5 Best email marketing automation tools for Enterprise

Best for Enterprise

HubSpot was founded in 2006 as a result of a simple observation: people have transformed how they live, work, shop, and buy, but businesses have not adapted. This mismatch led Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah to create the vision for the inbound experience and to develop HubSpot's platform to support it. With our powerful, easy to use, integrated set of applications, businesses can attract, engage, and delight customers by delivering inbound experiences that are relevant, helpful, and personalized. HubSpot is, after all, on a mission to make the world more inbound, one business transformation after another.

HubSpot's Pricing

HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing starts at $15/mo per seat for Starter, $800/mo for Professional (includes 3 Core Seats), and $3,600/mo for Enterprise (includes 5 Core Seats). A free plan is available with up to 2,000 marketing contacts.

HubSpot's Pros

• Easy to use and intuitive platform

  Easy to use and intuitive platform

• The Hubspot blog holds a wealth of knowledge for business owners to learn about online marketing

  The Hubspot blog holds a wealth of knowledge for business owners to learn about online marketing

• Hubspot is a complete all in one solution

  Hubspot is a complete all in one solution

HubSpot's Cons

• Steep price creep, as you build your list, the cost of Hubspot rises steeply

  Steep price creep, as you build your list, the cost of Hubspot rises steeply

• Marketing platform requires a 12-month contract

  Marketing platform requires a 12-month contract

• Expensive for a small business solution

  Expensive for a small business solution

HubSpot Verdict

HubSpot was founded in 2006 as a result of a simple observation: people have transformed how they live, work, shop, and buy, but businesses have not adapted. This mismatch led Brian Halligan and Dharm

Best for Enterprise

Marketo was founded in 2006 by B2C marketing software executives who previously helped transform marketing at Epiphany. They started Marketo with a mission to change the way marketing and sales teams collaborate throughout the revenue cycle by realigning the impact of B2B marketing automation and sales effectiveness solutions on revenue growth. Marketo provides marketing and lead management software solutions that help marketing and sales teams to collaborate at every stage of a revenue cycle from the earliest stages of demand generation and lead management to the pursuit of revenue and customer loyalty. Privately held and around $100 million in venture funding from venture firms including InterWest, Storm Ventures and the Mayfield Fund. As of november 2012, Marketo counted over 2,000 customers and 22,000 user subscribers in B2B industries such as software technology, financial services, business services, healthcare and communications. Marquee customers include BT, Cisco, Dell Boomi, Jigsaw (part of Salesforce.com), Kelly Services, McKesson, PayPal, Rackspace, Sharp and Thomson Reuters.

Marketo's Pricing

Marketo's Pros

• Powerful attribution modelling

  Powerful attribution modelling

• Deep integration with Salesforce

  Deep integration with Salesforce

Marketo's Cons

• Users often report needing external support and consultants to manage

  Users often report needing external support and consultants to manage

• Expensive pricing increases exponentially

  Expensive pricing increases exponentially

• Poor landing page and form builder

  Poor landing page and form builder

Marketo Verdict

Marketo was founded in 2006 by B2C marketing software executives who previously helped transform marketing at Epiphany. They started Marketo with a mission to change the way marketing and sales teams

Best for Enterprise

Pardot, B2B marketing automation by Salesforce, offers an easy-to-use marketing automation solution that allows marketing and sales departments to create, deploy, and manage online marketing campaigns from one central platform. Together, Pardot and Salesforce empower every rep to act in the moment of engagement, and every marketer to drive greater results from campaigns. As an integral part of the Salesforce family, Pardot is committed to staying on the front lines of innovation, helping companies to exceed their revenue goals, better align their sales and marketing teams, and do more with the resources they already have. Pardot is dedicated to supporting the needs of growing B2B organizations, and can help marketers and sales reps at any size organization work together and win together. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Pardot has a growing client base ranging from small and mid-sized businesses to divisions of large enterprise organizations. Additional Pardot offices can be found in cities across the globe.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Pardot)'s Pricing

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Pardot)'s Pros

• Customizable marketing automation tool

  Customizable marketing automation tool

• Great integration with Salesforce

  Great integration with Salesforce

• Lead Deck lets you send send perspectives on your service pages with one-click

  Lead Deck lets you send send perspectives on your service pages with one-click

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Pardot)'s Cons

• Accounts starts with only 1 user

  Accounts starts with only 1 user

• API access only available for PRO users starting at $2,000 / month

  API access only available for PRO users starting at $2,000 / month

• One of the more expensive solutions

  One of the more expensive solutions

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Pardot) Verdict

Pardot, B2B marketing automation by Salesforce, offers an easy-to-use marketing automation solution that allows marketing and sales departments to create, deploy, and manage online marketing campaigns

