Marketing automation is all about optimizing your campaigns to reap all the benefits of digital marketing.
Investment for marketing automation technology is getting more sophisticated, projecting an increase of $25 billion by 2023. This staggering growth has been consistent since 2017 at an annual rate of 14%.
This article will reveal 12 great tools that will easily help you automate your marketing process.
But first…
When should you get a marketing automation tool?
According to the Demand Gen Report 2018, 91% of those who have used marketing automation for their campaigns think it is imperative to boost their efforts. Also, 74% said that its most significant benefit is that it allows them to save time during the campaign. As for its overall usefulness, 80% saw increased leads, while 77% agreed to increase conversions.
Aside from these numbers, you are ready to get marketing automation tools if you want to:
- Reduce staffing costs. With the aid of software, you can reduce some of the staff who are doing repetitive chores or delegate to the other essential marketing tasks, rather than adding more people to the team.
- Increase revenue. Better lead and customer management will let you produce a better ROI. By automating cross-sells, up-sells, and follow-ups, you can increase the customer lifetime value.
- Have marketing and sales team accountability. With marketing automation, you can easily track the bottlenecks in your processes. You get to have a clear view of the company’s marketing and sales pipeline so you can identify which aspect you need to improve the most.
- Be more effective. One of the reasons many marketers use marketing automation is that it gives them more time to do everything that needs to be done.
- Be more creative. Manual, repetitive work is not only tiring, but it also drains all of your creative juices. Marketing automation has tools to reduce cyclic tasks and gives you the freedom to explore more creative options.
Tools to make your workflow faster and easier
Marketing automation refines all the processes on your marketing strategies. It allows you to gradually improve every aspect of your campaigns by giving you more time while not wasting precious resources.
Here are 12 of the best marketing automation tools to optimize your workflow:
1 . Filecamp
Creating digital assets can be tiresome, but managing them adds to the burden, especially if your library has grown too big. It is essential that you are supported with digital asset management software, like Filecamp, to effectively manage and secure your assets and ensure that all future campaigns will stick to your kind of branding.
Filecamp is a clever way to organize, share, tag and distribute all of your digital assets. You can manage your files, boost productivity and find it easier to collaborate with the team through the cloud-based SaaS DAM platform.
All subscription plans of Filecamp are offered with a free trial. The cost for each plan is categorized into 3, the Basic, Advanced, and Professional at $29, $59, and $89, respectively. The features and functions also depend on the plan. Still, it generally differs according to the included storage and premium features that get even better on the Advanced and Professional plans.
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2 . Missinglettr
It is so easy to get overwhelmed with everything you need to accomplish in a social media marketing campaign. Remember that the process does not stop at posting content. You also need to ensure that your posts reach the right audience at the right time. Missinglettr lets you manage your social media marketing efforts so you can achieve your goals without breaking a sweat or your resources.
As an all-in-one social marketing platform, Missinglettr transforms your content into something that engages the audience to grow your brand. By the simple process of scheduling your posts, you are assured that your socials are working efficiently without spending hours monitoring all channels. Aside from post scheduling, Missinglettr lets you automate drip campaigns, curate the best content and analyze your metrics to see if your campaigns are effective.
You can try Missinglettr with a free plan that comes with 50 scheduled post-credits for one workspace and one social profile. The Solo plan at $19 a month is best for startups, letting you schedule up to 500 posts and have one workspace for up to three socials. At $59 a month, the Pro plan increases the workspace up to three for nine social profiles, unlimited users, 10 curated posts and schedules up to 3,000 posts.
3 . Icons8 Mega Creator
A high-quality design is a non-negotiable feature of a killer digital marketing campaign. Having stunning graphics is one of the most effective ways to get the audience’s attention. The problem is that even the most-seasoned designer can also run out of ideas since fresh and quality content is needed regularly. Icons8 Mega Creator alleviates this problem by giving you unlimited ways to create perfect designs easily.
There are infinite ways to tell a story through pictures and graphics. Mega Creator ensures that you can do this in the best way possible by growing a library of icons, royalty-free photos, illustrations, music and templates. You can all use the API to integrate the tool into your workflow.
