The Best Marketing Automation Tools for Small Business, Chosen by the First Job
Which marketing automation tool suits a small business? Choose by the first job you want off your plate, then see which of seven tools fits it.
One of our clients was losing about 15 hours a week to work that software should have been doing. Follow-up emails went out one at a time. The same update was posted to Instagram, then to Facebook, then again to LinkedIn. Leads from the website form were copied into a spreadsheet by hand. We set them up on one tool and they had those hours back within a month.
That is the case for marketing automation tools for small business in one paragraph. The harder part is choosing one, because most comparison lists rank platforms by features a small team will never switch on. This guide starts from the job you want to stop doing and works back to the tool.
What is marketing automation for a small business?
Marketing automation is software that carries out the repeat steps of your marketing once you have set the rules. Someone fills in your enquiry form and a reply goes out within minutes. Two days later a second email follows, and the lead is already in your CRM with a note of what they asked about. You write the steps once and the software repeats them for every new lead.
Which marketing automation tool should a small business start with?
For most small service businesses, ActiveCampaign is the safest place to start. If you want to test the idea before paying anything, the free plan from Brevo is enough to build a first workflow. Online shops are better served by Klaviyo. A business already running on Zoho should stay inside Zoho, and HubSpot earns its place when a sales team will work in the CRM every day.
| Tool | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | Service businesses that follow up enquiries by email | The price climbs as your contact list grows |
| Brevo | Testing automation on a free plan | You will move to a paid plan once the workflows prove themselves |
| Mailchimp | A first newsletter with a simple welcome sequence | Automations that branch are easier to build elsewhere |
| Klaviyo | Online shops that sell through Shopify or similar | Built for retail, with little to offer a service business |
| GetResponse | Businesses that teach through webinars | Worth it mainly if the webinars matter to you |
| HubSpot | Teams that will live inside the CRM | Full automation sits in the Professional tier |
| Zoho | Businesses already on Zoho CRM | Little reason to pick it if you are starting from nothing |
Start with the job you want to stop doing
Feature lists make every platform look equivalent. What separates them is how well each one handles the specific task you hand over first. Pick that task before you look at a single pricing page.
| First job | What the automation does | Tools that do it well |
|---|---|---|
| Replying to website enquiries | Replies within minutes and files the lead in the CRM | ActiveCampaign, HubSpot |
| Welcoming new subscribers | Runs a short sequence after someone joins your list | Brevo, Mailchimp |
| Recovering abandoned baskets | Emails shoppers who left before paying | Klaviyo |
| Filling webinars or training sessions | Sends invitations and reminders, then the replay | GetResponse |
Build that one workflow and leave it running for a few weeks. Add the second only when the first is doing its job without you checking on it.
The tools, one at a time
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign puts email automation and a CRM in one place, and its segmentation lets you send each contact the emails that match what you know about them, without writing code. For a business that lives on enquiries, the lead follow-up is where most of the saved hours come from.
Brevo
Brevo, which used to be called Sendinblue, has a free plan and a no-code workflow builder. That makes it the cheapest honest test of whether automation changes anything for your business. Build one welcome sequence, watch it for a month, then decide.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is where many small businesses send their first newsletter, and the interface is friendly. It suits a welcome email and a regular newsletter. If you expect your automations to branch on what each contact does, start with a tool built around that.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo was built for online retail and connects directly to Shopify, so purchase history flows into every email it sends. If you sell products online, start here. If you sell a service, look elsewhere.
GetResponse
GetResponse is the unusual one because it hosts webinars inside the same platform as the email and automation. We recommended it to a client who ran monthly training sessions and was paying for Zoom on top of separate email and landing page tools. GetResponse replaced all of them.
HubSpot
HubSpot puts the CRM at the centre, which suits a business where a sales team follows up every lead. The catch is that the full automation sits in the Professional tier of Marketing Hub, so check what that tier costs for your team before you build around it.
Zoho
Zoho Marketing Automation makes sense when you already run Zoho CRM, because leads go straight from one into the other. Starting from scratch, there is no strong reason to choose it.
Why the tool is rarely the problem
A client came to us after paying for ActiveCampaign for more than a year. When we looked inside the account, the only automation running was a single welcome email written during the free trial. No follow-up sequence and no lead scoring. Open rates looked fine, so nobody had noticed that nothing happened after that first email.
The platform was working exactly as configured. It had simply never been asked to do anything useful. That is why the first thing to check in any account is what is actually running, before anyone suggests changing platform.
When a small business should wait
Automation multiplies what you already have. Sometimes that is the wrong thing to multiply.
- If enquiries are rare, automating their follow-up saves minutes. The bigger problem sits upstream, and marketing cannot always fix it.
- If you have no list of people who agreed to hear from you, an automation just sends more email to people who never asked. Build the list first, with a first-party data strategy.
- If your website form does not reliably send leads anywhere, fix the plumbing before adding anything on top. That is the setup work we cover under automations and workflow engineering.
- If nobody on the team will open the tool after the first month, choose the simplest one on this list or wait until someone will.
Frequently asked questions
How much time can marketing automation save a small business?
It depends on how much repeat work you do by hand today. The client in the opening paragraph got back about 15 hours a week, but they were doing nearly everything manually. A business that already replies to enquiries quickly will save less time and gain more in consistency.
Can a small business start with marketing automation for free?
Yes. Brevo has a free plan with a workflow builder, and several of the other tools offer free tiers or trials. Use the free version to prove one workflow works for you, and pay only when you need more than it allows.
How long before marketing automation shows results?
It depends on how much you automate. A single follow-up sequence is a small job, and its effect shows quickly in how fast enquiries get a reply. Connecting a CRM and testing several workflows is a bigger project, so judge it on the first workflow before you add the rest.
Do I need a separate CRM as well?
Only if your automation tool does not include one. ActiveCampaign and HubSpot both have a CRM built in. If you already use another CRM, check that it syncs with the automation platform before you buy anything, because a CRM that does not talk to your automations is one more place to copy data by hand.
I already pay for a tool and nothing seems to be happening. What should I check?
Open the list of active automations and read what each one does. Then look at a recent lead and trace what happened to it after the first email. If the answer is "nothing", the tool is fine and the setup needs work.
Salty Lavender, a full-service marketing agency in Faro, sets up and runs marketing automation for small businesses. If you have a tool gathering dust, or hours going to tasks that software could handle, tell us what you are doing by hand or write to hello@saltylavender.com.