As a busy marketer, ever wish you had a psychic assistant to tackle those tedious marketing tasks while you focus on the big picture?

Someone who always knew what to do and when to do it, letting you focus on more important stuff.

While that would be super cool, no one is that good. 

But you know what comes close?

Automation tools! 

That’s right, content marketing automation tools, where you set up a workflow and they handle the repetitive tasks. Or automatically integrate with other tools in your existing stack so work runs smoothly. 

Wondering where you can find these tools?

Keep reading to learn more about some of the best content marketing automation tools in this guide.

Disclaimer: The information below is accurate as of November 12, 2024.

What are content marketing automation tools?

Content marketing automation tools are digital assistants that help automate tedious repetitive tasks in your marketing efforts. 

They can automatically:  

• Send emails to customers after a purchase.
• Update your customer relationship management (CRM) database with new client data. 
• Schedule and post social media content.
• Research SEO keywords. 
• Notify you and your teammates of changes to a piece of content or process.

Overall, these tools help improve your productivity and free up more time to work on more important tasks.

Now, let’s get on with unpacking these apps.

Content marketing automation tools: comparison table (with features & pricing)

Just before we dive into these tools properly, we created this comparison graph for you.

It’s a glance at their standout features and cost so you’re familiar with them if you need to choose quickly.

We’ve also added another section below highlighting what each tool is best for.

Best marketing automation software by use case

All of these tools offer automation, but what they automate and how they do it varies. 

So, here’s a rundown of what each of them is best at:

• Ceros – Best for creating interactive content without a single line of code. 
• Salesforce Pardot – Best tool for identifying prospects who can be closed.  
• ActiveCampaign – Best email marketing tool with CRM tool. 
• Adobe Marketo Engage – Best B2B tool for engaging customers across the omnichannel.  
• HubSpot Marketing Hub – Best for managing marketing processes and collaborating with sales teams. 
• MailChimp – Best email marketing automation with preset customer journey. 
• Drip – Best B2C marketing automation tool with live support for clients. 
• Buffer – Best for social media marketing and scheduling social content. 
• Wiser – Best tool for gathering data from competitors and customers. 
• Adroll – Best for launching digital-based cross-channel marketing campaigns. 

Now that you have some basic insight into what these tools offer, let’s break them down, showing you what they’re known for, including their pros and cons.

1. Ceros

Ceros is a platform for creating interactive content using customizable templates. The type of content that allows your audience to interact with it by clicking, hovering, scrolling, or responding to quizzes.

Besides creating premium content, here’s what Ceros can do to reduce your workload: 

• Adapts interactive experiences to different browsers and devices by default. 
• Update published content wherever it’s embedded when changes are made in real time.
• Provide a digital library for storing brand assets to use when needed. 
• Create content templates you can repurpose with ease. 

Now, do all these really help you save time?

See what Jonathan Harrop, VP of global marketing and communication at Adcolony said: 

“Using Ceros for content creation took us 3 weeks, instead of the 8-12 week timeline for a designer, web developer, and QA.”

Ceros features

Look at some of its features below:

• Responsive design automation to ensure all the content created on Ceros is responsive. 
• Simultaneous collaboration, allows multiple team members to make edits to a project at the same time. 
• Asset library to keep all reusable digital assets in a centralized location for easy access. 
• Contextual toolbar helps streamline your workflow by keeping essential tools within your grasp. 

Ceros pricing

Ceros pricing is custom-based meaning it’s available on request. 

Ceros pros

• Ceros’s automation is in-built and doesn’t require extra effort to set up. 
• It has an easy-to-use interface.

2. Salesforce Pardot

Pardot, aka Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Management, is an automation tool that helps marketers identify prospects with high chances of converting and closing them. 

And it does so by leveraging what you know about the prospective client and what they do. 

Image source: Salesforce

Regarding marketing automation, Pardot is used to:

• Send automated emails to prospects based on triggers, actions, or after a waiting period. 
• Capture prospect’s activity across different touchpoints on their journey, e.g., your websites, app, landing pages, etc. 
• Divide prospects into different audience segments for more personalized marketing.
• Score prospects based on their engagement with your assets. 
• Track keywords and your competitor’s SEO performance.
• Post content on social media platforms and track user engagement. 

Here’s what Robert, an IT manager says about this tool:

“This platform really extends the functionality of Salesforce and its data to a whole other level. Having insights into what your customers/contacts, leads [...] are doing across multiple channels is marketing gold. 

