Designing, creating, launching, and then monitoring a marketing campaign – too much work, right? It becomes even more challenging when you have multiple clients on board and limited resources.
So, what is the solution?
Do you onboard more resources, bring up your operational cost, and reduce your profit? Or do you let go of your clients just because you don’t have enough resources?
Both of these options aren’t ideal for any business. This is the reason marketing automation tools were created. Previously, marketing automation tools were seen as a supplementary part of the marketing stack. However, in just a few years, they have become vital. Now, every digital marketing agency and business is relying on these tools.
So, whether you are a small business struggling to scale or you want to boost your ROI, marketing automation is the way to go.
If you are still confused about marketing automation, its benefits, uses, and details about the best tools, keep reading. This write-up will cover details about some of the best marketing automation tools available on the market.
What Are Marketing Automation Tools?
We often hear about marketing automation tools. Some think that any tool that can help them schedule their campaign can qualify as an automation tool. However, even a basic social media management tool can do it for you.
So, what makes marketing automation tools different from the rest?
Well, simply put, a marketing automation tool helps the marketer to know more about the customers and come up with content that can convert. After idea generation, it helps the marketer nurture leads and even offers business benefits that might take days if done manually.
In this digital world, you can easily find internet near you, which is why you see more and more people chronically online. This consistent online condition means brands have to boost their marketing game and target these customers with powerful campaigns.
Moreover, it automates simpler tasks and helps the marketer save time and effort. A study shows that with the right use of marketing automation tools, you can notice a nearly 34% boost in revenue and a 53% increase in sales conversion.
So, when you use the right tool, you will be saving money and time, generating more leads, and boosting overall business ROI. Marketing automation tools come with different features. Some just focus on content, while others go beyond the basics and even offer email automation features to boost productivity.
However, it all comes down to the marketing automation tool you choose.
7 Must-Have Features Within Your Marketing Automation Tools
Now that you have an understanding of marketing automation tools, it is time to look at some of the main features that a tool must have. While there are so many different tools and a variety of features available, it all comes down to the business you own and the kind of goal you have.
Here are some of the main features that you must look for in a good marketing automation tool:
Lead Intel
Learning about the prospects or potential leads is very important before you start running your marketing campaign. As a marketer, you can manually learn about the pain points of your clients, their role in marketing, their expectations from the market, and the qualities they are looking for.
Moreover, if you generate a lead page, you can ask all these questions and eventually use this intel to create a product that addresses all their issues.
Lead Management
Generally, when the lead data is obtained, it is then sorted manually based on the demographics, behaviors, and engagement. This process manually takes a lot of time and effort.
However, with the help of a marketing automation tool, all these things can be done automatically. Apart from this, the lead management feature also helps in identifying promising leads, so you can only target the best ones.
Lead Engagement
Once the best leads are filtered, they are generally sent emails and fed details so they get to know the brand more. These leads can then be converted into clients.
When done manually, this process takes a lot of time and effort. On the contrary, automating this process takes minutes. With the right lead engagement, the tool will automatically track the engagement of each lead and then trigger those emails in the future for conversion.
Campaign Handling
While running a campaign, testing, tracking, and then analyzing are very important. Generally, it takes a lot of experience to optimize the campaign based on analytics.
However, automation tools don’t just help you with social listening and handling campaigns, but also testing and strategizing the campaign based on these results.
Content Handling
Content sits at the core of a marketing campaign. One bad word or a wrong use of a tagline can instantly kill your campaign. Since the process is so important, marketers take a lot of time to design emails, write drafts, and design social media posts.
With marketing automation tools, this whole process can become easy. These tools have an in-built CMS that has all the important assets that can be optimized for optimum performance.
Tool Integration
Marketing is much more than content and finding potential clients. These are just a few tasks within marketing, but there is much more that goes behind a powerful campaign.
When a tool has limited features, you have to do the rest manually. However, if your tool offers third-party tool integration like CRM, email marketing, social media handling, and communication, this can eventually facilitate your overall marketing process.
