Today, a whopping 6,000+ marketing technology vendors pack the industry to its brim. And as the marketing technology landscape widens, so too does the knowledge gap between consumer and vendor.
Who are the top marketing SaaS vendors? Can they fulfill my needs? What will they enable me to do?
On top of day-to-day operations, even simple questions like these can pose a monumental challenge. More complex ones about support, features, and integrations make shopping around even harder.
So, on behalf those without the time to shortlist martech software, we’ve compiled a list of the leading marketing SaaS vendors among the 6,000+ available today.
The best SaaS vendors on the market
Whether you’re in need of one tool or an entire stack, the following will guide you toward some of today’s top SaaS marketing vendors. For more on constructing a marketing technology stack to support your ad budget, get the Instapage guide: The Advertising Stack to Power Your $1M+ Ad Spend:
CRM software
At the core of every successful business is a customer relationship management software. If your marketing tech stack was a body, this would be the brain. Software in this category accomplishes two major goals:
- Gathering and storing data from your employees and other tools in the stack to form a comprehensive view of the customer.
- Passing that data back out to other tools to enable them to serve the customer in a personalized manner.
For example, a visitor ends up on your post-click landing page, where they submit their personal information in exchange for your industry report. Now you have their name, email, business size, and budget in your CRM.
If, the next time they reach one of your post-click landing pages, you ask for the same information in a lead capture form, that information should be auto-filled to make converting easier. Information is initially passed to your CRM, which it stores, then sends back out to other tools to provide targets with a more personalized user experience.
Top SaaS vendors in the CRM category
- Salesforce: When you talk CRMs, Salesforce is always in the conversation. This giant of customer relationship management has been around since 1999, and its software has only gotten better as the years go by. Today, businesses choose it for its ability to compile, organize, and display data in a user-friendly way. According to Salesforce itself, the results speak more than words could: Users of Salesforce report 44% more leads, 45% increase in customer retention, 37% increase in sales revenue, and a 52% faster integration of business apps.
- Microsoft Dynamics: Microsoft and integrative technology are practically synonymous, so it’s no surprise they’re a leader in the CRM sphere. Customers of this platform go for its ease of use, seamless integration with the entire suite of Microsoft tools (especially Office 365), and the level of customization it offers.
Email marketing software
After all these years and so many powerful tools later, nobody could’ve guessed that email would still be marketer’s most valuable. Still, it generates upwards of a 4,400% return for every dollar spent. It’s affordable, but more importantly, it’s consumers’ preferred method of contact.
Nearly all businesses use a squeeze page, a lead capture page, or an exit pop-up to gather email addresses at the top of their funnel for nurture. That makes email marketing software the heavy lifter when it comes to guiding visitors through the customer journey.
Top SaaS vendors in the email marketing category
- MailChimp: By far the biggest player in the industry, MailChimp is the choice of teams large and small. Its tool lets users generate, launch, and analyze email campaigns. Start with your own design, or build from any of the software’s professional templates. Then, analyze and optimize. Connect with tools like Salesforce, Eventbrite, Shopify, and more to take email personalization to the next level.
- Campaign Monitor: Campaign Monitor’s 250,000 customers choose it for its ease of use, its engaging and designer-friendly templates, and the ability to create and track buyer journeys. With a full analytics suite and integrations with Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce, and more, users of the software can do more than send email: They can build and optimize personalized journeys at scale.
Marketing analytics software
All good campaigns start with great data. And you can’t gather and sort it effectively without a marketing analytics platform. A good software from this category will not only allow you to collect behavioral data but also to…
Sort it in a way that gives you a clear picture of what it means and how you should use it.
Pass it along to other tools in your stack.
On page, software in this category helps you form an idea of who this customer is and how they interact with your content.
Top SaaS vendors in the marketing analytics category
- Google Analytics: Decades later, this tool is still a must-have. It provides every website user with foundational data crucial for digital marketing success. Track sessions, bounce rate, page value, traffic sources, and even set goals and evaluate traffic flow. The biggest advantage here is that Google Analytics integrates with nearly every software there is, allowing you to pull insights for cross-analysis between tools.
- HotJar: While Google Analytics covers primarily quantitative data, HotJar handles mostly qualitative. With this software can do things like record and watch user sessions, give surveys, deploy heat maps, and even recruit testers for your site. It also comes with integrations that, after such data collection, make improving overall user experience easy.
Social media advertising
This year, social media advertising revenue is expected to rise even higher, which isn’t surprising, considering most people access the internet through a handful of apps on their mobile device. Those apps? Research shows they’re primarily social media:
Even though, on social media, users aren’t necessarily in shopping mode, history has shown that doesn’t mean they won’t buy. And that’s especially true if you’re targeting people who already have a relationship with your business. Software in this category allows visitors to capitalize on…
- Retargeting technology to draw users back to their post-click landing pages.
