What is the Best Powerful Email Automation Tool for you in 2021?

Does Email Automation tools matter in this social media age?

With the advancement of modern technologies, Physical stores are going online. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are integrated with the platforms. They improve the online experience and assist the customers.

Two or three decades ago, people don’t get any information. The communication and Mass media reach was poor to absolute nil.

But nowadays Misinformation and Meta-information are the problems. From the huge pile of data, the correct information doesn’t reach the targeted customers.

What do we do about it?

MarketsandMarkets published a research report called ‘Marketing Automation Market – Global Forecast to 2024’. In that report, they’ve predicted that the ‘Net value of Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Analytics & Reporting are estimated to grow from USD 3.3 Billion to USD 6.4 Billion.’

Email Automation and marketing software are mandatory tools we need. Especially for the marketing businesses whose main leads come from Emails.

Choices

We have many options available in the market. Convert Kit is one such package that comes with a variety of tools. To read more about Convert Kit and its pricing, click here.

ClickFunnels is another funnel-based targeting tool. Even though automation is not their primary focus, it can be done in ClickFunnels. Click here to read about its review.

In this article, we’ll discuss the other automation tools available out there. Active Campaign, Campaign Monitor, and Hubspot are our targeted tools. By the end of this article, I hope you’ll understand which tool would be the best option for you.

Active Campaign – Email Automation

The Powerhouse of Email automation and marketing.

Why am I referring it as a powerhouse? You’ll understand when you visit their website.

It may seem overwhelming to few. Except a very few, all these Automation and marketing tools come with cluttery web pages.

There are many options and tools. But if you spent some time with it, you’ll understand the requirement and purpose of each tool.

In Active Campaign, they have 20 links under 4 sub-divided topics.

Let’s discuss its features.

Reach & Engage

1) Automation map

Designing an automation strategy is very simple in Active Campaign. Like the drag and drop editor, they have provided a simple layout to build automation. We don’t need to do coding.

2) Automation Goals

Contact management is vital for marketing. We need options to group them as well as filter them. Customer personalization is achieved through the automation goals.

3) Sign-up forms

Capturing contacts is the business 101 of email marketing. We capture leads and establish a relationship with them. Through constant contact, we turn them into our customers. Sign-up forms bridge our company to the customers.

4) Site tracking

Research is done at the sites to understand the behavior of the potential clients. It let us know, where we lose our customers, what is the distraction on our webpage. We can improve those step by step to retain those who visit our pages.

5) Facebook custom audiences

Active Campaign gives an individual menu to understand our Facebook audiences. It would collect various information like how long do they stay on our page, where on the page they have concentrated.

We can adjust our future pages according to these results. By refining the content we can improve our site productivity.

Nurture & Educate

1) Email Segmentation

This is similar to the Automation goals. But we’ve more control over customizing content for our customers.

Even though it is a broadcast message, we can personalize them individually. Thus, we reduce the time we spend on marketing and give our customers one-on-one attention.

2) Event tracking

Marketing doesn’t stop after sending the emails. We need data about our emails. Who are all opened our mails? Did they click on our link? Or Did they delete it without even opening the mail? By getting all these data, we can improve our segmentation.

3) Site messages

If someone is visiting our site, we can entertain them while they are perusing our content. We can send custom messages, a fun fact, or even some quiz. It keeps them occupied and makes them spend some more time.

It increases the inter-personal relationship with our content.

Convert & Close

In this section, We’ll discuss a few features that are not available in any other tool out there.

1) Contacts scoring

It is a ranking system we give to our customers. It helps us to rank them in a priority table. If someone spends a lot of time with our web-page, this tool increases their priority ranks. So, we don’t have to worry about who is our target customer.

We can segment those high valued customers and contact them frequently.

2) Win probability

Whenever we design automation, Active Campaign shows us a win probability. It is based on our content and its past interaction with the customers. Active Campaign reads these patterns and predicts a probability.

It might not work in most of the conditions, as we cannot 100% predict our customer’s mindset. But it gives us an option to analyze our methods and improve them.

The above two features are not available in any other tool.

3) Split testing

When we design our emails or landing pages, sign-up forms we can make a split test. It is like sandboxing. Instead of making a single format, we can try out multiple templates. We can measure which template attracts the most customers.

Then we can use that template on a large scale. It is also a part of customer research.

We can split tests on almost everything on the Active Campaign. Be it site messages, text messages, message contents, etc.

