Looking for an upgrade to your current marketing automation tools? Or on the hunt for a new solution to solve a specific challenge? We’re here to help.
We reached out to 10 marketing agency owners in the US and UK and compiled their favorite marketing automation tools in this guide. We also highlight the features and prices of each tool.
The article is quite long so please feel free to use the Table of Contents on the left-hand corner to skip to the part you’d like to read first.
Otherwise, let’s dig in!
The agency world is competitive, and the biggest challenge marketing agencies face is to scale up. To land more clients, agencies need to have marketing processes and workflows nailed down to the T, so they can deliver better results for their clients in a shorter period of time.
At Adriel, when we talk to agencies about automating their reporting, we always hear that they’re drowning in manual tasks, data discrepancies, and inefficiencies.
Marketing automation tools can alleviate these pressures, offering numerous benefits:
That being said, let’s dig into the 15 marketing automation tools that come highly recommended by agencies.
For marketing agencies, automation tools are like “silent co-workers”, designed to help them achieve their goals efficiently.
Here are 15 marketing automation tools that agencies we've talked to recommend:
Built for marketing agencies, Adriel is a real-time marketing reporting platform with the highest customization and integration capabilities in the market.
With Adriel’s 650+ easy integrations, custom alarms and rules, and ready-made dashboard templates, agencies have reported to slash up to 60hrs/week on reporting.
Adriel Features:
Adriel Pricing:
Recommended by:
Adriel has been a total game-changer. It used to take us hours to build and standardize reports from scratch. Now they're ready as soon as we log in to Adriel - our clients are thrilled with our delivery speed!
-- Z. Kelsey, Founder and CEO at Hooked Advertising
Asana is an affordable and powerful project management and marketing automation tool to manage all teams and projects in granular detail. Digital marketing agencies also use this as a CRM.
Asana Features:
Asana Pricing:
Recommended by:
Asana is our business’s life source. The organization, notifications, assignment system, and hierarchy makes Asana stand out. We tried Monday as well, but it just couldn't compete with the intuitiveness of Asana.
-- EmilyKate Lorenz, Director of Online services at Hierographx
Hootsuite is an agency-focused social media automation tool for scheduling posts, monitoring activity, and tracking analytics across multiple social media platforms.
Hootsuite Features:
Hootsuite Pricing:
Recommended by:
Social media is a large part of our marketing portfolio and Hootsuite has made my job significantly easier and better.
-- Brenda Baker, Owner at Oak + Ivy Venue
Agorapulse is an easy-to-use social media automation and scheduling software, similar to HootSuite. The difference between the two seems to lie in the ease-of-use, value, and pricing. Agorapulse rated 4.5 out of 5 for value on G2.com, while HootSuite ranked 4.2. But HootSuite offers a more intuitive pricing structure as the pricing changes with the number of accounts, rather than features.
Agorapulse Features:
Agorapulse Pricing:
Recommended by:
Agorapulse has really changed our ability to follow up with customers and make sure we're being responsive and interacting with them when they want.
-- Jaime Mendelsohn, Director of Customer Happiness at Lovepop
ActiveCampaign is also another email marketing, CRM, and marketing automation platform with a vast library of pre-built automations. It’s ideal for B2C marketers looking to streamline tasks like lead scoring, sales lead rotation, and SMS communications.
ActiveCampaign Features:
Marketing automation:
Sales automation:
eCommerce marketing automation:
ActiveCampaign Pricing:
Recommended by:
I often suggest ActiveCampaign to my clients to ensure that whenever we get a lead, it's handled correctly every time, and it all happens automatically. My favorite feature of ActiveCampaign is that you can combine it with the site tracking to get more data automatically.
-- Phillip Stemann, Founder of Phillip Stemann
Constant Contact is a small-business-focused email marketing automation tool. Compared to MailChimp, Constant Contact appears to have a more intuitive interface, better delivery rates, and a helpful support team. Digital agencies we’ve talked to use this to nurture prospects and grow their business.
Constant Contact Features:
Constant Contact Pricing:
Recommended by:
We find Constant Contact to be the easiest email marketing automation tool to use. Its drag and drop email editor makes it especially intuitive.
-- Robert Bentz, President at Purplegator
IFTTT is a web-based marketing automation tool that automates workflows and tasks between apps and devices using simple "if this, then that" conditional statements. You can explore all their services here.
IFTTT Features:
IFTTT Pricing:
Recommended by:
We use IFTTT to create custom workflows that automate repetitive tasks across different apps and services. For example, we use it to automatically save email attachments to Dropbox or Google Drive.
-- Adam Hardingham, CEO at Rivmedia
Make.com is an advanced marketing automation platform for businesses and individuals looking to streamline workflows by connecting apps and automating tasks without needing extensive coding knowledge.
Make.com Features:
Make.com Pricing:
Recommended by:
Hands down the 'most' powerful tool in our arsenal. This powerful automation platform acts as the central hub for our tech stack, seamlessly connecting all our diverse tools and applications through robust 'no code' integrations.
-- Eric Melillo, Co-owner and CGO of Meticulosity
AdGen AI is a programmatic creative tool that uses Generative AI to create, test, and publish ads at scale on multiple channels.
Digital marketing agencies can not only get a collection of ad creatives with different styles in minutes, but they can also publish them across Meta or Google Ads in one-click.
