VP of Demand Generation & Marketing at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency
Answered a year ago
SendPulse has revolutionized our small business marketing efforts at Thrive. Its user-friendly platform let us set up intricate automation sequences in no time. What really impressed me was how it brings together email, SMS, and web push notifications. We saw engagement jump by 40% when we started using all three channels in our campaigns. Here's a real example: we created a sequence to re-engage inactive leads. It started with an email, then sent an SMS if they didn't open it, and finished with a web push. This approach boosted our conversion rates by 25%. I'm also a fan of SendPulse's AI content suggestions - they've helped bump up our email open rates by 15%. And their support team? Top-notch. They've been crucial in fine-tuning our campaigns for better results. For small businesses, it's all about getting the most bang for your buck. Pick a tool that can grow alongside your business and helps you reach customers through multiple channels. That's why SendPulse is our go-to choice.
HubSpot is an excellent choice for small businesses looking to implement marketing automation. We've used HubSpot extensively in our own marketing efforts, and it's proven to be a powerful and user-friendly tool that can scale with a growing business. For small businesses, HubSpot offers a comprehensive suite of tools that cover various aspects of marketing, sales, and customer service. Its marketing automation features are particularly robust, allowing businesses to create sophisticated email campaigns, manage social media posts, and track website visitor behavior. We found the ability to create personalized content and automate lead nurturing workflows especially valuable. For instance, we set up a series of targeted emails that automatically sent relevant content based on a prospect's interactions with our website. This approach increased our email open rates by 25% and improved our lead-to-customer conversion rate by 10%. Actionable Tip: When implementing HubSpot or any marketing automation tool, start with a clear strategy and specific goals. Begin by setting up your basic workflows, such as a welcome series for new subscribers or a re-engagement campaign for inactive leads. As you become more familiar with the platform, gradually introduce more complex automations. Regularly review your automation performance metrics and be prepared to adjust your strategies based on the data. Remember, the key to successful marketing automation is continuous optimization.
For small businesses, SureTriggers is a great marketing automation tool that I personally use and highly recommend. It’s very flexible and allows you to integrate various enterprise-grade apps into your business flow and automate workflows across multiple platforms. The tool is especially great if you’re working with multiple tools as a small team. For instance, I use the platform for automating actions triggered by events from one app across multiple different platforms seamlessly. Big thing for me there is SureTriggers integrates with tools such as Calendly, a scheduling app, to automatically sync leads from my contact forms to our CRM and send them a follow-up email once they complete the form. I wouldn’t have to lift a finger. The reason SureTriggers is such a great tool for my business is because it takes all the mess of complicated tools and simplifies the process especially when you’re on a lean budget. We don’t need to have a tool for EVERYTHING, SureTiggers ties everything together and keeps things simple. It’s super affordable, highly customizable, and saves SO much time, it’s a perfect tool for ANY small business looking to automate their marketing without having to struggle with complicated setups.
Keap stands out as a fantastic tool for small businesses looking to streamline their marketing automation. What sets it apart is its all-in-one approach. Keap combines CRM, marketing automation, and e-commerce functionalities, which means you don’t have to juggle multiple platforms. This integrated setup simplifies the user experience and makes managing customer relationships more efficient. One practical technique we’ve found incredibly useful is Keap's automated follow-up sequences. Setting up these sequences saves a ton of time and ensures no customer slips through the cracks. For example, you can automate follow-up emails after a customer makes a purchase, which keeps your brand top-of-mind and encourages repeat business. This automation reduces manual workload and boosts customer satisfaction, creating a win-win scenario.
We love using ActiveCampaign for small businesses because it balances value and features. It allows us to set up advanced server-side conversion tracking, which is crucial in today's post-cookie consent world, where marketers are losing valuable customer data as more users opt out of tracking. Not every platform can handle complex automation and logic, which can often come with high price tags. ActiveCampaign offers powerful features without breaking the bank, making it ideal for small businesses. As technology evolves, it's important to choose partners wisely—some vendors only get more expensive, while others continue to offer value over time.