Best for Enterprise

Oracle Eloqua allows you to plan, create and implement marketing campaigns across multiple channels. The marketing automation software provides tools to segment and target specific audiences with the most relevant content. You can analyze customer behavior through website analytics and social media monitoring. With ELoqua you can create a marketing calendar for content, promotions, on-boarding, lead nurturing and other campaigns. Create SEO optimized content with custom data attributes based on individual customer data, such as engagement stage or persona. Create landing pages and forms, and publish content across the most relevant platforms. Along with marketing automation, Oracle Eloqua can also be used as a sales automation tool for greater lead management. Create activity profiles for website visitors, email recipients or contacts in the database, Use contact profiling and segmentation to qualify leads and get a visual summary of prospect activity that is embedded within your CRM. Define various lead nurturing paths and branches depending on customer needs. Focus conversation on the topics that are most relevant to your prospects based on their activity profiles. Send pre built email templates directly from the CRM or the web, and receive real-time website visitor alerts.

Oracle Eloqua's Pricing

Oracle Eloqua's Pros

• Well-designed visual campaign builder

  Well-designed visual campaign builder

• HyperSite builder which lets users quickly build personalized microsites

  HyperSite builder which lets users quickly build personalized microsites

• Considered one of the most powerful marketing automation solutions for enterprises

  Considered one of the most powerful marketing automation solutions for enterprises

Oracle Eloqua's Cons

• Expensive plans start at $2,000 / month with long-term contracts

  Expensive plans start at $2,000 / month with long-term contracts

• No integration with Google Adwords

  No integration with Google Adwords

• Slow implementation time due to the the typical organizations that use Oracle Marketing Cloud

  Slow implementation time due to the the typical organizations that use Oracle Marketing Cloud

Oracle Eloqua Verdict

Oracle Eloqua allows you to plan, create and implement marketing campaigns across multiple channels. The marketing automation software provides tools to segment and target specific audiences with the

Best for Enterprise

With over 150,000 customers, it’s not surprising that ActiveCampaign was the most commonly mentioned tool in our survey of email markering software options for 2023.

ActiveCampaign has earned its reputation as a leading marketing automation tool by focusing on building a world-class product that provides multiple solutions for B2C, B2B, and e-commerce businesses from around the globe.

ActiveCampaign’s automation builder is as simple to use as a flowchart or mindmap

It’s by far the most advanced email marketing platform on our list, with Active Intelligence (AI-powered features) and predictive tools enabling marketers to work smarter and deliver higher ROI.

Often credited with pioneering visual marketing automation, ActiveCampaign is impressively intuitive and easier to use than some tools on our list.

As an all-in-one marketing tool, ActiveCampaign comes with a built-in CRM system to manage your sales, live chat, and of course, email campaigns.

A built-in sales CRM connects with ActiveCampaign’s powerful automation engine

As an all-in-one marketing tool, ActiveCampaign comes with a built-in CRM system to manage your sales, live chat, and of course, email campaigns.

ActiveCampaign’s Pricing

You might think all these features come at a hefty cost. Yet, starting at only $15 a month, ActiveCampaign is reasonably priced and more affordable than many of the tools on this list.

ActiveCampaign’s Pros

• Visual automation builder

  ActiveCampaign pioneered the visual marketing automation builder, making it incredibly intuitive to create complex workflows. With 135+ triggers and actions, you can build sophisticated automations without any coding.

• Active Intelligence (AI features)

  The Pro plan includes AI-powered features like predictive sending, predictive content recommendations, and win-probability scoring to help you work smarter and achieve better results with less manual effort.

• Extensive integrations

  With 900+ integrations including native connections to major CRMs and eCommerce platforms, ActiveCampaign plays nicely with your existing tech stack and enables deep, robust integrations beyond basic Zapier connections.

• Automation split testing

  This feature enables you to A/B test entire sequences against each other, rather than just test individual emails (which is offered by most marketing automation tools).

ActiveCampaign’s Pros

• CRM

  ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation is particularly powerful because ActiveCampaign has an in-built CRM system. This CRM, however, is not as good as standalone platforms like PipeDrive or Salesforce – though we feel this is a reasonable trade-off for ActiveCampaign’s automation features.

ActiveCampaign Verdict

If you’re looking for a market-leading email marketing solution, there’s no denying that ActiveCampaign has long occupied that position.