each tool or platform together with the professional design services of Superside. This way, not only can you fully automate your campaign, but also design it in a manner that really gets the attention it deserves.