As the founder of a Fractional CMO firm, I have experience with various marketing automation tools. For small businesses, I highly recommend HubSpot. HubSpot offers a free CRM and marketing automation platform with essential features like email marketing, landing pages, and social media management. Their affordable paid plans scale as your business grows. HubSpot focuses on the full customer journey. Their integrated tools help attract traffic, convert leads, close deals, and build loyalty. For example, one music startup client increased leads 63% in 6 months using HubSpot to optimize their site, launch drip campaigns, and target social ads. HubSpot also provides educational resources to strengthen your marketing skills. Their blog, webinars and certifications offer actionable advice for small businesses. For hands-on help, HubSpot partners provide strategy, content, and campaign services.
Here is my answer in the requested format: I prefer HubSpot for small businesses. Their free version has the basics to get started, like email marketing, landing pages, and social media scheduling. As you grow, their affordable pricing tiers scale with your needs. HubSpot focuses on the entire customer journey. Their tools help you attract website visitors, convert leads, close and delight customers. This end-to-end experience builds loyalty and boosts revenue. For example, one client saw a 63% increase in leads after 6 months of our management. We used HubSpot to redesign their website, launch email drip campaigns, and target social ads. The integrated platform made it easy to track leads across channels and optimize efforts. HubSpot’s learning center offers valuable resources for small businesses. You’ll find blogs, webinars and certifications to strengthen your marketing skills. For hands-on support, HubSpot partners like ENX2 (my company) provide strategy, content creation and campaign management services.
Klaviyo's my top pick for small biz marketing automation. It's super flexible for creating fun, interactive email campaigns that boost engagement. We've seen awesome results integrating Klaviyo with our gamification platform. It lets us easily segment customers and trigger personalized game-like experiences based on their actions. The analytics are great for optimizing our strategies too. Overall, Klaviyo's been a game-changer for driving sales through engaging email marketing.
As CEO of a digital marketing agency, I rely on HubSpot for small business clients. Their robust yet intuitive tools help companies at any stage generate awareness and leads. HubSpot's free CRM captures contact info and tracks customer journeys so I know what's working. The email marketing features let me craft targeted campaigns to move people through the sales funnel. For one client, automating nurturing emails increased converted leads by 38% in 3 months. Paid HubSpot plans provide more advanced features like landing page and form builders to convert site visitors. Their analytics show which content drives the most traffic and leads so I can optimize. The social tools schedule posts and track engagement to boost following. HubSpot's educational resources are invaluable for my team and clients. Their blog and video tutorials offer the latest strategies to try. The certifications strengthened my team's skills and credibility. For hands-on help, HubSpot partners provide services to supplement my offerings.As the CEO of a digital marketing agency, I've tested many marketing automation tools over the years. For small businesses, I highly recommend HubSpot. Their free CRM and marketing automation platform is easy to use but packed with powerful features, so you can scale as you grow. We've used HubSpot with many clients to boost traffic, generate leads, and increase sales. The analytics and reporting give you insights into what's working so you can refine your strategies. HubSpot Academy offers free certifications to help you master inbound and content marketing, so you can do much of the work yourself or understand how to better guide an agency partner. Their email marketing tool lets you create targeted campaigns, automated nurture sequences, and personalized content for your subscribers. The all-in-one nature of HubSpot's marketing, sales and service hubs provide an integrated experience for running and growing your business. As your needs advance, their enterprise packages provide scalability, advanced features and dedicated support to help optimize your success.
