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SaaS marketing automation tools have become an indispensable part of sales funnels and an efficient way of scaling online business growth. According to stats, 51% of companies use marketing automation, and 58% of B2B firms plan to implement it soon.
Due to the increase in demand for marketing automation, we have seen a rise in SaaS tools that can automate almost every marketing operation.
Automation eases the pains of the marketing team, which include cumbersome and repetitive tasks. It works to fix content gaps, campaign mismanagement, and many other tedious but crucial tasks essential for the success of marketing efforts.
But with so many SaaS tools available in the market, choosing the ones that work for a particular brand can become hard.
In this blog, I will share a list of SaaS marketing automation tools that I use to increase the productivity and efficiency of marketing campaigns. I will also discuss some tips on selecting an automation tool that works for you.
What are SaaS Marketing Automation Tools?
Marketing automation refers to using tools and software to automate different marketing activities. In this approach, you automate multiple aspects of your marketing efforts to enhance their effectiveness.
Marketing automation tools, most typically, get implemented to support:
- Email marketing
- Email automation and onboarding
- Marketing research
- Social media posting
- Email outreach and sales
- Lead generation
- Lead nurturing
- Analytics
SaaS Marketing Automation Tools I Use
There are numerous SaaS marketing tools available in the market. So, a company that decides to automate its operations might get confused. With so many features and benefits, it feels like every SaaS will be amazing for a brand, which is not true.
I have prepared a list of SaaS tools every marketer must have to start their marketing automation journey.
1. For Email Marketing and Lead Nurturing
Email marketing and lead nurturing are essential aspects of marketing. But they require constant upgrades as the prospect’s buying journey changes.
With personalisation becoming a necessary part of increasing conversion rates, it is difficult to manually keep up with lead segmentation, lead scoring, and lead nurturing. A SaaS marketing automation tool solves this problem by automating all the essential elements of lead nurturing.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampagin is a leading SaaS tool popular for its features and affordable pricing. It aims to provide incredible customer experiences by executing marketing campaigns tailored to consumer needs.
With attributes like email marketing, CRM, lead segmentation and scoring, and workflow automation, it proves it is a SaaS marketing automation tool that every marketer needs.
Providing over 870+ integrations, ActiveCampaign is suitable for B2B, B2C, e-commerce, and every type of business.
Main Features:
- The SaaS takes a holistic approach to cross-channel marketing. Email campaigns, messaging & texts, social media, WhatsApp, etc., ActiveCampaign covers all types of channels and helps marketers engage their target audience on their preferred platforms.
- Easy lead segmentation and workflow creation automate most of the buyers’ journey and assist in connecting with potential customers immediately.
- ActiveCampaign also provides a robust reporting mechanism that effectively analyses consumer activities. It helps filter out the campaigns that work and update the ones not showcasing expected results.
Hubspot
Hubspot is a marketing tool everyone has heard about as it provides all types of marketing automation services. Being one of the pioneers of inbound marketing, all of Hubspot’s SaaS marketing automation tools focus on serving quality to every customer.
Apart from all its features, the SaaS tool also has a free plan, which is great for beginners looking to learn marketing automation.
Hubspot has five SaaS tools expanding to marketing, sales, content, service, and operations. A company can buy them in a bundle or opt for a single tool, depending on their needs.
Main Features:
- Be it the awareness, consideration, decision, or retention stage of the sales funnel, dedicated tools are available for each. It helps create consistency throughout the marketing campaigns as the operations get centralized.
- Many SaaS marketing automation software often ignores content marketing. But Hubspot has created a separate tool for it under the name CMS hub. It strengthens SEO, automatically optimises pages for various devices, gives code alerts for bugs, etc., to provide a top-notch user experience.
- For better customer engagement and services, Hubspot offers a ticketing system that assists in keeping track of client feedback.
Plezi
Founded in 2015, Plezi is one of the youngest automation tools in the marketing sector. It aims to increase the ‘ease of marketing’ with quick-to-deploy workflow solutions and simple lead-tracking systems.
With a client base of 400+ and partnering with more than 30+ agencies, Plezi is helping marketers gather quality leads by targeting prospects with the right content.
As a marketing automation tool, Plezi balances lead generation, lead nurturing, traffic, and customer acquisition all through one software. It shares hyper-personalised content with the target audience for higher conversion rates and retention.
Main Features:
- Tagging system of Plezi is meticulous and makes it stand out. Marketers assign tags to different content pieces depending on their connection with a sales funnel stage and topic. When a prospect enters the funnel, Plezi gives them tags based on their online activities. The tags get matched, and relevant content gets delivered to the prospects.
- Smart campaigns are the best feature of Plezi as they make progressive profiling easier. It utilises tags and updates prospect profiles in real-time based on their online user behavior. Marketers can save a lot of time and data troubles with the help of this feature.
Suggested Read- Introduction to Plezi
2. For Social Media Marketing
As social media becomes an essential part of marketing, it is the right time to invest in a social media marketing automation tool. Handling projects, keeping up with deadlines, and at the same time posting on social media with fresh new content every day is not an easy job.
