Chapter 01
A Breakdown of How Marketing Automation Software Works
Marketing automation is traditionally thought of as a way to nurture leads already in your funnel through drip campaigns and email marketing efforts. However, times are changing.
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Comparing the three top industry leaders:
A Breakdown of How Marketing Automation Software Works
Comparing User Experience, Pricing, & CMS Functionality
Comparing Tools: Social Media, Blogging, and SEO
Comparing A/B Testing Capabilities & Conversion Tools
Comparing Email Marketing & Lead Nurturing Capabilities
Comparing API Integrations and Reporting Tools
Chapter 01
Marketing automation is traditionally thought of as a way to nurture leads already in your funnel through drip campaigns and email marketing efforts. However, times are changing.
Today, marketing automation is utilized for all stages of the marketing funnel including attracting prospects, converting leads, and acquiring customers. As you start to decide what marketing automation software is best for you and your company, make note of what you can do inside one platform. If the software requires additional, outside solutions, it should be seen as an indication that the company is behind the trend and may not be the right choice for you.
“The best marketing automation software is not limited to one or two features; it provides opportunities for marketers to reach prospects, leads, and customers at every stage of the funnel through any channel.”
– Ryan Malone, CEO, SmartBug Media
Marketing automation software integrates seamlessly with your website, social media, lead conversion, and customer tracking tools. The best software is able to provide you with ways to grow each channel and improve the overall ROI of your marketing efforts by tracking visit-to-lead and lead-to-customer conversion rates.
Using marketing automation software will also give you an added benefit of content marketing and SEO, making it easy to launch, grow, and report on new inbound marketing campaigns.
There are many benefits to using a marketing automation tool. Below are some of the many areas in which you will see improvement in your marketing team.
Productivity:
Marketing automation tools help to make your marketing team more efficient by providing planning, execution, and analysis tools all in one place. This helps to streamline your marketing processes.
Qualified Leads:
Because you can easily manage your website, create conversion paths when needed, and analyze performance quickly, you will start to see the total amount of leads increase in quantity and quality.
Lead Behavior Insights:
Everything can be tracked, giving you insights into lead behavior beyond email opens and click-through rates. You can see how leads are interacting on your website, how they're getting there, and other key data points.
Communication Between Sales & Marketing:
It's important that sales and marketing teams are working toward the same goals. With marketing automation, you can keep sales in the loop on new leads, set up lead scoring, and report on month-to-month growth.
Marketing ROI:
Marketers struggle to prove that what they're doing is worthwhile. Using marketing automation, you can track leads’ first-touch, the moment they become qualified, and the journey to becoming a customer. Prove that your marketing efforts are driving revenue for your company.
Often, people assume marketing automation and email are the same thing, but this assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.
Sure, email is a component of marketing automation, but it is not all-encompassing. Email is simply one feature of the marketing automation machine—if done right.
There is a myth floating around that marketing automation is just a means to shoot off spam email. False. In fact, marketing automation actually makes sending personal, targeted, and relevant messages much easier.
With marketing automation, you can collect information about email recipients to better understand their wants and needs to tailor your offers to their interests. Does that sound like spam to you? Probably not.
Marketing automation does not mean that you snap your fingers and all of your marketing dreams come true instantly. Leads and customers do not simply appear because you have the right tools.
Marketing automation aids the sales and marketing team when the customer base gets too big for them to handle on their own … but the strategy behind it is all human.
Marketers set goals, implement tactics, and monitor results to re-evaluate their initial strategy. Marketing automation tools simply help streamline and automate marketing processes, a key component of ensuring your tactics and processes are sound.
Yes, and here’s why:
Sales agents spend 22 percent more time selling when marketing automation is deployed.
Gartner estimates a 15 percent savings on creative production when businesses use a marketing automation system.
Businesses that nurture leads make 50 percent more sales at a cost 33 percent less than non-nurtured prospects.
Seventy-eight percent of high-performing marketers say that marketing automation software is responsible for improving revenue contribution.
Spending for marketing automation tools is expected to reach $25.1 billion annually by 2023.
Now that you understand what marketing automation is, let’s take a look at key players in the industry and the pros and cons of each. In this guide, we will be comparing HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot, the three are major players in the industry that provide the most robust solutions.
HubSpot: Touted as the No. 1 inbound marketing platform and the father of inbound marketing.
HubSpot, now a public company, is known as the all-in-one inbound marketing software platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. The founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, coined the term “inbound marketing.”
4 Notable Facts About HubSpot
Marketo: “Best-In Class Marketing Automation Software”
Marketo is a traditional and well-regarded publicly traded enterprise and mid-market marketing automation software with SEO tools. Their main product focuses are on marketing automation and lead management.
4 Notable Facts About Marketo
Pardot: “No Hassle Marketing Automation”
Pardot is a B2B marketing automation software that has recently grown with its acquisition by Salesforce.
