January 30, 2024

The Best B2B Marketing Automation Platforms to Use in 2024

Reading time about 13 min

B2B marketing automation platforms offer businesses tools to improve marketing processes and shorten the sales cycle. To succeed with marketing automation, it’s important to choose the right platform for your strategy and business needs

Because marketing automation technology is so helpful, businesses plan to spend more on MarTech through 2025. To help you find the best tool for you, we reviewed the top B2B marketing automation platforms.

What is B2B marketing automation?

B2B marketing automation streamlines marketing processes like lead generation and customer segmentation. Automation helps businesses carry out the following marketing tasks. 

  • Take care of repetitive duties 
  • Personalize campaigns 
  • Track business metrics
  • Analyze customer data 

When used well, marketing automation can improve customer engagement and campaign performance.

How do you automate a B2B business?

Marketing automation software is used to automate B2B business processes. Any aspect of a marketing strategy can be automated.

Businesses can use automation to

Improve lead generation

Automatically qualify leads and capture leads with signup forms and content. 

A software company can use B2B marketing automation to collect leads using signup forms on web pages. They can even make entire landing pages with an offer for a free trial of their software in exchange for contact information.

Streamline lead nurturing

Create lead-scoring workflows, and provide personalized content and communications throughout the sales cycle.

For example, a SaaS company can use B2B marketing automation to create drip campaigns to help nurture and find qualified leads. 

Companies can also use email marketing automation to engage leads. Keep leads in the loop about product features and pricing. Have inactive contacts? Reach out with a reactivation email.

B2B marketing automation email marketing campaign example by DocuSign.

Source

This email marketing campaign by DocuSign encourages readers to use their product. Sending how-to’s and valuable insights will drive interest in your brand.

Enhance customer engagement

Identify audience segments for better targeting and personalize the customer experience.

You can target audiences based on behavior or attributes. Then, personalize campaigns for each audience. Dynamic content can further personalize content for each recipient.

For example, you wouldn’t send the same campaign to new cold leads as hot ones. Segment your audience to keep engagement high and churn rates low.

Increase conversion rates

Analyze campaign and brand performance to improve for future deals.

For example, consulting companies and agencies can use marketing automation software to monitor user or visitor behavior. That way, they can track things like what web pages they visit — all in real time. 

For more insights, reports show why deals are won or lost. With reports, businesses can make their next campaigns better. 

Reduce marketing costs

Automate administrative tasks, update customer profiles, and optimize campaigns.

The bottom line? Your sales and marketing teams have more time to plan content and pitch deals. 

Further reading: Marketing Automation for Agencies: The Top 10 Tools

The best B2B marketing automation platforms comparison

This table introduces the best B2B marketing platforms, their features, prices, and ratings.

The top B2B marketing automation software

From lead generation to multichannel marketing, these platforms offer powerful automation functionalities for your B2B business needs. Read on for an in-depth look at features and pricing. 

1. Brevo – Best overall B2B marketing automation

The best B2B marketing platform example.

G2 user review of Brevo Marketing Platform

Brevo is an excellent option for businesses looking for a feature-rich and approachable B2B marketing automation platform. 

It offers a variety of digital marketing features, including email marketing, SMS marketing, advanced automation workflow builder, landing pages, signup forms, A/B testing, segmentation, Facebook Ads, and a native CRM. 

Automation workflows can be set up for any or every step in the customer journey. Brevo has ready-to-use lead nurturing workflows such as email marketing drip campaigns, page visit triggers, and more.

Brevo offers contact segmentation and lead scoring so you can easily qualify leads and do lead management. Shared dashboards connect your support, marketing, and sales teams and give a full view of the customer journey.

Brevo’s marketing campaigns integrate seamlessly into the Brevo CRM. Personalize your marketing campaigns with CRM customer data and boost engagement.

G2 rating: 4.5/5

Brevo pricing

Brevo’s affordable pricing plans keep Brevo accessible for all business sizes.

With a free Marketing Platform account, you can create automation workflows with the custom workflow editor for up to 2,000 contacts. Target the right contacts using advanced segmentation for better engagement.

The free plan includes 9,000 free monthly email sends (300/day) and unlimited subscriber/contact storage. 

Paid plans start at $25/month and add 20,000 email sends with no daily sending limit. 

The Business Plan starts at $65/month. This plan gives users access to powerful A/B testing and send time optimization tools. You can also include unlimited contacts in your automation workflows. 

Downsides to Brevo

While the templates are varied, there are fewer free, responsive email templates than competitors. However, automatic branding makes designing templates with your logo, colors, and fonts extremely easy. 

It also offers fewer premade automation workflows than competitors. On the flip side, users can build custom if/else/then automation workflows. 

2. HubSpot Marketing Hub – Best jack of all trades

B2B marketing automation platform review.

G2 user review of HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot is a well-known B2B marketing automation platform with lead nurturing capabilities and integration to its own CRM software.

HubSpot’s B2B marketing automation tools are good for inbound marketing teams but also allow you to trigger email marketing campaigns, set up webhooks, and send follow-up messages to your prospects. 

To support your other teams, HubSpot offers other platforms or Hubs. These Hubs offer tools for sales, service, and other business functions. 