For e-commerce businesses, Omnisend is one of the top marketing automation tools because of its multi-channel marketing and deep integration with e-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce. Omnisend has email, SMS, push notifications and even Facebook Messenger automation, so you can reach your customers across multiple touchpoints in a seamless and personalised way. I’ve used Omnisend to help e-commerce clients set up abandoned cart sequences, post purchase follow ups and product recommendations, all of which have increased conversions. The automation workflows are easy to build so small businesses can create complex customer journeys with minimal effort. Omnisend also has pre-built templates for e-commerce, so you save time on campaign setup. For small e-commerce businesses, email and SMS in one platform is a no brainer. Omnisend’s focus on sales and automation and keeping it simple for users is perfect for small businesses that want to get the most out of their marketing and grow their audience.
I use Customer.io and my favorite thing about it is that I can create in-depth, event-based automation workflows. So I define an action (joining the newsletter, buying something, navigating to a certain part of our site, etc), and then I define a response (‘welcome’ message, a special deal, a missed opportunity to join the newsletter, etc). Throughout the process, everything can be customized, and the user journey can be adapted as much as needed in a way that is as personalized as the best, most organic conversations, which ultimately increases our engagement and retention. Besides that, one thing I really like about Customer.io is its advanced segmentation, which lets me divide our customers into smaller and smaller groups based on their traits, behavior, or just the history of our exchanges. This means I can always send very relevant email marketing efforts to send messages automatically to each group of customers I want to reach. Customer.io can also easily connect to other programs we use. For example, when we combine its technology with our CRM, we can access a wealth of specific and useful data that help us make our marketing automation better all the time. I can't say enough good things about Customer.io for small businesses that want to grow their marketing tools.
I’m a big fan of LeadSquared as a marketing automation tool, especially its lead-scoring system. It’s very detailed and you can customize it exactly how you want, for instance sorting leads based on their propensity to convert as well as their activities on your website, like number of pages visited, time spent on a page, and navigating between different pages. This has been super helpful for me to better focus my outreach efforts and engage with the leads who are most likely to become customers, and save my time by not spending the extra effort with the ones that were not so likely to convert. I think this platform is actually perfect for those looking for a tool that is relatively easy to use and has a low learning curve (like me since I don’t have a lot of time running a small business even while I'm trying to automate my tasks). But, more importantly, the lead scoring feature gave me the real-time information I needed about who exactly was interested in what we had to say and also helped us improve our marketing and sales processes. It's changed everything about how we deal with leads and how many of them turn into customers.
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As a digital marketing expert, I have hands-on experience with several automation tools. For small businesses, I highly recommend ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign offers reasonably priced plans with essential features like email marketing, landing pages, and basic CRM. Their platform is intuitive yet powerful, perfect for new marketers. One client incteased sales 15% in 3 months by launching targeted email campaigns and optimizing their site with ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign focuses on automation and optimization. Their pre-built automations help engage leads and customers with the right message at the right time. Embedded forms, surveys and polls provide actionable data to personalize experiences. ActiveCampaign also offers lots of native integrations with popular apps like Stripe, WordPress and Zapier. While I have used tools like HubSpot and Ontraport, ActiveCampaign hits the sweet spot for small businesses with a simple, affordable platform and automation capabilities to streamline marketing and sales. For new marketers, their knowledge base and video tutorials offer guidance to get started and gain momentum fast.
At Elek Solar we use GoHighLevel. Having used Omnisend, Mailchimp, Insightly and others I can say from a price and features point it's hard to beat. We're able to execute all of the automations, email marketing, calendar bookings and much more. The biggest win here is the pricing plan. For a small business they do not charge per user which is from my experience what 90% of these companies to. It's a flat $97/month and you can have as many users as you want. Considering many of the cheaper automation softwares charge $14/user/month as soon as you have more than 7 people it makes sense to with GHL.
