Best Marketing Automation Software in 2024

The turn of the 21st century saw the world being propelled into a digital age, and with it came an unprecedented amount of technological advances. One of these advancements was the introduction of automation in nearly every facet of digital marketing. In the particular case of email marketing, automation has allowed marketers to streamline their processes, saving time and money while still achieving desired results.

Marketing automation does not mean a marketer is no longer involved in marketing. It just eliminates the need to complete tedious tasks manually and allows the marketer to focus on the bigger picture.

We have evaluated dozens of marketing automation software providers and ranked them according to specific attributes that are most critical to automate processes effectively.

What Makes the Best Marketing Automation Software?

The best marketing automation software is one that provides a comprehensive set of tools and features to help businesses streamline their marketing efforts and increase efficiency. The key to a successful marketing automation strategy is choosing the right software, which can be a daunting task considering the plethora of options available.

In our study, we have ranked the best marketing automation software based on several key attributes that are crucial for successful marketing campaigns after conducting extensive market research and consulting with industry experts.

Automation Builder

As the name implies, an automation builder is an interface you'll use to create and modify automation rules. Most providers of marketing automation software offer a drag-and-drop interface, allowing you to quickly set up an automation sequence with minimal effort. The workflows you create can range from simple (i.e., sending emails with a certain frequency) to complex (i.e., taking into account website visits, contact scoring, etc.).

When assessing an automation builder, we take into account if a builder is available and how well it functions. Does it offer enough options while still being straightforward? Can you quickly set up complex rules? These are the types of questions we ask.

If/Else Conditions

If/Else conditions provide a way to add conditions to your automation workflows. Traditionally used in programming, this feature allows you to create a rule that will only be executed if certain conditions are met. For example, you could send a promotional email only IF a contact has visited your website in the past week.

Website Tracking

In order to tell if somebody has visited your website in the past week, you need some kind of website tracking. This usually comes in the form of a small piece of code that you add to your website. It collects data about visitors and sends it back to your email marketing software for analysis.

Website tracking can also be more specific, allowing you to trigger different actions based on the page a visitor views. For example, if a visitor views your pricing page, you could email them with a coupon code or feature comparison. If they visit your blog, you could send them an email with the most popular posts from the past week.

Since website tracking matters so much, we look closely at which providers offer a tracking code and which do not.

Go-to Actions

Go-to actions help you move users to another step of your automation based on their actions within the workflow. For example, you could create a condition that when a user clicks a link in a particular email, they are sent to a particular step somewhere in your workflow. This can be used to skip and trigger different actions based on how users interact with your emails.

Goal Actions

Goal actions are similar to go-to actions, but instead of requiring a single step of the automation workflow to trigger them, they need a user to achieve a particular goal that can be triggered from anywhere and anytime. If you have an ecommerce store, you could set up a goal action that requires a user to complete a purchase before they receive any follow-up messages tailored to people that already purchased from you. Until this goal is achieved, the user can continue to follow your workflow, and once they make a purchase, the workflow takes the user directly to the goal action from where the automation continues or ends.

Tags

In order to maximize the effectiveness of your personalization efforts, you can segment your contacts into different categories or groups. Tags are an easy way to do so, allowing you to assign labels to contacts. These labels can be added automatically when a contact meets certain criteria. That criterion could be relevant to their location, the pages they view, or their purchase history.

For instance, if a contact has made multiple purchases from your store, you could add the "loyal customer" tag to them. That would make it easy to target them with special offers and promotions.

Contact Scoring

Similarly to tagging, contact scoring allows you to assign scores to contacts. These scores can be customized to any factor, such as specific link clicks, purchases, opened emails, etc. They are mainly used to track how qualified a lead is in the overall customer journey so that at certain scores certain actions like a free demo or a sales call can be triggered. The higher the score, the more valuable a contact is to your business. And just as you can add points for actions, you can of course subtract points if a user interacts less with your emails, for example.

Use Case Example

I just sent a marketing email. If a lead opens it, they get 10 points. If they click the link inside, they get 20 more. If they download my ebook from the next email, they get another 20 points. If they don't, I take away 5 points. If, at any stage, a lead's score hits 100 points, they're considered a hot lead. At this point, the system prompts my sales team to give them a call.

Automation Splits

Automation splits allow you to split your automation workflow into two different paths at a point of your choice. For example, you can split your list into two equal halves and then run each half through different steps and emails to see which path turns out to be more profitable.

Predictive Sending

By definition, predictive analysis is a process that uses data mining and statistics to identify patterns and trends in large datasets. Predictive sending applies this concept to email marketing, allowing you to find the optimal time to send emails to your contacts. This can be based on historical data for each person in your list, such as when they opened previous emails, clicked on links etc. In our evaluation, we verified this feature as "confirmed" only when advanced AI and machine learning algorithms are used. Simple sending depending on a user's location is thus not sufficient for this feature.

10 Best Marketing Automation Software

How to Choose a Marketing Automation Software for Your Needs

Marketing automation can make a huge difference in the success of your email campaigns and business efficiency. Generally speaking, larger companies with more contacts to juggle see it as an essential tool. Smaller businesses, however, may not have as much of a need for advanced automation features, but only until they realize how much time and money it saves them.

Marketing automation is beneficial for absolutely any size of business.

When choosing the right marketing automation platform for your business, you should consider what kinds of automations you will be using and how complex they will be. Think about the criteria mentioned above and use that to determine which platform suits your needs.

It helps to consider specific scenarios and think them through, so you know exactly what automations you want to use and how much they are worth to you.

Ultimately, the best automation platform for your business is the one that meets all of your specific requirements and provides you with the most value for your money. If you're not quite sure about your decision, use our Finder Tool for a personalized recommendation.