Posted by A crucial part of running a successful business is choosing your investments wisely. So, if you’re looking to incorporate automation in your marketing strategy, you need to find out how much it would cost you. After all, a conducted survey showed that the fear of marketing automation cost is the biggest obstacle to the technology’s adoption.
Marketing automation is the use of software technology to perform the repetitive tasks involved in marketing a product on multiple online channels without the need for human intervention. These channels include social media, email, websites, SMS, etc.
With marketing automation software, you can automate lead generation, email marketing, social media advertising, A/B testing, lead conversion, and many other online marketing tasks. They save time, boost productivity, and infinitely scale your campaigns.
These benefits seem great, but the major question remains, how much does marketing automation cost?
The cost of marketing automation mostly depends on the price of the software a company uses, and spending between $35 to $250 should be enough to automate marketing campaigns to a large extent.
Marketing Automation Cost
Let’s find out how much it would cost you to get some automation software for your marketing team.
The first step to determining its cost is to understand how marketing automation pricing works. Most SaaS platforms in this field provide their services on a monthly price plan. However, you can pay for several months or years (annual billing) and get a discount in most cases.
The two major types of monthly pricing plans for marketing automation software are:
- Per Month: You pay to use certain features for a month. The amount is based on your tier plan, and the higher your tier, the more features and benefits you get.
- Per Contact, Per Month: You pay to get all the features but can only use them on a limited number of contacts in your marketing database.
The cost of marketing automation greatly depends on what tasks you want to automate in your campaigns. Knowing what type of marketing stage your business needs to automate will allow you to prioritize your spending, so you don’t overshoot your budget.
Features Needed to Qualify as a Software Marketing Automation Tool
There are five main features that qualify a software as a marketing automation tool. A software qualifies if it has automation capabilities for at least one of the following features:
- Email Marketing: The process of sending newsletters, promotional emails, or triggered responses to contacts in your email list.
- Lead Generation: The strategy used to capture lead info through forms, landing pages, ads, and more.
- Lead Scoring: The process of ranking leads based on predetermined parameters to help prioritize marketing efforts and reduce waste of resources.
- Lead Nurturing: The act of sending relevant emails, messages, and ads to specific leads to convert them into sales.
- Marketing Analytics and Reporting: The creation of periodic reports of the data obtained from tracking marketing campaigns, website activities, social media engagements, productivity, conversions, and more.
Next, we’ll determine the cost of automating each marketing task by considering the price of the top 10 automation software with the required features. Below are a series of tables for the top 10 of the above marketing tasks.
These tables will include their starting price and their maximum base price to give you an idea of what you may be spending when your business grows into a juggernaut. We’ll also include a column to indicate if these services have free forever plans that you can use or not.
Note that these software have different features, scales, and specializations. Some are geared towards a specific industry, such as real estate and credit management. Hence, the prices vary. There’s also a difference in quality, even though they are some of the best in the world.
Costs of the Top 10 Email Marketing Automation Software
Software Name — Starting Price (for 1000+ contacts) — Max. Base Price —
(for 10,000+ contacts) — Free Plan Availability
Hubspot — $45 — $3200 — Yes
Constant Contact — $45 — $335 — No
ActiveCampaign — $25 — $279 — No
Campaigner — $29 — $649 — No
Sendinblue — $25 — $65 — Yes
Salesforce Pardot — $50 — $15000 — No
Campaign Monitor — $29 — $249 — Yes
GetResponse — $15 — $165 — No
Keap — $70 — $300 — No
MailChimp — $9 — $299 — Yes
Average starting price: $34.2
If you need an email marketing automation software, be ready to spend around $35 per month.
Costs of the Top 10 Lead Generation Automation Software
Software Name — Starting Price — Max. Base Price —
— Free Plan Availability
OptinMonster — $9 — $49 — No
Prospect.io — $89 —$149 — No
Hubspot — $45 — $3200 — Yes
Outreach.io — $100 — (-) — No
MailChimp — $9 — $299 — Yes
Follow Up Boss — $69 — $1000 — No
Leadfeeder — $63 — $599 — Yes
Intercom — $59 — $119 — No
Unbounce — $80 — $300 — No
MobileMonkey — $14.25 — $199 — Yes
Average starting price: $53.725
If you need a lead generation automation software, be ready to spend around $55 per month.
Costs of the Top 10 Lead Scoring Automation Software
Software Name — Starting Price — Free Plan Availability
ClosedPlan — $39 — No
Madkudu — $1,999 — No
Maroon.ai — $499 — Yes
Oracle Marketing — $2000 — No
Sales Wings — $99 — No
Vanilla Soft — $80 — No
ActiveCampaign — $9 — No
Velocity Lead Manager — $60 — No
Act-On — $900 — No
Sendinblue — $25 — Yes
Average starting price: $571
If you need a lead scoring automation software, you can get a low-end for less than $100 per month, but be ready to spend over $600 for the best.
Costs of the Top 10 Lead Nurturing Automation Software
Software Name — Starting Price — Max. Base Price — Free Plan Availability
Pipeline — $25 — $49 — No
AWeber — $29 — $149 — Yes
Salesforce Pardot — $50 — $15,000 — No
LeadSquared — $25 — $100 — No
Nutshell — $22 — $39 — No
Hubspot — $45 — $3200 — Yes
Marketo — $895 — $3195 — No
Act-On — $900 — $2000 — No
SharpSpring — $399 — $1299 — No
Pipedrive — $12.50 — $99 — No
Average starting price: $240.25
If you need an email marketing automation software, be ready to spend around $250 per month.
