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Marketing Automation Software: Best Platforms for 2022

A marketing automation software will take care of all the repetitive work involved in successfully running marketing campaigns. Having put all the routine tasks on autopilot, you will have more time to devote to the parts of your business that demand human discretion and creativity. Not only that, but you will still be in the driver’s seat of your campaigns, and be free to make any changes if need be.

Surely, you have come across multiple tools claiming to be the best at marketing automation. Amidst all the noise, how do you zero in on the best marketing automation software? Luckily for you, we’ve narrowed down your search and present the top 10 marketing automation software for 2022 in this guide.

Our Pick for the Best Marketing Automation Platform for 2022: HubSpot

HubSpot has been a renowned marketing tool since 2006. It’s a pioneering marketing platform with little to no competition as far as reliability and expertise are concerned.

HubSpot features that make it stand out amongst its peers:

Usability: Marketing automation tools are designed to make your life easy and not stress you with complicated interfaces. Automating your workflow and creating sequences on HubSpot is code-free and super simple.

Diverse Automation: Unlike most popular tools, HubSpot doesn’t limit its automation feature to emails alone. From lead management to social media and e-commerce, you can automate everything from one dashboard.

Powerful Insights: HubSpot gives you detailed insights at every marketing stage. Know what exactly your customers do and want right from your screen.

Salesforce Integration: Sync-sensitive customer information extracted during marketing campaigns integrates directly with Salesforce’s CRM dashboard.

Best Marketing Automation Software: Top 10 List

Here is our marketing automation platform list:

HubSpot: Best Overall Marketing Automation Software

Salesmate: Best For Reengaging With Quality Leads

Mailchimp: Best Email Marketing Automation Software

Sharpspring: Best Marketing Automation Software For Small Businesses

Omnisend: Best Free Marketing Automation Platform

Moosend: Best For Ecommerce Integration

Iterable: Best Marketing Automation Software For Large Businesses

Activecampaign: Best For Customer Experience

Pardot: Best B2b Marketing Automation Software

Ortto: Best Email Marketing Automation Software For Templates

Best Marketing Automation Software: Compared

Each of the tools mentioned above comes with a unique set of features designed for particular business needs. Here’s a detailed review of each of these tools and their unique features to help you choose the best marketing automation partner for your business:

1. HubSpot: Best Overall Marketing Automation Software

HubSpot allows you to naturally nurture your leads with automated emails so that you can speed up their journey through your sales funnels and turn them into customers faster. The easiest way to automate your marketing strategies on HubSpot is through workflows, which are simple to build and can have diverse customer interactions ranging from simple follow-ups to complex multi-step processes.

Some of the tasks that you can automate through HubSpot include email marketing, lead conversions, lead data management, lead tracking, and follow-ups.

You can also automate your social media marketing campaigns by scheduling posts in advance, tracking brand mentions, conversions, and giving you a closer look into your post engagement.

Best Features

Here is what we love about HubSpot:

No-code Workflows: Building workflows and automating operations on HubSpot requires zero coding knowledge

Social Media Marketing: All-in-one marketing automation for all your social media platforms

Email Marketing: Simplifies email marketing with engaging templates, automated follow-up, and lead tracking

CRM: Seamlessly integrates with your favorite CRM tool Salesforce to help you manage customer data and relationships better

Pricing

After your HubSpot free trial ends, you can choose any of their three paid plans:

Starter: $45/month for up to 1000 contacts

Professional: $800/month for up to 2000 contacts

Enterprise: $3200/month for up to 10,000 contacts

Pros

Simple to set up

Helps with blogs, landing pages, SEO, and Ads

Works for email and social media marketing

Seamlessly integrates with Salesforce

Cons 2. Salesmate: Best For Reengaging With Quality Leads

Salesmate currently empowers over 4000 brands across 70 countries with comprehensive marketing plans designed to engage and entertain leads from multiple marketing channels.

Salesmate allows you to automate every customer integration by creating smart, action-based message triggers. Every time a customer fulfills a requisite action, they will automatically receive a pre-designed message from your end.

You can also segment users based on history and actions to send personalized emails automatically. Timely follow-ups nurture your leads better and increase your probability of retaining them.

