Comparing the Big 5 Marketing Automation Platforms

A marketer’s guide to the leading platforms

Marketing automation platforms are the central hub of your CXM strategy. Today’s leading tools are a combo of email marketing, customer intelligence, lead management, sales enablement and reporting. They either feature or connect with everything you need to manage your marketing.

With the right platform, you can expect to:

• • Bring in more (and better) leads
  • Nurture customer loyalty
  • Understand customer behaviour better 
  • Personalise marketing at scale
  • Capture more value from CXM

It’s important to choose wisely. Marketing platforms are an investment both in terms of finances and time. According to the latest data from Gartner, martech accounts for almost 24% of the marketing budget. That’s a big chunk, but there are significant payoffs if you make the right decision.

To help you make an informed choice, we’re comparing the features, functionality, and flexibility of five leading marketing platforms: HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, Zeta, and Braze.

How we chose the test subjects

While there are thousands of marketing automation tools out there, these five are frequently ranked as top full-feature platforms. They all have sophisticated automation software, enterprise CRM capabilities, and multi-channel marketing intelligence. Sticking to full-feature platforms makes for a fairer comparison. These platforms have end-to-end capabilities – although they control access to features differently.

HubSpot vs Marketo vs Salesforce vs Braze vs Zeta

HubSpot: The all-in-one marketing platform

HubSpot is a comprehensive customer platform for SMEs and growing businesses. It’s essentially a CRM with feature bundles organised into six use-case “hubs”: Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Operations and Commerce.                                                                                   

This build-it-yourself model positions HubSpot as a competitor for single-feature marketing tools and full-feature platforms. 

For example, marketers might compare HubSpot to Unbounce for building conversion-optimised landing pages, while big sales teams compare HubSpot to Marketo for marketing automation and account-based lead management.

Benefits:

• • Intuitive interface
  • All hubs integrated into a Snowflake-compatible CRM
  • Modular feature set provides flexibility as you grow
  • Free features let you trial the UI

Limitations:

• • Hubs may have features you don’t need but still pay for
  • High subscription fees for adding features and expanding contact database limits 
  • May fall short for larger enterprises with 2k+ employees or 15m+ contacts

Use cases:

• • Inbound marketing: SEO, content creation, social media management.
  • Lead generation and nurturing: Lead scoring, email marketing, forms.
  • Sales enablement: CRM integration, sales automation.
  • Customer service: Live chat, ticketing, surveys.

Marketo: The marketing automation powerhouse

Marketo Engage is Adobe Experience Cloud’s marketing automation offering. The focus is on lead generation and customer experience with powerful functionality for cross-channel automation, sales and marketing alignment, and lead management. Marketo is ideal for larger enterprises with complex lead nurturing and account-based marketing needs. It excels in delivering personalised customer experiences at scale.

However – in our experience at least – Marketo’s complexity and higher price point often intimidate smaller companies. 

It’s also not a CRM. Marketo is designed to work with large standalone databases. Especially Adobe Experience Cloud, but also Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.  This is one reason comparing HubSpot vs Marketo is innately tricky. One is a CRM surrounded by marketing automation features, and the other is a marketing automation platform that syncs with your CRM.

Benefits:

• • Strong account-based marketing capabilities
  • Advanced AI-powered predictive analytics
  • Flexibility and customization

Limitations:

• • Steeper learning curve
  • Higher costs and investment in training required

Use cases:

• • Lead scoring and nurturing: Advanced segmentation, personalization, and predictive analytics.
  • Account-based marketing (ABM): Identifying and engaging high-value accounts through targeted campaigns.
  • Customer journey mapping: Gaining a comprehensive understanding of customer interactions across multiple channels.
  • Revenue attribution: Measuring the impact of marketing efforts on revenue generation.
  • Predictive analytics: Identifying high-potential leads and optimizing marketing campaigns.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement: The Sales(force) centric solution

Since retiring Pardot, Salesforce has been pushing hard to make Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement a known name. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is a modular platform for managing multi-channel transactional purchases: email, SMS, social and display are all covered. Granted, it’s not as catchy as HubSpot or Marketo. But seeing as it’s targeted at companies already invested in the Salesforce CRM ecosystem, it doesn’t need to be.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is ideal for companies with large Salesforce databases needing a dedicated marketing automation solution. Unlike Pardot, which focused on B2B-style ‘considered purchases,’ the cloud-based platform is geared towards transactional purchases and cross-channel journeys.

