Last Reviewed: November 25th, 2024

Best Marketing Software For Small Business Of 2024

What is Marketing Software For Small Business?

Marketing Software for Small Businesses (MSSB) is a toolkit engineered to empower smaller businesses with the ability to execute vibrant, engaging marketing strategies. It addresses the common constraints small business face including limited resources and lack of marketing expertise. This has a significant bearing on brand visibility, customer acquisition, and ultimately, growth. Core features include content management, email marketing, social media integrations, and analytics tools. One emerging feature is the use of AI for predictive customer behavior analysis and personalized marketing. While universal in appeal, industries like retail, hospitality, or any sector that directly engages consumers stand to gain the most. That said, challenges around integration with existing systems and potentially steep learning curves are worth noting. In conclusion, MSSB levels the marketing playing field, offering small businesses the tools to stand out and compete with larger counterparts, thereby driving business growth.

What Are The Key Benefits of Marketing Software For Small Business?

  • Enhances Marketing Strategies
  • Boosts Brand Visibility
  • Improves Customer Acquisition
  • Saves Valuable Resources
  • Facilitates Content Management
  • Amplifies Email Marketing
  • Enables Social Media Integration
  • Provides Insightful Analytics
  • Supports Personalized Marketing
  • Drives Business Growth
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Overall

Based on the latest available data collected by SelectHub for 23 solutions, we determined the following solutions are the best Marketing Software For Small Business overall:

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Why We Picked Mailchimp

Stepping into the realm of email marketing, Mailchimp emerges as a prominent contender, captivating businesses with its user-friendly interface and extensive features. User feedback from the past year sheds light on Mailchimp's strengths and weaknesses, offering valuable insights for potential adopters. Mailchimp's intuitive design empowers users of all skill levels to craft visually appealing email campaigns. The platform's drag-and-drop editor and diverse template library simplify the creation process, enabling businesses to maintain brand consistency and engage their audience effectively. Affordability is another hallmark of Mailchimp, with tiered pricing plans catering to businesses of varying sizes and budgets. The availability of a free plan further enhances accessibility, making it an attractive option for startups and small businesses.

However, Mailchimp's automation capabilities have drawn mixed reviews. While the platform offers basic automation features, such as welcome emails and abandoned cart sequences, some users find them to be less robust compared to competitors like ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo. Additionally, Mailchimp's segmentation options, while functional, may not provide the same level of granularity as more specialized email marketing platforms. Despite these limitations, Mailchimp's ease of use, affordability, and comprehensive feature set make it a compelling choice for businesses seeking a reliable email marketing solution. Its intuitive interface and extensive template library empower users to create professional-looking emails without extensive design experience. The platform's scalability ensures that it can accommodate the evolving needs of growing businesses, making it an ideal choice for those embarking on their email marketing journey.

Pros & Cons

  • Easy to Use: The platform has a simple interface and can easily be understood by anyone with basic knowledge of email marketing, observe 95% of reviewers referencing this feature.
  • Easy Email and Templates: It’s easy to create and understand emails using templates, send professional email flyers, and run campaigns automatically, according to 83% of users who mention this feature.
  • Email Marketing: Everyone referencing this aspect thinks it’s a comprehensive email marketing tool with features like campaign management, customer journey, transactional email, integrations and more.
  • Customization: Almost 80% of reviewers who talk about this feature feel the built-in templates are easily customizable, and editing them doesn’t require graphic design experience.
  • Paid Version: More than 85% users mentioning this aspect observe that the free version doesn’t include all features and the premium version is expensive compared to other email marketing services.
  • Email Spam: Every user talking about this feature mentions that sometimes clients' e-blasts end up in the spam folder for recipients.
  • Glitches: There are glitches such as difficulty signing in when logged in from another device, frozen modules, slow editing process, poor compatibility with Outlook and more, as every review on this feature mentions.

Key Features

  • Audience Dashboard: Store contact data and track trends to understand the audience better. Clickable sections in the dashboard help instantly launch campaigns based on that data.
  • Segmentation: Ready-made segments based on campaign activity, purchase history and more are offered to send campaigns. Enable up to five layers of segmentation filtering, and update data automatically. Add a set of nested conditions facilitating different combinations of data collected such as purchase activity, gender, age range and more.
  • Behavioral Targeting: An API enables pulling custom event data or actions performed by users, to send targeted messages based on specific activities, such as downloads or account renewal.
  • Lookalike Audience: Works with social ads and postcards to reach more people. Find new people similar to contacts using marketing CRM data and an audience network. Create Facebook and Instagram ads, and target people interested in the company’s products.
  • Content Studio: Stores assets such as photos, documents and other files. Upload or sync assets, edit them directly in the content studio and use them for marketing.
  • Templates: More than 100 predesigned templates are available. Customize templates to launch campaigns.
  • Email Builder: Create posts for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter directly from the email builder. Also add photos, write copy and share the post after the email is sent.
  • Landing Pages: Create a place for contacts or potential contacts to land on when they click through from an email, ad, social post or other location on the web.
  • Email Automation: Automate welcome messages after user subscription, and emails based on dates and events. Drag and drop RSS content into any template to pull in the latest posts.
  • Schedule Campaigns: Send a campaign or schedule it for a specific date and time. Includes: 
    •  Send time optimization, which recommends a time for subscribers based on click time activity. 
    •  Timewarp to send campaigns to recipients based on their time zone. 
    •  Batch delivery to send campaigns in timed batches. 
    •  Ability to pause campaigns. 
  • Reporting: Monitor trends and track performance. The growth, engagement and revenue reports facilitate viewing who’s interacted with marketing, along with their clicks, buys and downloads. Compare open, click and unsubscribe rates to industry peers.
  • Real-Time Analytics: Keep tabs on all marketing campaigns including emails, automations, social ads and more. Manage marketing budget using real-time stats. Track sales from a campaign to purchase by finding out who made a purchase after opening the campaign, viewing what they bought and seeing the money earned by the campaign.
  • Integrations: Integrates with apps and web services including Xero, Zapier, Square, LiveChat and more.
  • A/B Testing: Test up to three variations for campaign and build a working strategy.
  • Security:Includes data center security, protection from data loss or corruption, application-level security, internal IT security and more.
Start Price
$9.99
Monthly
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
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Why We Picked Constant Contact