Also, you can set up your account to send notifications and reminders for when high-quality leads take action. You can automate your customer’s journey at every point – from the first interaction to the final purchase with Salesmate.

Best Features

Here is what we love about Salesmate:

Customer Segregation: Don’t send the same emails to all your customers. Instead, segregate and customize them based on history and buying stage

Action-triggered Emails: Send relevant emails based on the customer buying stage for maximum lead conversion probability

Multi-channel Automation: Salesmate allows you to automate multiple points of interaction and every part of your customer’s journey

Reliability: Stalemate is already serving renowned brands like Sony Music and 4000 more across 70 countries who can vouch for their reliability

Pricing

Salesmate comes with a free trial and 4 paid plans:

Starter: $12/month/user billed annually

Growth: $24/month/user billed annually

Boost: $40/monthly/user billed annually

Enterprise: Custom pricing for larger brands

Pros

Offers A/B testing for campaigns

Helps you to engage at the best time

Tracks user engagement

Discovers and re-engages with quality leads

Cons

No voicemail drop feature

3. MailChimp: Best Email Marketing Automation Software

The biggest issue that most brands face with marketing automation is over-generalized messages and emails that do not directly appeal to individual users. Mailchimp, on the other hand, collects customer information and helps you create personalized experiences and journeys for each customer.

Also, to take away the burden of email scheduling, Mailchimp collects and analyses your customer data to recommend the most suitable timing for reaching out to them.

Suppose you have a store on e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magneto, WooCommerce, or Bigcommerce. In that case, you can integrate it with your Mailchimp account and automate your eCommerce interactions with purchase-based emails.

Mailchimp’s social media marketing features are comparable to HubSpot. You can schedule posts, track engagement and diversify your social media marketing efforts on multiple channels.

Best Features

Here is what we love about Mailchimp

World-class Email Marketing Automation: Mailchimp has the finest email marketing service. From automated emails and scheduling to the finest templates and 100% deliverability, you get it all here.

Social Media Marketing: Bring your social media marketing efforts for all channels under one roof with user engagement tracking and post scheduling

Ecommerce Integration: Connect your online business with Mailchimp to simplify customer interaction based on purchase history.

Auto Scheduling: Don’t waste hours finding the right time to contact your customers; Mailchimp will automatically recommend the window that can get the most responses.

Pricing

The free plan of Mailchimp covers almost all basic features like basic templates, marketing CRM, behavioral targeting, etc. Along with that, here are their paid plans:

Essential: $9.99/month with additional features like custom branding and A/B testing

Standard: $14.99/month with additional features like retargeting ads and custom templates

Premium: $299/month with additional features like Multivariate testing and advanced segmentation

Pros

Integrates with eCommerce

Auto scheduling for emails

Covers all-important social media marketing aspects

100% deliverability for personalized messages

Cons

The social media marketing plan is only available in the “Standard” plans and plans above it

4. Sharpspring: Best Marketing Automation Software For Small Businesses

Adequate information on your leads at every stage of customer interaction will ultimately translate to a high conversion rate, which is why Sharpring with its detailed insights, is definitely up there as the best marketing automation software.

Its powerful, dynamic forms integrate customer data directly with its built-in CRM system to minimize manual data transfer. Also, thanks to customizable form fields, you can create separate forms for different audience segments and only track information that will help your marketing campaign.

It also helps you identify the best leads every day and sends their details directly to your inbox. Using branching logic, Sharpspring engages your customers at critical points of the sales funnel to keep them hooked until you reach out to them.

The biggest strength of Sharpspring is its unique visitor ID. Instead of missing out on important leads, you can now identify them with their visitor ID and target them based on their personal information.

Best Features

Here is what we love about Sharpspring:

CRM Integration: Directly sync all your customer information with their built-in CRM tools

Dynamic Forms: Use their customizable forms to extract important customer information based on individual user segments

Identify Best Leads: Get a list of hottest leads from your daily marketing campaigns with Sharpspring

Unique Visitor ID: Identity each customer with a unique visitor ID and never miss out on any crucial leads

Pricing

The best part about Sharpspring is that its pricing is customizable, for the most part. Its “Small Business” plan for 1000 contacts comes at $399/month, whereas its “Enterprise” and “Agency” plans are open to customization. You can also get demos for both customizable plans.