- The massive amount of time people spend on social media.
- The abundance of social media users and data on those users to target the ideal customer.
Top SaaS vendors in the social media advertising category
- Facebook: With its massive user base and mountain of data, it’s pretty obvious why Facebook is where most advertisers allocate their budget for social (above). Not only do they have the users and the targeting to reach them, but the ad types to get those users clicking, converting, submitting, or any number of other objective goals — and the same goes for Instagram as well.
- LinkedIn: It may not be considered the coolest social media network, but LinkedIn has made some additions to its advertising offerings over the last few years that make it a must-use for any B2B business. Matched Audiences, for example, allows advertisers to create new target audiences from their own lists, while Account Targeting gives businesses the ability to reach decision makers at businesses of their choice.
Social media marketing
Marketers have always succeeded by being where their customers are. So, for the same reasons that make social media advertising appealing, social media marketing is as well.
Software in the social media marketing category allows businesses to manage organic content, as opposed to paid advertisements. That includes scheduling posts, targeting them, analyzing, cross-promoting on other platforms, and more…
Top SaaS vendors in the social media marketing category
- Sprout Social: An established leader in social media marketing, Sprout Social offers teams all they need to launch, manage, and track social media campaigns. It provides an all-in-one dashboard which gives users a comprehensive view of connected accounts, and easy ways to interact with others. Additionally, compare profiles, schedule posts, create a content calendar, and even rely on Sprout Social for task management.
- Hootsuite: Some marketers might call it the original social media management app. Hootsuite has been around since the beginning of the social media platform boom. Use it to bulk schedule your posts, interact across social media platforms, run contests with templates, and invite the whole team to manage Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn.
Video marketing
Video content is becoming more and more of a staple of today’s modern-day marketing strategy. When you consult the research, it makes sense: After watching a video, 64% of people say they’re more likely to buy a product. Additionally, companies that use video earn 41% more search traffic than those that don’t.
Marketers making video a more central part of their strategy will appreciate software in this category, which usually offers a suite of tools for creating highly engaging, visual content.
Top SaaS vendors in the video marketing category
- YouTube: It’s the platform which needs no introduction. YouTube has been simplifying quality video production for all since 2005. With an easy-to-use uploader, basic editing tools, and in-video CTAs, YouTube is still the number one go-to for marketers looking to monetize video. While there are more robust tools for actual video production, when it comes to marketing your videos, there’s no place better than YouTube to do it.
- Wistia: Create, manage, and share your videos. In a nutshell, that’s what Wistia enables its users to do. But beyond the ability to create and edit video with a host of tools, Wistia also enables creators to generate leads with them using gated content, and custom CTAs. Why should we be surprised? It’s “The video platform built for marketers, by marketers.”
Tag management software
To integrate any tool with your web pages — whether it’s A/B testing, analytics, heat maps, or behavior tracking — you need to employ the use of tags. Tags are little snippets of JavaScript implanted into the code of your website. In theory, no problem.
The only trouble is, if you don’t have a dedicated tech or on-hand or experience editing code, you risk making drastic errors that could kill a campaign, down your website, or something worse and more permanent.
That’s what tag management technology is for. In this category, software allows its users to easily add, edit, replace, delete tags without having to navigate a website’s code.
Top SaaS vendors in the tag management category
- Google Tag Manager: With a large majority market share, Google Tag Manager is the choice of most marketers who use tags to get more from their web pages. The reason? It’s easy with a clean and simple interface. With this software, you’ll never need to dive deep into the code of a website, just use the dashboard and add, edit, remove tags in a few clicks.
Communication software
Staying ahead of the competition, necessitates moving faster than ever, across departments, teams, and even continents. Communication software allows businesses to do that, by ditching old meeting methods like email and in-person gatherings. With text, video, voice, and more, these tools enable the agility expected by the modern consumer.
Top SaaS vendors in the communication category
- Slack: For such a simple, straightforward, and minimalistic software, Slack packs a whole lot. Not only does it make messaging between teams and individuals a breeze, but a search function, hashtags, integrations, and file sharing put this software, almost literally, in a category of its own. It blows all other competitors out of the water.
- Skype for Business: Simple to download, easy to set up, and it benefits are streamlined communication anywhere there’s internet. While its chat function will seem lackluster compared to Slack, it offers video and voice, for a more personal touch.
Marketing automation software
If marketing automation had a slogan, it would be “smarter, not harder.” This class of technology allows its users to automate simpler, repetitive tasks, so a business’s staff can focus on more complex issues. Some work with email, others involve social media, but every marketing automation tool has one thing in common: freeing up time for the people behind the tech.
