A review of current Marketing Automation platforms • Switchboard Canvas

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A review of the current marketing automation platforms available and how they compare.

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No matter what industry you’re in, all organizations have the same goals: to achieve higher revenue at a low cost. We live in a digitally advanced world, where there are many ways to get the best return on investment while incorporating little effort. Perhaps the most valuable marketing tool organizations can use to attain higher revenue is marketing automation.

What is Marketing Automation?

In the simplest of terms, marketing automation uses software to automate work. This can include sending out email campaigns, follow-ups, lead nurturing and scoring, social media posting, and even ad campaigns. This type of workflow has been crucial to big corporations and is now starting to benefit every kind of business out there. With the help of the right marketing automation platform, your business can outperform competitors and increase sales.

Omnisend

Omnisend is an e-commerce email marketing and SMS marketing automation platform designed to help teams increase revenue with a small workload. Omnisend has e-commerce integration, template workflows, and markets itself as the only email marketing platform that provides cross-platform abandoned cart recovery. Omnisend features include:

  • E-commmerce marketing automation tools. These include welcome emails, confirmation emails, reactivation, and order follow-ups. You can also create custom workflows and combine email and SMS automation for consistent messaging.

  • Newsletter and email campaigns. This feature offers targeted email templates, discount notifications, and SMS campaigns to reach your audience on the go.

  • Email and SMS list building forms. Create sign-up boxes, pop-ups, and landing pages to complement your campaign needs.

  • Reporting and tracking. Omnisend offers audience segmentation, form tracking, and website live reports so you can know exactly what your audience is interested in.

Marketo

Marketo is a marketing automation platform owned by Adobe and built to help organizations automate their marketing and measure engagement. Marketo is extremely diverse and offers many tools to help organizations. Features include:

  • Marketing data environment systems. Arguably one of the broadest feature sets in Marketo, which centralizes all marketing and sales data in one environment. This includes segmentation, security, engagement, targeting, and more.

  • Content personalization and cross-platform engagement. This involves asset management, like your landing page or social channels, A/B testing, email marketing, SMS messaging, SEO, and dynamic chat.

  • Automation. Marketo offers all the marketing automation features you can think of, from scoring and routing, to landing pages and forms.

Eloqua

Eloqua Marketing Automation is a platform that handles cross-channel B2B marketing campaigns that nurture leads from stage to stage. Eloqua allows organizations to personalize each of their workflows for better production outcomes. Features include:

  • Campaign design. You can create adaptable campaigns and expand each through SMS messaging.

  • Advanced lead-scoring. Nurture and score your leads as they go through the automation sequence. This feature also allows users to manage engagement and segment audiences.

  • Real-time firmographic data. Eloqua allows you to review system health in one place with its marketing operations center. View all metrics like bulk API, CRM activity, email sends, form submissions, and more.

  • Integrated sales tools. You can bring marketing and sales together through Eloqua intelligence, and identify, prioritize, and track opportunities.

Hubspot

Hubspot is a marketing automation platform designed to automate email campaigns, lead nurturing, and sales through a system of workflows. Hubspot puts all your marketing efforts on autopilot so you can focus on other areas of business. Features include:

  • Content management. Hubspot offers blogging automation, email campaigns and personalized landing page features to push your content further.

  • Sales and automation. Increase sales with marketing automation, lead management, and analytics engagement to capture audience attention.

  • Brand reputation and recognition. Automate your social media posting and SEO strategy to put your brand name out there.

  • Advertising. Hubspot offers salesforce integration, ads, and ad tracking, as well as calls-to-action to maximize performance.

Pardot

Pardot is a B2B marketing automation and lead generation tool from Salesforce. It is tightly integrated with Salesforce objectives and easily accessible to many organizations at a reasonable price. Pardot features include:

  • Email marketing and data capture. Send emails to a list of prospects and capture their data in their prospect record.

  • Audience segmentation and lead qualification. Pardot allows users to segment audiences, source based on engagement, and score prospects for qualification.

  • Social media and search marketing. Post to your social channels, use specific keywords, and track engagement.

Active Campaign

Active Campaign is a marketing automation platform that combines email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM management across your website, social channels, email, messaging, and more. This marketing automation platform is great for e-commerce and B2B businesses looking to convert and grow. Features include:

  • Reach with precision targeting. Active Campaign offers email marketing and segmentation, forms, site tracking, and deliverability.

  • Lead nurturing and management. This involves marketing automation through email and SMS, goals and mapping, event tracking, and custom Facebook audiences.

  • Conversion and sales tracking. Engage with your audience with CRM and sales automation, contact and lead scoring, and pipeline management.

  • Growth and personalization. Grow your audience with the chat feature, split testing, and web personalization.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform for small businesses. Mailchimp is very easy to use and offers an extensive plan for free users. Mailchimp offers:

  • Audience management. This includes sign-up forms, audience segmentation, predictive insights, and behavioral targeting to help turn your audience data into productive insights.

  • Creative tools and assistance. Create dynamic content with the content studio to personalize your campaigns.

  • Marketing automation. Review customer journeys, and utilize the scheduling tools and pre-built automation to connect with your customers when it matters.

  • Insights and analytics. This involves A/B testing, benchmarking, surveys, and more to take the guesswork out of your insights.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is an all-in-one email marketing automation platform designed for small businesses. Constant Contact makes reaching new customers and keeping the loyal ones easy with its interdimensional systems. Features include:

  • Creation and management. Design templates for your marketing automation, conduct A/B testing and create landing pages to engage your audience.

  • Growing and tracking efforts. Use the list-building tools, integrate your technology, track your events, and report on your insights.

  • Social and mobile integration. Connect your social media marketing efforts and manage your accounts on the go with mobile integration.

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