Pros

Helps you identify your best leads

Directly sync user info with a CRM tool

Customize form fields through user segments

Engage your users at every funnel stage

Cons

Their insight feature is pretty basic

5. Omnisend: Best Free Marketing Automation Platform

The brand launched in 2014 and has since managed to build a loyal customer base of 70,000+ sales teams, including some of the most renowned brands like Hallmark and Jiggy.

Another impressive feature of Omnisend is its usability. Automatic marketing processes can be challenging at times, but not with Omnisend. Its easy-to-create workflows and no-code email automation make it accessible even to startups and solopreneurs without any tech expert.

Omnisend has both custom SMS and email templates that can be integrated with your customer journey to keep them engaged at every step.

Set your sales strategy on autopilot through a welcome sequence, cart recovery, and post-purchase marketing to drive revenue even when you are away.

Best Features

Here is what we love about it:

SMS Automation: Almost every marketing tool offers email automation, but Omnisend outperforms them with customizable and easy-to-integrate SMS campaigns.

Automated Sales Campaigns: Reach out to your customers during and after sales with automated sales campaigns

Usable: Creating automated workflows on Omnisend is super simple. Automate every part of your marketing campaign with zero coding skills.

Precise Targeting: Built-in audience segmentation allows you to target the right user at the right time

Pricing

Omnisend’s free plan works for up to 250 contacts. After that, you will need to use any of these paid plans:

Standard: $16/month for up to 500 contacts

Pro: $59/month for up to 500 contacts but unlimited emails and better features

Pros

Effective SMS integration and automation

Automated sales and post-sales marketing

Connects with popular eCommerce platforms

Set up in under 30 mins with 24×7 expert support

Cons

Slight probability of your email ending up in spam

6. Moosend: Best For Ecommerce Integration

Moosend email marketing automation platform’s automated workflows are designed to give you the best conversion results. It simplifies automating marketing and focuses heavily on personalization.

One of the biggest benefits of this tool is its easy-to-use user onboarding feature. It automatically sends a welcome email as soon as a new user subscribes to your service, followed by an email to deliver set-up instructions at your chosen interval.

Creating automated workflows is extremely easy on Moosend. All that you have to do is drag and drop elements and set triggers that will result in a particular action. Select the event, add necessary filters and create the resulting task to automate crucial workflows forever.

Other important features include a multiple trigger setup that works best for brands with diverse target audiences. You can also create recurring emails on a loop to be sent out daily, weekly, or even monthly without your intervention.

You can also access all sensitive workflow data from any automated business process with a single click.

Best Features

Here is what we love about Moosend:

Drag and Drop Workflow Builder: Build automated workflows simply by dragging and organizing elements

Multiple Triggers: Automate sequences for different user segments by setting multiple triggers

Workflow Sharing: Easily share your workflow with your team to replicate similar sequences

Abandoned Cart Follow-up: Follow up on your customer’s purchase and abandoned carts with an automated email

Pricing

Moosend offers a 30-day free trial with unlimited emails and workflow automation. After that, you can purchase any of these paid plans:

Pro: $9/month and designed for up to 500 contacts

Custom: For advanced needs of a big corporation

Pros

Assists in seamless user onboarding

Easy to create workflows and sequences

Efficient cart follow-up and lead scoring

Sends automated event reminders to your users

Cons

Integrations are slightly complicated

7. Iterable: Best Marketing Automation Software For Large Businesses

If you’re looking for a top marketing automation software to collect consumer data and boost your marketing strategy, Iterable is a good choice. Built with sophisticated technologies and features, this cross-channel marketing platform offers impressive scalability and speed.

Iterable AI powers modern personalization tools, which ensures better customer experiences. Iterable’s data-heavy approach is perfect for large-scale marketing campaigns. That said, it’s a viable software for businesses of any scale.

Best Features

Here is what we love about Iterable:

Omnichannel Marketing: Iterable helps organizations engage with their customers on various channels.

Data Acquisition: A USP of this marketing automation platform is that it can collect a large volume of real-time and event-based data on your target customers.

Analytics: Iterable is quite suitable for performing marketing analytics that helps you get better insights.

