Marketing Automation On a Budget: Part 2
No matter what your budget – big or small – everyone likes it when we find a product or tool that works well for less cost. While enterprise tools Hubspot and Pardot are undoubtedly are good at what they do, in Part 1 of our post on Marketing Automation On A Budget, we showed you all the tools that get the job done, but don’t cost you thousands a month.
While everyone loves an all-in-one tool, sometimes, you don’t need it. If you don’t need a full sales CRM system then a tool that just automates social media or email marketing is more than enough for you. Here’s some we’d recommend:
Email marketing
Of course a major component marketing automation is email marketing, and as many of you will likely already have an account for one of the more popular email marketing platforms, you’ll be pleased to know you’ve already got access to some form of automation (though it might come at an extra cost, I promise it’s still reasonable!).
Whether it’s birthdays, VIP customers, website activity or products bought – you can set up Automated Emails with following popular email marketing tools, the features don’t vary massively – so it’s more about which platform might already use, or the pricing. We’ve only included a couple below, but generally the majority of email marketing tools have some kind of automation feature built in.
Mailchimp
What’s it gonna cost? If you’re already for your Mailchimp account – nothing! If you’re still on the free plan you’re looking at $10 a month.
Constant Contact
What’s it gonna cost? You’ll need to be on the Email Plus package which is $45/m.
Campaign Monitor
What’s it gonna cost? Automation Features are available on all of their packages, so you’re looking at from $9 for the basic package for 500 subscribers though there is a send limit, with the price increasing depending on subscribers and/or the number of emails you send.
Get Response
What’s it gonna cost? Starting from $15/m for 1000 subscribers, Autoresponder 2.0 is available on all platforms.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media is one of those channels that requires a lot of attention and time in order to be successful, but often these are the two things that we just can’t afford to give it!
Don’t worry though as there are plenty of tools out there to help you automate and manage your time better.
Buffer
What’s it gonna cost? Prices for Buffer start from Free but you can also upgrade to the Awesome Plan which is only $10/month.
What do I get? Buffer is all about helping you to schedule your social media posts in advance, so that you can worry less about having content on your channel and focus on the stuff that matters!
On the free plan, you can connect 1 Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google + account and schedule up to 10 posts.
On the Awesome plan, you can connect 10 of any social profiles (also including Pinterest), and schedule up to 100 posts. You can also add RSS feeds, so that you can easily curate and add content to your channels from your favourite blogs.
Full list of features:
Free*:
- Connect 1 profile per social platform (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin)
- 1 User
- 10 Scheduled posts per profile
- Browser Extension
- Mobile Apps iOS + Android
- Pablo: image creator
- Video & Gif Uploader
- Optimal timing tool
- Link shortening and tracking
The Awesome Plan*
- Connect 10 social profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest)
- 1 User
- 100 Scheduled posts per profile
- Browser Extension
- Mobile Apps iOS + Android
- Pablo: image creator
- Video & Gif Uploader
- RSS Feed
- Calendar
- Optimal timing tool
- Link shortening and tracking
*While neither plan has social analytics available, you can still see the reach, total clicks, total engagements etc for each post on these plans.
Hootsuite
What’s it gonna cost? There’s a free account, or you can pay $9.99/month for the pro plan.
What do I get? Hootsuite is a social media management tool, so is a little more complex than Buffer, but has a wide range of features. In fact you could even call it an all in one tool for social media.
For the free plan you can add 3 social profiles, schedule messages and get basic analytics reports. For the Pro plan, you’ll get all that plus up to 50 social profiles and bulk message scheduling (handy when you plan the month’s social media in advance!).
Full Feature List:
Free:
- 3 Social Profiles
- Basic Analytics Reports
- Message Scheduling
Pro:
- All Free Features, plus:
- Up to 50 Social Profiles
- 1 Enhanced Analytics Report
- Bulk Message Scheduling
- 1 user included, add up to 10
- Access to Premium Apps
Quuu
What’s it gonna cost? Free or $10/m
What do I get? Quuu is a tool that provides “hand curated content suggestions for social media”, essentially taking the effort out of filling the gaps in your social media for you.
You’ll need a Buffer account so that Quuu can add the posts into your social queue for you (pun FULLY intended).
The free plan gets you up to 2 posts a day from up to 5 interest categories, whereas for $10/month you’ll get up to 10 posts a day from unlimited interest categories (there’s over 140!) and a daily review email, to let you know what’s been scheduled.
Hint: Quuu is also really great for content distribution. Got a blog post you want to promote? Simply submit it to Quuu Promote and your article will be shared with thousands of Quuu users. Prices range from $0 – $25 per article.
Full Feature List:
Free Forever:
- Hand curated content
- Up to 2 posts per day
- Earn more by referring friends
- Up to 5 interest categories.
$10/month:
- Hand curated content
- Up to 10 posts per day
- Unlimited interest categories
- Quuu Daily Review Email
Bonus tool!
Zapier
This last tool is basically allows you to automate your life. Well, maybe not that far, but they can certainly automate some of the more monotonous tasks in your everyday work.
What’s it gonna cost? Plans start from free up to $125/month, though really the Business plan at $20/month should be more than enough.
What do I get? Set up ‘Zaps’ (automated tasks) using over 400+ apps covering tasks such as accounting, CRM, Emails, Marketing, Social Media and more.
With the Business plan you’ll get 50 Zaps that can run 3,000 tasks a month, including Multi-Step Zaps and Premium Apps.
Zaps range from tweeting new blog posts by connecting your RSS feed to Twitter, or subscribing Typeform entries to a Mailchimp list.
So there you have it, automation tools for your email marketing and social media that don’t cost more than $50/month!
Personally we use Zapier, Buffer and Quuu. Buffer and Quuu work effortlessly for staying on top of social media channels, and Zapier allows me to do a whole host of tasks effortlessly. We previously used to send new users of neatly a Linkedin request from Jon, but unfortunately they stop supporting it 🙁 (Was a very cool hack though)
Of course, these aren’t the only tools available so if you have any recommendations let me know, or if you do use the tools, let me know what you make of them.