Best Marketing Software in 2024

There are scores of good quality marketing tools out there. Top marketing software providers tout their system as the best in the online business environment. But, do not go by the marketing gimmicks of the vendors. You know best what your business needs are. We have prepared this buyer’s guide to help you select the best marketing software app for your requirements. You can also check out our article about top 10 marketing software platforms to do a comparison of the best tools on the market.

Shortlist a few top vendors and try out their products by subscribing to their free trial or demo. You can select the list of apps that have the highest SmartScore rankings and customer satisfaction rating in our marketing software reviews. Get feedback from your company’s users and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each software objectively to zero in on the right app for your needs. The best thing to do when looking for the best among a number of marketing tools is to try services that currently have the highest results in our SmartScore and Customer Satisfaction Rating in the Marketing software category: Infusionsoft reviews, Offerslook, Firecart, Inboundli, RankActiv, RedCappi, Campaign Monitor, OSI Affiliate Software, Hatchbuck, and ActiveCampaign.

Before jumping on the bandwagon and deciding on your next online marketing system, try to understand the details of your marketing needs, and check whether you fall within some of the following categories:

• Small Businesses automating marketing for the first time. Small companies want to generate a higher return on investment, which is why they are the ones that can recognize the success of such software the most. These systems simplify their strategies, and streamline campaigns to reach customers at a fraction of what they’re currently investing.
• Medium Businesses looking to improve efficiency. Medium companies are in a constant development process, and they need to improve lead management by nurturing buyers to a sales-ready position, and by scoring them to examine which ones are more willing to buy. They need marketing software to automate the process, and to let agents focus on more attention-demanding aspects.
• Large Businesses in need of marketing analytics. Large companies have long surpassed initial marketing automation, and are looking to upgrade their software with powerful analytic features. Accurate analytics will accelerate and improve lead management, allow them to track ROI and optimize their fractional attribution models.  In the age of big data, large businesses have to dig through even more complex layers of information to uncover relevant insights. Traditional analysis methods no longer work as efficiently, thus the need for a more up-to-date and robust marketing analytics system.

Large Enterprises use marketing software tools to draft, manage, and maintain their complex promotional strategies, the same as their campaigns and marketing resources. The critical function they’re pursuing is automation of their marketing processes, cross-channel marketing engagement, and the compulsory analytic capabilities which forecast opportunities and showcase the full picture of their marketing results.

As these systems are usually enabled with digital asset management, web content management, and the standard campaign tracking, enterprises manage to save time, efforts, and money without compromising their promotional techniques. Purchasing such marketing system is way more cost-effective than running several programs to cover the functions in question.

Additionally, a marketing system’s data analytics function must be reliable. Quick and agile decision-making contributes to a business’ competitiveness, but this will only work if based on accurate and relevant information.

• Infusionsoft: A proven marketing automation leader for small business, centralizing all daily activities and customer interactions in a single productivity set.
• HasOffers: A great performance marketing app that supports agencies, advertisers, and networks in managing direct public relationships.
• Moz: A popular SEO tool provider with admirable analytical features that helps companies improve their SEO programs, develop better SEO practices, and drive more traffic to their websites.
• KISSmetrics: A powerful platform that enables companies to determine, monitor, and enhance marketing and other metrics relevant to their business.
• Similarweb: A web measurement leader with highly competitive online intelligence, used by companies to review and compare performance against their competitors.

Read about other widely used apps in this category in this article on the top 15 marketing solutions.

Many types of marketing software are widely used. The following ones are among the most popular: Account Based Marketing, Call Tracking, Campaign Management, Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Digital Signage, Email Marketing, Event Management, Kiosk, Marketing Automation, Marketing Resource Management, Mobile Marketing, Print Fulfillment, Public Relations (PR), Search Marketing, and Social Media Management.

Depending on deployment, you can choose one of these popular marketing software options:

• On-premise – You pay a one-time license fee to install the software on your server in your office premises. You pay only once and can keep the system under your control. But, you have to pay high upfront costs for the license fee, servers, maintenance, and IT support team.
• SaaS and Cloud-Hosted – The vendors maintains your data on their server. You only need to pay a relatively low monthly or annual fee based on the number of users who access the system via the Internet. The benefit is the cost is low.
  Plus, you don’t have to worry about maintaining the server and using a technical support team. The vendor takes care of maintenance and upgrades, and some offer regular data backups as well. SaaS package prices are calculated based on the number of users and clients, as well as features used. Large companies can make use of enterprise solutions for which vendors offer pricing by quote.

Aside from deployment, there three main types of marketing software–advanced workflow automation, marketing intelligence, and marketing automation. Depending on your business’ needs, you can narrow down your options based on these types of marketing systems.

A top quality marketing software app can help you make the most of your leads and maximize sales. Look out for the following essential components while selecting a suitable system:

• Lead Management – The software should enable you to attract buyers and nurture them with personalized campaigns. You can then pass them on to sales to close deals. You should be able to identify promising leads to be able to close faster. Improve your marketing efforts by tracking effective campaigns. Use automated, personalized campaigns to engage potential buyers at all stages of their lifecycle.
• Sales Insight – The marketing software should help your sales team to prioritize and interact with promising leads to close deals faster. You should be able to identify hot leads and engage them with smart campaigns. Understand the moments when a lead shows interest in buying your product. This can help your reps be prepared at all stages of the sales cycle to engage promising leads at the right time for effective results, as well as to maximize conversion ratios and boost profitability and customer satisfaction.
• Email Marketing – The marketing software should have a useful email marketing component. You should be able to prepare a detailed profile of your target customers and engage them with relevant email marketing messages based on their demographics, preferences, and individual behaviors. The app should offer smart automated A/B testing to help your improve the outcomes of your campaigns. It should provide in-depth reporting and analytics features that help you get a clear idea of the impact and ROI of the emails you send to prospective customers.
• Social Marketing – The software should help you use social media websites effectively to learn about your customers. You can use these networks to get new customers, engage existing customers and create brand advocates by engaging them using referrals programs, sweepstakes, polls etc. You should be able to offer shareable videos and social media sharing buttons to enable your customers to share your content with their social contacts. Plus, the software should offer social metrics to see which social marketing activities drive conversions and sales, and should cover traditional media in an equally good and personalized way.
• Integrations – One of the things you should consider before getting a marketing software is its capability to integrate with your existing systems. If you already have a CRM system that works well for your business, the best marketing software would be the one that can work best with your CRM. A smooth relationship between these two software can yield a number of benefits, such as seamless transfer and prioritization of customer information, and more.