Designed for small businesses, Constant Contact delivers web-based email marketing that’s easy to use. Most users find its robust email marketing and campaign management feature beneficial. It offers lots of templates and strong contact management capabilities. The customer support team is quite helpful as well. However, it lacks some important features such as Google Analytics and automation settings, limiting its usefulness in some key areas. Additionally, reviews indicate most of the emails users send are marked as spam. Overall, it’s a decent software for small businesses that are in need of an efficient, lightweight solution.

Pros & Cons

  • Email Campaigns: It’s possible to add tables and buttons, check open and click rates, and schedule, customize and manage emails, according to 90% of reviewers who mention this aspect.
  • Ease of Use: More than 95% of users who talk about this aspect report it’s easy to navigate.
  • Templates: Creating and using pre-built templates, including those for different occasions, aid announcements and sales marketing, as 70% of users referencing this aspect observe.
  • Contact Management: The system helps save and organize contacts in one place, as well as create emails and events to send out to different groups of contacts, according to 90% of reviewers who talk about this feature.
  • Customer Service: The customer support team is helpful and always available to assist, note 82% of users mentioning it.
  • Lack of Features: The system lacks certain features such as Google Analytics tracking, configuration options, CRM capabilities and automation options, note 90% of reviewers talking about this aspect.
  • Spam Emails: Most of the emails sent via the platform go to junk folders, according to 83% of users referencing this issue.

Key Features

  • Drag-and-Drop Editor: Facilitates customizing an email template and designing professional, mobile-responsive emails for every device. 
  • Sign-Up Forms: Supports creating inline sign-up forms that can be embedded into the HTML code on the website or blog to enable collecting sign-ups as people view a specific webpage. Provides sign up-forms and automatic display triggers to maximize list growth. 
  • Surveys and Polls: Facilitates creating custom surveys and polls, and enables viewing individual results from respondents or tracking general data trends from social media or an email survey. 
  • Campaign Report: View email metrics such as sends, opens, clicks and more. Compare campaigns to determine which received the most opens or clicks. 
  • Integrations: Integrates with apps such as Salesforce, Outlook, Mindbody, Shopify, Facebook and more. 
  • A/B Testing: Run an A/B test on two versions of subject lines to maximize email open rates. 
  • Contact Segmentation and Targeted Marketing: Create customized segments based on a contact’s engagement with email campaigns, location and company details, and already-existing lists. Send targeted marketing emails with relevant messages. 
  • Contact Management: Upload contacts from Excel, Outlook, Salesforce and more. 
  • Email Scheduling: Send emails instantly or schedule them to be sent at a future time. Suggests the best time to send emails based on the industry’s open rate. 
  • Landing Pages: Two types are available: 
    • Lead Generation: Collects visitor information and helps set up automated email series to stay connected to new leads. 
    • Shoppable: Enables selling products and supports tracking results such as gross revenue, page visitors, conversion rates and more. 
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Why We Picked Asana

Asana is a work management platform designed to help users organize and streamline operations with a user-friendly, customizable interface, automation and AI. Key features include the ability to create custom fields, deadlines, and subtasks, utilize various project views like Kanban boards and timelines, and leverage AI for summarizing tasks and drafting workflows. During my test of the software, I liked how easy it was to create a task by email and create project and task summaries using their AI tool.

Customization was also a win. I built a task template for my Content Creation project with custom fields, relative due dates, assignees and a bulleted checklist. However, head’s up, adding task templates to existing tasks requires creating a new task with the template and merging it. Hands down, workflow management was one of my favorite parts of testing Asana. Adding in new sections (without having to go to the list view) and creating custom rules for transitions with a little help from their version of prompts was a breeze.

Collaboration is another plus, with in-card comments and mentions, an inbox, group and individual messaging in platform and guest accounts with custom permissions for external users.

On the downside, if you don’t have access to a free trial of the paid version (like I did), the free version may not be as effective. You won’t be able to access AI features, certain project views and resource management. The setup also isn’t exactly intuitive, and you may need training plus multiple visits to the help center to conceptualize your project and pick the right template.

Overall, Asana is a fantastic all-in-one project management solution for users looking for a flexible tool with AI assistance and don’t mind springing for one of the paid plans.

Pros & Cons

  • User Friendly: Reviewers appreciated that the system is easy to use and intuitive with a clean UI, even if you’re new to projects.
  • Overall Functionality: Workflows and automation, task management and collaboration are everything you’d look for in a project management system, according to users.
  • Customization: Users liked the customization options for unique team needs, projects and workflows.
  • >Cost: Users mentioned Asana’s paid plans were too expensive for smaller businesses making it difficult to upgrade from the limited free version.
  • Set-Up: Getting started can be overwhelming with so many customizations and task options. Users said you may need extra time to implement it effectively.
  • Advanced Features: Reviewers noted some features like AI, advanced project views, resource management and multiple task assignees require expensive plan upgrades.

