With growing competition and a push for ROI focused campaigns, it has become extremely crucial for the marketers to automate, streamline and measure their marketing efforts. Automation tools allow the marketers to easily send messages to potential prospects based on a predefined set of triggers. It maximizes the chances of conversion and improves the lifetime value of customers. Marketing Automation is slowly becoming a necessity instead of just an option.
However, before choosing any automation software for your organization, it is important to have a comparison as every tool has its own set of advantages over others. Here is a quick review of the world’s top 3 Marketing Automation softwares that will empower you to choose the best one for your next campaign:
HubSpot
HubSpot is surely the platform for large enterprises with more than average budget. It has a focus on goal based nurturing, which means, you can easily set goals and create campaigns based around those goals. It offers an interactive dashboard where you can see what’s working in the campaign and what’s not. You have the power to choose from different types of email triggers and actions for targeting every individual prospect. Some of the major features offered by HubSpot are:
- 1. It offers an option to automatically grow your list. So, if you are working on HubSpot, your list will not erode sooner. Moreover, it also lets you create campaigns based on buyer persona for even greater ROI.
- 2. You can send internal notifications, score leads and personalize the content for every individual target.
- 3. It has a visually interactive dashboard where you can see the progress of your prospects as to how far they have moved across the sales funnel. Goals are easy to create and track.
- 4. You can make use of the intuitive campaign builder that has branching logics for multi-stage customer journeys. HubSpot offers advanced segmentation logic to create goals and embed them into workflows.
- 5. It offers automatic integration with almost 150+ apps and has over 10,000 customers. Many big brands trust HubSpot as their preferred automation platform. It has a 24×7 customer service with a 30-day free trial.
However, when it comes to having a dedicated CRM, HubSpot lacks several features or is too costly. Most of the features provided by HubSpot can be found on any other software easily at a much cheaper price. Another biggest disadvantage with HubSpot is that it charges separately to train customers. For large enterprises with dedicated sales teams, it might be a go but it’s a big obstacle for companies having smaller teams.
GetResponse
If you are a startup or running a small business, this is the software you should go for. One of the major problems with automation software is that they are difficult to handle. GetResponse solves this problem by offering a simple, scalable, drag-and-drop interface that can be learned easily without any paid training. It has ready-to-use blocks for creating intuitive workflows based on 3 vital aspects of marketing:
- 1. User Behavior: You can create events based on user behavior like clicks, cart abandonments, purchases etc. As soon as a behavior is detected, the event happens in order to pull the customer towards the end of the sales funnel.
- 2. Marketing Action Based on the User Behavior: Depending on your chosen conditions, a set of actions like sending emails, assigning scores, tagging happens automatically.
- 3. Application of Filters to Maximize the Overall Impact: Any marketing campaign is successful when we keep it segmented. With GetResponse, you can create filters based on a defined amount or range in order to segment your best prospects.
The interface offered by GetResponse is simple and easy to use. People with no technical expertise can easily create actions and automate the marketing processes using the drag-and-drop workflow builder.
Features like visual workflow editor, actions based on cart/form abandonment, transactional emails, shopping cart integration are not available on Hubspot and Marketo.
Marketo
For medium to large enterprises, Marketo is an ideal platform. The entire system offers both integrated and stand alone modules that can be purchased as per your own marketing needs. The automation platform offers account based marketing with support for email, mobile, social and digital ads. It has an improved module on business analytics that provides detailed insights on the impact of marketing on your business. Moreover, it offers a predictive content module which offers your customers, content that they want automatically. The most noticeable features of Marketo are provided below:
- It offers a tailored solution according to your enterprise needs.
- 2. Marketo and Salesforce can easily integrate together so if you are an existing Salesforce customer, upgrading to Marketo would be easier.
- 3. It allows you to score and nurture leads based on customer behavior and demographics. You can easily track campaigns and get access to insights for better ROI.
- 4. It offers a drag and drop interface to easily create and schedule emails. Moreover, it has robust analytics and business intelligence.
The pricing of Marketo is high and as such it’s not suitable for small enterprises. Moreover, Marketo does not offer blog management features and does not have a built-in CRM. The after support is also not satisfactory. Marketo is more associated with lead nurturing and is a more useful tool for B2B marketers.
Comparison Table
Here is a side by side comparison of Hubspot, GetResponse and Marketo:
| Company | HubSpot | GetResponse | Marketo |
| Ideal For | Large Enterprises | Small to Medium Enterprises | Medium to Large Enterprises |
| Pricing | High End | Affordable | High End |
| Minimum Time Commitment | Annual | Monthly | Annual |
| Visual Workflow Editor | Not Available | Available | Not Available |
| A/B Testing | Available | Not Available | Available |
| Easy Traffic Tracking | Available | Available | Not Available |
| Usability | Great | Great | Average |
| Maintenance | Easy to Maintain | Easy to Maintain | Average |
| Funnel Analysis | Available | Not Available | Available |
| Content Personalization | Available | Available | Not Available |
It totally depends on your own individual needs as to which software you choose. If you have a small business and are just starting to automate your marketing efforts then I recommend you to go with Getresponse as it does not involve any annual commitments. However, if you are a large enterprise and are looking for high customization then you can go with either Hubspot or Marketo.
Are you currently using any Marketing Automation software for your marketing campaigns? Please let me know in the comments below.
Images: Author’s Own