Is this splitting hairs? Maybe. There’s a lot of grey between those two definitions. Still, it’s important for Pardot users to know it’s not a straight swap.

Benefits:

• • Powerful standalone platform that connects with the Salesforce ecosystem
  • Lots of user-friendly ‘Builders’ and ‘Studios’
  • Cost-effective for Salesforce users

Limitations:

• • Data management is more complex than other platforms
  • Expensive for non-Salesforce users to migrate 
  • Not as strong in B2B use cases (compared to both Pardot and the other platforms)

Use cases:

• • Lead management: Efficiently capture and nurture leads within the Salesforce environment.
  • Sales and marketing alignment: Improve collaboration between sales and marketing teams.
  • Account-based marketing: Target specific accounts and personalize interactions.
  • Opportunity tracking: Monitor deal progress and forecast revenue.

Zeta Marketing Platform: Building a name for AI-powered automation

Zeta’s marketing automation offering, Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP), represents the new world of progressive customer profiling. Unlike most marketing platforms which start as CRMs, ZMP is built on Zeta’s flagship customer data platform (CDP). Everything the platform offers is built on identity and data. As a result, it’s highly effective for analysing customer data signals, connecting data sources, predicting intent and personalising experiences. 

While other marketing automation platforms focus primarily on lead management and email marketing, ZMP is more focused on identifying individuals and personalising experiences. This makes it an intelligent choice for brands prioritising data-driven marketing, personalisation at scale, and omnichannel (typically purchase-oriented) experiences. 

Benefits:

• • Collects, centralises and organises data from online and offline touchpoints 
  • Matches customer data to create unified customer profiles
  • Personalises customer experiences using AI and predictive modelling
  • Supports seamless cross-channel customer journeys 
  • Handles large volumes of data to support growing businesses

Limitations:

• • Can be complex to implement and manage
  • Most users require additional training to get the platform’s full value
  • Strong data focus means there are limited features for specific marketing tactics like social media management or content creation

Use cases:

• • Retail and eCommerce: Personalising product recommendations, optimising customer lifecycle marketing and driving loyalty programs.
  • Media agencies: ZMP combines identity matching, targeting and activation, enabling agencies to scale up and prove ROI.
  • Travel and leisure: Connecting customer interactions, personalising messaging, increasing loyalty in travel and hospitality industries.
  • Financial services: Enhancing customer segmentation, improving customer acquisition and retention, and personalising financial offers
  • Telecommunications: Optimising churn prediction, targeting promotions and personalising customer experiences
  • Media and entertainment: Delivering personalised content recommendations, increasing engagement and optimising advertising campaigns.
  • Healthcare: Improving patient engagement, targeted marketing for healthcare products and services, and optimising patient journeys.

Braze: The mobile engagement specialist

Braze is a customer engagement platform known for its strong mobile marketing features and real-time engagement capabilities. The feature suite is mobile-first with WhatsApp, SMS and in-app messaging. But you still get the classics. Braze’s email tool has impressive personalisation and automation features, and the web experience builder rivals bigger platforms. It’s usually a good bet for companies looking to drive app adoption, increase customer loyalty or reduce churn. 

We like Braze because they’re on the front foot. They see how first-party data, AI and real-time conversations are changing CXM. You get a data platform, customer journey orchestration tool and analytics as part of the platform.

That said, Braze is the smallest company on this list. But they’re growing fast.

Benefits:

• • Real-time data and personalisation
  • Strong mobile marketing features
  • Excellent for orchestrating multi-channel campaigns
  • AI features, analytics and data platform built in

Limitations:

• • Higher cost and non-transparent pricing 
  • Steeper learning curve for new users

Use cases:

• • Push notifications: Deliver timely and relevant messages to mobile users.
  • In-app messaging: Engage users within the app with personalised content.
  • Customer journey orchestration: Create seamless customer experiences across multiple channels.
  • Data analysis and insights: Understand customer behaviour and preferences to optimise campaigns.

