5 Best eCommerce Marketing Automation Platforms for 2020

In the last two decades, e-commerce marketing has witnessed a sea of change.

As digital channels gained the lion’s share of priority, automation came forward to play a vital role in deciding the course of business. With more number of customers taking to order online, new age payment solutions and digital wallets are fast replacing regular debit and credit cards. Reportedly, more than 60 percent of marketing leaders in 2019 has embraced at least one such marketing automation platform that runs on business intelligence extracted from existing databases to foster actionable analytics across personalized marketing campaigns. Artificial Intelligence, along with Deep Learning, has made automation platforms a potent tool for marketers to do away with laborious monotony of repetitive tasks and bring to a business, the much-needed edge in a competitive scenario. From mining prospective buyer’s data, accessing digital consumer behavior designs, marketing automation platforms help strategize the right kind of content to pump sales conversions. Here’s a look at five such best performing names for an e-commerce business to look forward to in 2020.

1. Omnisend

Widely appreciated for its innovative, yet easy-to-use templates, Omnisend works via one dashboard structure to facilitate the creation and sharing of marketing campaigns. Every single customized communication is built on behavior analysis, promo codes inclusion, product recommendations, and discounts. The pricing is directly proportional to the number of subscribers one has. Hence, one is at complete liberty to control their expenditure for each campaign, which makes Omnisend an ideal choice for any small or medium-sized business.

Key features:

• Powerful inbound marketing features like the resending of newsletters, re-engagement of customers via call-to-action campaigns which is further infused with CTR features such as discount vouchers.
• It lets you create journeys for your customers with the help of personalized messages triggered across a plethora of events. The workflow is entirely automated and doesn’t require any intervention whatsoever.
• Besides user data analysis and performance metrics, Omnisend has actionable items included within its reports to enhance and improve your campaigns. Such a feedback mechanism directly influences conversion rates.

Pricing

You can avail of a 14 day trial period with Omnisend restricted to 2000 emails per day. All paid plans are charged according to the number of subscribers that falls right across three distinct price bands.

2. Drip

Specialized in automated email marketing, Drip facilitates businesses to seamless integrate with e-commerce sites to the likes of Woocommerce and Paypal. Furthermore, it also makes way for advertising across social media platforms. Although it’s not a fully equipped marketing automation software, Drip’s service offerings do the work right. Coupled with competitive pricing, Drip’s making it easy for both small and medium businesses to realize their goals on a constrained budget.

Key Features:

• Contact lists are segmented and oriented towards targeted campaigns.
• Users shall receive mail in accordance with the tracking data that helps in the enhancement of open rates.
• The presence of an interactive workflow that helps shape smart campaigns without any manual intervention.
• Drip also offers additional capturing tools that include pop-ups, embedded forms that impact the contact list of users to grow with the utmost ease.

One gets to enjoy a 14 day trial period before the company can ask you to sign up for any of their paid plans. Drip Basic as well as Drip Pro plans come with DRIP Automation Suite and are recommended for new businesses looking for customers, and any small or medium level startups looking to ramp up their presence.

Pricing

3. Hubspot

One of the most popular automation platforms preferred by many leading marketers globally, Hubspot has carved a niche for themselves. Hubspot’s comprehensive automation suite with top-notch marketing funnel is fully equipped to meet the ever-growing demands of any small or medium range business. Starting with landing pages that promise higher conversions followed by SMS and email marketing along with integrated workflow for Salesforce as well. Versatility and freedom to explore freely is what makes Hubspot standout in the market.

Key Features:

• A complete end-to-end marketing solution that is inclusive of hosting, optimization of landing page for SEO needs, social media, and email marketing along with content distribution using pre-set marketing funnels and lead management and an easy to use analytics dashboard.
• One of the finest designed pre-set marketing funnel that helps one and all business owners distribute and present their content easily and in just a few steps. Easy-to-use drag and drop feature to create landing pages geared towards maximum conversions. 
• Hubspot helps in realizing outreach efforts on large-scale that includes tracking leads, emails that need to be delivered with a personal touch and loads of discounts to help direct clients back to one’s site, thus driving conversions in just a few clicks.

Pricing

Although Hubspot’s automation platform for marketing remains free, the free version comes with quite a few features of the marketing automation suites.  If you are an eCommerce business owner looking to automate your marketing through Hubspot’s platform, it is advised that you sign up for a paid plan that starts at just $35/month. 

One of the major downsides of Hubspot is probably the Marketing Automation Suite that is only available across paid plans like ‘Professional” and “Enterprise”. Also, both plans are a little pricey and might not fit the budget of many businesses that are just starting out.

4. Autopilot

A cloud-based automation platform for marketing, Autopilot is perhaps one of the most visually appealing systems that are out there doing its job right. The main target group is small and medium business owners who are taking a first step towards bettering their online presence and expanding their reach out. Autopilot offers active email engagement, SMS marketing, lead generation and other modes of offline communication as well. The interface is a breeze to use, courtesy customized templates that are backed by a dedicated customer support team.

Key Features: 

• Autopilot lets you visualize your campaign right from the time of planning. This is great for small and medium business owners to check how their business plans are shaping up and what else needs to be done to get things going.
• Real-time tracking across all activities, starting with user onboarding and engagement.
• Flexibility towards the creation of datasets and subsequent sharing across multiple platforms
• Easy sync in option with external tools of any kind.

Pricing 

One can start using Autopilot with a 30 day trial period that allows one to send no more than 1000 emails each day. All premium packages for Autopilot sets its price increasingly for each block of 500 contacts. 

5. Marketo

Marketo operates under the hood of Adobe and was primarily designed to enhance business strategies for medium and large scale e-commerce businesses. The tool offers full-fledged marketing automation services that fit the profile of one and all B2B companies. Starting with automated channels for maximum engagement with access to powerful forms, landing page builders, social media with behavior tracking ability for all, Marketo is an excellent find for B2B businesses wanting to scale up their game or usher in new leads.

Key Features: 

• It allows one to create prospects to boost sales channels and support lead scoring with promising conversion rates using customer databases.
• Extensive reporting feature that deeply analyses every campaign to generate revenue for each account.
• A dedicated “Customer Engagement Stream” that is responsible for a robust outreach program that is loaded with preset responses across a plethora of event and its outcomes to guide customers back to your site.  

Pricing 

Unlike other tools, Marketo does not have a pricing table. Any business wanting to use Marketo should have to directly reach the company following which a customized plan can be chalked to meet their needs. However, there is a “request for a demo” link present on their site for users to check out.

Conclusion

Investing in a marketing automation platform demands you conduct due diligence for pricing and features on offer. Sadly, the majority of such platforms do not offer the necessary features independently. Instead, it comes as a package offering with features like lead management, CRM integration, social media marketing, and much more. Now, not all such paid packages are inclusive of workflows that are automated. Hence, before you move on with your purchase, ensure such features are included in the buyout so that you don’t shell out extra. Also important is to consider the effectiveness of your purchase. Ask yourself. 

How dynamic are the automation features included in the package? Is there any specific feature that can usher in leads promising a rewarding future? Are you already working for a platform that offers similar services? Can you measure and tally them both? Any feature that looks swanky but negatively impacts ROI is a strict no-no for any business.  Hence, stick with tools that make way for benefits driven by real-time automation, fostering delightful customer relationships.

Keval Padia

Keval Padia is the founder & CEO of Nimblechapps, a fast-growing mobile app development company. The current innovation and updates of the field lures him to express his views and thoughts on certain topics.