Our in-depth comparisons indicate that these are the main benefits companies experience when using a solid online marketing system:

• Focusing on the final business mission. The first effect of optimizing and automating marketing is free time to focus on more important aspects of the business flow. Without such system, poring proper analytics and researching marketing opportunities would take significantly more time and money.
• Marketing consistency. Automated marketing eliminates the risk of human error, as there is only software to control the wheel, and such cannot be influenced by opinions and feelings, or interrupted as an employee could. Therefore, the entire marketing strategy is smoother and more consistent, and you have a variety of tools to promote your business even when you’re not directing it.
• Quality reporting. Quick and efficient reports are the dream of every busy company struggling to outreach and identify changes and optimal decisions. Marketing software is tailored for the purpose, as it usually comes with a set of advanced reporting tools, which are as well customizable and easy to personalize.
• Lead nurturing. This is a benefit many companies don’t expect, but marketing software is indeed empowered for lead generation and nurturing. Assuming that your business relies on leads too, you can use these systems to reach as many people in the cyberspace as your business needs.
• Multi-channel efficiency. The internet is good because it allows us to connect with people in many different ways, which can be even more valuable in the business sense of the word. You can use your marketing automation system to reach people through emails, social media, remarketing, ads, and so on.
• Eliminating practices that don’t work. Obtaining a perfect batting average is the blessing of few, and that’s not because most marketers don’t work, but rather because they don;t have a clean insight on what they’re doing. Soon after implementing a marketing automation software you will see the difference in the performance of your campaigns, and you can use its valuable analytics to improve the least efficient ones.

Good quality marketing software systems are evolving and reinventing themselves to keep up with the changing times. Here are four important trends in the continuing development of marketing software:

• Systems are Becoming Easier to Use – Many users are put off by marketing software systems with complicated interfaces. As more and more businesses are opting to use marketing automation over standard email marketing, vendors are making it simpler for these companies to adapt by making sure their systems are easy to learn and use.
• Computing Everywhere – Mobile devices are becoming more popular and this trend is creating major challenges for businesses. Good quality marketing software apps are catering to this trend by ensuring their systems are accessible on popular mobile platforms to enable users to be productive even in the field.
• Social Intelligence – Canny marketers are making use of social intelligence to stay ahead of the pack. They are using social media channels to listen to their customers and become more responsive to their needs and feedback. Social intelligence is helping marketers to look into the future and optimize their products effectively to cater to changing customer requirements.

It is also important to evaluate the drawbacks of marketing software vendors while you go about making your choice. Watch out for these potential issues and check if the vendor is vulnerable to any of them:

• Data Security – You have entrusted your data to a third-party service provider. This data is accessed by your employees with mobile devices everywhere. So, it is important to ensure only the right people get access to the sensitive data. Make sure ex-employees are prevented from accessing the system after leaving the company. Do your homework and a select a vendor that uses the latest data security technology.
• Outages – A lengthy outage can play havoc with your company’s productivity and revenue. Therefore, read the vendor’s SLA (Service Level Agreement) carefully and analyze their historical performance before entrusting your applications and data to the cloud. The vendor should guarantee a very good uptime percentage and ensure outages are kept as less as possible.
• Compliance – Since your data is stored in a third-party vendor’s datacenter, it can be a problem to comply with government data-protection rules. Do research and find out which regulations have to be followed by your business. Engage the SaaS vendor and ensure their solution helps you meet statutory regulatory requirements.
• Data Mobility – The SaaS vendor you select may go out of business or you may need to change your service provider for some other reason. For these reasons, make sure you will be able to easily move your processes and data from one vendor to another. Avoid getting locked in with one vendor by preparing an effective exit strategy for data mobility.

Artificial intelligence is turning software systems into smarter machines to boost customer engagement. Machine learning is an AI technology that hinges on its ability to automatically improve based on experience.  In marketing systems, machine learning helps create a more personalized interaction with target customers.

Machine learning tools are often used in social media platforms. Facebook, for example, uses machine learning tools to recognize the users’ interests and tailor content or product recommendations for them. LinkedIn uses the same technology to recommend content, jobs, etc., that their users might be interested in based on their history and behavior within the network.

Chatbot is another AI-assisted tool that enhances customer experience. Used mainly for providing customer support, chatbots can carry out conversational marketing. It is also being continuously developed to be able to provide a more human-like experience to its users.

Search engine optimized content and carefully crafted images make a powerful marketing duo. But in this day and age when video streaming has crossed the YouTube borders, video marketing is gaining more traction and rightfully so.

Video marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach the target audience and engage their attention. Short videos (15 to 30-second clips or more) are everywhere on social media, video streaming platforms, and even on gaming applications.

Video ads these days are also no longer just regular clips. There are interactive video ads now that are boosting customer engagement. According to a study conducted by Magna, interactive video advertisements are 32% more memorable than non-interactive ones. And although the user does not click on the videos itself, the video ad’s interactive nature can drive high impact on the intent to purchase.