Read About Marketing Automation Tools

Marketing automation is one of the biggest competitive advantages available to you as a marketer.

Sending limitless personalized messages to customers and leads, triggered by their actions, is a luxury that would be unfathomable to the previous generation of marketers.

If you’re running a small business, the idea of automating your sales and marketing is compelling.

To do this while shortening your sales cycle, improving your lead qualification, and freeing up time to focus on more creative work makes it virtually a no brainer.

That is, until you look at the price tag.

Marketing automation tools are notoriously expensive, as most vendors base their pricing on the approximate value that the software will add to your business. After all, what’s $10,000 per year if it’ll grow your business by an extra $250,000 per year?

With that said, it’d be foolish to not mitigate your risk by choosing the tool that’s most affordable and best suited to your business.

In this post, I’ll share five of the best low-cost marketing automation tools for small businesses. To narrow down your options between them, I’d recommend reading our post on ‘7 considerations when choosing small business automation software‘, or by using our free tool finder.

1. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign are one of the best kept secrets in the small business marketing & sales world. For years very few people knew about their platform, which is among one of the best marketing automation tools out there – despite being 20-30X less expensive than many of the other tools in this post.

We used them here at Marketing Automation Insider and have done for almost three years now. So what’s so great about ActiveCampaign? For a start, their visual interface makes it extremely easy to build powerful marketing automation workflows.

They also have a built-in CRM system, which makes it easy to keep everything managed in one place. Having personally tried to use Salesforce, PipeDrive, Zoho and many CRMs over the years, this is the only one that I’ve enjoyed using.

If you want to learn more you can create a free ActiveCampaign trial here.

2. Infusionsoft

Clate Mask and brothers Eric and Scott Martineau co-founded eNovaSys in Arizona in 2001, with the dream of revolutionising the way that small businesses grow through sales and marketing automation.

The company later evolved into Infusionsoft, which is now used by over 15,000 small businesses. Mask is the current CEO of Infusionsoft and has written articles on entrepreneurship for such publications as VentureBeat, Entrepreneur and Fast Company. Clate Mask and Scott Martineau also co-authored Conquer the Chaos, a New York Times best-selling book.

Infusionsoft is one of the only sales and marketing software built exclusively for small business and promises that you’ll spend less time chasing dead ends and more time building relationships by automating the repetitive tasks in sales and marketing process.

Their cloud-based software will allow you to centralise all customer interactions and daily activities in one place, while their email marketing capabilities will capture new leads, automate follow-up and turn them into customers.

The lead scoring feature identifies the hottest leads so you can close sales faster, while custom segmentation allows you to create lists based on demographics, lead score, and behaviours like email clicks, purchases and payment history.

E-commerce shopping carts allow you to sell more online and collect payment with one centralised system. To further customise your experience, Infusionsoft Extras are additional Infusionsoft-created products and tools that plug in seamlessly to their software. An example of this is Infusionsoft Sync, which allows access to Infusionsoft’s sales and marketing features while working in gMail or Outlook.

Infusionsoft’s 4-tier pricing structure starts from $199 per month for the Essentials package, designed for companies with basic marketing automation needs. This includes 3 users and 2,500 contacts, compared to 5 users and 10,000 contacts for the most expensive package, Complete, which costs $379 per month and is suited for companies with a sales team and online store. Kickstart Services, at an additional one-off cost of $1,999, are required for all new Infusionsoft customers and include one-on-one consulting and training resources.

ICON is Infusionsoft’s annual marketing automation conference for their community of customers, small business owners and industry experts who gather for three days of product training, education and inspiration. In 2016’s conference in Arizona, attendees can expect six inspiring keynote presentations, over 39 educational sessions, personal consultations with industry experts, and networking events.

You can read our full review of Infusionsoft here.

3. Ontraport

Serial entrepreneur Landon Ray founded Ontraport in Santa Barbara, California in 2006 and currently serves as CEO. Ray has taken his exhaustive research and personal experience and created a family of products and related services that reflect his passion for educating and supporting entrepreneurs.

Ontraport is an award-winning all-in-one marketing and business automation platform designed to help entrepreneurs start, systemise, and scale their small and mid-sized businesses. The Dashboard feature allows you to create a personalised heads-up display of all your vital business stats on one easy-to-use screen, with an interface that allows you to add fully customisable metrics, set the reporting period, and stay up to date with your analytics.

In addition to the CRM that allows you to track customer interactions, manage tasks automatically and score leads, you can set triggers to perform various actions, such as sending an email, direct-mail postcard, SMS message, scheduling a rep to make a phone call or another automated action.

Their open, secure API allows developers to securely access, add, delete or edit most account information automatically, making it possible to integrate virtually any other software tool you use in your business.

