Best Marketing Automation Software for Small Business in 2024

In today’s digital world, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a marketing team that’s not using some kind of tech tool for their marketing projects. But not all businesses need the same type of product. It usually depends on the size of the organization and the scale of the projects. Also, budget is always a consideration when it comes to investing in new business tools.

This buyer’s guide focuses on marketing automation software for small businesses. It provides examples of some of the top products in this category and discusses key features that are vital to marketing teams in a wide range of industries. To quickly narrow your choices to free solutions, go to our list of free marketing automation software.

Marketing automation software can demand a significant chunk of a company’s budget, yet underdeliver in performance and features. Also, remember that it can take a few products and trials before you find the best software for your team. In the end, using robust marketing automation software is just one factor in your marketing team’s success. Others include know-how, strategy, and optimal use of your marketing tools.

Free trial offers for small business marketing automation software are a great way to get a first-hand experience of the product before actually subscribing to a paid plan. The easiest way to know which ones to try first is to choose apps that are at the top of our SmartScore rankings and have high customer satisfaction ratings. These are Freshmarketer, HubSpot Marketing, monday.com, Maropost Marketing Cloud, and Marketing Creatio.

After testing several apps, it’s best to get some feedback from your marketing team about the features and overall usability of the products. Which ones are the easiest and most intuitive in design? What makes a product stand out from the others? These types of questions can help you create your own top products list and make your decision from there.

The products in this guide include some of the best features useful to small businesses looking for robust yet affordable marketing software solutions. But they are also scalable and include more advanced features that enterprises might need for their complex marketing activities.

• Small business. Marketing automation software is important for small businesses that want to reach their customers and grow their sales without spending too much on expensive marketing agencies or hiring more staff to handle a variety of marketing tasks. Automation features for lead generation, for example, can streamline workflows and help marketers save time from doing manual tasks. Most marketing automation for small business offers free plans and very affordable tiered pricing plans.
• Medium businesses. For bigger organizations, marketing automation software serves as a tool to efficiently handle more complex marketing tasks. They might look for powerful email marketing features such as personalized email, auto-replies, and outbound marketing to accommodate a growing number of subscribers.
• Large businesses. Advanced automation and analytics features often characterize marketing automation software aimed at enterprises. They might also need more customization, advanced reporting capabilities, and compliance features in their product. For these instances, many vendors offer quote-based plans that provide more flexibility in that users can choose the most essential features applicable to their needs.

• Freshmarketer: An all-in-one conversion rate optimization (CRO) suite that helps marketing teams deliver more personalized customer experiences.
• HubSpot Marketing: A complete digital marketing platform that includes lead generation tools, blog/content management, email marketing, social monitoring, and SEO capabilities.
• monday.com: A project management and collaboration software that has powerful automation features to help marketing teams efficiently handle any project.
• Maropost Marketing Cloud: A marketing automation software that allows marketers to map out a customer’s entire journey using modern tools like unified multi-channel marketing and audience segmentation.
• Marketing Creatio: A CRM platform that has automated lead generation, multi-channel marketing, email marketing, website behavior tracking, and marketing resource management, among other features.
• Omnisend. A marketing automation software that provides visibility into customers’ engagement via integrated omnichannel workflows, smart list segmentation, and smart reporting.

There are three types of marketing automation software for small business that are available in the market. They are based on how they’re deployed to users and vary in terms of convenience, cost, and maintenance requirements.

• On-premise. These are software products that are acquired through a one-time license fee. They are hosted on the customer’s local server and require IT/network admins to check on the setup and maintenance of software and hardware.
• Cloud-based. This is also known as cloud-computing and refers to products and services that fall under the categories of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Read the differences between PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS.
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS). Software that is sold under the SaaS model are hosted on the vendor’s server and is a subset of cloud computing. Customers usually pay a monthly or annual fee to use the product and don’t need to worry about any maintenance for the software since the vendor is the one who handles everything.