Key Features

  • Task Management: Create tasks with custom fields, deadlines, tags, subtasks, dependencies and descriptions during setup, adding tasks to the section you want when you create your first project or forwarding an email to [email protected]. Save time by converting your custom tasks into a template you can apply to new tasks and using AI to summarize tasks and draft subtasks. Switch between list, board, timeline, calendar and Gantt views to optimize visualization and drag-and-drop tasks between sections.
  • Project Planning and Scheduling: Kick your projects off with a plethora of templates ranging from product rollouts to hiring pipelines, or import your project from a spreadsheet. Convert tasks into milestones on the card and add details about why it’s a milestone. Add tasks to multiple projects and organize strategic initiatives by creating a portfolio where you can track the updates of all your projects.
  • Resource Management: Keep track of what’s on everyone’s plate by switching to the workload view. Drag and drop tasks to manage timelines and assignees and assign custom values like hours or points to tasks to accurately factor in employee effort.
  • Sprint Management: Hit the ground running by applying the sprint template to a new project. Add custom fields, use the timeline tab to map out sprint tasks and deadlines and set start and finish dates in the project view.
  • Collaboration Features: Add updates, questions and notes into the description. Comment on cards with mentions, files, lists, code blocks and even AI assists. Send messages directly to individuals or teams using the inbox. Keep your clients in the loop by creating guest accounts and sharing specific tasks and projects with them.
  • Reports and Insights: Tap into a bird’s eye view of your project by clicking on the dashboard tab where you can monitor overdue, complete and incomplete tasks and burnup charts and create custom charts with their AI tool. Visit the reporting tab to view trends, progress, resourcing and work health.
  • Custom Automations and Workflows: Build a workflow that’s a perfect fit for your project in the workflow tab by adding sections for each step in the process with custom transitions and rules when tasks are moved. Add custom automations and rules from scratch, use the options provided as a starting point or get a helping hand from the AI studio. Check out the automations we built in depth below.
Start Price
$800
Monthly
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked HubSpot

With basic CRM alongside marketing, sales, service and content management, Hubspot offers a lot of functionalities, which users cite as a primary benefit. Its slick interface ensures an intuitive experience and extensive automation simplifies tasks, although some complicated functions make it time-consuming to learn. Users also appreciate how prompt customer support is, and that there’s a free version that’s ideal for small and mid-sized businesses.
However, certain email elements present issues and the paid versions are expensive for what they offer. Overall, businesses that are in need of a robust and scalable product suite, especially those with a focus on inbound marketing, might find this to be a good fit.

Pros & Cons

  • Ease of Use: Every user referencing navigation reports the platform is user-friendly.
  • Customer Support: The support team is reliable and offers quick responses to any need, according to 91% of reviewers referencing this aspect.
  • Automation: Automating email campaigns, lead scoring and workflows, managing sales funnel and social engagement, and creating email templates is easy, according to 95% of reviewers who talk about automation.
  • Feature-Rich: The range of features offered, such as creating landing pages, forms and email campaigns, is a benefit to 85% of users mentioning functionalities.
  • Marketing: Every user who refers to marketing feels it’s easy to market products.
  • Interface: A slick interface makes it easy to navigate, in the experience of 80% of reviewers referencing the UI.
  • Price: Premium products are expensive for the amount of functionality, especially for small and mid-sized companies, according to 86% of reviewers mentioning cost.
  • Training: In 85% of reviews referencing training, users say it’s difficult for average users to perform complicated tasks such as tracking leads and making different mailing lists, causing a learning curve.
  • Email Functionality: All reviews about this issue note that customizing the mobile version of an email affects the desktop version, inserting custom HTML such as a for promo timer isn’t possible and more.

Key Features

  • Pipeline Management:
    •  Reduces data entry through auto-populated data and grants control over pipelines to match how users work. 
    •  User-friendly edit tools alongside a drag-and-drop interface simplify the entire management process. 
    •  Quick access to key metrics is available with a sales dashboard. 
  • Lead Management: Perform CRM activities without the hassle of reconciling different data sets and gain full visibility into contacts by accessing data-rich profiles in one location. Capabilities include lead segmentation, contact activity history and tasks. 
  • Messaging: Facilitates better internal and external communication, promotes strong customer experiences, supports lead generation and enables more timely follow up. Offers Facebook Messenger, a customizable live chat widget, shared email and a chatbot builder. 
  • Conversations Inbox:
    •  Provides context, alignment and transparency for marketing, sales and service teams through a team-wide inbox. 
    •  Aids cross-functional collaboration via a central hub for communicating with prospects, leads and customers. Routing rules deliver emails to the most relevant team or member. 
    •  Offers a seamless experience to customers no matter what stage they’re in. 
  • Contact Activity: Gain deeper insights by leveraging analytics that show website interactions. Track form submissions, page visits and more. 
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Key Features

  • Automated Intelligence and Outreach: With this feature, users no longer have to struggle with manual data updates and can completely automate contact discoveries and company searches with precision. 
  • Webform Optimizations: ZoomInfo FormComplete makes it easy for users to capture contact information without tedious form fields. All users need to capture is the prospect’s email address and the rest of the information is scored accordingly. 
  • Website Visitor Tracking: Users can turn intent into action with the software’s WebSights service, which tracks all anonymous visitors to landing pages or the website. Users never have to miss a visitor's responses again. 
  • Lead Enrichment: The Enrich feature prevents outdated and incomplete data by auto-updating data with new additional information. This process makes database management and lead management much simpler. 
  • Activity and Pipeline Management: The software’s InboxAI tool saves hours of manual work by quickly aligning the sales teams’ email inboxes directly to Salesforce. This data sync allows complete access to the engagement of accounts and activities. 
  • Enterprise API: Managers can customize workflows and data presentation. ZoomInfo’s API helps search, enrich and append existing data, so users never run out of contact discoveries. 
  • Account Targeting: The platform’s advanced targeting capabilities allow users to reach out to key decision-makers. The account targeting watchlist enables account managers to have access to updated insights that help promote business growth. 
  • Campaign Optimization: This feature helps users understand their target audience, enhance their data and develop hyper-targeted campaigns. It provides updated, accurate and actionable CRM data to ensure successful outreaches. 
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Why We Picked Klaviyo

With an easy-to-use design and email templates, Klaviyo simplifies marketing efforts. Vigorous monitoring and analytics were other strong points according to user feedback. Users also leverage it for market segmentation, which provides useful market insights according to the segments chosen. However, getting started with the product may take some time due to the lack of training resources for implementation, and the capabilities may not justify the price tag for smaller companies according to user feedback. All in all, it’s a good choice for companies with a larger budget that require strong automation and segmentation capabilities.