Costs of the Top 10 Marketing Analytics and Reporting Software
Software Name — Starting Price—Free Plan Availabilty
Hubspot — $45 — Yes
SEMrush — $119 — Yes
MailChimp — $9 — Yes
SharpSring — $399 —No
AgencyAnalytics — $49 — No
Emarsys — $399 — No
TapClicks — $79 — Yes
Optinmonster — $9 — No
Force24 — $249 — No
OWOX BI — $85 — Yes
Average starting price: $144.2
If you need a marketing analytics and reporting software, be ready to spend around $150 per month.
Marketing Automation ROI
There are several benefits to automating your marketing campaigns, but getting a quick Return on Investment is the most important. It’s not enough to calculate marketing automation implementation cost without considering its ROI in the long run.
In a survey carried out by Marketo, 76% of businesses that automate their marketing enjoy a significant ROI within a year after implementation.
These returns could come in the form of click-through rates, open rates, and an increase in the number of monthly leads. In fact, the percentage of marketers that get more leads due to automation is 80%, and on average, marketing automation boosts qualified lead generation by 451%.
Is Marketing Automation Worth the Cost?
The worth of marketing automation is closely linked to its effectiveness. The image below is a chart created by VB Insight, and it shows that only 11% of the people who use marketing automation believe it is not worth the price.
In the end, it all comes down to how you can, whichever software you pay for. Marketing automation is only worth the cost if it can do any of the following for your business:
- Scale your market reach
- Boost lead generation
- Save cost
- Shorten your sales cycle
- Boost productivity
- Improve customer retention
- Provide more insights into your campaigns
How Much Should You Spend on Marketing Automation?
In 2012, MarketingSherpa created a benchmark report for B2B marketers, and it showed that they allocated 7% of their marketing budget to automation. We’ve seen cases of businesses allocating about 3% of their marketing budget and some even 1.6%.
However, as a rule of thumb, you should only spend around 5% of your entire marketing budget on automation if you run a B2B company and 10% if you run a B2C company.
Depending on the age of your business and the current state of your industry, it’s advisable to set aside 5% to 12% of your entire revenue as your marketing budget.
So, if you’re a B2C company that generates $100,000 per month, your total marketing budget would be between $5,000 to $10,000. That means you may want to allocate $1000 (10%) for marketing automation.
Marketing Automation Cost-Saving Tips
Here are tricks to help you save on marketing automation cost.
Take Advantage of Free Trials and Plans
Free trials allow you to test the premium functions of a SaaS product before paying for it. Some companies will need you to input your card details before you can start the trial, and others give it to you immediately you sign up. If the software doesn’t work well enough for you during this trial period, you can always cancel before its deadline and not have your card debited.
A free plan, on the other hand, is free forever and allows you to only enjoy a very limited number of features. Most times, the features you get with a free plan are never enough to help you make more money. Nevertheless, you should use free plans to test new software and ensure it’s a good fit for your company.
Go for Multipurpose Software
Marketing automation software are almost never created for a singular purpose. You may have noticed that services such as Hubspot, OptinMonster, and Act-on appeared multiple times in the top 10 lists. There are not the only products with multiple functions, but they are some of the few that offer top-level quality for nearly every feature they offer — enough to make it to more than one top 10 list.
Subscribing to such software will help you save cost because you’ll be getting a reliable service to handle multiple stages of your marketing campaign for the price of one.
Understand How the Plans Work
Take your time to fully understand how a subscription plan works before you pay for it. Don’t be distracted by the large slash on the price tag that denotes a discount. You should check the starting date, refund policy, contract terms, and privacy policy.
You also want to ensure you’re not overreaching with the plan you pick. For instance, imagine paying for an email marketing automation plan for 10,000 contacts when you only have 1000 people on your email list.
Leverage Discount Opportunities
SaaS products are always offering one discount or the other. Most of them will allow you to get cashback when you pay for a year instead of a couple of months. Annual billing allows you to save tens to hundreds of dollars that would have gradually accumulated if you paid monthly.
Low-Cost Marketing Automation Software
Depending on your budget, you can get the best deals that will allow you to automate every stage in your sales cycle.
We’ve put together our recommendations for small business owners looking to automate their marketing on a budget.
Here’s the best low-cost marketing automation software combination for different situations and needs:
Less than $100 Budget
If you discover that you can’t spend over a hundred bucks on marketing automation, you can still get top-quality software that can handle your email marketing, lead generation, lead scoring, lead nurturing, and analytics.
We recommend:
- ActiveCampaign (email marketing and lead scoring): $25
- OptinMonster (website lead generation and simple reporting): $9
- HubSpot (Email marketing, lead nurturing with CRM system, and marketing analytics) — $45
The total cost of this combo is $79. It’s ideal for infant businesses or one-person agencies.
Lead Management
You don’t have to spend separate amounts for lead generation, scoring, and nurturing. For $900, you can subscribe to an Act-On Professional plan. It automates all aspects of lead management and also comes with adequate email marketing and analytics systems.
E-Commerce on a Budget
E-commerce stores are a great way to earn passive income, especially if you’re into dropshipping. However, there’s a limit to how much you could earn if you’re just starting out.
Sendinblue (starting at $25) and OptinMonster (starting at $9) works great with e-commerce stores, especially Shopify. Together, they cost $34 a month and will provide so much more value for your money.
Free
Don’t want to spend anything to automate your marketing? You can try out the free plans for the following services:
- Hubspot (free plan) — free email marketing, lead generation, and analytics tool.
- Sendinblue (free plan) — free email marketing and lead scoring tool.
Bottom Line
Marketing automation is not a cheap venture. However, it doesn’t have to be an unattainable feat for your business. The tips above will help you find affordable tools that offer high-end features for businesses of every size.
Did you know that marketing is not the only business process you can automate? Check out our business automation guide to find other ways to save time, energy, and money.