G2 rating: 4.4/5

HubSpot pricing

HubSpot offers a Free Tools plan that covers a bit of everything, from marketing to sales. Marketing automation is limited on this plan to one email action and 2,000 email sends/month. 

The Starter Marketing Hub plan starts at $20/month for 1,000 marketing contacts. This plan unlocks form and email automation. Additional contacts can be purchased in groups of 1,000.

Downsides to HubSpot

HubSpot quickly becomes an expensive B2B marketing automation platform if you upgrade from the Starter Plan or need more than 1,000 contacts. 

A/B testing is only available starting on the Professional Plan at $890/month. Finally, email templates are difficult to customize without some CSS knowledge.

If you know exactly what you’re doing, you won’t get overwhelmed with HubSpot’s many features here, there, and everywhere. 

3. Adobe Marketo Engage – Best for teams with dedicated experts

B2B marketing automation platform example.

G2 User review of Marketo Engage

Adobe bought Marketo Engage to help brands map the buyer journey. It offers advanced segmentation, personalization, and campaign management. Businesses that need to focus on account-based marketing automation will benefit from Marketo.

Lead capture tools, including landing pages and signup forms, can be built with coding knowledge to grow subscriber lists. 

Lead nurturing automation workflows help guide prospects through the customer journey. Users can set triggered automation from website visits and send SMS and email campaigns to contacts.

You can set up extensive reporting features with some expertise on your team. They will need to be able to manage timestamps rather than customer history.

If you’re looking for a CRM to help your business, Adobe integrates with Netsuite CRM.

G2 rating 4.1/5

Marketo Engage pricing

Marketo Engage offers no free plan or trial. 

Businesses must contact Adobe for a pricing quote, and paid plans are cited as starting at $895/month. 

Downsides to Adobe Marketo Engage

While Marketo is robust, it’s not intuitive. If you choose to use Marketo, you will need a dedicated expert on your team to manage the platform. 

Unlike HubSpot and Brevo, Marketo offers no free plan or trial, and the entry pricing is expensive. 

Reports are not automated and require dedicated support to create.  

In all, Marketo Engage is extremely robust and has more of a legacy-type feel to it compared to competitors. However, larger companies with a dedicated team will benefit most from Marketo. 

4. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

B2B marketing automation platform example, Pardot.

G2 user review of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Formerly known as Salesforce Pardot until 2022, Salesforce’s marketing platform integrates with Salesforce CRM. It focuses on account-based marketing and personalized interactions.

With lead nurturing and scoring capabilities, you can automate the customer journey. All prospect and client history is stored in your dashboard for easy access. Campaign reports give you a detailed look at campaign metrics. From there, it’s easy to gain insights and measure success.  

G2 rating 4.0/5

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement pricing

Plans start at $1,250/month on the Growth plan, which includes landing pages and social media connectors. The dynamic content add-on is $400/month. The Growth plan includes 10,000 contacts.

To get into advanced automation, you will need the Plus plan, starting at $2,750/month. Advanced automation includes dynamic content. 

G2 rating: 4.0/5

Downsides to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Email marketing is not their strong point. The new drag-and-drop builder creates different reports than email campaigns from the original email builder.  

To sum it up, “Pardot is rather expensive and probably not suitable for small enterprises. The e-mail managing/creation/customization interface needs to be worked out. Even though it works great most of the time, it tends to have issues with Gmail servers” – GetApp third-party review.

5. ActiveCampaign – Best for premade automation

B2B marketing automation platform example, ActiveCampaign.

G2 user review of ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign has what you can expect from a B2B marketing automation platform. 

You can build email sequences for welcome emails, reminders, and more. Audience segmentation helps you plan marketing campaigns, and campaign results give you insight into key metrics like open and bounce rates. 

Contact lists and split automation help you organize prospects and nurture them efficiently down the sales funnel. 

ActiveCampaign is also known for email marketing automation. Those looking for a more multichannel approach can buy an SMS add-on and reach clients on their phones. 

G2 rating: 4.5/5

ActiveCampaign pricing

ActiveCampaign has a Lite Plan, which isn’t obviously advertised. It starts at $39/month for 1,000 contacts. However, features are limited, and the only automation is for email. 

Landing pages, e-commerce automation, and automation maps become available on the Plus Plan for $70/month and 1,000 contacts.

Split automation is available on the Professional Plan and higher. The Professional Plan starts at $187/month and includes 2,500 contacts.

Downsides to ActiveCampaign

You can’t send email campaigns to contacts in a specific geographic location. The email drag-and-drop builder is also a bit basic, with no stroke-based shapes, only fills, for example. 

Users who enjoy cookie-cutter automation recipes will benefit from ActiveCampaign. Those looking for something with more multichannel features might do better elsewhere. 

Get started with B2B marketing automation

The best way to find the platform is to ask for a demo or try a free account. Also, keep a list of your must-have features. This will help you narrow down your search. 

The Brevo Marketing Platform is an excellent software for building automation workflows. Try Brevo for free, easily automate multichannel campaigns, and stay in touch with your clients when it counts.

Start B2B Marketing Automation with Brevo

Visual workflow builder, if/then logic, multichannel steps, performance tracking and ready templates to use. Free for 2,000 contacts.

Open my free Brevo account now >>

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