Being able to track a lead as they respond to an automated campaign-based email, click through to your website, look at your products, and then fill in a Contact Us form [to generate] leads, tasks, alerts, and notifications means you [...] know what [...] to discuss with them long before you actually talk to them. ”

Salesforce Pardot features

Here are some of its features:

• Engagement studio to help manage an email campaign, send automated emails to clients at every stage of their journey, and monitor them. 
• Lead management for assessing the quality of your leads and helping you identify the right content for their journey. 
• Einstein AI, Salesforce’s artificial intelligence, lets you reach out to the right lead at the right time. 
• Dynamic content for delivering personalized content (e.g., landing pages, emails, etc.) based on user engagement.

Salesforce Pardot pricing

This marketing automation tool costs $1,250 per month.

Salesforce pros and cons

Pros:

• It offers predictive analytics and lets you identify factors that can drive conversion in your campaign.
• It allows you to track different metrics (e.g., email open rate, social media interactions, and web visits) to improve engagement rates.

Cons:

• It’s expensive for businesses on a tight budget.
• No free trial option is available.

3. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a marketing and email automation tool that helps build workflows to engage and nurture customers. 

Image source: ActiveCampaign

All you have to do is set different triggers such as prospects downloading a guide, a corresponding action, e.g., sending an email or SMS, and a condition (actions to take when prospects respond).

And the automation begins. 

Essentially, ActiveCampaign lets you automate delivering personalized customer experiences so you can grow your business and focus on other revenue-driving activities. 

See how a small business owner described this tool:

“It's [...] easy to create not just email automations but also automations that can track who reads certain emails, clicks certain links, and simply apply tags so I end up with a well-organized list of [...] hot clientele ready to buy. 

Plus it's been amazing to have a campaign that can have various leads going into the same automation so I don't have to set up duplicate campaigns all over the place…”

ActiveCampaign features

See some of its features below: 

• Custom landing pages and forms for capturing user information.
• Audience segmentation for organizing your audience into different categories (purchase history, location, website visits, etc.) so you can launch a more personalized outreach.
• Dynamic content to help send the target audience content that applies to them based on their engagement. 
• Win probability to predict which customer or lead engagement will likely lead to a sale so you can focus on them. 

ActiveCampaign pricing

It has a free 14-day trial and paid versions starting at $15 monthly. 

ActiveCampaign pros and cons

Pros:

• It supports multiple languages such as Portuguese, Italian, French, etc.
• It features a CRM tool to help manage and track all marketing and sales processes.

Cons:

• It has a bit of a learning curve.
• Its starter plan has limited features, for instance, users can only set five actions per automation.

4. Adobe Marketo Engage

Adobe Marketo Engage is a B2B marketing software solution for creating personalized customer experiences as they interact with your brand. 

And it does this by merging customer data, content, and analytics with automation.

Image source: Adobe Marketo Engage

With this tool, you can automate lead generation and lead nurturing, have personalized multi-channel conversations, and audience segmentation. 

All that, to help you develop customized connections with your customers and prospects. 

That’s why users like Lionel, a business owner say it’s a tool for automatically marketing products. 

“With this platform, we maintain constant marketing without manually marketing products to each client. It has also helped us to attract new customers and in turn, we have increased our reliability with potential customers. Adobe Marketo Engage classifies them in an orderly manner from the least potential to the most potential thus achieving the needs of each of the services they decide.” 

Adobe Marketo features

Marketo offers different features and some of them include:

• Cross-channel marketing lets you connect and engage with customers offline and online across the most popular platforms.
• Predictive audiences to identify, target, and connect with the right audience who need your product or services.
• Web personalization for delivering relevant experiences to visitors or customers using geographical and behavioral data. 
• Data insights and analytics to understand how effective your customer experiences across different touchpoints are.

Adobe Marketo Engage pricing

Marketo has four pricing tiers; Growth, Select, Prime, and Ultimate, and all of them are available on demand.

Adobe Marketo Engage pros and cons

Pros:

• It allows you to launch an omnichannel campaign.
• It has an extensive library of integrations (over 500 apps).

Cons:

• Requires training or skilled professionals to make the most of this tool.

5. Hubspot Marketing Hub

Hubspot is a popular digital marketing tool committed to helping businesses grow. It’s got a whole suite that offers marketing, sales, customer support, and operations services, all integrated with Hubspot’s CRM. 

And that all-round integration makes automation easier on Hubspot because customer data is centralized. 

Image source: Hubspot

Here’s what Hubspot marketing automation lets you do:

• Set up an auto-response for your email list.
• Create custom chatbots to help respond to prospects and customers. 
• Design conditional workflows so the system automatically performs an action when people trigger it.
• Add the right people to your campaign using advanced segmentation. 
• Send leads to the sales team. 
• Get notified when contacts trigger an action.  