SaaS marketing automation tools specifically made for social media marketing help to ease this stress. Let’s talk about SaaS in this field.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that got created keeping in mind the role and responsibilities of a social media manager. It works to provide a single platform that helps create and share posts on all required platforms.
Hootsuite is an easy way to organise social media campaigns and plan them. It covers social media paid campaigns under its powerful features so that brands can track all their ads from the same place.
Hootsuite allows integrations with all the popular social media channels essential for brands.
Main Features:
- Brands can create, schedule, and posts content through a single dashboard. It provides real-time insights across various platforms and the impact of ads and posts.
- It helps deliver personalised messages across social media by monitoring trends and creating engagement at scale.
- It also offers integration with CRM tools like Salesforce, Zendesk, etc., for easier management of prospects.
3. Website Monitoring
For personalising prospects’ buying experience, monitoring their online behaviour is essential. Though Google Analytics showcases how most users act, its data might not be that effective when figuring out which elements create customer friction.
To make this process more efficient, various website monitoring platforms have emerged that help understands a website’s weaknesses better by analysing real-time visitor interactions.
Hotjar
Hotjar is a SaaS tool designed explicitly to understand website visitor behavior. For a long, marketers have depended on number-driven analytics, but Hotjar visually depicts the content consumption and various leads coming to a site in a straightforward format.
By creating heatmaps of web pages, insightful information about the usability and utility of different website elements gets cleared out.
The SaaS tool has a basic plan available for free and many features to make any website’s user experience ethereal.
Main Features:
- Scrolls, clicks, moves, everything gets recorded by Hotjar in visual and numeric format. Marketers can even check who visits the page for the first time or is a repeat visitor.
- Session recordings are also available on the tool from which brands analyze rage clicks, bounce rates, mouse movements, etc.
- Surveys and feedback are crucial for any brand to develop exceptional customer service. Both of these key features are available on Hotjar. Companies can validate website changes and attract more traction through active customer response.
4. For Team Management
Experts always recommend having an aligned market and sales team to achieve timely marketing goals. Both teams work closely with leads and clients; it is possible to get the roles and responsibilities sometimes get mixed up.
Using a single platform to share projects, ideas, and notes makes it easier for both teams to track and note the duties and upcoming marketing strategies.
Marketing automation platforms have understood the importance of having communication in marketing operation workflow. Many platforms have emerged, providing easy integrations with CRMs and a flawless user interface. Companies can easily sync their teams on such platforms and increase their efficiency.
Slack
As the world pushes for more flexible business environments, Slack comes off as a fresh breath of SaaS option that presents many opportunities. It is a powerful tool designed to build workspace ecosystems digitally. Slack connects employees through computers and mobiles whenever possible.
Collaboration through it is unlike your average chat app; it goes beyond. Slack allows for more than 2000 integration with different apps that helps in defining a transparent workflow. It assists companies in bringing tools, services, and people of their choice to work together on common projects.
Main Features:
- Automated workflows in Slack help online businesses save a lot of time and focus on other crucial tasks. The workflow builder option offers integration of apps, messages, and other vital marketing processes into the automation that makes for an efficient work style.
- A huddle is an option in Slack that allows for easy screen sharing and quick meetings to make up for last-minute project changes or catch up with updates. It handles video-calling, ideas-sharing, and chats, all on a single platform.
- Slack allows companies to be flexible with their communications, whether with team members, partners, or clients. Building channels with members connected to a particular task makes it easier to stay updated, have daily meetings, and keep the client involved.
Trello
Assigning tasks to different team members and keeping a tab on them can be challenging. Trello makes it easier with its take on team management. It is a tool that uses different visual styles, making it easier to create, assign, track, and manage processes all at the same place.
Companies create a specific board for a project and add lists of the bigger tasks. The lists get filled with moveable cards with smaller tasks assigned to various team members.
Trello integrates with other communication channels like Slack and Gmail, so the responsible members get alerts whenever a task gets assigned or a card moves.
Main Features:
- On the cards, managers can directly add the file’s URL and make them accessible to the required teammates. It saves from having emails filled with roughly named file attachments creating confusion in the workflow.
- Due date reminders on Trello help keep the team accountable and on track with the project. Managers can also add comments on a particular card relating to changes or updates to the task. These key features help keep the conversations specific to a particular job, building clarity.
- Trello also has built-in butler automation that schedules assignments and automates everyday actions and tasks, making it easier for teams to focus on their work.
Ending Note
Which will be the right SaaS marketing automation tool for a company must get decided by the processes it wants to automate. Managers must look for automation alternatives for CRM, lead nurturing, team management, or any other operations that are slowing down the workflows.
Companies must employ experts and the best tools in the market to build a robust SaaS business. SaaS marketing automation tools make dealing with tedious tasks, repetitive operations, and lousy workflows easier. I highly recommend getting the automation tools that make your project management more efficient and push for higher business goals.
Before you go, Download Your Free Homepage CRO Checklist which has 14 actionable items with 25 real-world examples. It serves as a guide, showing you what to focus on and how to improve each section of your SaaS website homepage effectively.
Also, Check:
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Optimizing B2B SaaS Website Design for Better Conversions
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