Not all marketing automation products are created equal but they do have features that are common to all of them. Here are some of the key features you can find in most marketing automation software:

• Email Marketing. Email marketing tools make it easy to design and deliver email campaigns that help build long-term customer relationships. Look for products that allow responsive email designs—those that are optimized for desktops, smartphones, and tablets.
• Online Marketing. These refer to features that allow companies to produce, launch, and optimize content for their specific marketing targets. They also include creating landing pages and resource management.
• Lead Management. For marketers, lead management refers to several key activities that help them discover new ways to generate potential customers. Lead management features in marketing automation software often include capabilities in lead generation, lead qualification, lead enrichment, tracking, and lead nurturing.
• Analytics and Reports. Marketers use reporting and analytics tools to keep track of marketing performance. A good marketing automation software should include custom reports and dashboards that can periodically monitor different marketing campaigns and performance metrics.
• Resource Management. Refers to features that help companies facilitate and make efficient use of marketing resources.
• Social Marketing. With millions of people using social media, it’s imperative that marketing platforms include features that handle social marketing. Integrations with top social media channels and instant messaging apps mean marketers can respond to queries from social media right in the marketing software.
• Lead Generation. The common tools for lead generation are dynamic landing pages, lead scoring, and SEO capabilities.
• Landing Pages. Successful marketing campaigns rely on high-converting landing pages. A good marketing software, therefore, provides easy-to-use tools that don’t require coding skills to create landing pages in minutes. Some products also offer templates for landing pages, complete with stock images, videos, and vector icons.
• A/B Testing. To get clear insights into what works and what doesn’t, marketers use A/B testing. This allows them to compare two versions of the same webpage, for instance, and analyze how visitors navigate the page and what elements get clicked. This can be an important process in determining which version produces the highest customer engagement and conversion.
• Mobile Optimization. Marketers today are no longer confined to the walls of their offices. Many work in distributed teams or remotely, so it’s necessary to choose a marketing software solution that works on desktops and mobile devices.
• API. It’s rare that businesses use only one app in their operations. To maximize your marketing software, check if it integrates with the current apps your marketing team is using. APIs are also important so you get the flexibility of customizing integrations for third-party apps.

Marketing automation benefits can be seen in different ways. The most significant one would be streamlining marketing processes or activities within the marketing team. A marketing automation system can also connect other departments to the marketing department; thus, it’s easier to collaborate on a project.

• It will keep your marketing strategy consistent. When you use marketing automation software that also connects with sales, it’s easier to align marketing and sales goals. Marketing qualified leads, for instance, can be nurtured and turned into sales qualified leads faster since salespeople and marketing people can share data about the lead.
• It will personalize customer relationships. Automation features in good marketing software are designed to create more personalized customer journeys through segmentation and reporting capabilities. Lead nurturing can be personalized once you know who your leads are.
• It will help you make the most of your resources. Using technology tools in marketing can help your team avoid many manual tasks that take away hours from productivity. Manual data entry for customers, social media posts, and content management are just some of the tasks that can be automated.
• It will save you time. Marketing automation software can track your leads, save customer information in one place, and update these details automatically. You can use tools to retarget past website visitors, for example, and increase CRO. This means marketers can have an easier time managing all the data they get from leads and marketing activities and save time.
• It will save you money. When you’re able to improve resource planning, you can manage budgets more effectively.
• It will facilitate reporting. Marketers only need to search inside their marketing automation platform to pull up the data they need to create their reports. They can get a high-level overview of their processes, see how landing pages are performing, and know where leads drop off during campaigns.

• AI evolution. Most software for marketing automation includes features that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) technology. AI is implemented in tools like chatbots, email, lead generation, and segmentation.
• Rise of the Omnichannel. Since customers are using a variety of touchpoints, marketing automation software also includes omnichannel capabilities. This ensures that businesses can respond and engage their leads and customers on the communication channel they prefer (Ex. social media, email, chat, webpage, search engine).
• Predictive Lead Scoring. Traditional lead scoring is subjective and can be inconsistent when assessing the quality of leads. Predictive lead scoring uses machine learning to create an ideal customer profile and identify which current prospects meet the criteria. More and more marketing automation products are incorporating this technology into their lead scoring tools.

Although many vendors now create marketing automation software that’s easy to use and integrates with many third-party apps, users can still encounter some issues along the way. Here are a few of the most common problems:

• Underutilization. Since vendors usually sell software products in packages, there are some features that businesses do not really need for their current operations but pay for anyway. One way to address this is to look for vendors with quote-based plans for their products.
• Integration. Connecting software to another can always present challenges, especially if they are not from the same vendor. That’s why it’s important to look for products that already have the integration you need or offer custom APIs for their users.
• Learning curve. Some marketing automation platforms can take time to get used to, so this can also intimidate many users trying to learn the product. When choosing a marketing automation solution, remember to also consider how much time will be needed to train employees on how to use it.