Hubspot Marketing Hub features

Find some of its key features below:

• Visual editor to create targeted workflows where you assign triggers people make and corresponding actions.  
• Predictive lead scoring so you can focus on contacts most likely to close. 
• Customer journey analytics to help visualize customer interaction with your brand across different touchpoints so you know the best way to attract customers.
• Form automation for sending automated emails after leads fill out pop-ups or embedded forms, to nurture them.

Hubspot Marketing Hub pricing

Hubspot’s automation tool is available for free. If you want more advanced features, paid plans start at $45 per month. 

Hubspot Marketing Hub pros and cons

Pros:

• It’s integrated with Hubspot’s CRM and other tools. 
• It has a free version. 

Cons:

• It can take a while to master this tool. 
• Its free version has limited automation options.

6. Mailchimp

Everyone knows Mailchimp as a tool for launching email marketing campaigns. 

While that’s correct, it also functions as an automation tool helping to set up marketing workflows so you don’t have to repeat processes. 

Image source: Mailchimp

Mailchimp lets you create landing pages to generate leads or connect your online store to transfer existing customer data to the platform. 

After that, you set triggers and actions, create content to be sent to the contacts, and Mailchimp manages sending emails to subscriber lists.

The automation side of this tool is what entrepreneurs like Shanelle love.

“The best thing about Intuit Mailchimp is its seamless integration of marketing automation with financial management tools, enabling businesses to streamline their marketing and accounting processes on a unified platform.”

Mailchimp features

Here are some of its features:

• Classic automations with pre-set triggers to help you quickly create and launch automated campaigns.
• Behavioral targeting to segment your audience based on how they engage with your site, app, or campaign and send them personalized messages. 
• A/B testing to identify which campaign strategy is more effective. 
• Prebuilt journey to suggest new ways to engage the audience and implement automation strategies relevant to your business. 

Mailchimp pricing

You can use Mailchimp for free. But to access its automation features, you need to subscribe to a premium plan starting at $13 per month.

Mailchimp pros and cons

Pros:

• It has prebuilt automations to help you get started quickly. 
• It’s integrated with several third-party tools such as Shopify, Zapier, etc.

Cons:

• Its free version has no automation features.

7. Drip

Drip is described as a powerful, easy-to-use marketing automation software for business-to-consumer (B2C) brands. It helps set up workflows for repeat purchases for your online store and increase conversions. 

Image source: Drip

You can use it to send automated emails or on-site messages to clients who viewed products but didn’t purchase them or to those who already placed orders.

And how do you even know which prospect or client to engage with?

Drip is integrated with different e-commerce platforms so it’s easy to import customer data from your store and send personalized messages. 

One business owner described it this way:

“Drip is a highly intuitive and user-friendly email marketing automation tool that offers a wide range of features and capabilities. From analytics to comprehensive email campaigns, the versatility and functionality are truly impressive.”

Drip features

Some of its features include:

• Visual workflow builder to create automation workflow across digital channels such as emails, websites, and social channels. 
• Pre-designed email e-commerce templates to quickly create and send emails to customers.
• A/B testing to test different email variations to identify the one that can drive the most conversions.
• Insights to learn what’s working so you can improve the automation campaign. 

Drip pricing

Drip offers a 14-day free trial and a paid version that starts at $39 per month depending on the number of people in your email list. 

Drip pros and cons

Pros:

• It’s integrated with different e-commerce platforms (e.g., Shopify) and payment apps (e.g., Stripe).
• It’s easy to use. 

Cons:

• It doesn’t support engaging with customers offline.
• It has limited email templates.

8. Buffer

Buffer is a social media management tool for managing accounts across different platforms.

It helps you build an engaged following across different channels by automating various tasks for you.

Image source: Buffer

With Buffer, you can schedule social media posts and it’ll publish them automatically.

It also lets you: 

• Repurpose existing content to suit different social media platforms saving you time. 
• Generate social media posts from prompts.
• Determine the best time to post on social media. 

Jose, a marketing assistant, says Buffer has been a productivity game changer for him. 

“I've been using Buffer for 5 years, and it has helped me [with] the way I manage my main social media profiles. In particular, the platform's scheduling feature has simplified my life but also the way to repost published content. I'm able to get more done throughout the day since I can pre-schedule my social media updates in advance.”

Buffer features

Here are some of its features:

• Automatic scheduling to help line up content to post across different social media sites. 
• Automated reports for downloading insight reports for all channels to monitor their performance. 
• Social media post generator for creating content for different social channels. 
• Browser extension allows you to use the tool on any web page.  

Buffer pricing

Buffer is available for free with premium plans starting at $6 per channel, per month. 

Buffer pros and cons

Pros:

• It’s got an intuitive user interface.
• It lets you manage and track the content performance of different social media platforms in a single environment.

