Sep 13, 2023
Sep 13, 2023
Marketing automation platforms can help you:
While older marketing automation software tools were built primarily for email, today the scope of the automation category and the needs of marketers have expanded dramatically. As a result:
To help you find the right solution for your business, we’ve taken the top 13 marketing automation platforms and organized them into three categories:
We’ll start the list with Insider—our comprehensive personalization and automation solution for websites and mobile apps, as well as channels like email, SMS, push notifications, and WhatsApp.
Insider can help you create, personalize, and automate simple flows and complex marketing campaigns across all customer touchpoints. Visit our website or schedule a demo with our team to learn more.
Marketing clouds and cross-channel automation platforms
Marketing automation platforms focused on email and SMS
Email-only marketing automation platforms
Build, personalize, and automate high-converting campaigns across all channels with Insider
These platforms are great for automating campaigns and synchronizing your efforts across a wide range of channels like:
They also have powerful personalization capabilities for tailoring different elements of your campaigns, like content, product recommendations, and send times, to each individual customer.
The broad channel support and extensive personalization features make these platforms a great choice for advanced marketers at enterprise and mid-sized companies looking to:
Insider brings together the most extensive set of personalization and automation capabilities for websites and mobile apps, as well as for channels like email, SMS, push notifications, and WhatsApp.
Our platform has been ranked among the top solutions in various categories, including:
Thanks to the wide range of capabilities and native channels, over 1200 brands like Adidas, Vodafone, and Lexus use Insider for various use cases like:
In the next sections, you’ll learn about the key benefits of using Insider to automate your cross-channel campaigns and other parts of your workflow.
Insider supports over 12 marketing channels natively—including websites, mobile apps, SMS, WhatsApp, email, push notifications, and others shown in the screenshot below.
Because these channels are built into our platform, you don’t need a third-party solution to automate messages or campaigns on them. This can help you drastically simplify your marketing stack, streamline operations, and maximize your marketing budget.
However, Insider doesn’t just let you reach customers on these channels. With our platform, you can synchronize your efforts across all touchpoints to create a truly consistent experience for your customers.
For example, say a customer showed interest in a certain product category and price range on your site. You can use that information to:
The key here is that each subsequent message can take into account how the customer reacted to the previous one. This cross-channel marketing approach ensures your messages and branding are always consistent, which produces higher engagement and more conversions.
This is possible thanks to Insider’s ability to consolidate all your customer data in our CDP (which comes free with our platform) to reveal each user’s:
For example, the screenshot below shows a unified customer profile in Insider’s CDP that contains all these insights.
However, if you already have your data consolidated in another CDP like Segment or Amplitude, Insider can simply connect to it. That way, our platform can use the data to help you build and automate high-converting campaigns, without you having to stop using your current CDP.
In fact, Insider’s flexibility allows it to connect and automatically exchange data with any online or offline solutions you might be using—including customer relationship management systems (CRMs), content management systems (CMSs), point-of-sale (POS) devices, analytics software, customer service platforms, APIs, legacy systems, and much more.
Remember, when choosing a tool for your business, you must consider several factors, such as industry and the size of your business. For example, if you are in the real estate industry, investing in a CRM for realtors may be a great starting point while also considering other aspects of your business to ensure your chosen tool is the ideal fit.
Insider makes it easy to build automated flows and campaigns for all sorts of use cases. For example, you can use our solution to create:
You can set up these and other automations with our journey orchestration tool called Architect.
This tool lets you build automated flows and campaigns (called Journeys) using a simple drag-and-drop editor. Each journey can be triggered by:
Once you choose the trigger, you can decide which segments should be included in the journey. Here, Insider’s advanced segmentation helps you hone in on the right audiences for each flow or campaign.
You can use three types of audiences to build highly-targeted campaigns:
AI-powered predictive audiences: This option lets you utilize our AI-powered intent engine to target users based on their discount affinity, projected spending, likelihood of purchase or churn, customer lifecycle status, and much more.
With your initial trigger and segments in place, you can freely choose how each journey unfolds. For example, you can select which channels Insider uses to contact customers from the extensive list shown below.
Note: The “Call an API” option lets you extend your reach even further to systems like Intercom or Zendesk, for example.
You also have granular control over exactly when initial and follow-up messages get sent with the “Wait” and “Check” elements:
The “Check” element lets Insider see if customers are available on a specific channel (or have previously interacted with your brand on it) or check any other condition before proceeding. For example, you can have Insider check whether customers have opened a specific email from your previous campaign. Those who have can receive another message on the same channel, while others can be contacted via SMS or WhatsApp, for example.