How to choose the right marketing automation platform

There’s no “best” marketing automation platform. We work with all the big ones (and several small ones) based on what our clients and their customers need. What we’ve learnt over and over is that the biggest, shiniest or slickest platform isn’t always the best. Don’t let a sales pitch convince you otherwise. 

Take time to assess your needs, set clear goals and do your research. It’ll make your martech investment significantly more valuable – even if that investment goes to upgrading existing tech or capabilities.

Step 1: Define your business goals and objectives

• • Identify KPIs: What matters most to your business? (e.g., lead generation, customer retention, revenue growth.) Figure out how to demonstrate the value of your efforts against those goals.
  • Outline your CXM strategy: What role does marketing automation play in achieving your KPIs? It’s far from the only factor, so set realistic expectations.
  • Assess your current marketing stack: Evaluate your current tech, looking for opportunities to upgrade, update or integrate.

This is a good time to call in CXM consultants. Our role is to clarify your business goals, simplify the next steps, and keep the project moving. 

Step 2: Understand your audience’s needs

• • Create detailed customer personas: Develop in-depth profiles of your ideal customers, including where they spend time online and how they want to interact with your brand.
  • Identify pain points and attractors: Determine what is and isn’t working currently. Try to anticipate how this will change in the future.
  • Reorganise around the customer: You’ll only get value from martech if your team structure and processes are customer-centric. This reorganisation can be a big step, but it’s worth the effort. 

Step 3: Make a list of must-haves

• • Essential features: What features and functionality would you consider ‘core’ in the next 12-24 months? Factor in current use cases and growth plans. 
  • Optional functionality: Evaluate the need for additional capabilities like CRM integration, SMS marketing, predictive analytics and AI. When do these become essential? Can you upgrade when the time comes?
  • Scalability: Ensure the platform gives your business room to grow without being too oversized. Otherwise, you’ll be back here before too long.

Step 4: Set your price

• • Determine your marketing budget: Allocate funds for the platform, implementation, and ongoing costs.
  • Calculate ROI: Evaluate the potential return on investment based on expected benefits and costs.
  • Explore pricing models: Compare different pricing plans and options.

There’s really only one way to get accurate HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce, Zeta or Braze pricing. That’s talking to the publisher.Published prices are often on the low end. They don’t account for additional features, larger databases, implementation, training and personal support. We can also provide a ballpark based on our experience with these and other platforms. 

Step 5: Assess support needs

• • Make an implementation strategy: Consider internal capabilities, external assistance, change management factors, IT requirements and migrating data to the new system.
  • Assess platform support: Evaluate the quality and availability of customer support. This should be easy enough to find in online reviews and forums.
  • Consider training options: Most platforms have generic self-guided training courses. If you need something specific, we can create a tailored short course.

Step 6: Start small, think big, scale fast

When you’re ready to roll out the platform, it’s tempting to go all in. In our experience, a pilot approach is better. It gives you time and data to work out the kinks so the broader implementation goes as smoothly as possible.

• • Pilot the platform: Select a small group with specific use cases. Get them to test the features, user-friendliness, integrations and any customisations.
  • Gather user feedback: Collect input on what works, what’s hard to use, and what they miss from the old days.
  • Improve and test again: Use what you learn to adjust the next implementation phase. If you can, expand the pilot gradually to have more time for tweaks.
  • Measure performance: Track key metrics to assess platform effectiveness. Continue adjusting over time.

Martech implementations never really end. There’s always a process you can improve, a new feature in development, a pain point you can solve or an insight you can act on.

The final word on HubSpot vs Marketo vs Salesforce vs Braze vs Zeta

If you came here looking for an answer on the best automation platform, we can only apologise. Then again, you probably knew it wouldn’t be that simple. The “right” platform is the one that meets your business needs and enables your long-term customer experience strategy. It’s the one that builds customer loyalty. Ultimately, it’s the one that delivers the most value. If there was one platform that met all those criteria for every business, we wouldn’t need to compare HubSpot vs Marketo vs Salesforce vs Braze vs Zeta (vs AJO vs Microsoft vs Pipedrive vs ActiveCampaign, etc.)

That said, hopefully this guide helped you narrow your shortlist.

For help navigating the next steps, get in touch with us. Our unbiased martech specialists will help you make the right choice, whether that’s investing in your current tech or migrating to a new tool.