Seamless Interface: This platform comes with a drag-and-drop dashboard interface, allowing the marketing team to easily collaborate and manage any campaign.

Custom Campaigns: Iterable can also build custom campaigns for you.

Pricing

Iterable does not have any fixed pricing plans. Instead, it offers a quotation-based approach wherein you can choose a custom plan as per the services and tools you desire. The ability to choose which services to opt for and which to exclude makes Iterable a cost-effective choice.

Pros

Gathers and uses large volumes of customer data

Ensures excellent customer engagement

Offers custom payment plans

Personalized marketing campaigns

Facilitates campaign segmentation

Cons

Limited data options and customization for the workflow webhooks.

8. ActiveCampaign: Best For Customer Experience

Look no further than ActiveCampaign if you’re on the lookout for a marketing automation software with the best customer experience. This software offers a perfect blend of email marketing and CRM solutions, ensuring a comprehensive approach.

You can implement ActiveCampaign to serve multiple purposes in your campaigns — sales, marketing, and customer support.

Best Features

Here is what we love about ActiveCampaign:

Social Media Marketing Tools: You can use ActiveCampaign to apply marketing automation tools to social media campaigns.

Personalized Marketing: You can tag and label your customers, allowing you to reach out to them in a personalized manner.

App Integrations: This software integrates well with more than 800 apps. Hence, you will find it compatible with your existing marketing tools.

Automations: Over 600 automations will help you streamline your marketing campaign and run it efficiently.

Form Tools: ActiveCampaign comes with various customized form tools that will help you generate leads.

Pricing

While ActiveCampaign offers various pricing plans, the cost of each plan depends on the number of contacts. Here are the prices of different plans at different tires:

Lite

Up to 500 contacts: USD 9 per month

Up to 1000 contacts: USD 29 per month

Up to 2500 contacts: USD 49 per month

Up to 5000 contacts: USD 79 per month

Up to 10000 contacts: USD 139 per month

Up to 25,000 contacts: USD 229 per month

Up to 50,000 contacts: USD 339 per month

Up to 75,000 contacts: USD 449 per month

Up to 100,000 contacts: USD 549 per month

More than 100,000 contacts: Custom quote

Plus

Up to 500 contacts: USD 49 per month

Up to 1000 contacts: USD 49 per month

Up to 2500 contacts: USD 99 per month

Up to 5000 contacts: USD 149 per month

Up to 10,000 contacts: USD 229 per month

Up to 25,000 contacts: USD 379 per month

More than 25,000 contacts: Custom quote

Professional

Up to 500 contacts: USD 149 per month

Up to 1000 contacts: USD 149 per month

Up to 2500 contacts: USD 149 per month

Up to 5000 contacts: USD 209 per month

Up to 10,000 contacts: USD 339 per month

Up to 25,000 contacts: USD 549 per month

More than 25,000 contacts: Custom quote

Enterprise:

A fully customized plan where the sales team will provide you a quote based on your needs.

Pros

Flexible pricing plans

A comprehensive range of tools and features

Excellent customer experience and customer retention

Cross-channel marketing

Cons

The reporting may be difficult to navigate through

9. Pardot: Best B2B Marketing Automation Software

Pardot is what you should be looking at if you need an automation tool for a B2B model rather than an eCommerce business. This software comes from Salesforce, a trendy platform among enterprises.

Pardot streamlines lead generation and help manage leads better. On average, Pardot helps organizations increase their campaign effectiveness by 37% and their ROI by 34%.

Best Features

Here is what we love about Pardot:

Visual Editor: A visual editor that you can use to design complex workflows with ease.

AI: Pardot incorporates artificial intelligence to a large extent, simplifying carrying out smarter marketing campaigns.

Free Training: Daily and weekly webinars and other training programs to help users learn more about specific features.

Knowledge Base: Gain unlimited access to Pardot’s knowledge base by subscribing to a plan. This will help you leverage this software to the fullest and enjoy the best results.

Excellent Customer Support: Besides providing responsive and helpful customer support, Pardot also allows users to vote on new product features.

