It’s no secret that marketing automation is the way to go. With the number of marketing automation tools available at your fingertips, it’s almost a sin not to use some of these for your business.
Note: Some marketing automation tools go into the realm of iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service) for enterprise clients such as Celigo, workato, and others. These iPaaS tools are beyond the scope of small business owners, freelancers, solo entrepreneurs, course creators, bloggers, and the like.
We are not getting into these iPaaS tools at all. We are talking about affordable marketing automation tools that help you connect with various SaaS apps that you can use for marketing automation.
The best tools of the trade are all about automating various aspects of your business.
Be it marketing, advertising, customer service, operations, or even the regular drudgery that some of the work we entrepreneurs have to end up doing on a daily basis.
Marketing automation simplifies everything and saves you time and money. If you’re not using marketing automation, then it’s time to get on board!
In this blog post, we’ll discuss what marketing automation is, why it’s so powerful, and some of the top marketing automation tools out there
Make (Integromat Earlier)
Make comes with its own suite of integrated tools— software designed for use for individuals, small businesses, and even medium-sized businesses. Make is a completely visual, no-code marketing automation tool and comes with a simple module-based “scenario” system to help you create marketing automation journeys.
Make boasts of 2000+ apps and 3000+ free templates for you to help kickstart your simple or robust workflows for marketing or business automation.
Make is a well-rounded, capable, and affordable choice for marketing automation as it offers several automation possibilities (beyond marketing as well) — including but not limited to Business management automation, automating lead generatio, recruitment or hiring automations, automations to boost your productivity, and so much more.
Make is free to start with and allows 1000 operations and 2 active scenarios for you to start with.
Start automating anything you like with more than 2000+ apps available.
START WITH MAKE FOR FREEAutomate.io (Now, part of Notion)
Automate.io was a promising marketing automation platform before it joined the Notion family. We’d now have to see how Notion + Automate.io plays out with Notion’s rollout of several features (AI or not) — including Notion templates, Notion sites, Notion Forms, and more.
It doesn’t have the same long list of integrations as Make and Zapier, but it offers more robust features and helps you automate, marketing, sales, and business processes.
Automate is more affordable, easier to use, and features business automation “bots” (as they are called) to help you grow your business.
With Automate, you can create:
– Simple workflows: Create simple one-to-one automation workflows or just sync data between two apps.
– Complex workflows: Create workflows spanning across multiple apps in minutes. Add delay, conditional logic, format data, and do much more.
Armed with Data encryption at rest and transit, data retention controls, and audit logs, Automate ships with more than 200+ (at the time of writing this) connectors to help you connect any of the apps you are probably using (or you those that you might).
Yes, Automate is better than Zapier in many ways and is drag-and-drop level easy. But that’s your call.
Latenode
Latenode is a brand new low-code platform for marketing automation (among others). Latenode can connect with any app or platform that has API. Boasting of AI Assistant and Headless Browser, it’s also one of the more recent alternatives to the big dogs like Make and Zapier.
Latenode empowers businesses to create complex solutions with ease, streamlining processes like data synchronization, API integrations, and automation across various services. This makes it an excellent choice for startups, SMEs, and even large enterprises seeking faster development cycles and reduced costs.
One of Latenode’s standout features is its ability to integrate seamlessly with APIs, enabling users to connect tools like CRMs, marketing platforms, and databases effortlessly. Its drag-and-drop functionality allows developers and non-developers alike to design workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and visualize the flow of data in real time.
Pabbly
Pabbly works a bit different compared to the likes of Make and Zapier. Bundled as a complete business ecosystem, Pabbly brings in apps to tie all those loose ends in your business. That makes up the bulk of Pabbly’s offering. It’s the Pabbly Connect feature that actually works like Make does — allowing you to connect with other apps to help with business automation.
With the usual triggers from one app, connecting it to do some “action” on another app (say send website leads to create a Mailchimp subscriber), or Post to social media when a new Google Sheet is updated.
Pabbly also comes with several native tools such as Email Parser, Iterator, advanced workflows, and workflow delays to help you enable and manage your workflows better,
Leadsbridge
Leadsbridge leans slightly over to the “marketing and advertising” side of things. More so than trying to “automate” everything.
Interestingly, Leadsbridge started with the simple premise of making your marketing less tedious and more impactful.
Leadsbridge has more than 380+ different connectors that try to help you iron out kinks in your marketing workflows, paid to advertise, sales funnels, and more.
By helping you connect directly with popular advertising platforms such as Facebook, Google Ads, and LinkedIn, you can make leadsbridge streamline your marketing efforts.
For instance, I already covered how Leadsbridge helps you connect your Facebook Lead Ads campaigns with your CRM. Or you could use Leadsbridge Autosync to give your retargeting campaigns a boost.
Talking about Retargeting, do sign up for my online course on Retargeting [Pre-launch].
Zapier
You can’t have a list about marketing automation without mentioning Zapier. It’s been a pioneer of sorts in trying to make marketing automation possible and affordable for everyone.
With more than 3000+ apps and counting, Zapier is constantly growing and adding more ways to automate your business (or even automate tasks to boost your personal productivity) than you can ever keep a handle on.
Further, Zapier’s library of third-party apps includes major players in the marketing automation space like MailChimp, Convertkit, Drip, SalesforceIQ, HubSpot CRM, and Marketo Marketing Cloud.
Besides, the company has recently made headlines for its integration with Slack: now you can automate tasks right from your messaging app.
More often than not, several new SaaS apps and others are constantly working with Zapier to make their apps compatible with Zapier so that end users can make apps work together.
Unlike Make, however, Zapier automation workflows are “linear” and “not visual”. While being more expensive than Make, it’s a good fit for your organization if it’s a good fit.
If it wasn’t obvious already, marketing automation tools like Zapier, Automate, LeadsBridge, Make, and others have already democratized personal productivity, business automation, and more.
I have a feeling we’ll have more of these no-code app connectors coming in soon.
In conclusion, what tools did I miss? Any more recommendations for me? (except the huge, iPaaS or enterprise-level automation software). Tell me all about any new tools you might find.
Marketing Automation Tools: Embrace it Or Ignore?
Think of the time it takes to do a few tasks like trying to log into each social network everyday, scrolling through, posting updates, sharing your latest blog posts on social media, and more.
There are thousands of repetitive tasks that you’d rather not do. You’d be better off letting automation (be it specifically marketing automation or business automation) do all of the hard work while you focus on high-value tasks that truly need your attention.
AI and marketing automation tools are a reality today. You’d do well to embrace it.
Start automating anything you like with more than 2000+ apps available.
START WITH MAKE FOR FREE