Do you ever wish there was two of you? One you could take care of the email follow-ups and millions of other business tasks you do, and another could enjoy fun stuff in life. The bad news is you can’t (and shouldn’t) clone yourself, but the good news is you can have software do lots of things for you. Here are a few of the best marketing automation tools in 2024.
Best Instagram Automation Tools
ManyChat
If you’ve been on Instagram lately, you’ve probably seen seen a creator tell you to comment a word to receive some freebie. Chances are high that they use ManyChat for that. ManyChat lets you create automatic replies based on a trigger word, so that you can send them a link to a lead magnet or resource of some kind.
This has lots of advantages over sending a user to a link in your bio.
- It’s more direct and therefore more likely they go where you want them to go.
- It improves the number of other people seeing your post or reel because Instagram likes when people interact on posts.
- You can additional context and info to your messages to get people to click your link.
- You can chat more with the user after they click the message.
In addition to Instagram messages, ManyChat works great for setting up chatbots and automatic responders on Facebook and other platforms, too. We use it at RefinerFire, and I have personally used it as a marketing automation tool for several years.
Pros: Powerful engagement, increased post reach, lots of templates
Cons: Used by lots of creators already
Free Tier: Yes
Pricing: Starts at $15 per month for Pro Plans
Best Email Automation Tools
MailChimp
MailChimp may be one of the best known email marketing platforms out there, and they offer lots of email marketing automation options to choose from. Most businesses can benefit from their email journey tool for starters. Their journey builder allows you to visually map out an automatic sequence of emails a subscriber will receive based on some trigger.
For instance, let’s suppose you want to send a series of emails to every person who signs up for your newsletter. You can set the trigger based on the sign up form completion. Then from there, you can plan out which emails they will receive and when they’ll be sent. You can also queue emails based on whether they open an email or click a link.
Here at RefinerFire we use automate our newsletters using MailChimp’s RSS Email Feature. Every time a blog article gets published on our site, the article gets sent to subscribers the next day without lifting a finger. We did this by connecting WordPress’s built-in RSS feed to MailChimp. From there, we built a template and made it live.
Pros: Powerful visual builder, lots of templates
Cons: Can get complex
Free Tier: Limited. Free tier does not include automation.
Pricing: Starts at $13.00 per month
Best Print-On-Demand Automation Tools
Printify
In the old days, you needed to have products in stock before you could sell them. Not anymore. Print-on-demand now lets you place your designs on hundreds of products without having to keep the products on hand. Among print-on-demand companies, Printify is the clear leader of the pack.
First, you connect Printify to your ecommerce stores on any of the following platforms:
- Amazon
- TikTok Shop
- Shopify
- WooCommerce (WordPress)
- Etsy
- And More
Then you choose products you’d like to sell from their extensive catalog. From there, you use their easy to use tools to place the design on the product and fill in specific product details. Printify will automatically create the listing on the platform you’ve connected. Then when someone places an order it will automatically route the order to the printer who takes care of production and delivery to the customer. You can see it in action on the site we created for Beneath the Broom Tree.
Pros: Simple set-up, low start-up costs, variety of platforms, production and delivery done for you
Cons: Cost per item higher than if you bought in bulk
Free Tier: Yes.
Pricing: You load money to cover production expenses up front and Printify withdraws the amount needed to produce and deliver the item each time a sale is made in your store. Printify Premium allows you to receive discounted prices on goods.
Best Ecommerce Automation Tools
Shopify
Shopify is already one of the top ecommerce platforms out there, but many people have no clue that it also includes built-in marketing automation tools, too. First, you’ll need to install Shopify’s Flow app which is included for free in all Shopify’s plans starting with Basic.
Like with other marketing automation tools, Shopify Flow automations start with some sort of trigger action that tells the automation to run. Triggers can include actions that you take in Shopify’s admin area such as publishing a product or tagging an order. They can also be actions your customers take in your store. From there, you can steps to take that would normally be done manually.
Let’s say a customer buys a product for example. You can create an automation that checks the stock levels and notifies you to order more stock via email or Slack message. You can also kick off campaigns, cancel fraudulent orders, and much more. Shopify has lots of useful templates or you can dig in yourself.
Pros: Lots of templates, powerful visual builder, also works with Point of Sale (POS)
Cons: Can be complex to do on your own
Free Tier: No, but there is a free trial.
Pricing: Shopify’s basic plan is $29/mo.
Best Overall Marketing Automation Tools
Zapier
Without a doubt, Zapier boasts the most extensive array of integrations of any marketing automation tool. In fact, it works with more than 7,000 different applications from around the web.
That said, Zapier has made some great strides in recent years in simplifying the automation set up, but it can still be overwhelming for someone new to automation. Unlike the built-in automation tools for MailChimp and Shopify, Zapier has to connect itself to the apps you want to automate.
Another common stumbling block is the mapping of fields. When creating integrations, you’ll be presented with pieces of data commonly called fields, and often you have to map, or match up, a field from one program to put the data into a field in another program. Sometimes this can be painful to say the least.
Pros: Lots of app choices, useful built-in tools, some useful templates
Cons: Often complex, must maintain connections to individual apps
Free Tier: Yes, includes 100 tasks per month
Pricing: Paid tiers start at $19.99/mo for 750 tasks
Make.com
Zapier is not the only marketing automation tool in town. Make (formerly known as Integromat) offers a robust app ecosystem as well, but at a much friendlier price point.
Make.com is our preferred marketing automation platform at RefinerFire. In fact, it’s the tool that powers our Target Market Analysis Tool behind the scenes.
For that automation, we created a webhook to receive messages send the data as a prompt to Claude AI and send it you via MailChimp. As you can see, Make.com uses a visual builder help you get a sense of the flow of the automation from trigger to completion.
Pros: Lots of app choices, Affordable, highly visual
Cons: Can be complex
Free Tier: Yes, includes 1,000 tasks per month
The Future of Marketing Automation Tool
Even with all of the resources we’ve shared here, we have barely scratched the surface of marketing automation. With AI poised to become a larger role in business we could be at the cusp of an explosion of new tools. As new tools come online, we will be sure to update this list.
Until next time, take care and God bless you!
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