Pricing

Pardot offers four pricing plans:

Growth

USD 1250 per month per month

Smart marketing automation

10,000 contacts

Plus

USD 2500 per month

More marketing automation features, including analytics

10,000 contacts

Advanced

USD 4000 per month

Artificial intelligence

10,000 contacts

Premium

USD 15,000 per month

Predictive analysis and support

75,000 contacts

Pros

AI-powered

Robust platform with comprehensive features

Seamless workflows

Excellent engagement and conversion

Ample learning material

Cons

Not as many integrations as other software solutions

10. Ortto: Best B2B Marketing Automation Software

Previously known as Autopilot, Ortto is one of the best email marketing automation software with a variety of helpful templates that you can use to generate and nurture leads and reduce your overall manual effort. This omnichannel marketing software integrates with various platforms, such as Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, SMS, etc.

Best features

Accurate Targeting: Easily target potential customers with great accuracy by segmenting the audience based on a plethora of factors.

Personalization: Implement a highly personalized omnichannel marketing automation strategy, facilitating better customer engagement.

Insightful Analytics: Ortto is great for marketing analytics, which helps marketing teams get valuable insights. Moreover, the software presents all the analytical information through well-organized dashboards.

No-code Integration: You can easily integrate Ortto with various other platforms to access and unify information.

Drag-and-drop Interface: Perform tasks like building emails using simple drag-and-drop functions of Ortto.

Pricing

In addition to offering custom quotes for large enterprises, Ortto offers the following three payment plans:

Campaign

USD 29 per month

2000 contacts

8000 emails per month

Professional

USD 99 per month

5000 contacts

20,000 emails per month

Business

USD 299 per month

20,000 contacts

80,000 emails per month

Pros

Excellent user-interface

Plenty of templates

Seamless lead segmentation and targeting

Real-time team collaboration

Predictive analysis powered by AI

Cons How To Choose A Marketing Automation Software?

Finding the best marketing automation software for your business is a tricky affair. After all, every business has its own requirements and preferences; two different businesses may not find the same software to be their best choice.

That said, you can’t really shy away from putting in the effort to find the best automation marketing software, as it will directly impact the success of your marketing campaign. Here are some factors to consider when shopping for a marketing automation software.

1. Your Goals

Your goals behind using the marketing automation software must be clear. Ensure that the software you choose aligns with your needs and offers all the necessary features and functionalities.

A good marketing automation software should help you achieve better conversion rates, greater customer satisfaction, increased ROI, new inward customers, etc. Also, make sure the software has adequate reporting tools to provide you with valuable insights.

2. Customer Support

It’s only normal that you might need some assistance when you start using a new software. The availability of reliable customer service ensures a hassle-free experience and a smooth learning curve. Moreover, if the software breaks down or any bugs appear, you should be able to get it resolved quickly by a responsive customer support team.

Go through online reviews, and before you buy the software, get in touch with the support team to check how responsive and helpful the customer support is.

3. Learning Resources

We recommend you pick a top marketing automation software with plenty of learning resources to guide you, especially if you’re new to using a marketing automation software. Things like short videos, text guides, or even webinars on making the most of the software’s features will help you leverage the software the way it’s meant to be.

4. User Base

Pay attention to the user base when scouring through various marketing automation platforms. A software with a greater user base is obviously popular, but the important bit here is that it’s reliable. Going through first-hand customer reviews will give you an idea of what the audience feels about the software and whether or not it’s plagued by negative feedback.

You may also want to check whether the user base of a software consists of B2B or B2C companies. This will help you pick a local marketing automation platform perfect for your business.

5. Cost

Needless to say, you must pick an automation software that fits within your budget. Take a detailed look at the pricing plans offered by different platforms and the features that tag along with each plan.

Generally, a marketing automation platform will have a base price and additional pricing tiers for a specified number of contacts and extra features. You may curtail your expenses by choosing a flexible software with cheaper plans and excluding extra features that you don’t need.

6. User-interface

The better the UI, the more convenient it will be to use the software. A free trial, in most cases, is the best way to find out whether or not an automation marketing software is for you.

Your choice should feature seamless navigation and provide you with contextual information when needed, such as for vague titles. This will also not only smoothen the learning curve but also enable you to use the software as efficiently as possible.

7. Native Integrations

Sound marketing automation platform comparisons are incomplete without a thorough understanding of their integrations. Focus on softwares that integrate natively with other softwares and tools you already use. Such integration with your existing technology will make it easier for you to get up and running with the new software.

