The Best Marketing Automation Tools For Agencies
We live in a world with endless marketing channels. Seriously, the opportunities to leverage and scale your business online are infinite. With infinite leverage and advanced technology, we are more connected than ever, and the potential for getting your company in front of a broad audience has never been easier.
With social media, paid ads, instant messaging, emails, your website, and SEO. These channels can be used to grow your audience and collect highly valuable data points, which you can use to streamline customer relationships through highly personalized customer experiences.
However, with multiple channels, it’s tricky to choose the right ones and stay on top of it all. Not enough staff, selecting the most appropriate channels, and the big one, spending time responding to mundane questions which eat away at your time and remove you from other creative means of growing your business.
So how do you stay on top of it all, free up your time and grow your agency simultaneously? Thankfully there are many excellent marketing automation tools explicitly designed to make your life easier as a marketer. But before we dive into which tools can grow your agency, let’s discover some striking statistics highlighting what marketing automation can do for your business.
Marketing Automation Stats
So what exactly can marketing automation do for your agency? Let's crunch the numbers.
-
According to 49% of companies, the main benefits of marketing automation are saving time on repetitive tasks and creating personalized customer experiences.
-
The average marketing ROI is $5.44 per dollar spent
-
Global Market share is projected to grow from 4,438 million to over 424 million dollars by 2023.
-
81% of marketing organizations use marketing automation (Salesforce Research, 2021).
-
31% of marketing professionals said they would purchase a marketing automation solution in the year ahead (Ascend2 and Research Partners, 2022).
-
Ease of use is the second most vital factor to consider when choosing a marketing automation solution, according to 54% of marketers (Ascend2 and Research Partners, 2022).
-
Hubspot is the most popular marketing automation tool, with a 29% market share.
Sources: Start-Up Bonsai and Finances Online.
The numbers clearly show what marketing automation tools can do for your agency. So now we know the benefits, what are the best tools to start using at your agency to begin reaping these benefits?
HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the best and most popular automation tools on the market. And with good reason. The tool is an all-encompassing digital marketing asset allowing you to centralize and streamline your marketing processes.
HubSpot makes all of your creative marketing processes simple and easy. With an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, the dashboard allows you to design custom workflows, create webhooks, generate leads, segment your audience, and automate emails. Oh, and you’ll be able to merge your social media content and schedule all in one place. Pretty cool, if you ask us. Prices for HubSpot start at $45 per month.
Pros
- Combines all marketing channels in one place
- Super organized and makes workflows easy to follow
- Details on which campaigns worked
Cons
- Takes time to learn how to use and get used to
- No SMS
ManyChat
One of the best ways to leverage automation is by taking care of those boring, mundane, and time-consuming message responses. ManyChat allows you to do just that through AI chatbots. From the ManyChat dashboard, you can respond to all your messages across email, SMS, and five different social media accounts, in one place. Just think how much time you waste flicking between platforms!
ManyChat is fantastic because it allows you to respond to all your messages in one place. But this marketing tool doesn’t stop there, allowing you to create custom AI chatbots and intuitive chatbot templates. ManyChat has you covered for mundane, frequently asked questions stealing your time. You can also sync your CRM system with other tools, and it’s free for up to 1000 subscribers, whereas upward of this, prices begin at $15 per month. Not bad for the freedom and automation power it gives you.
Pros
- A/B Testing
- Simple and easy to use
- Easy to install
Cons
- Expensive with larger audiences
- Chatbot bugs
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is the perfect marketing automation tool for combining email and social media. Merging these two marketing elements is huge in freeing up valuable time. Constant Contact is a must-have if you’re serious about streamlining your marketing processes in 2023.
While many tools on this list allow similar functionality, Constant Contact takes the cake for just how seamlessly the platform combines the two. Push social posts, reply to messages, and set up drip campaigns from a straightforward interface.
The custom form builder feature makes adding campaign-specific forms to your website easy. There is both a free and paid version of the tool, with the paid version going super in-depth, with behavioral insights, giving you the power to adapt your funnels and personalize the customer journey.
Pros
- Drag and drop with easy-to-use functionality
- Does what it says, and makes it easy to connect with important business contacts
Cons
- Poor customer service
GetResponse
GetResponse is another simple but functional and highly effective marketing automation tool. It allows you to, well, get responses. GetReponse will enable you to create 24/7 support systems to respond to customer queries as promptly as possible. A simple tool for creating all-round better customer experiences.