AdGen AI Features:
AdGen AI Pricing:
Recommended by:
I LOOOVE how fast AdGen generates professionally designed ads!
-- J. Bollman, CMO of 62Above
For social media or PPC agencies that work a lot with videos, CapCut is an invaluable tool. From creating and editing videos to adding text and enhancing images and videos - CapCut does it all. It’s free and comes with ready-made templates and AI capabilities.
CapCut Features:
CapCut Pricing:
Recommended by:
We edit videos on CapCut for social media and it’s super user-friendly and helps us save a ton of time.
-- Gabriela Covay, Founder and Managing Director at Bright Valley Marketing
Figma is a collaborative web-based design tool favored by UX/UI designers for its user-friendly interface and robust teamwork features. It recently introduced a new tool - FigJam - an online whiteboard which helps with UX research, brand guides, marketing campaign plans, and more.
Figma Features:
Figma Pricing:
Recommended by:
"AI integration into design platforms like Figma have been a pleasant surprise. It helps speed along tedious design tasks and is specifically useful for the FigJam feature in Figma for structuring notes and making project ideas more organized."
-- EmilyKate Lorenz, Director of Online services at Hierographx
Keap is like a Hubspot alternative for boutique digital agencies and small businesses. It’s great for managing customer data, streamlining email marketing campaigns, and writing personalized messages, all-in-one place.
Keap Features:
CRM:
Marketing and email marketing automation
Sales
Keap Pricing:
Recommended by:
“InfusionSoft is our go-to for CRM and digital marketing automation!”
-- Claire Jarrett, Founder of Jarett Digital
WP Engine is a website hosting platform that simplifies the management of client websites by automating tasks such as updating WordPress versions and plugins. You can design, build, power, and manage WordPress, WooCommerce, and headless sites with WP Engine.
WP Engine Features:
Website tools:
WordPress Plugins:
WP Engine Pricing:
Recommended by:
“When you host client websites, there is so much ongoing work that needs to be done. Things like changing out WordPress versions and updating plugins are time consuming and difficult to monitor when you have dozens of client websites to administer. WP Engine makes it easier as it reports daily on what we need to update and repair.”
-- Robert Bentz, President at Purplegator
SE Ranking is a versatile SEO software suite that's ideal for small to medium-sized businesses and digital marketing agencies, offering comprehensive tools for keyword ranking, website analysis, and competitor tracking.
SE Ranking Features:
SE Ranking Pricing:
Recommended by:
"SE Ranking allows us to auto-generate detailed reports which not only save time but also ensure accuracy and up-to-date SEO data.."
-- Connor Hewson, Managing Director at Assured Marketing
Evernote is a flexible note-taking and organization app, perfect for individuals and teams seeking a centralized platform to capture, organize, and share notes and ideas across devices.
Evernote Features:
Evernote Pricing:
Recommended by:
"I use Evernote to capture and organize my notes, ideas, and tasks. Evernote helps me to write and edit my notes, add images and audio, and access and sync them across my devices."
--James Heartquist, Real Estate Buyer at WeBuyHouse Arizona
But with thousands of marketing automation tools in the market, how do you choose the right one for your business?
Typically, marketers value these features when they are looking for the best marketing automation solution:
Not every employee in your agency is tech-savvy. The best marketing automation tools understand this and fine-tune their product to be as easy to use as possible. They also offer an extensive library of resources, videos, documentation, product tours, to ensure everyone in your organization knows how to make the most of it.
The one specific feature I value most is ease of use. I can quickly adapt to using the marketing automation tool without having to take an online course or do extensive research and studying.
-- Jerail Fennell, CEO of NotedJax
In marketing, data is king. You want a solution that seamlessly integrates with all your other marketing automation tools so you can extract, import, and share data easily across different channels. This way, you can build a more accurate picture of who your customers are, how they behave, and how you can effectively grow your business.
Easy integration is so important. It would enable a comprehensive view of the customer journey, enhancing strategy development and decision-making processes.
-- Moody Mattan, Founder & CEO of BrandXR
Just aggregating data is not enough to craft a personalized marketing strategy. The right marketing automation software digs deep into your marketing data and provides suggestions for personalized campaigns that lead to higher conversions.
For agencies with multiple departments, teammates, and clients, custom rule creation can be a massive time-saver. Choose an automation tool that allows you to create your own metrics, dimensions, and workflows based on what you need to power up productivity.
I like to break processes down to granularities to find pain points or areas where we can be more effective.
-- EmilyKate Lorenz, Director of Online services at Hierographx, a full-service agency
One of the most tedious tasks of marketing is creating images for ads, social media posts, blogs, or other content pieces. Creative teams are stretched thin with mountains of requests from different departments. Creative automation tools can ease the burden and cut down image generation time to minutes instead of days.
Once you have some automation tools in your shortlist, follow these steps to automate your marketing agency:
This concludes our guide to marketing automation for agencies. If you need a marketing dashboard to streamline reporting, check out Adriel below.
Looking for a digital marketing automation tool to save time on marketing reporting? Adriel is here to help.
With dozens of grab-and-go dashboard templates, Adriel can save you massive time on aggregating and visualizing data on all your marketing campaigns.
Have a report you’d like us to replicate, or need some extra assistance? Get in touch and we’ll build a template within 48 hours free of charge.