Otherwise, you may have to tackle specific tasks manually or switch to technologies compatible with your new software, which will add to the overall cost of automation.

Conclusion: What Is The Best Marketing Automation Platform?

Having discussed ten excellent marketing automation softwares inside out, our top pick for the best marketing automation software has to be HubSpot. First and foremost, it’s the most comprehensive marketing automation software out there — use it to automate your email marketing, social media marketing, lead tracking, lead data management, follow-up, etc. What’s more, it offers easy-to-build no-code workflows and seamless CRM integration, and the best part is that it offers all this in affordable packages.

FAQs

What are marketing automation platforms?

Marketing automation platforms and softwares, as the name implies, are tools used to eliminate repetitive manual tasks involved in the sales and marketing efforts of a business or organization on online channels such as email, websites, etc., by using automated solutions instead. Such platforms require no software installation and can be simply used as a web-based or hosted solution.

What is an example of marketing automation?

Sending reminder emails to a customer a few weeks after the initial purchase is an excellent example of marketing automation. For instance, the service fee charged by Toyota makes for a good portion of its total revenue, the credit for which goes to the automated emails (in which they ask customers to schedule a service appointment for their car’s maintenance) its marketing platform sends out to customers every six months after the car purchase date.

Which is the best marketing automation software?

HubSpot is the best marketing automation software, mainly due to features like code-free automation sequences, detailed user insights, Salesforce integration, etc. It also allows you to schedule your social media posts well in advance and track post engagement, including brand mentions, conversions, etc. Furthermore, you can use HubSpot to automate lead data management, conversion and tracking, and email marketing.

How do I automate my marketing?

The first step to successfully automating your organization’s marketing is to zero in on the tasks you want automated, such as sending responsive emails. It’s a good idea to automate only those tasks that are time-consuming and monotonous. Next, select an adept marketing automation software, such as HubSpot and MailChimp. Lastly, train your team to make sure they understand how automation would warrant a change in their responsibilities; address and resolve any concerns or doubts they might have.

Author: Krishi Chowdary

Krishi is an enthusiastic B2B and B2C content writer, always on the lookout to simplify software purchase decisions for businesses. Other hobbies include studying the financial markets and cricket!… View full profile ›

02

HubSpot Announces Claire Hughes Johnson Joins Board of Directors

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- HubSpot, a leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform, announced today that Claire Hughes Johnson has joined the company's board of directors. Hughes Johnson brings more than two decades of experience in scaling high-growth companies and products.

HubSpot, Inc. logo - www.hubspot.com . (PRNewsfoto/HubSpot)

Hughes Johnson joins as Julie Herendeen transitions from the board. Herendeen joined HubSpot's board in 2016 and has supported the company through a period of rapid transformation that includes significant expansion across HubSpot's platform and Yamini Rangan's transition to CEO in 2021.

"First, I want to thank Julie for her support and guidance over the past six years. As one of HubSpot's first board members as a public company, Julie has been instrumental in navigating HubSpot through a period of tremendous growth and change. While I'm sad to see Julie go, I'm excited to be welcoming Claire to our board," said Brian Halligan, HubSpot's co-founder and Executive Chairperson. "Claire has impressive experience when it comes to scaling high-growth companies, as she was an executive at Google from 2004 to 2014 and COO at Stripe from 2014 to 2021. Her experience in payments at Stripe will be invaluable as we continue to build out HubSpot Payments in the coming years. In addition to being a great operator who has seen some great movies, she's a great person that I look forward to working with."

"The CRM industry has dramatically evolved during the pandemic, and I have tremendous respect for Yamini and her team for turning HubSpot into an engine for innovation during this time," said Hughes Johnson. "I'm thrilled to work alongside the rest of the Board as HubSpot continues to hone and scale its customer-centric approach."

Hughes Johnson's experience as chief operating officer at Stripe and vice president of multiple Google business teams, including Global Online Sales, Google Offers, and Google Self-Driving Cars, will be instrumental as HubSpot continues to build out its product offerings, including its natively built CRM-powered payments capabilities.

