LAST UPDATED : MARCH 2021

Successful marketing initiatives requires marketing automation and CRM to sync and work extremely well together.

Unlike a CRM suite that deals with customers throughout their lifecycle, marketing automation tools help marketers nurture leads at an early stage of the purchase process. The marketing automation tool identifies the prospect’s interest and helps the marketer run lead generation and lead nurturing campaigns through the vast swathes of online and offline channels. The CRM later takes the prospects and manages the subsequent customer relationship. Integrating marketing automation tools into the CRM spares them from the hassles of manual import of lead data. It saves time and improves accuracy.

Businesses that succeed in making marketing automation and CRM work in unison bring together marketing, sales, and customer service and deliver a seamless customer experience across all touch points. Here are the five best marketing automation tools for seamless integrating with Salesforce CRM.

1. Salesforce Pardot

Salesforce owns Pardot. By integrating Salesforce and Pardot, the marketer can track data from both the CRM and automation tool from a single interface. 

Several other reasons make Pardot a highly valuable marketing automation tool in its own right. Pardot does a good job of integrating all marketing tasks, bringing together all campaigns on a single platform, and accelerating the sales pipeline.

Pardot delivers robust and seamless solutions in email marketing, multi-channel social marketing, sales intelligence, and more. A typical marketer leverages Pardot’s functionality to add prospects, set automated email blasts to prospects, and nurture leads through Salesforce without missing a beat. Marketers may analyze the results of campaigns and optimize on-the-go, making it a very potent tool.

Pardot enhances the capability of a pure vanilla CRM. The tool allows marketers to go beyond the basic demographic information, into detailed behavioral tracking. Marketers get greater insights on the type of content that interests the prospect, their buying cycle, and so on. It issues real-time alerts when a prospect is active on the website or has taken some other specific action, allowing the marketer to strike while the iron is hot.

 Another key USP of the Pardot automation tool is solid ROI reports. Pardot’s closed-loop reporting makes it possible to pinpoint the right campaign and the right team responsible for the revenue.

Infographic : 7 Marketing Automation Tactics to Automate your Lead Generation Strategy

Like all Salesforce products, Pardot has systematic release schedules. However the dozens of feature releases every year put a strain on users, as updating became a routine affair. Salesforce has since then consolidated feature release schedules to three, and syncing it with the Salesforce release cycles. Pardot still innovates at the same pace.

Some of the significant changes to Pardot over the last five years include:

• A host of enhancements to the Salesforce Lightning Design System
• Improvements to email blasts, such as customizable email re-subscribe messages, ability to send engage email from Salesforce campaign & opportunity records, new user-friendly and productivity enhancement views in the sent emails, and table to review emails and set up Automation Rules.
• Enhancements to snippets, which enable the reuse and refresh of content in dynamic ways.
• Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, to increase the effectiveness of previous campaigns and give pointers on what to do next. Marketers may pull in data from external systems, like Google Analytics, effortlessly. The Developer Sandboxes for Pardot makes testing, auditing, and configuring easier.

The Spring ’21 release of Pardot co-opts several enhancements. Catering to the need for speed in today’s fast-paced business environment, Salesforce allows setting up Pardot faster than ever. Enhanced capabilities such as maintaining engagement data streams with first-party tracking, better email personalization, and enhanced email deliverability and reporting make the suite more robust, functional, and flexible than before.  Improved clone actions give marketers the option to clone Pardot marketing assets when cloning a Salesforce campaign.

Salesforce has discontinued Pardot’s separate user authentication system. Pardot users now use Salesforce single sign-on (SSO). 

The newly launched Pardot Premium enables B2B marketers to execute account-based marketing and lead generation strategies at scale. Businesses with multiple segments and brands can manage automation efforts seamlessly for each business unit separately, while still maintaining a global view. Business Snippets make it easy to manage business content, such as legal disclaimers, copyright information, or branding standards across units and geographies. Pardot Premier Plus goes further in delivering customization.

Combining Pardot with Salesforce CRM allow marketers to launch high-volume and heavy duty campaigns effortlessly. Pardot drives automation Salesforce and does the heavy-lifting, whereas the CRM provides the perfect back-end support.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is another extremely popular inbound marketing platform that integrates well with Salesforce. The two systems work in the background effortlessly, keeping both databases in perfect sync.