Get the complete set of assets and apps at only $29 a month or have the Mega Creator at $29 per month. You try it out for free but be aware that it will offer a lower resolution if you download your design.
4 . Post Planner
It is not enough to have attention-grabbing content. Automating social media posts will take a huge chunk of your load when making a social media marketing campaign work. It is not enough to have attention-grabbing content. It will help increase your efficiency to focus on other components of your digital marketing campaign. Post Planner is precisely what you need for this purpose.
Instead of using spreadsheets, you can use Post Planner as your posting calendar to quickly schedule, preview, and collaborate with your team before posting. It has an auto-recycle feature to republish contents without even lifting a finger. Running out of ideas about what to post is not a problem because it can filter content from all your socials so you can see which topics need to be boosted.
The Starter plan at $5 per month offers three profiles and 300 scheduled posts at 12 posts per profile per day. The Solo plan is great for ten profiles and 1000 scheduled posts at 18 posts per day. The Business plan is perfect for those who need 25 profiles to prepare 5000 posts per month at 24 posts a day for only $29 per month. You can try all plans for free during a 7-day trial period.
5 . Slazzer
Removing image backgrounds is an essential skill in digital marketing. Doing it will let you work with images and graphics more easily. Slazzer is an instant background remover that will save you plenty of time manually doing the task. You can also save a lot of money since you will never have to hire a full-time employee to do a repetitive job.
Slazzer is powered by AI technology. This means that photos are instantly analyzed to have a smooth and precise cutout. What is great about it is that you can batch remove backgrounds for up to 1,000 photos. You can even use its integration feature to speed up your workflow further.
You can try Slazzer for free with its free plan but only up to 2 free credits. Subscription is based on how many credits you want to purchase and can be as affordable as $0.04 per image or $1,999 for 50,000 credits a month.
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6 . AI Writer
With so many competitions clamoring for the customers’ attention, you have to offer a consistent flow of unique and entertaining content. This can be difficult, especially with all other tasks you need to accomplish for your marketing campaign. AI Writer helps you generate accurate and relevant content from headlines so that you can craft quality content all the time.
AI Writer creates full-length article drafts that will serve as your base for writing new articles. It automatically generates a list of citations for you to verify the facts of your content. Rest assured that the generated content is SEO-friendly and authoritative so you maintain a good standing on search engine rankings.
You can start with a free trial account, but you can fully enjoy the features at only $29 for the basic plan with up to 40 articles a month. The standard plan at $59 generates up to 150 articles a month. The Power plan at $375 is the perfect solution if you need up to 1000 unique articles every month and have ten users working on your profile. All paid accounts come with an AI Text Generator, SEO Editor, Text Rewording, and API access. You also get to have two months free to pay for a full year of subscription.
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7 . Encharge
An email marketing campaign does not work when the emails sent look generic. Even for transactional emails, it has to be personalized to give it a human feel that is more appealing to the receiver. Encharge automates the email campaign according to user behavior.
Encharge can be set to send automatic emails according to what customers do on the website. This gives the campaign a personalized approach that would let you nurture leads, convert trial users, onboard customers, reactivate users with ads and automate sales tasks.
Encharge has flexible pricing plans. You only have to pay according to the number of emails you need to send every month. If you have only about 2,000 subscribers, for example, then you only have to pay either $49 or $59, depending on whether you choose the Growth or Premium plan.
8 . Text Blaze
Most typing mistakes happen because you are too tired to proofread or have too many tasks to do that you tend to send generic replies that are not effective. Text Ablaze lets you use customized templates that will help eliminate typing mistakes and at the same time send meaningful messages to your clients.
Text Blaze uses snippets or typing shortcuts to speed up your typing and avoid mistakes. These templates can be integrated with other sites so you can fully utilize their features across platforms. You can also share it with your colleagues and edit the snippets together to improve them for your clients.
It is free to use the starter version for 20 snippets with 2,500 characters each. The Pro plan at $2.99 a month gives you 1,000 snippets with 25,000 characters, while the Business plan is at $6.99 with 4,000 snippets for up to 50,000 characters per snippet.
