Top 54 Online Marketing Software (Jan 2023)

A Buyer's Guide to Online Marketing Solutions

Marketing Software Buyer’s Guide
 
If revenue directly comes from sales, sales, on the other hand, is the direct result of marketing. Maybe not all will agree on this premise but all would probably say yes when asked by this question: Are sales and marketing important elements of your business? Next to ROI, marketing conversion rate will more likely be the main focus of a well-versed modern-day internet marketer. Marketing is communicating the value of a product or service to a customer with the goal in mind of selling that same product or service. This is not an easy job most especially when significant type and volume of products are involve. But thanks to the marketing software, it makes our life easier, faster and our business, profitable.
 
Through this Buyer’s Guide, we at ITQlick.com would like you to re-examine your current position in marketing and further encourage you to discover the value and impact of marketing software solution on your overall performance. We all know it. Marketing is the life and blood of business. There is more to learn on this scientific body knowledge and one of them is the acquisition process of the right marketing software solution for your business.
 
Types
Marketing software solutions are here for these two important tasks: 1) conduct customer/market segmentation and 2) campaign development and management. With this principle in mind, marketing leads us into these three major types of marketing solutions.
 
Marketing Intelligence
By tracking the customers’ response on marketing campaigns conducted via different channels, marketing software solution is able to gather and measure data from these activities. This helps marketer in developing better programs and campaigns that can boost market conversion rate.
 
Marketing Automation
With the primary focus of converting leads into customers, marketing automation automates marketing processes including customer segmentation, customer data integration, and campaign management.
 
Advanced Workflow Automation
With the primary objective of increasing the marketer's ability to deliver relevant content to relevant individuals at relevant times, workflow automation focuses more on streamlining the internal marketing processes of an organization.
 
It is clear that these sets of technology help marketers manage the customer experience across different marketing channels. In a broader sense, marketing software solutions are there to provide strategic process automation. Marketing software products help marketers in:
 

• developing and implementing email marketing campaigns
• automating repetitive business tasks
• creating and managing a central database for present and potential customers
• integrating processes and activities in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system
• developing automated campaigns and programs to increase the overall business sales

 
Features
Most marketing software solutions rooted out from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Email Marketing industries. Let’s go over with this list of features that will help you better understand the power of available marketing software solutions today.
 
Database
Database supports every feature and function of a marketing platform. It is where contact data and activity histories for each lead and customer are saved and secured.
 
Email Marketing Engine
Considered as the hardest working marketing tool, automated email campaigns can produce conversion rates two times higher than non-automated ones.
 
Automated Programs
Lead nurturing programs like series of follow-up messages and scheduled call-to-action alerts helps improve lead-to-customer conversion process.
 
Lead Scoring
This involves the assigning of score or value to the activity and demographic data of the lead who visited a certain store or website. This help marketers in analyzing the buying cycle of a lead and come with actions or solutions that help convert them to buyers.
 
Landing Pages
This is the web page where you intend to bring your prospect leads after clicking a link, button or text in an email or blog as a result of a call-to-action campaign.
 
Forms and Surveys
Forms and surveys are powerful engagement tools. Automating the sending, processing of data, and generating of report out of these forms and surveys help companies in a variety of ways.
 
Website Visitor Tracking
Web Analytics and the popular Google Analytics help analyze web traffic. Number of visitors, their activity on the site, and their demographic profile when analyze results to formulation of better marketing campaigns.
 
CRM Integration
Integrating your marketing automation database with CRM systems like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Sugar CRM helps you in understanding better your leads and customers. CRM connects the dots between marketing, sales and customer service.
 
Web Event Integration
Web events like webinars require a lot of efforts to organize. Integrating such activity into your marketing software helps you save time and even allows you reach a greater number of participants.
 
Social Marketing
Social media marketing can be automated. Auto-post, auto-tweet, and auto-respond features are now all possible to be incorporated in your social media campaigns.
 