Pros & Cons

  • Analytics: The product offers robust analysis capabilities, according to all reviews about analytics.
  • Ease of Use: A user-friendly interface and email templates are noted by 96% of users who leverage the product.
  • Segmentation: More than 90% of user feedback on this feature suggests that segmentation is a key benefit.
  • Training: All users who mention setup and implementation indicated the lack of training resources as a drawback.
  • Cost: It’s not cost-effective for the functionality offered, according to 79% of users who mention this aspect.

Key Features

  • Customer Relationships: Attend to customers, collect and store important customer information, and use it according to their consent. 
  • Analysis: Understand customer trends through segmented market data, using data science and AI, which provides business insights to speed up growth. 
  • Integrations: Offers unlimited real-time data with robust, ready-to-go integrations for more audience insights and personalization. Connects with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and more. An open API provides the flexibility to create direct integrations with custom e-commerce platforms. 
  • Reporting: Run reports from a single screen and export data with ease. Understand flow performance, campaign performance and signup form performance quickly. Custom analytics assesses the performance of emails and identifies opportunities. 
  • Social Media Advertising: Transfer data to Facebook and Instagram to create relevant messages and deliver consistent experiences. Sync data dynamically and generate more sales to automatically updated target groups with product-specific ads. 
Start Price
$9
Monthly
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign provides cloud-based marketing services to businesses of any size. It’s easy to use and offers a wide range of features, along with robust automation and campaigning capabilities. The system integrates with all major platforms. Most users also find the customer support team as well as the training materials to be helpful.
However, it takes time to learn the intricate features thoroughly. Reviews also state the system suffers from glitches and the interface could be more user-friendly. Businesses that need a system that caters to CRM as well as marketing needs, and that have the ability to leverage its complex functionality effectively, should consider this as a solid choice.

Pros & Cons

  • User-Friendly: Everyone referencing this aspect states the software is easy to use.
  • Automation: It helps run customer and lead campaigns, triggered automatically based on set specifications, note 98% of reviewers referring to this feature.
  • Customer Support: The support team is easy to reach and very responsive, according to 93% of reviewers talking about this aspect.
  • Functionalities: Every user mentioning features states the system offers robust capabilities including client onboarding, lead funnels, newsletters, contact tracking and more.
  • Email Campaigns: In the view of 85% of reviews about this feature, it’s easy to send weekly emails, replicate earlier emails and develop templates for other uses.
  • Integration: Connecting with Zapier and other platforms makes it easy to transfer leads, according to 88% of reviewers referencing integration.
  • Help Resource: Everyone mentioning training reports there are helpful tutorials and webinars.
  • Learning Curve: According to 77% of reviewers talking about training, it’s tough and time consuming to learn the platform.
  • Glitches: Every user mentioning this aspect notes it can be glitchy at times and quite slow to load during peak business hours.
  • Interface: The interface is slow and not very intuitive, according to 62% of reviewers referencing this aspect.

Key Features

  • Dynamic Content: Keep content fresh and personalized by automatically changing email content depending on where a lead is in the buyer’s journey. 
  • Email Marketing: A robust and fully-featured suite offers broadcasting, triggered and targeted emails, funnels, and robust integrations with popular social media and e-commerce platforms. Also offers: 
    • Drag-and-Drop Builder: Create and automate campaigns with ease. 
    • Scheduled Emails: Enables scheduling emails for specific dates and times. 
    • Email Autoresponders: Enables sending welcome emails, starting a welcome series or delivering lead magnets automatically. 
  • Segmentation: Target specific groups within the contacts list to be more personal in emails and engage people with the right information. 
  • CRM: Notify the sales team, update deals, create tasks and nurture leads automatically. Scores leads, passes off highly-qualified targets to sales and integrates with popular email providers. 
  • Advanced Reporting: Offers custom reporting features, including custom KPIs, sales reporting, tag counting and robust segmentation. Gives insights into email performance. Split testing can also be used to get email opens, clicks and buys. 
  • Fast Training: Schedule one-on-one appointments with the company’s customer service team to help teams get up to speed with training. A series of robust webinars and user docs are available. 
  • Migration Services: Receive assistance migrating from another marketing automation product. Services include contact list and tag import, form recreation, workflow recreation, and email template recreation. 
  • Powerful Integrations: Integrates with PayPal, Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Facebook, Google Analytics and more than 250 other apps including payment processors, membership websites and e-commerce stores. 
  • Audience Segmentation: Allows personalized messages by adding tags to segments. Tags can be based on purchase history, geographic location, time since last purchased, personal interests and more. 
  • Geo-Tracking: Automatically capture a contact’s location for geo-targeted email marketing campaigns. 
  • Site Tracking: Pulls data in from other websites to assist in tracking the customer’s activity. 
  • Social Sharing: Gives insights into performance on social platforms and enables greater audience engagement. 
  • Split Testing: Try different email subject lines, body copy and more to increase and optimize campaign conversion rates. Add up to five variations for a single campaign. 
  • SMS Marketing: Automate SMS marketing to send notifications and campaigns such as appointment reminders, flash sale notifications and more. 
  • Conversation Features: Provides: 
    •  Live chat to facilitate capturing leads and creating contacts from the website. Includes customizable auto reply, custom branding, contact creation and triggered automations. 
    •  A unified inbox to connect conversations with customers. 
  • Predictive Sending: Automate emails using machine learning algorithms. It ranks the hours in a day based on a contact’s open time and uses these recommendations to schedule an optimal send time. 
  • Contact and Lead Scoring: Sends notifications when leads are getting hot, with automatically triggered email notifications and task assignments based on lead score changes. Helps follow up with deals that are most likely to close. 
  • Win Probabilities: Calculates the conversion chance for a specific lead, giving foresight into lead behavior. 
Start Price
$895
Monthly
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked Marketo

As a part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, Marketo Engage supports both demand and account-based marketing strategies that work in sync with marketing and sales. It offers a range of features that help businesses operations. Notable features that users call out include custom reports, automation tools and lead management. It’s highly customizable and can integrate with a wide range of business systems. Users also appreciate the robust customer service.
Some limitations include an inconvenient mobile app, outdated user interface for campaign dashboards and cumbersome functionality. Overall, businesses looking to automate their sales and marketing efforts will find the system has a lot to offer.

