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5 Lead Nurturing Software Tools for B2B Businesses

Lead nurturing software is the most potent solution to the tedious task of providing a personalised buying experience to every lead. It takes care of complex but necessary work like progressive profiling, lead scoring, email nurturing, workflow maintenance, etc., to deliver apt results.

Lead nurturing is a strong pillar in B2B marketing. But it requires companies to always stay at the tip of their toes when delivering content to prospects and requires rigorous routine updates. Lead nurturing software automates all such processes and saves time so that businesses can focus on bigger projects.

The marketing automation sector was worth $6.1 billion in 2021, and research predicts it will double by 2023. It indicates the increasing demand for efficient marketing automation software. Let’s dive into understanding five lead nurturing software present in the market and solving marketing problems head-on.

But first, let’s establish something basic.

What is Lead Nurturing Software?

Lead nurturing software are marketing automation tools that help manage the sales pipeline when the marketing and sales team are busy or off-duty. It maintains and updates the lead nurturing workflows and keeps in check the KPIs of every single campaign to provide data reports.

According to research, a B2B automation tool used for lead nurturing brings a 451% increase in qualified leads. It highlights the importance of automation and why switching from manual to automatic lead nurturing is good.

Suggested read: What is B2B marketing automation and how to use it?

Key features a lead nurturing software must have:

  • Sales Pipeline Management
    Supervise incoming new leads, prospects, and established clients through different sales funnel stages. Keep track of leads closed or lost and present data that helps optimise campaigns.
  • Lead scoring
    Assign scores to various leads depending on their online behaviour and attributes. The lead scoring software must be capable of executing different campaigns based on the company’s lead scoring system.

Suggested read: How to Create a Lead Scoring Model

  • Lead Segmentation
    Records every prospect’s attributes like firmographics, demographics, email, phone number, location, etc. It becomes easier to segment leads with such management and reduce research work.
  • Email automation
    Executes email nurturing sequences according to action triggers and moves prospects to new campaigns when they complete a goal or showcase different interests. It helps in personalising the mails according to the lead’s wants.

Suggested read: A Simple Guide For Email Nurturing Campaigns With Examples

Best Lead Nurturing Software in Market

1. Plezi

Plezi is a B2B automation tool that strengthens a brand’s content marketing. It focuses on leveraging content as a core part of every marketing effort and pushes for lead and traffic generation. With many of the Plezi features, it becomes easier to understand the prospects’ intent and how to deal with them.

The marketing automation platform has a long list of clients even though it got released in 2015, the youngest one from my suggestions. Companies can use this tool throughout their sales funnel and enhance their content marketing.

Plezi a Lead Nurturing Software

Core Features:

  • Tagging
    The tool uses tags to understand the nature of the content and intent of leads. Users can assign tags to different content, denoting which funnel stage and what buyers’ personas they target. Such tags are also assigned to leads, so it becomes easier to identify their attributes, funnel stage, and other crucial metrics.
  • Smart Campaigns
    Smart campaigns utilise tags assigned to various pieces of content to understand a lead’s buying intent in real-time. It can determine a prospect’s interests and stage in the sales funnel based on the content they view. Not only that, such campaigns automatically get updated when new content is added.
  • Lead Management
    The leads’ profiles get regularly updated automatically, so marketers do not have to worry about updating them. It creates a more personalised buying experience for every prospect and makes it easier for companies to identify high potential buyers.

Suggested Read: Introduction to Plezi: Marketing Automation Tool

2. Marketo Engage

Adobe Marketo Engage is what B2B marketers require to run advanced lead nurturing campaigns and establish a secure lead management system. Loaded with automation features that push for an integrated marketing approach, Marketo Engage creates an ecosystem of networks that support a brand’s goals.

Utilised by leading brands like Lenovo and General Electric, Marketo has established itself as a market leader because of its innovative approach to advertising. Abode offers various features of Marketo Engage in bundles from which businesses can pick one or more according to their needs.

Marketo Engage a lead nurturing software

Core Features:

  • Cross-Channel Engagement
    Marketo Engage takes multi-channel marketing very seriously. That’s why it covers all marketing channels be it social media, emails, websites, paid advertisements, or mobile. It allows brands to connect with the target audience through a relevant channel and personalised content.
  • Progressive Profiling
    Progressive profiling is essential if a company aims to deliver hyper-targeted content to the right audience. Marketo Engage updates lead profiles with real-time information. It makes lead segmentation easier with account-based marketing filters and helps identify new leads.
  • Sales Insights
    Reveal new target accounts, validate existing account lists, and build the ideal customer profile — in seconds, not weeks — using AI-powered workflows and account-based marketing filters.

3. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool that automates marketing for a better customer experience. Launched in early 2003 as a consulting firm, the company soon transformed into a CRM and marketing automation platform due to consumer demand. ActiveCampaign caters to businesses of all sizes.

It does so with efficient personalisation, segmentation, and tracking of leads. Recently ranked 12th on the list of best software companies by G2 Software Awards, ActiveCampaign has earned popularity because of its great features.

ActiveCampaign homepage screenshot

Core Features

  • Omnichannel Marketing
    The tool connects brands with target audiences across different channels like email, text, chat, and social media. It helps brands create a coherent platform network focusing on a similar goal. Such efforts result in better consumer lifecycles and conversion rates.
  • Email Deliverability
    Sometimes, your emails do not reach the audience. It can be because it landed in the prospect’s spam list or failed a reputation or email authentication check. ActiveCampaign looks after this problem and works with high deliverability standards. Industry experts like M3AAWG and TrustRadius have named ActiveCampaign top email marketing software, with good deliverability being one of the reasons.
  • Win Probability
    AciveCampaign uses consumer data not only for personalisation but also to understand the buyer’s intent. The win probability feature of the tool helps forecast which leads have higher chances of making the final purchase and should be the prime focus of the sales team.

4. HubSpot

HubSpot’s marketing automation tool is a powerhouse for inbound marketing. Like other SaaS companies, it also targets lead nurturing optimisation through automation but with a twist. HubSpot has divided the automation process into five hubs: marketing, CMS, sales, operations, and services. It becomes easier for marketers to automate specific workflows and make them efficient.

But that’s not all. Hubspot also offers free versions of its hubs that marketers can use to test out new campaigns. With a customer base of 120,000+, Hubspot is a must-try for lead nurturing.

HubSpot's marketing automation tool

Core Features

  • A CMS Tool
    HubSpot has a hub specially focused on content management. It provides SEO recommendations, optimises web pages for all devices, and sends alerts when a bug gets detected. The CMS hub is an excellent tool for optimising content marketing for search engines and social.
  • Customer Retention
    The service hub in HubSpot takes care of customer retention. It helps companies set up a ticketing system and customer portal, making it easier to address customer grievances and take their feedback. Navigating various sales funnel activities becomes seamless as every operation gets executed by a single platform.

Suggested read: Hubspot Review: Is It A Complete Inbound Marketing Tool?

5. Ontraport

Ontraport is an automation tool that answers to entrepreneurial needs. Founded in 2006, what started as a venture to create an automation platform that eases the company’s operation became a core tool for over 3000+ companies. The tool’s features help sell, manage, and market a business through a powerful yet simple lead-nurturing workflow.

With its no credit card 14-day trial offer, it becomes easier to check out and test its functionality. Personalised journeys, pages + forms, tracking, automation, Ontraport provides services for everything that helps businesses create scalable entrepreneurial journeys.

Ontraport an automation tool

Core Features:

  • Designing emails and web forms
    It provides a single editor for emails, web forms, and landing pages. Due to this, the confusion between changing editor styles decreases, and it becomes easier to come up with authentic designs. In Ontraport, you can use its block-based editor or templates to kick-start campaigns.
  • Create Robust Payment Workflow
    The bottom of the funnel is the decision-making stage of sales, where a lead will finally make a purchase. A smooth payment process that looks after abandoned carts, credit card payments & expiry, etc., helps decline the lost lead rate. Ontraport also has a membership site that actively keeps track of the latest credit card information to generate a seamless subscription experience.
  • Email + SMS Messaging
    Ontraport provides email and SMS marketing options that make connecting with leads painless. Instead of opens and clicks, companies can add UTM tags to their emails to track nurturing campaigns effectively. For SMS marketing, businesses get allotted a personal number that they can use to contact leads instead of depending on a pool of business phone numbers.

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Conclusion

The prime goal of lead nurturing software is to make all the processes involved in lead nurturing faster and more efficient. With the help of automation and integration, all five SaaS mentioned in the article are valuable add-ons to marketing.

Companies must go through lead nurturing software’s features and free trials to decide which one to choose. It is the best way to understand and determine how the tool can become an asset for the company.

If you want to learn more about lead nurturing and its strategies, check out this guide:
B2B Lead Nurturing: The Ultimate Guide

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Top 9 Mistakes in SaaS Lead Nurturing and How To Fix Them
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Lead Nurturing Email Examples From My Personal Account

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