 HubSpot’s claim to fame is its comprehensive set of features, delivered in a seamless and very efficient way. It offers marketing automation features and capabilities in almost all functions including SEO, email marketing, blogging, and more.

Marketers often tout HubSpot and Salesforce integration as a “match made in heaven.” (Tweet this)

 The praise is not misplaced, for Salesforce-Hubspot integration makes the marketer’s life easy. They can monitor leads, track performance, review landing pages, and take other steps to improve performance, from a single console. 

 HubSpot enables integrating all data in one place, for complete visibility and more potent analytics. 

The Salesforce and HubSpot connector brings together leads and conversions in one place, automatically eliminating the tedious manual processes that usually accompany such “messy” tasks. Syncing both databases offers insights into the specific marketing activities that attract new customers and pointers on what went wrong with the initiatives. With such new automation capabilities, marketers and business managers may spend less time reconciling spreadsheets. Marketers also have it very easy in personalizing emails and other marketing tasks.

HubSpot tracks, converts, and categorizes leads and offers a record of every sales interaction that occurs. The extremely accurate closed-loop reporting system keeps the sales team updated on every marketing interaction.

HubSpot also designs product updates to make it even easier to use the software. A slew of updates enables marketers to thrive despite the challenges brought about by COVID19. 

The following are the latest updates to HubSpot:

• A host of templates, tasks, sequences, canned snippets, scheduled emails, etc. make it very easy to connect to customers, and improve the efficiency of the sales team.  The new proposals option allows marketers to adjust the look and feel of quotes to entice attention.
• Scalable contacts pricing model enables companies to pay only for the actively marketed contracts
• Custom objects make it easy to track business-specific information. Marketers may automate such data easily. 
• AI-powered sales accelerators improve the efficiency of the sales team. Conversation intelligence capabilities capture details from every call to unearth the “why” behind the way things go. AI-powered insights aids in coaching team members as well.
• Connected Configurations-Price-Quote (CPQ) tools such as integrators with popular accounting tools such as QuickBooks, streamline accounts, and other enterprise functions. 
• Advanced permissions grant information-based access, rather than individual-based access.
• Sophisticated yet streamlined reporting capabilities including a new, powerful, flexible and dynamic report builder. 
• A new logged-in visitor identification allows companies to respond to messages more quickly and personally from inside the conversations inbox.
• The redesigned HubSpot’s Solutions Directory has upgraded search functionality, a self-service listing experience, and a refreshed new look.
• A new help desk automation features allow businesses to quickly set up conversational bots to answer common questions, 

These changes allow the sales team to cope with the new normal of inside selling. 

The enhanced HubSpot’s App Marketplace help businesses build a tech stack that perfectly syncs with the demands of today’s digital-first economy. More than 500 apps integrate seamlessly with the HubSpot platform now. Hubspot’s robust and flexible automation capabilities is the perfect icing on the Salesforce cake!

3. Marketo

The multi-functional Marketo platform also integrates well with Salesforce, automatically syncing all custom objects and fields. The two systems leverage each other’s strengths to enrich customer experience and reduce inefficiencies.

Having Marketo atop the Salesforce platform empowers marketers to launch highly targeted campaigns across various marketing channels simultaneously, in double-quick time, thus helping the process of lead generation immensely. Marketo has a very robust lead scoring, email marketing, and campaign management functionality, and comprehensive functionality to measure and optimize ROI. A key USP of Marketo is the ability to deliver deep personalization to web and mobile visitors, cutting across channels and marketing calendars. The marketing and sales teams get clear and comprehensive actionable insights into their prospects.

In October 2018, Abode acquired Magento. Abode Marketo Engage takes user experience to the next level. The platform delivers customer data analytics, content, and automation, facilitating seamless coordination between sales and marketing across all touchpoints. The platform brings together the look and feel of Adobe Experience Cloud with significant productivity innovations that drive personalized engagement campaigns. Productivity and speed-to-process improve significantly.