But GetReponse doesn’t stop there; the tool boasts numerous features to simplify your digital marketing life, with a website builder, email marketing automation, live chats, and ad management. There is a basic and MAX version that unlocks all the bells and whistles for excellent, automated marketing; prices start at $12 per user per month.
Pros
- Offers a free trial
- Excellent integration functionality
Cons
- N/A
Autopilot
Autopilot is the best marketing automation tool for onboarding and mapping customer journeys. The tool allows you to streamline the process and create a perfectly fitting customer journey for your clients. You can build automated lead generation processes, nurture leads through the customer journey, and keep track of it in one easy dashboard.
You can streamline and adapt custom journeys based on behavioral factors, create multi-channel workflows, and measure ROI; super handy when justifying content strategies and marketing campaigns to your clients and executives. The tool integrates with well-known platforms such as Slack, Zapier, and Twitter.
Pros
- Great automation capabilities
- Easy to learn with a great user experience
Cons
- Less extensive analytical insights than other tools
- No built-in CRM
SendInBlue
SendInBlue is another all in once all-encompassing marketing automation tool. A super popular tool with everything you need for building customer relationships and nurturing leads. With marketing information, email marketing, SMS marketing, and a built-in tracker that allows you to track behavior and adjunct customer experiences accordingly.
A super powerful feature that allows you to create complex, personalized, and automated workflows. Prices start at $270 per year but are based on a pricing plan based on the number of emails you send.
Pros
- Great technical support
- Offers a free trial
Cons
- Less functionality than other tools
MailChimp
While Mailchimp can be considered a basic marketing automation tool, we couldn’t create this list without including it. With a simple, easy-to-use interface and easy audience segmentation, mailchimp allows you to take control and grow your business through email marketing automation.
It’s the best email marketing tool on the market, favored by 122 million companies globally. Pieces start free and go up depending on your email list size. Other features allow you to create web pages, custom email designs, sequences, ads, and social media content. MailChimp is an agency essential.
Pros
- In-depth reporting and insights
- Excellent editor and easy-to-use templates
Cons
- No email automation with the free plan
Mobile Monkey
For a Facebook-specific marketing tool, look no further. Facebook is a significant part of any company and customer relationship process, at least it should be. Mobile Monkey allows you to maximize your Facebook marketing effectiveness. How much time do you spend replying to Facebook comments? If it’s already too much, Mobile Monkey can help rescue that and alleviate some of the response demand. While not as versatile as other tools we’ve mentioned, Mobile Monkey makes Facebook messaging easy.
This tool is widely regarded as the best Facebook chat tool on the market. With over a billion users, Facebook remains essential to any company's marketing efforts. Mobile Monkey allows you to build custom auto-responders for Facebook chat messages, send chat blasts, run Facebook messenger ads and post auto updates. Oh, and it also allows you to measure performance with detailed analytical insights.
Pros
- Super easy to set up
- Great user experience
Cons
- No visual view of the communications flow
Benchmark One
Benchmark One, formally known as HatchBack, this marketing automation tool is another all-in-one CRM software, meaning you can streamline campaigns and execute marketing strategies. With email marketing, pop-ups, landing pages, APIs, and integrations, Benchmark makes it easy to push drip feed campaigns and automate all your follow-up messaging.
Pros
- Easy to create templates and automate emails
- Excellent customer support
Cons
- N/A
V-Bout
Last but certainly not least is V-Bout. This tool allows you to collect leads and use a dashboard to create drag and drop builder to create landing pages, customer journeys, and social media management. There's also a white-label platform to create unique pricing plans and custom workflows and improve your company collaboration.
Pros
- Excellent features and functionality
- Great templates and easy to to use
Cons
- Some features don't work perfectly
Best Marketing Automation Tools - Final Words
What a time we live in with seemingly endless methods and channels to promote and market your business to your ideal future customers. Growing and scaling your agency has never been easier. Thankfully, due to some of the best automation tools on the market, you can tap into the vast and lucrative potential of infinite marketing leverage without sacrificing your time and effort and diving into unnecessary resources. To recap, here are the best marketing automation tools you can start using today:
-
HubSpot
-
ManyChat
-
Constant Contact
-
GetResponse
-
SendInBlue
-
MailChimp
-
Mobile Monkey
-
Autopilot
-
Benchmark One
-
V-Bout
If you want to take your agencies marketing to the next level, why not combine these marketing automation tools with outsourcing your copywriting and content creation? Here at Scripted, we have a vast pool of industry experts to help create your content and free up your time. To discover how Scripted can transform your marketing game, get in touch with us today.