Analytics and Reports
With real-time reports, your time to make sound decision relevant to your next marketing strategy can be maximized. Going deeper with the analytics features, like the dashboard, your marketing solution can help you analyze better the bigger picture of the market where you are operating.
 
In addition, don’t forget to check the common features like ease of use, overall speed performance, and availability of training and support, and mobility features.
 
Solutions per Business Size, per Vendor
Marketing software solutions are available from a wide range of vendors. They are segmented into three major levels: Enterprise Players, Small and Medium Business Players, Niche Providers. Solution providers, industry analysts, consultants and software users agree the these segments were formed by carefully considering these parameters:
 

• Target industry
• Features included
• Focus or scope covered
• Degree of integration
• Ease-of-use and internal resources available
• Efficiency of internal processes and relevance of designed flows
• Content and relevant offers

 
Eloqua and Marketo are both enterprise players that offer a variety of functions on the solutions they provide. Aprimo, Unica, Teradata and SAS Institute are also among of the top performers in this market segment.
 
In the SMB market is where many players are thriving and competing against each other in providing the best-of-breed (industry-specific) and hybrid (or CRM that includes marketing functions) solutions. Salesforce.com, SAP and Microsoft all offers solutions that can be integrated with another vendor’s technology tools.
 
Neolane, Exact Target and Silverpop are niche players. They are also known as specialist marketing automation vendors. Most of these specialists are providing marketing solutions to the B2C and B2B consumer markets.
 
Pricing Considerations
Below list of marketing software solutions is a mix of cloud-based, SMB, and subscription-based pricing model. They were regarded as the top 15 marketing software solutions that can boost your business today.
 

1. Marketo
2. Vocus
3. HubSpot
4. Yesware
5. Sailthru
6. Optimove
7. LocalVox 
8. MailChimp
9. Infusionsoft
10. ThriveHive
11. Demandbase
12. WordStream
13. Act-On
14. CAKE
15. Optify

 
It is oftentimes a big challenge to many software buyers to accurately calculate the total cost of a marketing solution. As your partner in business, we at ITQlick.com would like to help you on this area of concern. Here are the tips that we want you to work on properly.
 

1. Determine your resources and budget, including the staff you'll need to oversee the effort required in various stages of the acquisition process.
2. Determine which software capabilities you would like to acquire and set performance targets that could be realistically achieved when these automation functionalities are applied.
3. Consider your organization’s culture to ensure that once the marketing solution is already up and running, everybody will do their part in achieving your marketing goals.
4. We highly recommend that you examine these parameters when figuring out the total cost of owning a marketing software solution.
   1. Base-product pricing (one-time license fee or subscription premium)
   2. Length of contract
   3. Administrative costs
   4. Costs of optional features
   5. Implementation costs (consultant and contractor fees)
   6. Training costs
   7. Cost per user (if part of the solution)

 
Market Trends
There is report stating that “by 2020, customer will manage 85% of the relationship with a company without even talking to a human”. Taking this on a neutral approach, the marketing solution industry is destined to grow and even with the absence of the voices and gestures from human communicators, relationship that are only possible to be established with interactions between customers will stay strong and connected. Evolutions in the marketing industry keep on coming and there will be no other first-hand beneficiaries on these but you business owners.
 
Big data, cloud-computing, and mobile apps will remain the buzz words that you and your customers will keep on exchanging with. Sales will continue to boost with all these things harmonizing the customer signals and digital footprints of the marketing world. Upgrade your marketing strategies. Today is the right time to acquire the right marketing software solution for your business.
Finding the right Online Marketing software for your business
Proper Online Marketing software selections are the precursor to successful deployment and business growth. Finding the right Online Marketing solutions doesnít have to be complicated, and it doesnít have to take days or weeks of your time.

After researching over 5,000 systems, we can identify the best solution for companies of all shapes and sizes. ITQlick.com is 100% free for software buyers.