3 Notable Facts About Pardot
Chapter 02
When choosing the marketing automation software that makes sense for you, it's important to consider the user experience, cost, and content management system functionality.
User experience, or UX, is how a person feels when interacting and interfacing with a system. Factors that influence UX include how intuitive the software is to use and how quickly someone can learn it.
In this case, we’re comparing the user experience across three of the top marketing automation platforms.
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The cost of software is extremely important to most companies. In this round, we’ll decide who is worth the monthly subscription cost and what is the best solution for your company based on your needs and budget.
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It is extremely important to have a content management system (CMS) that is easy to access, make changes in, and publish from without a developer.
A CMS lets users change content on their website without having to write code. Yes, we said it: without having to write code.
In this section, we’ll compare systems for robustness, features, and ease of use.
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Chapter 03
Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty: content creation and syndication. It’s important that the marketing automation software you choose gives you the proper tools to publish and promote all of that awesome content you’re creating!
Love it or hate it, social media has become one of the building blocks of successful marketing campaigns. Having seamlessly integrated social media tools is extremely important for productivity and the ROI of your marketing team.
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By maintaining an active blog, your company gains the ability to build thought leadership among your prospects, leads, and customers and become a resource within your niche. Consequently, you can convert more visitors into leads and more leads into customers, making this round extremely important.
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Currently, Marketo does not offer a blogging platform.
Currently, Pardot does not offer a blogging platform.
Now, more than ever, users are searching for solutions to their problems online via search engines. Getting found with search tools like Google, Yahoo, and Bing can be challenging, but, if done correctly, it can be extremely rewarding.
The marketing automation software that you choose should make it easy to identify SEO opportunities and challenges.
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Chapter 04
Optimizing your site’s content and design isn’t a “set it and forget it” thing. If you want to connect with leads on a deeper level, you’ll need to be able to look at data and make changes to improve your users’ experiences and raise your conversion rates. This is where A/B testing and conversion optimization can take your efforts to the next level.
Have you ever wondered if a red button or a blue button would perform best on your website? Maybe you’ve second-guessed what combination of words will generate the most clicks on a CTA. With A/B testing, you can collect and compile data on marketing assets that will help to inform future decisions.
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In this next section, we will review how easy it is to convert visitors into leads and leads into customers by comparing CTAs, forms, and landing page tools.
Calls to action (CTAs) are what prompt visitors to do something, whether that means subscribing to your blog, scheduling a demo, downloading an e-book, or anything else.
Let’s compare the CTA tools that HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot have to offer.
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Marketo does not currently offer a CTA tool inherent in the software, but you can connect with Uberflip CTA creation tool.
Pardot does not currently offer a CTA tool inherent in the software, but you can connect with Uberflip CTA creation tool.
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Chapter 05
Email marketing and lead nurturing are crucial to any successful inbound strategy. Marketing automation software should make your life easier when it comes to sending marketing emails to your contacts and nudging them down the funnel via lead nurturing.
Email marketing is an excellent tool to track engagement and filter out unqualified or dead leads. Whether you’re sending out monthly newsletters, launching a new product or service, telling your current customers about a promotion, or anything in-between, using marketing automation will streamline the process of sending marketing emails.
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Lead nurturing is typically an automated process that allows your incoming leads to be nurtured through email campaigns down the sales funnel, encouraging leads to become marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
Not only is this important for getting in front of your leads before your competitors, but it also provides your sales team with more qualified leads overall.
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Chapter 06
As marketers, we’re used to leaping between different channels and ecosystems and using data from multiple sources to better target more relevant audiences. API integrations make it easy to manage contacts and data from a variety of sources, all while saving time. In this chapter, we’ll also compare one of the most invaluable features of marketing automation software: reporting.
API integrations allow one program to easily speak to and interact with another program. This technology is what drives social tools, CRM systems, and other integrations within marketing automation software tools.
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Though most of your time will be spent focusing on your own company, it’s a good idea to keep tabs on your competition as well. Having insight into their current goings-on can help you establish a benchmark for your company, understand industry trends, and tweak efforts as needed based on what you observe.
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Marketo does not currently offer a tool for competitor insights.
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It is important for any company to analyze and prove the value of a marketing automation software tool. In this section, we will break down which tools make it easiest to prove ROI.
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More Resources
All-in-one marketing platforms such as HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot can revitalize and transcend your marketing efforts and take your campaigns to new levels.
By utilizing all available marketing automation software and tools, you can grow the amount of qualified leads coming to your website and close customers at a faster rate.
Don’t have time to implement the software or build out an inbound marketing strategy? Don’t worry. Our team of strategic marketers, developers, and designers are standing by to answer any questions you may have surrounding marketing automation software, inbound marketing, and beyond.