9 . Oktopost
Enabling B2B social media management can be a lot of work. Instead of stressing out the whole team, you can use Oktopost to optimize your efforts and still get the best results.
Oktopost covers all the basics of B2B social media management, including monitoring and measuring your growth. You can maximize content visibility by planning and scheduling your posts. It has a People Database to let you track and convert your audience. Oktopost gives you the whole picture of how your efforts fare by analyzing the impact of every post, campaign and network.
Oktopost customizes its services for each client. Contact them for a demo or if you want to get a quote for your marketing team’s needs.
10 . Pixelied
While it is a must to prioritize professional graphics for marketing, you also have to remember that there are other essential things to look after to get everything in order. A lot of precious time is spent on creative tasks. This is why your design team can be more effective if they are aided with an automated online graphic and photo editor, like Pixelied.
Digital marketing demands stunning graphics to be effective at enticing the audience. Pixelied is an all-in-one graphic design tool that lets you retouch product images, change backgrounds, create branded designs and design social media graphics. It has thousands of templates for thumbnails, header images, story and post graphics, and all other graphic needs for any marketing channel. Pixelied also has more than 4 million stock photos and icons to add life to your designs. Aside from the ever-growing library of assets, Pixelied is built with a powerful background remover to quickly prepare images for further enhancement or uploading.
You can try the app for free, but you can only access the basic features and downloads are limited to only three a month. A lifetime subscription is offered for a one-time payment of only $97. This would let you uncover all features, use all assets, and have all future updates.
11. Pixelixe
Anyone would presume that big brands are aided with professional graphics designers on their team. Modern businessmen and marketers know better, especially with Pixelixe! As a revolutionary graphics design tool, Pixelixe has solutions to create eye-catching visuals for your social media marketing and branding projects. Every tool is designed to boost productivity and scale your marketing. It gives you the ability to create engaging graphics that will catapult your business to growth and success!
Pixelixe frees up startups, bloggers, marketers and advertisers from having to use complicated software by using including the following ground-breaking features.
- White Label Editor: Take advantage of the easy-to-use, no-code necessary white label editor to integrate your designs into your web app.
- Image Automation API: Empower your designs and enhance the different graphics elements like color, text, and dimensions instantly.
- Image processing API: Make photos stand out by editing them using the built-in image editing options, such as flip, crop, rotate, resize and more.
- Photo Filter API: Create unique graphics with Pixelixe’s vast choices for filters and presets.
- Design Set Builder: Avoid the rush and get your images ready for upload to any social media platform.
- Unlimited Storage: Design all you want without worrying about having nowhere to keep your designs.
12. Design Stripe
An amazing online design tool made easier for creatives. Design Stripe lets users customize colorful illustrations with hundreds of customizable graphic assets. Choose a design, choose your graphics and finalize – the perfect set of illustrations, ready for online and offline publication.
Design Stripe offers ease of use: a go-to for creatives of all levels, complete with friendly plans to suit different demands, from casual, individual to team use.
Making designs has never been easier. Design Stripe is an absolute godsend for projects looking for amazingly aesthetic designs on the sly. It’s a tool that’s simple to use and offers so many options for illustration, including themes and hundreds of graphics. No learning curves here. It’s the perfect app, even for beginners.
It also allows multiple users to work together, making collaborations easier to manage. Design Stripes’ key features include:
- User-friendly UI and interface.
- Powerful design tools.
- Customizable and pleasing design themes and assets.
- Free plan available.
- Budget-friendly pricing for individual and team use.
For the pricing plan, Design Stripe gives you the following choices:
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FREE. Unlimited use of free styles, full scene customization and PNG and JPG file downloads.
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INDIVIDUAL PLAN. This comes with a $20/month price tag, with unlimited use of graphics and scene customization, plus PNG, JPG and SVG file downloads.
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TEAM PLAN. This includes custom team assets, unified branding and color features, and multiple user support.
Takeaway
Marketing automation is the smartest way to go around the most common challenges of any digital marketing strategy. The fact that these tools are so comprehensive is a blessing since they will let you reap the benefits of digital marketing without getting burned out in the complex processes.
Hopefully, this post gave you a clear understanding of how you can use marketing automation in achieving your business goals.