For more details, tactics, and examples of Architect in action, check out the articles below:
For a real-life example, you can refer to our case study with beauty and cosmetics brand Clarins. They used Architect to deliver relevant and personalized experiences on the channels their customers use, leading to a 45% increase in lead capture, a 4% uplift in conversion rates, and a 30x ROI in 12 weeks of using Insider.
Using multiple channels to reach customers is the standard today. And while that provides lots of opportunities for brands, it also raises two big questions with regards building an effective cross-channel marketing strategy:
The traditional approach here would be to A/B test different channels and send times. And while that can certainly provide good results, it often takes lots of time, effort, and resources to find the right mix of channels and send times that work for each segment.
Insider has two AI-powered capabilities that can help you avoid this issue altogether:
Send-Time Optimization (STO): Like the previous feature, this one also analyzes each customer’s behavioral patterns to determine the best time to send each message. You can enable STO when building messages for each individual channel like email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push notifications.
Besides relying on Insider’s AI-powered capabilities to optimize your journeys, you can also run A/B tests to compare any variables you like—from subject lines, images, and body copy to different channels (e.g., email vs. SMS) and entire flows.
As you can see below, setting up even complex A/B tests is quick and easy with the drag-and-drop editor.
Additionally, Insider’s A/B Testing Winner-Autoselection feature can save you lots of time and effort when determining your test’s results.
This feature automatically detects and directs users to the winning path in your A/B tests using our machine learning algorithms. The selection is based on two criteria you select beforehand:
With this feature enabled, you don’t have to worry about manually analyzing each test and adjusting your automations based on the results.
You can speed up your tests (and campaign creation in general) by also using our ChatGPT-powered AI capabilities to automatically generate engaging copy for your messages, including subject lines, body text, and more.
Once it’s set up, Insider will give you a detailed overview of your entire user base, including:
From here, you can start digging deeper into your analytics data by focusing on specific segments, channels, or journeys.
For example, after launching an automated campaign, you can analyze its results in real-time right in the journey builder to see how many people entered each step, where drop-offs occur, and which channels produced the best results.
There’s even a more granular view of all your automated journeys (or just select ones) in the dedicated Architect analytics dashboard.
You also can drill down into specific channels and analyze their individual open rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and other essential metrics.
Lastly, you can build custom dashboards for different teams inside your organization.
For example, you can have detailed dashboards for marketers interested in metrics like open rates, CTR, and channel reachability and simpler ones for stakeholders and C-level executives who are primarily focused on revenue and acquisition costs.
Besides picking channels and send times, we know that getting started is the biggest challenge when it comes to cross-channel automation, especially for large companies.
There are just tons of factors to consider and challenges to overcome—from disconnected systems to complicated workflows, difficult integrations, and the learning curve that comes with using a new system.
That’s why we’ve made sure that Insider customers can get started and see a return on their investment as fast as possible. There are two key components here:
Overall, Insider’s combination of extensive templates, trainings, and high-quality support is essential to many of our customers.
“Great support from the Insider team; trainings, onboarding and on-going technical and strategic support. Product works well, haven’t found any bugs and there is a lot to offer to really power on-site optimisations, run campaigns, conduct A/B testing and plan user journeys out. Templates are aplenty and the team is always available to help set up the campaigns.”
Thanks to our focus on simplicity, support quality, and ease of use, lots Insider customers see a fast and massive return on their investment:
Insider isn’t just a solution for automating flows and cross-channel campaigns. Our platform also has extremely powerful personalization capabilities that let you individualize each customer’s experience based on their needs, interests, and preferences.
For example, Insider lets you automatically tailor every element of your site or app to each customer browsing it, including:
When it comes to product recommendations, you can leave the process completely in the hands of our algorithms by selecting a user-based recommendation strategy. This is a great way to easily increase engagement, conversions, and revenue, as our platform automatically serves relevant recommendations to each user.
You can also choose from a wide range of other recommendation algorithms—like most popular items, top sellers, viewed together, purchased together, and so on—and tweak them based on your preferences.
Insider also makes it easy to scale personalizations across all external touchpoints, like:
Our platform can deliver targeted messaging, content, and product recommendations with each message you send on these channels.
Combining Insider’s personalization capabilities with its powerful automation features, like Next-Best Channel Predictions and STO, lets you take your cross-channel marketing to the next level and automatically deliver truly individualized experiences.