Pros & Cons

  • Lead Management: The ability to route and categorize leads based on requirements is helpful for staying on top of customers inputs, in the view of 60% of users talking about lead management.
  • Customizable: All reviews on this aspect agree that the system is highly customizable and offers email templates that can be created as per requirements.
  • Automation: Marketing and sales automation make it easy to use and eliminate manual entry, according to 83% of users who reviewed this feature.
  • Reporting: Provides custom reports that fit the user requirement and are insightful, say 75% of users referencing reporting.
  • Integrations: Integrations for websites, event platforms, survey platforms, mobile apps and more, along with two-way integration with CRM systems, aid functionality, according to 75% of users mentioning integrations.
  • Customer Support: The training is great and customer support is responsive, according to 66% of reviews on this topic.
  • Not User-Friendly: The functionality is cumbersome and pages take time to load, in the experience of 60% of users who reviewed the usability.
  • Dashboard: Campaign dashboards are outdated and the design needs an upgrade, according to 75% of users specifying this feature.

Key Features

  • Search Engine Optimization: Compares keyword rankings of competitors, provides recommendations for new keywords for higher ranking web pages, and discovers inbound link opportunities based on targeted keywords and competitors’ links. 
  • CRM Integration: Offers native integrations for Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications to provide a bi-directional data sync that auto-updates every five minutes. Also facilitates custom-configured integrations for various CRM platforms such as NetSuite, Oracle, SAP Sales Cloud and SugarCRM. 
  • Lead Scoring: Rank customers by assigning positive and negative scores based on demographics or their likelihood to exhibit certain behaviors, such as making a new purchase, being open to cross-sell offers and more. 
  • Email Marketing: Supports both batch and real-time triggered emails. Helps: 
    • Create personalized campaigns for mobile, web, ads and more using a visual editor and responsive templates.
    • Personalize content based on inferred information from website visitors, such as company, country, zip code and city, helping segment and localize content.
    • Use browsing behavior to identify product interest for target accounts.
  • Mobile Marketing: 
    • Helps connect with customers on the go, track inputs from different marketing channels and respond via mobile apps.
    • Sends push notifications and in-app messages, and incorporates beacon and geo-fencing technology to send location-relevant messages to customers.
    • Visual dashboards measure overall performance by opens, installs and session duration across multiple apps.
  • Social Media Marketing: Facilitates running social polls, sweepstakes and referral campaigns with built-in social share buttons and shareable videos. Integrates social metrics into marketing reports to help measure the impact of social activity on conversions and revenue. 
  • Digital Ad Campaigns: Connects with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and other advertising platforms, and targets customers with relevant ad campaigns. 
  • Analytics and Reporting: Automatically connect data from different sources into a unified platform. Enables: 
    • Mapping and measuring a customer journey at every stage through shareable, prebuilt dashboards and ad-hoc reporting tools.
    • Designing custom models with the help of AI.
    • Leveraging a suite of attribution models.
Start Price
$1,250
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is liked among users for the seamless integration it offers with Salesforce, leading to stronger marketing capabilities. It also offers various functionalities to make email marketing more powerful and is relied upon for lead generation. However, the cost of the product might be too much for smaller companies, especially given the lack of reporting options. The complexities of the platform also make it difficult to get used to according to the majority of reviews. Overall, the product is a good pick for larger enterprises seeking robust marketing automation, particularly those already using Salesforce that can leverage the tight integration for enhanced marketing.

Pros & Cons

  • Integration: More than 90% of users who mention integration noted the benefit of being able to connect Marketing Cloud Account Engagement with the wider Salesforce ecosystem.
  • Email Marketing: Users can seamlessly set up emails, create content, measure performance and report results, according to all reviews about email marketing.
  • Lead Generation: It offers robust tools for lead generation and nurturing, as reported by 85% of user feedback on these features.
  • Cost: The product costs more than the functionality it offers, according to all the users who mention this aspect.
  • Complexity: It’s difficult to understand and involves a lot of clicks, as observed by 95% of users mentioning this aspect.
  • Reporting: The lack of vigorous reporting tools is a matter of concern, according to 85% of user feedback on the topic.

Key Features

  • Campaign Visualizer: Tracks marketing and sales efforts as customers move through the sales funnel and provides a high-level overview of a campaign. 
  • Dynamic Content: Improve lead generation and customer experiences with dynamic and useful content specifically tailored to a target audience’s needs, wants and interests. 
  • Landing Page Builder: Standard, easy-to-use and customizable templates enable better customer service and increase lead counts. 
  • Smart Forms: Collect information at every interaction and enrich data pools with a simple drag-and-drop form builder. 
  • Organic and Paid Search Tools: Integrate with Google AdWords to determine ROI and then analyze keywords to improve performance. 
  • Social Posting: Track prospects and leads in social platforms. Schedule posts at optimal times for the greatest impact. 
  • Email Builder: The email builder is simple to use, yet powerful, and can be attached to any number of automated tools and tracking measures. 
  • Einstein: Gain insights on campaigns to optimize marketing assets and find new audiences using machine learning. 
  • Email Reporting: Track metrics like clicks, opens and more. Provides SPAM analysis and preview services to extend email reporting. 
  • Auto Segmentation: Deliver a personalized experience with dynamic content by leveraging automatic contact segmentation. 
  • Activity Tracking: Track prospect activities and maintain an activity history from a CRM, Gmail or smartphones. 