Combining the new Abode Marketo Engage with Adobe Experience Cloud offers marketers a complete set of features, such as AI-driven analytics to content optimization, at scale. Integrated profiles and consolidated engagement history, actualized using the power of AI, enriches the capabilities of the suite and amplifies the customer experience. 

Integration of Abode Marketo Engage with Salesforce CRM continues using OAuth 2.0 protocol. Admins may review the Salesforce CRM syncing status from the dashboard.

Like all marketing automation tools, Magento also upgrades its offering continuously to stay relevant. The latest January ’21 release offers enhanced support for Workspaces and partitions, and multi-channel personalization capabilities.  

Magento’s automation tools perfectly complements Salesforce CRM.  Enterprises, cutting across size and geographies, may use this stack to orchestrate highly potent campaigns in double-quick time.

4. SalesGenius

SalesGenius is another good value-for-money automation solution, offering robust marketing automation and email marketing features. Many marketers find the intuitive SalesGenius automation workflow designer tool very handy to launch and orchestrate multi-step drip campaigns quickly and easily.

 SalesGenius scores high in customization features. The tool facilitates automated lead nurturing with customized messages, delivered in real-time. It also tracks the response in real-time, and as such deciphers the prospect’s “online body language.” Such insights allow the marketer to adopt proactive engagement strategies without waiting for a response from the customer.

SalesGenius offers easy access to social sharing tools. Other USPs include a streamlined process for developing unique URLs, tracking, and an intuitive dashboard reporting system with a well-designed UX. 

Over the last few years, SalesGenius has carved out a niche as an automation suite that suits smaller enterprises looking to undertake one-off campaigns. Integrating SalesGenius with Salesforce offers the perfect combo of catering to customers of all sizes and all requirements.

5. MailChimp

MailChimp has seen a surge in popularity of late. The charming monkey-field aesthetic profile is backed up by a strong engine under-the-hood. The platform sends over 10,800 emails out every second.

MailChimp offers a robust email suite, and an in-built CRM enabling businesses a one-size-fits-all package. 

The key USPs of MailChimp include:

• A comprehensive set of tools that cover almost everything, and most of it on the free plan. MailChimp leverages the power of simplicity to offer several forms, landing pages, and automated drip campaigns. Marketers can set up customer profiles and assign customers a lifetime value within the in-built CRM. They can use Salesforce for higher-level tasks.
• Ease of use, with clear navigation and a clean interface. The fast and simple editor, with a drag and drop interface, allows even lay users to create highly powerful newsletters and email campaigns.
• A choice of different email templates, including classic newsletters, autoresponders, A/B testing, etc. Responsive and flexible, drag and drop interface add to the UX.
• Robust automation logic, with rules to send conditions-based follow-up emails.
• Storing reporting capabilities.

MailChimp integrates easily with Salesforce and other CRM.  Salesforce CRM users can leverage MailChimp for added nimbleness and flexibility, and also to get things done in a cost-effective way.

A word on ExactTarget

Exact Target was one of the small, yet powerful marketing automation tool available until 2013 when Salesforce acquired it. The cloud-based tool offered a trusted infrastructure that tracks and makes explicit the customer journey in real-time. Users of ExactTarget vouched for its powerful functionality to target communications over multiple channels. Marketers could easily deliver customized content on every channel and every device, with unmatched flexibility. The strong analytics capabilities offered a single view of the customer, with rich insights into the prospect’s social conversations

Salesforce acquired ExactTarget for $2.5 billion in 2013. The deal has driven automation Salesforce since then, enabling Salesforce to provide email marketing services directly, besides offering enhanced social and mobile marketing capabilities. ExactTarget allowed Salesforce to addresses pain points such as poorly qualified leads, inappropriate marketing-to-sales handoff procedures, losing leads in the pipeline, and lack of insights into buyer motivations. 

All these marketing automation solutions help companies engage with buyers dynamically on their terms, orchestrate personalized marketing campaigns, close deals, and grow relationships. The caveat is the need to understand how to use and integrate such tools well, and in this, the services of a competent and experienced strategic partner, who has done it before, help. Talk to our Salesforce experts at Suyati for any marketing automation-related queries.  Reach out to services@suyati.com.