Note: Just because Insider supports so many channels doesn’t mean you have to use all of them from the start (or at all). Many of our customers start with just one or two channels, like on-site and email, and then expand to other touchpoints and use cases over time.
Finally, if you’re interested in Insider’s channel-specific capabilities, check out the articles below:
For more details on how Insider can help you build and automate personalized marketing campaigns across all customer touchpoints, book a live demo with our team.
Braze
Braze is a comprehensive customer engagement platform. It supports a range of channels, including email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push notifications, and offers basic on-site and in-app personalization features. In terms of automation, Braze has a tool called Canvas Flow that comes with many features for building and automating cross-channel campaigns.
Learn more: Top 12 Braze competitors and alternatives for cross-channel marketing.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud combines various products for:
These tools can be used to automate routine tasks and campaigns across channels like email, SMS, social media, and push notifications.
Adobe Experience Cloud brings together a set of tools for use cases like automation, personalization, content management, journey orchestration, and more. When it comes to automation, the most important products in this stack are:
Marketing Hub is HubSpot’s main offering for marketing teams. While it does have a free plan (as well as a few cheaper ones), its complete automation capabilities are available on the more expensive Pro and Enterprise plans. As a marketing automation solution, Marketing Hub offers:
These platforms are primarily built for creating and automating single messages or campaigns across SMS and email. They also have features for personalizing your marketing but they’re not as advanced as the personalization features of the previous platform.
While email and SMS are their focal points, these tools also have useful auxiliary features and other supported channels, including:
Overall, their versatility, free trials, and pricing plans for small businesses make these automation platforms a good choice for:
Keap is a versatile platform that offers four distinct solutions:
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a platform and CRM suite for email, SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, and chatbots. It helps brands build automated campaigns across these channels and expand their subscriber base with signup forms and landing pages. They also offer an enterprise product called BrevoPlus that includes personalized onboarding, a dedicated success manager, and other advanced features.
Klaviyo established itself as a powerful tool for marketers with its email marketing automation features. In recent years, the platform has expanded by adding SMS (although that’s available in five countries) and mobile push notifications as supported channels. They’ve also released tools for data aggregation and displaying customer reviews on a website.
Suggested reading: 11 Best Klaviyo competitors & alternatives for all business types.
Omnisend is an eCommerce email, SMS, and automation platform. It offers beginner and advanced-level features for building a contact list, automating flows and campaigns, and analyzing their results. Omnisend also supports web push notifications, which can be used in combination with email and SMS messages or as their fallback if they don’t produce the desired results.
Campaigner is a marketing automation platform that can be used exclusively for email marketing or for creating campaigns across email and SMS. It offers an intuitive drag-and-drop builder for creating messages on both channels, as well as reusable content blocks for speeding up campaign creation. Campaigner also has basic personalization features for tailoring email and SMS messages to their recipients’ behaviors and characteristics.
Constant Contact is a digital and email marketing platform with two distinct products:
These are by far the simplest platforms on this list as they’re only focused on email marketing automation. They come with pretty much everything you need to build and automate email marketing campaigns, including:
The simplicity of these platforms makes them a good fit for small businesses and individuals that:
Mailchimp is one of the original email marketing tools that popularized the entire category. It was acquired by Intuit in 2021 but still exists as a separate brand for small businesses that want to:
Moosend is an email marketing and automation software owned by Sitecore. Besides the standard email building, automation, and list management features that pretty much all solutions offer, Moosend also has capabilities for:
Drip is a marketing automation tool for eCommerce businesses. Its primary focus has always been on email, with lots of options for segmentation, campaign management, and automation, as well as a rich email template library. Recently, Drip has expanded to website personalization with basic features for creating tailored on-site experiences, like popups, sidebars, and more.
Insider is the best marketing automation software for fast-growing mid-sized and enterprise brands looking to automate and personalize communications across all customer touchpoints—from their websites and mobile apps to channels like email, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more.
Our platform can also:
Our vast template library lets you quickly take advantage of proven automation tactics, while our experienced support team can help you set up our platform, understand how it works, and implement the right marketing automation strategies for your needs.
Click here to book a demo with our team and learn how Insider can help you reach your business goals.
Written by
Katie Morley
Katie is an award-winning content marketer with over eight years of experience in content strategy, development, and copywriting. As Global Content Director at Insider, she currently oversees content strategy across 26 regions. Fun fact: Katie read 64 books last year (for which she owes a long commute and two week-long holidays where she spent approximately six hours a day with her nose in a book).