Pricing

License/Subscription Cost
  • Subscription-based model – per user per month
  • Starts at $1,000 per user per monthSetup fee of $1,000 is charged
  • Cost per extra user is $50 per month
  • Cost may vary based on the plan selected – Standard, Pro and Ultimate
Maintenance Cost
  • Cost is included in the subscription cost
  • Provides on-going customer support via Customer Hub which is an on-demand online resource center providing hundreds of articles, training and other resources to support users
  • Marketing Cloud Account Engagement offers ongoing technical support and services via in-app chat and email to users located across the globe with offices in Atlanta, San Francisco, Dublin, London, Sydney and Tokyo
  • Provides unlimited access to the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Knowledge Base to the end user
Installation/Implementation Cost
  • None
Customization Cost
  • Cost may vary depending on the type of functional requirements being added as an add-on or the type of plan being selected out of Standard, Ultimate, and Pro
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost
  • Cost may vary depending on the current software, amount of data to be migrated, complexity of the data fields, level of automation and data migration tools to be utilized for transfer of data from the old to the new software
Training Costs
  • Cost is over and above the subscription cost and will vary depending on the type of training course opted for
  • Provides Live, weekly and free training, including deep-dive webinars on specific features to the end user
  • Provides Training and Certification courses along with Webinars, eLearning modules, best practices documents for learning Marketing Cloud Account Engagement solution
  • Marketing Cloud Account Engagement offers free, virtual training webinars, live events, live onsite session and customized training programs based on user requirements
Recurring/Renewal Costs
  • Cost is equivalent to the recurring monthly subscription fee to be paid on a yearly basis, customization cost, data migration cost plus training cost
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked monday.com

monday.com is a cloud-based project management platform that caters to a wide range of industries thanks to its customization, user-friendly interface and templates. It allows users to build boards from templates or from scratch and view projects through multiple views like list, calendar, Ganntt and Kanban. During our test, we enjoyed using the platform's pre-built templates and drag-and-drop feature to set up projects and reorganize tasks.

Its task management features are stellar. We liked how easy it is to custom groups for tasks, assign them to specific team members, and leverage various communication tools like comments, mentions and board discussions. The updates feature means everyone is on the same page and the view option boosts accountability. On the automation front, we successfully used the built-in automation engine, which comes with both pre-made templates and no-code customization options, to build a custom automation for status changes with little to no difficulty.

On the flip side, monday.com may have a slight learning curve for users who aren’t familiar with project management tools. Additionally, some advanced features, such as custom notifications and time tracking, require upgrading to a higher pricing tier, which could become expensive for larger teams.

All in all, we thought monday’s intuitive interface, customization options and no-code automations make it a great option for users without a ton of technical expertise and a flexible budget.

Pros & Cons

  • Task Management: Users appreciated how easy it is to monitor tasks with customized views, an activity feed and task updates.
  • Collaboration: Instant messaging, integrations, board discussions and easy scheduling and planning were a plus for reviewers.
  • User-Friendly: Reviewers said it was simple to set up and use for less tech-savvy users, and liked the attractive, colorful interface with helpful templates.

What Users Like

  • Project Tracking: "The ability to customize columns and task dependencies lets us create a clear, tailored workflow." - Jeffery Zhou, CEO and Founder of Fig Loans
  • Interface: "The timeline and calendar views were particularly useful when we had multiple projects running alongside each other, helping everyone stay aligned without a lot of back-and-forth." - Rob Stevenson, Founder of BackupVault
  • Notifications: “The automation features were especially useful in notifying different people responsible at different steps of the journey while maintaining transparency and accountability with the rest of the team and building a frictionless and trust-based culture.” - Alok Jain, CEO of Reveal
  • Cost: Reviewers noted that advanced features like customized notifications or time tracking required a plan upgrade which could become expensive.
  • Learning Curve: It takes time to get used to the navigation and features according to users.
  • Mobile App: Some users said the mobile app doesn’t have all the features available.

What Users Dislike

  • Complexity: “[monday.com] lacked some flexibility in handling complex, multi-step tasks that needed a lot of customization, which sometimes left us manually tracking those details elsewhere.” - Rob Stevenson, Founder of BackupVault
  • Time-Based Automations: “Creating an automation to notify a user three days after a certain date, for example, was more complex than it needed to be. We had to set up custom date columns to drive these instead of just being able to calculate it as a part of automation.” - Alok Jain, CEO of Reveal

Key Features

  • Custom Dashboard: Build your own custom dashboard using built-in widgets and third-party integrations. Get a bird’s eye view of your boards and teams along with individual team member and board views. Monitor workload, timelines, feed activity and custom charts, like in-progress tasks, from a central location.
  • Multiple Views: Toggle between different views to track your projects using Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendar views, project reports and custom filters like task owner, status and timeline.
  • Task Management: Create tasks under custom groups like To-Do, In-Progress, On-Hold, and Complete and add personalized fields, assignees, due dates, labels, statuses and priorities. Mention assignees, add comments, files, links and tables directly in the tasks using the Updates tab. Drag and drop tasks and groups to reorganize things.
  • Automations: Streamline workflows with no-code automations using templates or building custom automations from scratch using conditions and actions. Apply automations to specific boards and save your custom automations as a template to use on other boards.
  • Templates: Create boards suited to your project needs by accessing the template center and choosing from a range of templates, including marketing, project management, sales and CRM, design, software development, and HR.
  • Workflow Management: Organize your processes by creating custom workflows. Search for the trigger you’re looking for and add it as a starting block. Build on those blocks by choosing from several options: action, if or else or delay. Select the board where you want the action to happen, add conditions and edit blocks. View active workflows and pause or edit workflows as processes change.