Progress Monitoring
The last step of marketing is to look at analytics, report it, and then optimize the campaign based on the results. In most cases, this is done manually and can take time. However, some marketing automation tools allow reporting and analytics with just one click, making it simple and quick.
What Benefits Do Marketing Automation Tools Offer?
There are several benefits of using a marketing automation tool. In most cases, automation tools are used to save time and money, while in others, they help track the progress of a campaign.
Regardless of the benefits you are looking for, here is a quick overview of some of the most noteworthy advantages of marketing automation tools:
- Marketing automation tools are perfect for streamlining the email marketing campaign, especially if you are targeting a wide customer base and their purchasing behaviors.
- These tools help in nurturing the leads and moving them toward the sales funnel more effectively.
- Schedule social media content on all the major platforms and ensure regular posting.
- Design a campaign to ensure a consistent online presence.
- Track ROI and optimize marketing activities for much better results.
- Automate complex tasks that can take hours to replicate and complete manually.
- Automate daily, yet repetitive tasks that require a lot of time.
- Customize marketing text, emails, and messages based on the attitude, online behaviors, and overall preference of the customer.
- Manage a lot of customers simultaneously and ensure business growth.
- Streamline marketing campaigns to target all existing and new customers.
- Customize web content to ensure that the customers landing on the web find it interactive and fun.
- Manage customer data to come up with different messages to target the desired customers.
- Automate customer support responses to minimize the overall response time of the business.
Top Marketing Automation Tools to Try
Currently, there are a plethora of online marketing automation tools available on the market, with each tool having its own significance.
Here are some of our top picks to help you narrow down your options.
Omnisend
Omnisend is one of the best marketing automation tools, especially if you are a beginner and don’t need a lot of features. The primary function of this tool is to automate message campaigns. It aims to help marketers get rid of lengthy marketing steps to focus on email marketing.
- Recommended For: Email and SMS marketing campaigns
- Price: Free plan with limited features
- Features: Email marketing, templates, discount code, easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, e-commerce workflows, message engagement
Nutshell
If you require a CRM to manage customer data, Nutshell is perfect for you. With the help of this tool, you can easily extract, track, and manage the data of your customers within the same dashboard. Apart from this, it works as an excellent lead-generation tool that can help you manage customer data.
This works as an all-in-one marketing tool for boosting campaign performance.
- Recommended For: Data management and customized campaigns
- Price: Paid
- Features: Lead tracking, work pipeline format, pipeline progress tracking, customized sale stages, lead timeline, lead history
Eloqua
Eloqua by Oracle is one of the leading marketing platforms that can help you manage customer data more effectively, boost your sales, and work on customized marketing decisions based on data.
- Recommended For: Cross-channel marketing and lead targeting tool
- Price: Customized quote based on features and use
- Features: Customized marketing campaign, dynamic campaign creation, SMS marketing, time scheduling, and optimization
Buffer
Buffer is an excellent social media marketing tool, especially for small agencies handling a lot of clients simultaneously. This dashboard allows users to schedule content, monitor performance, and then optimize it as well.
- Recommended For: Social media management
- Price: Free plan with limited features
- Features: Planning content, scheduling social media posts, analytics, reporting, tracking engagement, team collaboration, performance measurement
Pardot
As one of the simplest yet most effective marketing automation tools, Pardot focuses mainly on the sales pipeline. This tool will help you target your leads and convert them into sales. It is designed for teams and will help in enhancing the sales experience.
- Recommended For: Sales pipeline management, customized content, and tracking leads
- Price: Customized quote
- Features: Email marketing as per user behavior, Real-time alerts, customized messaging, content editing, and activity tracking
Simply put, marketing automation tools were once used for efficiency, but now they are considered a must-have for marketers. However, with so many options, picking the best can become a challenge. With the help of above-mentioned tools, you can easily pick the ones that suit your needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to use a marketing automation tool for boosting ROI?
Marketing automation tools mainly boost ROI by increasing company efficiency. Since campaigns are automated, the right message is delivered on time without allocating resources.
Why is audience segmentation important?
Audience segmentation helps in categorizing the audience based on their interests, location, behaviors, and more. Eventually, a campaign can be designed and launched based on these details.