Story continues

Hughes Johnson is currently a corporate officer and advisor for Stripe, and she also serves on the boards of directors of the media company, The Atlantic; Ameresco, a leading renewable energy company; and self-driving company, Aurora Innovation.

"Throughout my career, I've worked with purpose-driven technology companies that create bold solutions to customers' most challenging problems. These past six years with HubSpot have been an incredible opportunity to do that, and I'm proud of the many milestones that HubSpot has achieved," said Herendeen. "There are many more ahead, and I'm confident that Claire and the rest of the board will do a great job supporting HubSpot as it enters this exciting new chapter. It's been a pleasure working with HubSpot and my fellow board members, and I wish them the best of luck."

To learn more about HubSpot's board of directors, please visit https://www.hubspot.com/company/board-of-directors.

About HubSpot

HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS) is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform that provides software and support to help companies grow better. The platform includes marketing, sales, service, operations, and website management products that start free and scale to meet our customers' needs at any stage of growth. Today, more than 135,000 customers across more than 120 countries use HubSpot's powerful and easy-to-use tools and integrations to attract, engage, and delight customers.

Named Glassdoor's #2 Best Place to Work in 2022, HubSpot has been recognized for its award-winning culture by Great Place to Work, Comparably, Fortune, Entrepreneur, Inc., and more. HubSpot was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company's thousands of employees work across the globe in HubSpot offices and remotely.

Learn more at www.hubspot.com.

Cision

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SOURCE HubSpot

03

8 Free Courses For Writers & Content Marketers

Increasing online competition and advancements in search technologies mean that writing content is about more than just having a solid grasp of the English language.

Great content that performs well takes into account a variety of marketing factors that not even the most seasoned writers are necessarily familiar with.

Before beginning to write content, you’ll want to consider:

How you’re going to optimize the piece with keywords, topical relevance, internal linking, and more.

How you’ll write for a diverse audience.

How you’ll ensure all of the writing has a consistent tone and style.

Whether you should hire writers who are experts in the subject matter, or writers who are experts at writing online content. In certain industries, it can be tough to find both.

How much will you pay your writers?

How many articles you are able to write and publish per week.

Who is going to manage the content when it comes to responding to comments, making sure links are not broken, etc.

In terms of marketing, which analytics reports you are going to use to make conclusions about the success or failure of each piece.

How you will incorporate different content types – video, infographics, ebooks, polls, reviews, interviews, etc.

It’s safe to say that if you want to write successful content that gets a lot of attention, it’s probably a good idea to get some training on both writing and marketing.

Fortunately, getting the training you need doesn’t have to mean shelling out a lot of money from your budget.

There are tons of free online courses that can help you learn everything you need to know to get the links and shares your business needs.

Read on for some favorites from myself and friends!

Top 8 Free Online Courses On Content Marketing & Writing

Disclaimer: I have not taken all of the courses listed below, but I have taken a few, and I know at least one person who has recommended the others.

They’ve also received numerous positive reviews from the hundreds of others who have taken the courses.

Without further ado, below are some of the best out there.

Skillshare Courses

Skillshare allows you to start free for 14 days, and then after that, it is a yearly fee of $96.00.

Once you pay for the membership, all of the classes are free within Skillshare.

If you don’t want to purchase a membership, the courses below can be purchased separately for anywhere from $10-20.

Still, I’ve added them to the list because you can get quite a few courses done for free during your 14-day trial.

1. Content Marketing: Blogging for Growth 

This course is taught by Eric Siu, CEO of Single Grain and Founder at Growth Everywhere.

This 80-minute class will teach you various blog-writing styles, how to brainstorm a topic, and then develop your notes from a brainstorming session to a full-on blog post. He even goes into detail on how to create an engaging headline and feature image.

This is a beginner course perfect for business owners and marketers, and it has a 95% positive review rate.

At the end of the course, you’ll have written an original blog post to share, which hopefully will be the first in a successful content marketing strategy!

2. Become a Better Blogger: Content Planning

This is a course by Andrea Goulet Ford of Corgibytes, a team of expert developers who not only offer maintenance services, but courses to boot!

Ford was an unknown name to me, but her loyal followers seem to swear by her advice, so I gave the course a try and was very impressed.

She has worked with government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and many more across the board.