COMPARE THE BEST Marketing Software For Small Business

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All Marketing Software For Small Business (23 found)

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Buyer's Guide

Small Business Marketing Software Is All About Simplifying Marketing Tasks and Workflows

Marketing Software for Small Business BG Intro

In the marketing landscape, small business marketing software helps you level the playing field and compete with industry giants. It’s similar to how spinach is to Popeye. Without spinach (marketing software in this case), you can do fine, but by using it, you can skyrocket your business as spinach does to Popeye’s biceps.

Looking for a way to streamline your marketing operations or better manage data reporting and analytics? Marketing software for small businesses might be right for you. This buyer’s guide will go over the platform’s features and benefits and help you pick the ideal solution.

Executive Summary

  • Small business marketing software helps automate and track marketing campaigns across channels.
  • Key features include marketing automation, A/B testing, SEO, email marketing and social media marketing.
  • Make sure to ask potential vendors critical questions before committing to a purchase.
What This Guide Covers:

What Is Small Business Marketing Software?

Small business marketing software is a suite of digital tools designed to help small businesses with their marketing efforts. These solutions allow small business owners and marketers to automate, optimize and track their marketing campaigns across various channels, including email, social media, search engines and mobile devices.

The solution aims to improve the efficiency of marketing operations and helps you make optimal use of resources for campaigns. It enables B2B and B2C companies to prepare for changing customer trends and deliver promotional materials to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Attract new customers, generate leads and nurture them with ease. The system offers end-to-end campaign management, covering aspects such as campaign design, content creation and publishing, customer segmentation, and marketing analytics.

Some small business marketing software trends you can look out for are AI features that provide insights into customer behavior and chatbots that automate manual processes and interact with customers.

Primary Benefits

Marketing Software for Small Business Benefits

Reduce Tedious Tasks

Small business marketing software offers robust automation capabilities to automate manual processes. You can schedule recurring meetings and send follow-up emails with ease. This means marketers can work better, thanks to the simplified campaign creation and execution.

The solution also reduces human error and speeds up the lead management process. It takes care of repetitive tasks and allows employees to focus on activities that require critical thinking, thereby increasing productivity. You can post and schedule regularly on social media, promoting consistency and audience engagement.

Streamline Marketing Operations

Marketing software for small businesses is like luggage that keeps everything neat and organized during customer journeys. You can enjoy a centralized data view and gain visibility into multiple campaigns at a single glance.

Monitor campaign progress with analytics tools and real-time reporting and see what exactly you need to do for improvement. The system lets you assign and track tasks, collaborate effectively with team members, and send updates regularly. You can also measure performance by examining KPIs like email open and bounce rates, making it easy to assess your business health.

Improve Customer Experience

We get that it’s difficult to compete with the marketing industry Goliaths. But one place small businesses can shine is in the experience they provide. Due to the limited clientele, you can use small business marketing software to personalize customer interactions, track where clients are in the sales journey and get to know their preferences.

The system makes it easier to find better leads and helps you take a targeted approach. It provides rich customer profiles with in-depth information, monitors customer behavior and segments various demographics based on factors like age and location. You can also enjoy enhanced customer retention by using A/B testing and engaging the right leads at the right time.

Boost Revenue

If you’re a small business, you already know that with each campaign, the stakes are high and involve a big financial risk. You need to make smart decisions based on relevant data, and small business marketing software can help you do that.

With dynamic dashboards and reports, you can analyze data with an informed approach rather than relying on guesswork. Build effective campaigns at your fingertips and use social media listening tools to enhance your brand and company reputation. You can also determine target audiences and map out different customer journey phases.

Print and other advertising methods tend to be expensive for small businesses, which is why social media is an affordable way to reach your target audience. Marketing software for small businesses helps you determine which channel is the most effective. You can post valuable content to establish yourself as a trusted source of information, increasing traffic and boosting brand awareness.

Key Features & Functionality

Marketing Automation

Automate repetitive marketing tasks such as email campaigns, social media posts and lead nurturing. The solution reduces human error and frees up time so marketers can focus on more complex and critical tasks.

You can schedule recurring appointments automatically. Use AI chatbots to personalize communication and resolve queries quickly.

Email Marketing

Create and send targeted email campaigns to customers and prospects. You can monitor factors like email open, bounce and click-through rates. Use email templates to create dynamic content and improve ROI.

Social Media Management

Manage and automate social media accounts, schedule posts and track engagement. Design and post social media ads from scratch, respond to comments and direct messages and engage with target audiences to create brand awareness.

It lets you build a strong online presence and use social media monitoring tools to measure your impact.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Access tools to optimize business websites and improve their ranking on search engines. Create blogs and long-form content and schedule them regularly. Measure how well your website is performing based on factors like click-through rates and keyword rankings.

Landing Page Creation

This feature helps you build custom landing pages optimized for lead generation and conversion.

Lead Capture Forms

Create forms to capture lead information from websites or social media pages. You can use these contact details later to send personalized messages, enroll them into drip campaigns or even target paid ads.

A/B Testing

Test different variations of marketing campaigns to determine the most effective approach. You can test email subject lines, analyze which version performs better and optimize your campaigns accordingly.

Reporting and Analytics

Track marketing performance across multiple channels and gain insights into audience behavior and preferences. The system lets you monitor customer trends and provides valuable insight into data through easy-to-understand reports.

Software Comparison Strategy

With so many vendors in the market, deciding which software would be the best for your business can get overwhelming. Jumpstart your search by considering the following aspects before committing to a purchase:

Preferred Features: Look at your current system and analyze where it’s lacking. What are the most common problems you face? Which features can help maximize productivity? Take your time to make a list of requirements.

Budget: You need to be honest about your budget and how much you can afford to spend. Consider all variables like the number of users, hidden costs and maintenance fees before making a purchase.

Deployment: Cloud solutions are cheaper and easier to access than on-site platforms. On-premise software also needs an IT team on board to fix technical issues if they come up. However, it can be cost-effective for large teams with lots of data, while cloud solutions are useful for smaller teams or startups.