As the owner of OneStop Northwest LLC, a digital marketong agency, I have tested and used many marketing automation tools over the years. For small businesses, I highly recommend ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign offers an intuitive interface, easy-to-use templates, and powerful automation at an affordable price. Their drag and drop email editor lets you create professional campaigns without coding experience. Built-in automations like email drips, abandoned cart sequences, and birthday campaigns make it simple to engage new and existing customers. One of my clients saw a 35% increase in sales within 3 months of launching with ActiveCampaign. Their knowledge base provides helpful guidance, and you can get started quickly. While tools like HubSpot and Marketo are robust, ActiveCampaign is ideal for smaller teams on a budget. ActiveCampaign focuses on what really matters for small companies: an easy to use platform, essential marketing features, and guidance to gain momentum. For seamless marketing automation, you can't go wrong with ActiveCampaign.
I picked Brevo for our small business because it provides a wide range of marketing tools that won’t break the bank. The user-friendly design means our team can navigate it easily, even if they’re not tech-savvy. On top of that, Brevo connects smoothly with well-known platforms like WordPress and Shopify, which fits perfectly with our current setup. Thanks to its features like email marketing, SMS marketing, and a landing page builder, we’ve managed to simplify our marketing strategies and see improved outcomes.
For small businesses, tools like Brevo, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, and HubSpot Marketing Automation are all great options. I personally use HubSpot because it offers a solid mix of features that grow with your business, making it easy to manage everything from email campaigns to lead nurturing in one place. It’s user-friendly and integrates well with other tools we use, which streamlines our marketing efforts. For a small business, HubSpot strikes the right balance between functionality and cost.
Entrepreneur, Owner & CMO at AccountsBalance
Answered a year ago
Marketing automation tools need to be affordable, user-friendly, and scalable as the business grows. Here's a breakdown of tools suitable for small businesses: Brevo (formerly Sendinblue): Great for email marketing and automation. It's affordable, easy to use, and comes with features like SMS marketing and basic CRM tools, making it ideal for small businesses. HubSpot Marketing Automation: Offers a free version that covers many needs of small businesses, from email marketing to CRM and lead generation. However, the paid versions can get expensive as you scale. Omnisend: This is a good choice for eCommerce businesses. It specializes in omnichannel marketing, which includes email, SMS, and push notifications. ActiveCampaign: Excellent for small to mid-sized businesses. It’s cost-effective and offers a wide range of features, including advanced email marketing, automation workflows, and CRM. Klaviyo: Highly suitable for eCommerce businesses, Klaviyo integrates well with Shopify and offers robust email and SMS marketing tools, although it's a bit pricey for businesses just starting out. Customer.io: Offers advanced automation features but has a steeper learning curve. It’s great for companies that need more detailed automation and segmentation. Mailchimp: A popular choice among small businesses because of its free tier and ease of use. It offers email automation, basic CRM, and landing page features, though the automation features are more limited compared to other platforms. SendPulse and Moosend: Both are affordable options that offer email marketing and basic automation. They are straightforward and work well for small businesses with simpler needs. EngageBay: A cost-effective all-in-one tool that includes CRM, email marketing, and automation. It’s ideal for small businesses that need a range of marketing features on a budget. My top choice is ActiveCampaign. I’ve used it across multiple businesses due to its powerful automation, segmentation capabilities, and CRM integration, all at a price point that works for growing teams. It's versatile enough to handle email, SMS, and sales automation, making it a go-to for creating sophisticated customer journeys without being overly complicated or expensive. It strikes a balance between features and affordability, making it perfect for scaling small businesses efficiently.
For my own small business, I use SendPulse, and I must say it works brilliantly. Its multi-channel marketing is by far my favourite feature: it allows you to combine email, SMS and even chatbot tools into one platform, so I don’t have to open several tools for different purposes and, instead, everything is centralised in the same place. I can run automation workflows triggered by user actions, and the workflow can be split across different channels if required. Honestly, I stick with SendPulse because it’s not overcomplicated, it does what I want it to do, and extra features would just get in the way. Being able to automate across multiple platforms helps us keep consistent communication with our audience, no matter how they choose to interact with us, and it’s saved us time. Our marketing activities are more consistent now because of it.