This subject matter seems fairly simple, but planning can be very intricate. She helps you create a resource library to refer back to in the future, AND she makes sure that you walk away with three months’ worth of online content all planned out.

Udemy Courses

Udemy is probably the most popular avenue for online marketers when it comes to taking free classes.

They have free options (all mentioned below) as well as paid options and offer more than 32,000 courses, 18,000 instructors, and 80+ course languages.

3. Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises

This course is best for B2B companies, but it’s worth mentioning because it’s one of the few good Udemy classes that are free.

The course is by William Flanagan, CEO and Founder of Audienti, and it’s great because it uses actual scenarios that Flanagan has dealt with in his own business as well as of his clients.

There are six sections to the class, including Creating Interesting Relevant Content, Publishing Content for Conversion, and Getting Content in front of Your Audience.

4. WordPress for Beginners: Create a Website Step by Step

This might seem unconventional, but part of content marketing is knowing how to take advantage of all WordPress has to offer.

This is important for SEO as well as user experience.

The course covers posts vs. pages, the Content Editor, media files, categories and tags, content widgets, and more confusing little options you have.

It’s a basic course and best for beginners, but necessary if you have any questions about what WordPress can offer.

Coursera Courses

Coursera courses are on the rise.

The education platform partners with top universities and organizations worldwide and makes it easy for anyone to sign up (similarly to Udemy, except it’s a bit pricier and works with colleges and universities).

Coursera also has one of the largest libraries of classes in all different categories, so this is one of my favorite platforms.

5. Content Strategy for Professionals Specialization

There are four parts to this course: “Engaging Audiences,” “Managing Content,” “Expanding your Content’s Reach,” and “Ensuring your Content’s Impact.”

The course ends with a final capstone project where you use the knowledge you’ve gained in the prior four courses to design a content strategy package.

The course says that it is designed for entry-level, for-profit, non-profit, volunteer, and government enterprises, and it’s a great way to learn some of the basics of content marketing and how it can relate to a business strategy as a whole.

It’s a beginner-level course, and if you spend approximately two hours per week on the classes, you will finish in about four months.

The best part is it’s completely free, although you do have the option of getting a Verified Certificate from Northwestern University for completing the course for $49.00.

6. High-Impact Business Writing

This is the only course on the list that isn’t free, but it’s only $35 for eight hours of videos, readings, and quizzes, which is pretty inexpensive for a Coursera course from the University of California, Irvine.

This course is unique because it’s one of the few options that put a heavy focus on the actual act of writing as opposed to content marketing.

It teaches you how to write and communicate effectively in the business world.

Naturally, a lot of this is writing for an online audience and online publications (although it does get into writing business proposals, memos, etc.). If polishing up your writing skills is what you’re after, this single-course is a great option.

This course is part of a 10-course series called Career Success Specialization, which you can opt to take from the link above.

General Website Courses

If you keep an eye out, you’ll notice different agencies and businesses around the web oftentimes offer courses taught by their professionals. Below are two of my favorites:

7. HubSpot’s Inbound Certification

This course doesn’t focus on writing or content marketing specifically, but it’s worth mentioning if you’re interested in how those two areas help an online strategy as a whole.

You learn everything from creating landing pages, closing sales, and more.

HubSpot is one of the leading marketing resources on the web with some of the best content featured on their five blogs, so their course is no doubt top-notch.

Once you pass the course, you get a personalized badge and certificate that you can display on your website, email signature, LinkedIn profiles, etc.

8. Online Marketing Institute: Content Storytelling Rules for the Digital Marketer

Much like Skillshare, the Online Marketing Institute offers a free trial that allows you to try any courses you wish.

They have 70 different content marketing classes to choose from all sorted by Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced level.

The Content Storytelling class is pretty unique because it helps you understand storytelling fundamentals and how you can get creative so your content is more engaging.

Creativity is something that many businesses are lacking, so this is a cool course if you’re looking to step outside of your comfort zone.

Conclusion

Good content writers are in high demand, and we don’t see that changing any time soon.

It’s even possible to make a full-time income just through content writing if you take the time to learn the ins and out of the business.

The list above is a great starting point if you’re looking to expand your content writing skills, but it’s by no means an all-inclusive list.

More Resources:

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