Included/Omitted Products

In this Buyer's Guide we include Marketing Automation tools that offer integrated capabilities for demand generation (including email campaign management, landing pages, lead scoring, etc.), and which have also been reviewed by end-users on TrustRadius.com. Some covered solutions (HubSpot and Act-On, for example) also include “inbound marketing” capabilities, such as support for SEO (search engine optimization), social media publishing, etc. One product, Infusionsoft, also includes basic CRM capabilities. Others (e.g., Aprimo, Unica) include capabilities for MRM (Marketing Resource Management).

We omit products that focus on one discrete aspect of marketing automation, e.g., just landing page management. We also omit products that have fewer than three reviews within a given market segment.

For a broader list of Marketing Automation products, visit our Marketing Automation software page on TrustRadius.com.

Market Segmentation Approach

As Marketing Automation needs are quite diverse it does not make sense to compare all products in one chart. Historically, most Marketing Automation solutions have focused on different market segments most often defined by organizational scale and an associated complexity of requirements. Some vendors span segments or have distinct offerings for them, such as Marketo which targets its Spark offering to smaller businesses. Others (like Infusionsoft) are very focused on one market segment - small businesses.

TrustRadius segments the market by the size of the company that the product serves:

• Small Businesses: 1-50 employees
• Mid-Size Companies: 51-500 employees
• Enterprises: >500 employees

Some smaller companies are exceptions to this segment generalization, and run complex demand generation programs that are usually associated with larger companies. Conversely, some larger organizations may have simpler needs that are easily addressed using products designed primarily for smaller companies. In some instances those solutions are utilized by a single department within a larger company.

Best Marketing Automation Software by Market Segment: Introducing the TrustMap™

The “best marketing automation software” is highly subjective. Selecting the right software requires prioritizing your requirements and determining which products address them. While ratings are a broad indicator of sentiment, it is critical to look beyond them to properly find the best match for your particular needs. When using product reviews as part of your evaluation, focus on those users whose needs most closely mirror your own, learn about the context in which the product is being used and read multiple reviews to get a better idea of a product's specific pros and cons. You can filter reviews on TrustRadius.com using variables such as company size, industry, role and more. You can also use our side-by-side comparison tool to easily view multiple user opinions on key questions.

To help narrow your choices, we have created the TrustMap™ - a visual depiction of the best software products as rated by users within each market segment. The TrustMap™ quickly helps Marketing Automation software buyers at all levels - small businesses, mid-size companies and enterprises - identify the solutions most closely aligned to their needs and most highly rated by their direct peer group. Each TrustMap™ depicts Marketing Automation software on two dimensions:

1. User Ratings — based on the average “Likelihood to Recommend” score by customers within that company size segment. These ratings reflect user perception of the product as a whole and not to specific features. In this analysis we present user ratings on a 1-5 scale. All ratings and reviews come from authenticated end-users of the software.
2. Segment Focus — the percentage of customers within that segment band, derived from the mix of marketing automation software reviews on TrustRadius.com. While this is not a precise measure of a product's user base, it can serve as a useful proxy for a product's market focus. This approach penalizes companies with offerings that broadly span segments, so we also present estimated customer counts by segment, derived again based upon their review mix and publically available data or estimates of total customer counts. Products with fewer than three reviews in a given segment are excluded.

We also draw lines for the average User Rating and Segment Focus within that segment in order to create a quadrant. We designate products in the upper right hand side of the quadrant that are at or above average for both User Rating and Segment Focus as “Best Products” for that segment. Products that have a User Rating at or above the average for the segment but a below-average Segment Focus are labelled “Strong Performers”.