Cons:

• Its free version has limited features such as reporting and AI content management. 
• It doesn’t have a social listening feature.

9. Wiser

As you know, research and data collection is an important part of content marketing. 

But sometimes gathering data can be a hassle. 

However, with Wiser’s solution, you can sit back and let it do all the hard work of collecting intelligence. 

Image source: Wiser

Wiser is a digital tool that helps brands and retailers gather insights to make better business decisions. 

It lets you identify competitor marketing strategies over time to determine opportunities for improvement. 

Essentially, you tell Wiser the data you need and it collects it and presents actionable insights. 

Wiser features

Here are a few of its functions:

• Retail intelligence to help get actionable insights and data from customers.
• Promotions intelligence to gather and aggregate historical promotions, digital and print, so you can optimize your ads.
• Unlimited user logins to allow different marketing team members to access the platform simultaneously.
• Live price check to help you monitor prices of competitors’ products to understand pricing dynamics. 

Wiser pricing

Wiser’s pricing structure is available on request.

Wiser pros and cons

Pros:

• Helps brands and retailers make data-informed decisions with the insights it collects. 
• It offers multichannel data capturing. 

Cons:

• No free plan or trial is available. 
• It has limited integration with third-party apps. 

10. AdRoll

AdRoll is a marketing and advertising tool that can help increase revenue by running social ads, web ads, and email campaigns across different channels. 

Image source: AdRoll

It’s got an automation feature that can handle launching cross-channel campaigns using automated sequences. 

In addition, the automation feature lets you:

• Connect with visitors who are most likely to buy. 
• Retarget existing shoppers across different channels (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, website, etc.)
• Connect with customers who didn’t checkout before leaving your site. 
• Deliver personalized customer experience based on their actions.

Brandon, a production manager describes Adroll this way: “Adroll's platform makes it extremely easy for a business owner or agency to set up and manage remarketing across the web (as well as additional features beyond that). Plus, dealing with almost 1k clients has difficulties/complexities, so having something like Adroll to assist in doing multiple things our clients want, but from a single easy-to-use platform helps a ton.”

Adroll features

Here are some of its features:

• List builder to help you segment the audience based on your contacts’ behaviors and attributes. 
• Dynamic ads to run personalized ads that reflect the customer’s journey on your website.
• Cross-channel campaign management to track campaign performance such as display ads, social ads, and email from a centralized platform.
• Campaign reporting to monitor channel, digital assets, and campaign performance to know what’s working, to make informed choices. 

Adroll pricing

Adroll runs a pay-as-you-go service and monthly subscription starting at $36 per month.

Adroll pros and cons

Pros:

• Prebuilt templates to help create automations quickly. 
• It’s easy to use. 

Cons:

• It’s difficult to identify the marketing channel that led to conversion.
• It's not fully integrated with Google Ads.

Up next, let’s quickly touch on why using a content marketing automation platform is a good move.

What are the benefits of using content marketing automation tools?

Thinking of investing in automation tools?

Here’s what that gets you: 

• Helps you save time: Automation tools streamline manual marketing tasks that would otherwise be time-consuming, like monitoring visitors who abandoned their cart. This way, you can focus on other important tasks. 
• Real-time interactions: Why worry about sending follow-up emails when someone or something else could do it for you? With marketing automation tools, you can interact with the audience without being overly involved. You can create the content and let the tool do the sending.
• Data-driven insights: These tools let you track key metrics related to your campaign such as views, open rates, click-through rates, or bounce rates so you can make data-informed decisions. 
• Personalized campaigns: With marketing automation tools, you can segment the audience based on different categories (purchase history or behavior) and create dynamic content that relates to them. 

And how do you know which automation tool is a good fit for you?

You can find out below.

How to choose the best content marketing automation platform for your business needs? 

Here’s what to consider when choosing an automation tool:

• Ensure it has an easy-to-use interface. Setting up automations can be tricky…so ensure the tool is easy to navigate before saying yes to it.
• Determine your budget. Automation tools save time and make you more efficient. What price would you put on that? Now, ensure the tool you pick falls within the budget.
• Consider third-party apps. Check for tools that fit into your existing stack so you’re more efficient.
• Evaluate analytics and reporting options. Ensure the automation tool offers an analytics feature to monitor metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to you. 

With that cleared up, let’s wrap this guide up.

Over to you!

Found an automation tool yet?

Let’s introduce you to Ceros, an interactive content tool. 

While it’s not a traditional automation tool, it can surely help create dynamic content that will leave your audience coming back for more. 

It’s easy to use, streamlines interactions, lets you monitor users’ engagement with the content, and more. 

Book a demo with Ceros today and witness its content marketing powers firsthand.