One of our clients was spending about 15 hours a week on tasks that the software should have handled. For example, they were sending follow-up emails individually. They were logging into Instagram, then Facebook, then LinkedIn to post the same update three times. They were also copying leads from a web form into a spreadsheet by hand.
Situations like this are exactly why businesses start looking for the best marketing automation tools. We set them up with an automation tool, and they regained those hours within a month. That story isn’t unusual. We see it repeated with almost every business that makes the switch.
So What Is Marketing Automation, Exactly?
People overcomplicate this. Here’s what it actually means: software running the tasks you keep doing by hand. Someone fills out a form on your site, and instead of you writing an email at 3pm when you finally remember, a sequence fires automatically. Your social posts go out at the right times without you logging into anything. New leads get ranked so your team calls the promising ones first instead of working through a random list.
You decide what should happen and when. The software does it while you work on things that actually need a human brain.
The return is where it gets compelling. Nucleus Research data compiled by Revenue Memo shows businesses earning $5.44 back for every $1 spent on automation. 76% see positive ROI within the first year. We had to double-check that 544% figure when we first came across it. Turns out it’s an average, which means a lot of businesses are doing even better.
And it’s not just a big-company play either. We pushed automation onto a few reluctant smaller clients a while back and every single one came back wondering why they’d waited. Entrepreneurs HQ puts small business adoption at 45% and climbing. Meanwhile, 63% of companies outperforming their competitors already have automation in place. Correlation isn’t causation, but that’s a hard number to ignore.
Before You Look at Tools, Ask Yourself Two Things
We’ve watched clients spend weeks comparing feature lists when the real question is much simpler: does this thing plug into what I’m already using? A CRM that doesn’t sync with your automation platform is just a new problem wearing a different hat. And the other one people skip over: will anyone on your team actually open this after the novelty wears off?
Automation is hard to get right. 73% of marketers say so, according to Dataopedia. But most of that difficulty comes from picking a platform that’s too complex for the team using it. Match the tool to the humans, not the other way around.
The 10 Tools Worth Knowing About
1. HubSpot
The biggest name in the space and the one we get asked about most.38% market share according to Datanyze, which is enormous. HubSpot tries to be everything: CRM, email, social, automation, analytics, all under one login. The workflow builder is genuinely one of the best we’ve used, especially for people building their first automations.
The problem? Price. HubSpot’s free plan lets you poke around, but the real automation power is locked behind the Professional tier. We’ve seen businesses sign up excitedly and then quietly downgrade three months later when the invoice hits. Great platform. Just make sure you’ve done the maths before committing.
2. ActiveCampaign
Our go-to recommendation for most small and mid-sized clients. We’ve set this one up more times than any other tool on this list.
What sold us initially was the segmentation. You can build automations that trigger based on incredibly specific behaviour without touching a line of code. “Customer visited this page three times in a week but didn’t buy” level of specific. Costs less than HubSpot at every tier, though it does scale up as your contact list grows. For most of the businesses we work with, this is where we start the conversation.
3. Brevo
Formerly Sendinblue, rebranded to a name that nobody can quite remember. But the product itself is solid for what it is: a low-cost way to test whether automation works for your business. Free tier gives you 300 emails per day, which is enough to build a couple of workflows and see what happens before you spend anything.
One thing to know upfront: the analytics are thin until you hit the Business tier. So if data and testing matter to you (and they should), budget for that level from the start or plan to upgrade quickly.
4. Mailchimp
Everyone knows Mailchimp. It started as an email tool and has bolted on landing pages, basic CRM, social posting, and automation over the years. Tons of tutorials online if you get stuck, friendly interface, very low learning curve.
Here’s our honest opinion on it: Mailchimp is a great starting point and a mediocre long-term solution. We’ve migrated several clients away from it once their automation needs outgrew what Mailchimp handles comfortably. It’s the training wheels of automation. Nothing wrong with training wheels. But eventually you take them off.
5. Klaviyo
Ecommerce businesses specifically should pay attention here. Klaviyo was built from the ground up for online retail. The way it tracks purchase behaviour and customer lifecycle data is a step above what general-purpose tools offer.
Here’s a number that stuck with us from Klaviyo’s benchmark data: their top-performing email workflows generate $16.96 per recipient. The average? $1.94. That gap is mostly about how well the automation is designed, not which plan you’re paying for. We think about that number every time a client asks whether the setup process really matters that much. It does.