The Pro package is $297 per month for two users and up to 25,000 contacts while the Team package is $597 per month for ten users and 100,000 contacts. Both packages include access to all the same features, as well as two complimentary, one-hour meetings with a Client Success Specialist where they’ll begin setting up your account. Packages are easily scaled to your business by paying extra to add more contacts, users or messages.

Now in its 4th year, Ontraport’s annual Ontrapalooza conference for 2015 will take place in Santa Barbara. Over the two days, the 600 entrepreneurs and small business owners in attendance can expect four exceptional keynotes, 24 hands-on workshops and networking opportunities. The cost is $599 with pre-sale and early bird pricing available.

You can read our full review of Ontraport here.

4. Act-On

Oregon-based Act-On was founded in 2008 and CEO Raghu Raghavan is the product visionary and driving force behind it. A seasoned entrepreneur, Raghu led the initial design of the Act-On service and the development of its core technology and infrastructure.

Act-On provides a cloud-based integrated marketing automation platform that enables small and medium-sized marketing teams to effectively acquire customers, build loyalty and expand their relationships with them through inbound, outbound, and advanced marketing automation capabilities.

Functionality includes email creation and delivery, social media campaign creation and management, webinar/event communications and management, website visitor tracking, advanced SEO for websites and marketing content, integration of SEO with blogs and CMS, Google AdWords integration, lead management, lead scoring and nurturing, out-of-box CRM integration, API access for third party integration, and reporting.

All tiers include the same features but prices range from $600 per month to $8,750 per month, based on the number of active contacts and whether billing is monthly or annually. Fees for implementation and training are not included and are an additional $500 to $2,500.

iHeartMarketing is Act-On’s regional user conference and will be in the form of a Road Show for 2015. This complimentary, half-day marketing workshop will be visiting Seattle, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Boston. Attendees can expect a hands-on workshop with strategies for getting the most out of Act-On solutions, a look at the latest Act-On product roadmap, a sneak peek of some upcoming features, and networking opportunities with other Act-On users and success managers.

5. Marketo

Phil Fernandez, Chairman and CEO, co-founded Marketo in San Mateo, California in 2006 and has led the company’s product vision and unique marketing and sales strategy to help them become an acknowledged leader in digital marketing technology.

Phil is a Silicon Valley veteran with more than 30 years of experience building and leading breakout technology companies. He is a well-known writer and speaker on topics related to digital marketing, marketing automation, big data, and entrepreneurialism, and is the author of Revenue Disruption (Wiley, 2012), which delivers bold new strategies for any company to transform its sales and marketing to accelerate revenue growth.

Marketo profess that their Engagement Marketing Platform has been built from the ground up and provides everything marketers need to succeed in this new era of engagement marketing. Capabilities include: targeted campaigns with lead-scoring, lead-nurturing and advanced workflow automation; cross channel engagement, including email, web, mobile, events, direct mail, and social media; integrated social marketing; a unified marketing calendar that fuses campaign planning and execution in one place; and more.

For small companies and beginners, the Spark package offers fast and easy B2B marketing automation for $895 per month for up to 10,000 contacts. The Standard package has more advanced features and is the most popular package for B2B marketing automation at a cost of $1,795 per month for up to 10,000 contacts. The Select package offers an advanced B2B marketing solution with full insight into your revenue funnel at a cost of $3,195 per month for up to 10,000 contacts.

Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit 2015 will bring together over 6,000 of your peers, colleagues and thought leaders to San Francisco, California to celebrate Innovation in the Nation over two and a half days. The registration fee is $1,295, with early bird rates available.

You can read our full review of Marketo here.

Extra: HubSpot

Still headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Hubspot was founded out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, now CEO and CTO, respectively. Since then, it has grown to have 11,500 customers in more than 70 countries. Shah also founded OnStartup.com, an online resource for and about software startups, and is a frequent speaker and writer on the topics of startups and inbound marketing.

HubSpot recognised the mismatch between how organisations are marketing and selling their offerings and the way that people actually want to shop and buy. They focus on pulling people in rather than just broadcasting information in the traditional way. HubSpot also differentiate themselves by building workflows around your marketing goals.

The Basic package, an entry tool for those new to inbound marketing, is $200 per month and includes up to three users and 100 contacts. The Pro package, an integrated solution for professional marketers, is $800 per month for unlimited users and up to 1,000 contacts. The Enterprise package, an advanced platform for marketing teams, is $2,400 per month for unlimited users and 10,000 contacts.

This can be scaled to suit your business by purchasing extra contacts in increments of 1,000 for an additional fee. Onboarding services are required for new customers and cost a one-time fee of $600, $3,000 or $5,000, depending on the package purchased.

Hubspot’s 4-day Inbound Conference in Boston includes six inspiring keynotes, over 170 educational sessions, networking and over 10,000 attendees. The cost varies between $499 and $1,998, with early bird rates available.

You can read our full review of Hubspot here.

