7 Marketing Automation Leaders

by Drew Robb

Marketing automation is a fast-growing area of enterprise software, and it's no wonder, with its ability to unify sales and marketing teams and help them provide superior service to prospects and customers. According to consulting firm Raab Associates, revenues for B2B marketing automation systems exceeded $1.2 billion in 2014, with 40 percent growth in 2015. Among the top marketing automation vendors are Hubspot, which Marketing Automation Insider says has a 36.3 percent market share, followed by Infusionsoft (24.3 percent), Marketo (11 percent), Salesforce Pardot (8 percent), Oracle Eloqua (7.8 percent), Act-On (6.5 percent) and Silverpop (2.8 percent). Accordingly, those are the companies we cover in our marketing automation buying guide. A few of these vendors predominantly serve small and mid-size companies, however. For large enterprises, the marketing automation leader is Salesforce Pardot with a 31.2 percent market share, followed by Eloqua, HubSpot, Silverpop and Marketo. And to make sure your marketing automation initiatives are successful, check out our list of marketing automation best practices.

7 Marketing Automation Leaders

Interested in marketing automation? (You should be!) Familiarize yourself with seven leading marketing automation companies.

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Oracle Eloqua

Oracle's B2B cross-channel marketing automation solution Oracle Eloqua is said to help marketers plan and execute marketing automation campaigns while delivering a personalized customer experience for their prospects. These campaigns can scale for audiences across email, display search, video advertising and mobile. With integrated lead management and campaign creation, Eloqua is said to assist marketers in engaging the right audience at the right time. By gaining real-time insight through what Oracle terms the customers' Digital Body Language, sales teams can close more deals at a faster rate.

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Salesforce Pardot

Salesforce Pardot is the leading marketing automation application used by Salesforce customers. Its features let B2B marketers generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and demonstrate marketing accountability. It is backed by the Salesforce Customer Success platform. Adam Blitzer, senior vice president and GM at Salesforce Pardot, said the standard package is $1,000 per month, which includes email marketing, prospect tracking, lead nurturing and scoring, reporting and CRM integration. Higher priced packages also include analytics, content management features and Google AdWords integration.

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Act-On

Act-On provides software-as-a-service, cloud-based marketing to engage with buyers across the lifecycle. Its marketing automation platform is aimed more at small and medium-sized companies and is said to give them the value of an enterprise-level marketing automation system, without the complexity and IT resources typically required by enterprise suites. It includes tools to attribute marketing spend to revenue, track prospect activity from initial engagement to closed/repeat sales and reporting. Professional Edition pricing starts at $600 per month for 1,000 active contacts, while Enterprise Edition starts at $2,000 per month for 10,000 active contacts.

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Silverpop

Silverpop Marketing Automation offers users access to a visual campaign tool to create marketing programs which can incorporate the rules and logic to route their audience based on their behaviors. Messages can be sent at the exact time of day and day of the week that customers are most likely to be in their inboxes based on prior behavior. By setting various criteria, stronger leads can be isolated and forwarded to the call center or sent direct mail. Silverpop is owned by IBM.

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Marketo

Marketo's marketing automation software is said to help companies launch targeted, automated campaigns across marketing channels with less manual effort. Features include triggering of sales calls or relevant offers, and the ability to determine campaign and channel success. Pricing starts at $1,195 per month for up to 10,000 records.

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Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is a CRM, sales and marketing automation offering aimed mainly at small businesses. As such, it includes the ability to import and organize contact information, collect data about the behavior of leads, identify the hottest prospects, customize follow up and trigger marketing actions. Pricing starts at $299 per month for up to 2,500 contacts.

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HubSpot

HubSpot is a series of interconnected tools using workflows to send email, internal notifications, score leads and personalize website content to each viewer. Goals are assigned to each lead and when the goal is achieved, the campaign stops. Content tools help attract new visitors, provide new landing pages and convert traffic into leads. Pricing starts at $200 per month ($600 onboarding) for up to 100 contacts or $2,400 per month for 10,000 contacts.

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