6. GetResponse
The odd one on this list in the best way. GetResponse bundles webinar hosting into its platform, which none of the others do natively. We recommended it to a client who was running monthly training sessions and paying separately for Zoom, an email tool, and a landing page builder. GetResponse replaced all three. Not the most powerful automation on this list, but for service businesses that generate leads through educational content, the combination is hard to beat.
7. Marketo (Adobe)
The heavy machinery. Multi-channel campaign orchestration at a scale most businesses reading this post won’t need for a while. We include it because it’s useful to know what’s out there when your business hits the point where mid-range tools feel limiting. Implementation takes months. The learning curve is real. Expect to need dedicated staff to run it properly. But for companies at that stage, nothing on this list competes with it.
8. Zoho
This one lives and dies by whether you’re already in the Zoho ecosystem. Already on Zoho CRM or Zoho Books? The automation module slots in seamlessly and the combined cost undercuts most alternatives. Starting from scratch with no existing Zoho products? Skip to the next one.
9. Drip
Klaviyo’s quieter competitor. Aimed at direct-to-consumer brands in the mid-range, not enterprise-scale ecommerce. The personalisation tools are where the value sits. We’ve seen it work particularly well for businesses at the stage where they know their customers well enough for personalised flows to actually change revenue numbers.
10. EngageBay
The cheapest serious option on this list. CRM and automation bundled together at a price that makes trying automation essentially risk-free. We’ve pointed solopreneurs and very early-stage businesses here when paying for HubSpot or ActiveCampaign felt premature. Free plan caps at 250 contacts, which is tight, but enough to learn the basics and decide whether to invest further.
The Real Differentiator Isn’t the Tool
27% of companies rate their automation maturity as advanced. That means roughly three out of four businesses with automation tools aren’t getting what they could from them. They build a welcome email, maybe set up an abandoned cart reminder, and leave it at that for months.
We’ve inherited client accounts on expensive platforms where the automations were so basic that a free-tier tool could have done the same job. The tool didn’t fail them. The setup did.
That’s why how you build your automations matters at least as much as which platform you choose. Got a tool collecting dust? Spending your afternoons on tasks that software should be handling? We can help sort that out.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is marketing automation in simple terms?
Someone fills out a form on your website. Instead of you remembering to email them later (which, let’s be honest, sometimes doesn’t happen until the next day), a pre-written email goes out automatically within minutes. Two days later, another one. A week after that, a third. You set this up once and it just runs. That’s the basic idea. Scale it up across email, social media, lead management, and you’ve got marketing automation.
Can a small business actually afford this?
Almost certainly. The “automation is expensive” perception comes from enterprise-level pricing that has nothing to do with what a small business would pay. Brevo’s free tier gives you 300 emails a day. EngageBay lets you start with 250 contacts at no cost. Even HubSpot has a free version. We usually tell clients to start with a free plan, see whether it actually changes how they work, and only upgrade once they’ve outgrown it.
How long before I see results?
Faster than most people expect for the basics. We usually have a client’s first automated lead follow-up sequence running within two weeks, and that alone tends to move conversion numbers noticeably in the first month. Getting everything wired up properly (CRM talking to automation, segmentation actually working, workflows tested and refined) is more like two to three months. Worth the patience, though.
I already have a tool but I’m not sure it’s working. What should I do?
We get this one a lot. Last client who said this to us had been paying for ActiveCampaign for over a year. When we looked under the hood, the only automation running was a single welcome email they’d written during the trial period and never touched again. Open rates were fine. But nothing was actually happening after that first email. No nurture sequence. No lead scoring. No follow-up triggers. The tool was working perfectly. Nobody had told it to do anything useful. If that sounds familiar, start by looking at what’s actually running and whether leads are moving through your pipeline or just sitting there.
Which tool should I pick if I have no idea where to start?
ActiveCampaign if you want something you’ll probably still be using in two years. Brevo if you want to spend nothing and just see what all the fuss is about. Both are solid entry points. The one thing we’d strongly advise against is jumping straight to HubSpot Professional or Marketo. You’ll end up paying for capabilities you won’t touch for a long time, and the complexity can actually slow you down when you’re still learning the fundamentals.