Mobile-Responsive Templates: Mobile advertising is widely popular, and marketing platforms that provide tools for mobile-optimized web pages and ready-to-use templates are beneficial.

Integrations: Take note of apps you use daily. Your ideal solutions should integrate with your preferred apps, enabling you to streamline communication.

Customizations: What customizable features does the software offer? Does it come with any pre-built templates? What about scalability options? Investing in a scalable solution helps keep up with your company’s changing technical needs.

Vendor Support: Does your vendor provide hands-on customer support? Do they have 24/7 live chat? What do their onboarding and training processes look like? How do they ensure data security? How will they help you import existing data into the new software?

User Experience: Marketing software that is intuitive and easy to use is always a plus. It can save valuable time and money that would otherwise go into costly and time-consuming software training.

Anti-Spam Compliance: Your preferred marketing solution should be able to do quality checks and flag users if they misrepresent your information or cannot meet anti-spam compliance needs.

Cost & Pricing Considerations

The price of small business marketing software starts from $15 and can go up to hundreds of dollars for advanced and cutting-edge solutions.

  • Subscription Fees: Most software packages are subscription-based, with monthly or annual fees.
  • Feature Tiers: Many solutions offer different feature tiers at varying prices, allowing businesses to select the package that best meets their needs and budget.
  • Setup and Onboarding Costs: Some platforms may charge additional fees for setup and onboarding services.
  • Integration Costs: Integrating marketing software with other tools and software may require additional fees.
  • Contract Terms: Some vendors may require a minimum contract term or charge additional fees for early termination.
  • Add-on Costs: Some tools may offer additional features or services as add-ons for an additional fee.

When considering the cost and pricing, weighing the costs against the potential benefits and ROI is important. Small businesses should also consider the selected solution’s scalability, as their marketing needs may grow and evolve. Additionally, businesses should ensure that the pricing and payment terms fit within their budget and cash flow.

The Most Popular Small Business Marketing Software

Jumpstart your software search with our research team’s list of the most popular marketing software for small businesses.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a popular platform that offers marketing automation, social media management, landing pages and audience insights. It's known for its user-friendly interface, affordable pricing and extensive integrations with other marketing tools.

It also offers a free plan with basic features, making it an attractive option for small businesses with limited marketing budgets.

Mailchimp

Audience Analysis with Mailchimp.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact offers social media management, event management and survey tools. Its intuitive interface and extensive library of templates make it easy to create professional-looking emails and landing pages.

You can integrate it with various marketing tools, making it a flexible option for small businesses with diverse marketing needs.

Constant Contact

Contact Management with Constant Contact.

HubSpot

HubSpot provides a cloud-based platform built around inbound methodology to help businesses be more customer-centric. It offers a free CRM package along with marketing, sales, service and CMS hubs, which you can deploy individually or together for full flexibility and scalability.

Additional capabilities include funnel automation, lead targeting, analytics and reporting, email templates, and more. It caters to small businesses but has paid versions robust enough to support the needs of larger organizations.

HubSpot

Traffic analytics on HubSpot.

 

 

Questions To Ask

To get a better understanding of your company’s requirements, ask yourself these guiding questions:

  • What are our marketing goals and objectives?
  • What specific marketing tasks do we need to accomplish?
  • How much time and resources do we currently allocate to marketing tasks?
  • What business apps do we need integrations for?
  • How do we collaborate, and how can we make it better?

Social Media Analytics Software Key Questions

Here are a few questions to ask potential vendors to help you learn more about them and their software:

  • What level of customer support and training is available?
  • What’s the process for upgrading or adding new features, and what are the associated costs?
  • What measures are in place to protect our data and privacy?
  • Can the vendor provide case studies or references of similar businesses?
  • Does the solution provide mobile accessibility and sync data offline?

Next Steps

Small business marketing software can improve the accuracy of reporting and analytics to measure marketing performance. It enables employees to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, freeing up time for more strategic activities. You can also improve customer experience, which is especially advantageous for small businesses.

Picking the right service might feel daunting, but we hope this buyer’s guide helped narrow down your choices. If you need further help, check out our free comparison report. It provides information on top industry leaders and lets you analyze their benefits, features and limitations.

Product Comparisons

Additional Resources

About The Contributors

The following expert team members are responsible for creating, reviewing, and fact checking the accuracy of this content.

Technical Content Writer
An Associate Editor at SelectHub, Christina George creates and edits articles spanning project management, CPQ, CRM, marketing automation and home health software. As a Bachelor of Arts graduate with a triple major in Economics, Political Science and Sociology, her aim is to bring an integrated and simplified approach to long-form technical content. Formerly a food writer, copywriter, and social media sleuth, she has a soft spot for a quality pun. When not crafting articles and editing buyer's guides, you can find her attempting to score goals on the football field, binge-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, or re-reading Pride and Prejudice for the nth time.
Technical Content Writer
Divya Dugar is a Marketing Analyst at SelectHub. At SelectHub, she writes for three software categories: Marketing Automation, EHR and Construction. She also designs and executes email marketing nurtures and campaigns. An avid reader, she graduated as an English major from Presidency College, Calcutta. She enjoys painting, creative writing and boxing. She geeks out on Robert Greene, Tom Bilyeu and Joe Rogan.
Edited By Joe Evans
Content Editor
Joe Evans is an Editor and Senior Market Analyst at SelectHub. A seasoned professional wordsmith, he has a bachelor's degree in journalism and electronic media and a decade of professional expertise in crafting top-tier digital content for niche online brands. He leads his small yet formidable team in producing helpful, compelling content in vital categories like HR, payroll, talent management, performance management, marketing automation home health, MES. When not editing and writing, he enjoys sports, quality time with family and dogs, and remains constantly in pursuit of something new and interesting to read or listen to.