The up-and-comers and a host of helpers
There are literally dozens of other companies in the marketing automation space that are worthy of consideration by a company looking for either a full solution or a piece of the pie.
That includes full solutions such as Pardot, which was founded in 2007 and has over a thousand customers with just 60 employees. It’s focused on B2B marketing automation and features a full suite, including email marketing, lead generation, ROI tracking, and social marketing. Acquired for almost $100 million by Exact Target in 2012 (which was then acquired itself by Salesforce), Pardot isn’t strong on social and doesn’t have the most sophisticated tools, but is very affordable.
Another option is InfusionSoft, which is B2C and bigger than Pardot, with over 10,000 clients — and built-in e-commerce capabilities. The company bills itself as CRM for small and medium firms, and it offers drag-and-drop campaigns with landing pages, special offers, email marketing, sales events, and reminders. More designed for small business and growing startups, it’s even more affordable at around $500/month.
Others include the very, very simple Net-Results;LoopFuse, with pricing from $350 to $1,495 per month); Silverpop, with a strong emphasis on email marketing; MindMatrix, which has a strong focus on sales; SalesFusion, which is similar but runs up to $3,000/month; and LeadFormix.
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Those who have chosen a platform for their marketing automation plans also often need additional tools, like Multichannel, which tracks your marketing spend; Custora, which helps you track your costs of customer acquisition; or Referly, which enables you to create your own rewards network. Whether it’s for content marketing or social media marketing, there are always additional tools to pick up, test, and use.
The key is ease of data integration — and there, Salesforce has a significant edge.