Despite emerging in 1999, marketing automation software has only been accessible to large enterprise organizations until recently.

Over the past five years, the price of marketing automation software has dropped significantly, attracting tens of thousands of small businesses to marketing automation platforms such as Infusionsoft, Hubspot, and Ontraport.

With the increased demand of marketing automation, the number of software vendors has also increased to a point where choosing the right software is an overwhelming task. In this post, we’ll walk you through seven of the most important considerations and questions to ask when choosing a software provider.

#1 Where will your business be in 2-3 years time?

One of the most common mistakes made when choosing marketing automation software is focusing only on what features you need in the near future. Most software vendors have tiered pricing, which can get very expensive as you require additional contacts and features.

Migrating between software vendors can be very difficult and expensive, so it’s important that you choose a tool that’ll allow you to grow over the years. Our advice is to map out the likely number of users, contacts, and likely features you’ll require in 1, 2, and 3 years time. With this information to hand you will be able to get a clear picture of probable monthly costs over time – and whether you’re likely to outgrow your automation tool in the near future.

#2 Will It Integrate With Your Other Software?

If you are thinking about implementing marketing automation software into your marketing strategy, chances are that you already have software that you’re using. Regardless of whether this current software helps you with your marketing or your customer service, it’s important that you have the ability to properly integrate them both.

In particular, be sure that your existing CRM system integrates with the automation provider you’re considering. As many marketing automation tools have been acquired or built by CRM companies, there is a degree of politics over which providers integrate with which CRMs – and the quality of those integrations.

#3 Your Budget: Both Today and in 3 Years Time

In a report by Autopilot, marketers reported that the cost of marketing automation software was one of the main reasons why they weren’t happy with their software.

Marketing automation software is typically expensive because it’s priced on value. In other words, companies like Infusionsoft are able to charge $300 per month because most small businesses generate more than this in additional revenue when the software is implemented.

Generally speaking, there are three pricing tiers in the small business marketing automation market:

• Under $400/month (Ontraport and Infusionsoft)
• $400 – $1000/month (Act-On, Hubspot, Marketo)
• $1,000+/month (Pardot)

It’s important to have a rough idea of what your budget for marketing automation software is, so that you can invest in your time in comparing the most suitable tools.

#4 How much upfront cost are you happy with?

As an extension to the aforementioned budget question, you should also consider whether you’re happy paying for your software upfront or not, as this will narrow down which tools are most suitable for you.

Hubspot, for example, require you to sign a 12-month contract and pay for their software annually (up front). Infusionsoft, on the other hand, are a bit more flexible but do require you to pay a mandatory $1,999 kickstarter fee.

If you want maximum flexibility with no setup fees, you may want to consider Ontraport.

#5 Which features do you require?

Within the marketing automation industry, it’s widely known that all vendors offer 95% of the same features. While some do certain things better than others, you can be fairly certain that they all offer landing page builders, lead nurturing, lead scoring, time and action-based emails etc.

While it’s good to double check that the provider does have all the features you require, it’s even more important to check that they offer them at the price tier that you’re hoping for. A lot of vendors, such as Pardot and Hubspot only enable certain features, like A/B testing, to their higher-paying customers.

The last thing you want is to end up paying an extra $500 / month for one extra feature that you needed but didn’t realise wasn’t included in your package.

#6 Platform usability

Marketing automation is an inherently complex idea. While most of the major software vendors do a good job of offering an intuitive platform, some are better designed than others.

How important this is will depend largely on who within your organization will be using the software, and how much of an issue user experience is going to be for those people. The best way to see whether you’re happy with a platform is to ask for a demo, or look at screenshots of the user interface.

You can see screenshots of all the major marketing automation tools by browsing our tool review pages in the menu above.

#7 Technical considerations: APIs, Deliverability & More

While not the funnest aspect of comparing vendors, it’s important to take into account technical aspects to ensure that you don’t run into any major technical obstacles when implementing the software.

The most important aspects to consider are firstly to do with the API. If you require custom integration with the vendor’s API, you should have your developer read through the documentation to ensure that it does everything you’ll need it to do.

Secondly, consider whether the vendor’s email deliverability rates are high enough. Most vendors have deliverability rates above 98% (with the likes of Ontraport boasting 100%). If you have a large mailing list, a few percent can result in thousands of extra emails being delivered, which can be a substantial amount of extra revenue.

Finally, if you’re hosting landing pages and microsites on their servers, you may want to check things like uptime, server speed, and other reliability metrics. As a general rule, we haven’t come across any major reliability issues like this with any of the major software providers.

In Summary: Finding the Right Tool for the Job

As you can see, there is a lot that you’ll need to consider before choosing a marketing automation software for your small business. After going through the consideration above, we’d recommend using our free automation tool matcher, which will help you narrow down the best tool for you in a couple of clicks.