Support & Grow

1) Conversations

Live chat is available while most of the competitors prefer emails.

They also have a Unified inbox that stores customer’s information and history in a single place. To view an individual customer’s history, just a single click.

It helps us to give better service to the customers.

2) eCommerce integration

Active Campaign supports Shopify, Woo-commerce, and Bigcommerce integration.

Other features

• One on one training.
• Free migration from other platforms.
• Mobile support.

Other platforms like Convert Kit, Hubspot have a mobile applications. But Active Campaign is the only one that mentioned this feature on their web page. It gives the option to check and conduct our marketing through mobile phones. It is a good feature for people who travel a lot.

Active Campaign pricing

Compared to Convert Kit, Active Campaign provides four pricing options. Convert Kit gives only two. Convert Kit’s free plan covers 1000 subscribers. Active Campaign starts at $17/month for 1000 contacts.

Yes, we can use Convert Kit premium plan at $25/month. But few features like customer scoring, win probability, live chat supports are not even available in it. For email segmentation, Active Campaign provides more choices.

Campaign Monitor – Email Automation

The first thing I want to mention about Campaign Monitor is ‘Video Demos’.

Yes. Other competitors put their documentation, tutorial in a separate page. Campaign Monitor placed them on the features page. It is useful for the novice to understand the concept of Email automation and marketing.

It is not only about the placement but also about the content quality. Just a simple way to encourages us to experiment.

On the technical aspects, it is similar to the Email automation tool – Convert Kit.

• Easy to use highly customizable templates.

They’ve given an Image editor inside the template panel. It may not be useful all the time. Because we’d edit our images before importing them to the templates. But it is a useful inclusion.

• Mobile optimization is available side by side.
• 100s of free templates.

Hyper-targeted Emails

It is not versatile like the Active Campaign’s Contact scoring menu, but it ranks close to that. It helps us segment our contacts very easily for a high-level targeted campaign.

On the Analytics front, there is a menu called Insights.

• It gives the graphical real-time data analysis of our emails.
• Also, it provides ‘Personalization based on Geography’. This option would be very useful if the clients belong to various countries and cultures. We can segment them accordingly and personalize their content.
• Options for split tests.

If we are an agency looking after other businesses, Campaign Monitor provides an Agency option.

Its resource pages are filled with market-related contents and documentation. In par with its name, its tools are apt to conduct campaigns on a large scale.

Campaign Monitor pricing

It has 3 pricing options starting at $29/month for the basic plan. Its premier plan is priced $149/month. Compared to Active Campaign, it lacks few features. But plans are a bit pricey.

Hubspot – Email Automation

How is Hubspot different from its alternatives?

Instead of offering a single tool for multiple purposes, Hubspot Email automation provides multiple tools.

Some may like this, some may not. Because we’ve to oversee a bigger picture and connect the plans to utilize this to our benefit.

It includes Free Hubspot Customer Resource Management CRM, CMS Hub, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub.

Some of the special features available in Hubspot are:

1) SEO recommendations

Hubspot user interface has an SEO recommendation menu. We have to just click that. It’ll analyze our web page with its optimizing tools and reports about what we should improve.

This is a very useful tool, as anyways we’re going to use an SEO tool for optimizing our content.

2) Multiple language content creation.

3) Dedicated migration team and 24/7 phone support.

4) 5 split tests at the same time.

5) Available in mobile versions.

Hubspot Pricing

Because of the individual tools, its pricing is a little difficult to comprehend. First of all, it offers a free basic plan for every tool.

Secondly, there is a premium version for all the 4 other hubs. If you’re sales-based, you can choose the Sales Hub alone. You don’t have to pay for other tools. That is a benefit here.

But nowadays all these works are interconnected. So, having multiple tools may increase your budget.

To rectify that Hubspot offers bundle plans, where you can pick the tools you need and pay for it.

In Conclusion

Hubspot offers individual tools. If you are not dealing with bridge platforms, it would be wise to buy only those tools you need. You don’t have to buy the whole package. It also offers SEO recommendations on its platform. That is very handy. Active Campaign’s Email automation comes with contact ranking. That way you can easily target your high-value customers. Compared to others, its plans are comparatively better. Campaign Monitor lacks in features. A bit pricey too. Active Campaign would be the worthy opponent to Convert Kit.

To learn about Groovefunnels, the complete funnel kit program, click here.