Top SaaS vendors in the marketing automation category
- Marketo: If it’s an all-around powerhouse you’re looking for, few match Marketo’s capabilities. With a full suite of software that integrates seamlessly, there’s little you can’t do with the toolset. Combine behavioral triggers with template emails, A/B test, and customize completely to suit your individual needs.
- Salesforce Pardot: Intuitive lead nurturing, lead scoring, email marketing, and Salesforce CRM integration are just a few of the advantages of using Pardot. Customers of this software call it “easy to use,” “impressive” and “powerful,” and tout its ability to create follow-ups, triggers, and whole automated processes.
Content management software
Just because internet users spend most their time in social media apps and make most their decisions on post-click landing pages doesn’t mean your website is obsolete. Still, the hub of your business online is your website. And content management software makes it easier to build, edit, and maintain.
Similar to tag management software, content management software offers various of levels of customization and ease of use based on skill level. Some you can find which require little to no experience with code at all, while others are designed to give experienced web developers a flexible foundation to build on.
Top SaaS vendors in the content management category
- WordPress: WordPress is by far the most popular content management system on the market. The reason? Its ease-of-use. Even newbies can get WordPress website up and running in a matter of hours. On top of that, the countless themes and plugins for WordPress websites make it nearly as customizable as it is easy to operate. Disney, The New Yorker, Sweden’s official website, among many more, are powered by WordPress.
- Drupal: While WordPress is considered the top choice for newbies and publishers, Drupal is at the other end of the spectrum, as a highly customizable platform for experienced developers. If you’re trying to build a membership website, for example, Drupal is your CMS.
Project management software
For agile teams, juggling several projects at once can be hectic, especially with several parties involved. Have the developers finished their part? And the copywriters? What about the designers?
When one time-sensitive roadblock can doom a campaign, software in this category ensures teams stay on-task to meet every checkpoint, all the way to completion.
Top SaaS vendors in the project management category
- Atlassian: With both Trello and Jira, and a suite of other tools, Atlassian has emerged as the leader in helping you to get things done. Both technologies offer tools for step-by-step task/issue tracking with privacy management, and Trello is known for its intuitive board setup. Simply invite, assign, accomplish, and move tasks from board to board until they’re done.
- Asana: Where Trello has boards, Asana has lists that look much like the online version of a to-do list hanging on your fridge. They’re bulleted, short, and task-oriented, which is exactly what you need when the completion of a task seems overwhelming. The software also allows for several levels of organization, including email notifications when a task is updated.
Live chat
If they need to contact you, customers expect more than just a phone number and email address with which to do it. They expect you to be available on their terms. That means offering customer service via email, phone, social media, and now, live chat on your website.
Software in this category allows businesses to keep website visitors that may have otherwise bounced without an answer to their question. It also provides said businesses with real-time customer data with which to make their content more comprehensive, so that future visitors can find answers on their own.
Top SaaS vendors in the live chat category
- LiveChat: Counted among LiveChat’s clients are McDonald’s, IKEA, PayPal, and Adobe. Those names alone are a powerful endorsement of the software. LiveChat’s tool allows its users to identify users and serve them chat messages based on their profiles, to send automated greetings or personal greetings, to provide customer support on any page at any time, adjust languages, add CTA buttons, and much more.
Post-click optimization software
The rise of post-click optimization software has come swiftly. As marketers began to realize the major gains that come from boosting conversion rate even a few percentage points, tools that allow for the scaled optimization of post-click landing page experience became highly popular.
This type of software allows marketers to optimize what comes after the ad click in the online advertising experience. That includes scalable creation, optimization, personalization, page load speed, message match, conversion ratio, and much more. A good tool will not only enable its users to optimize such things, but do so quickly, easily, and effectively.
Top SaaS vendors in the PCO category
- Instapage: Without targeted post-click landing pages, post-click optimization efforts won’t go far. But building them all from scratch isn’t resource-effective. With Instapage, users can scale their post-click landing page production with Instablocks™, collaborate within the same intuitive front-end builder, edit groups of pages in one place and publish. Then, they can gather data with a robust dashboard and heatmaps, and use it to inform A/B tests to improve conversion rate.
Assemble your marketing stack with the best SaaS vendors
Today, most businesses rely on a grouping of best-in-class tools to deliver highly personalized customer experiences. When choosing yours, always remember to…
- Make a list of what you need to keep sleek features from getting you to overpay.
- Ensure the technology integrates with the tools you already use.
- Ask your staff to recommend and test potential software.
- Look for reviews that aren’t on the company website. They’ll be more honest.
- Ask around. It’s likely you have friends in the same industry facing the same problems. How did they solve it?
Start assembling the marketing stack to power your $1M ad spend with this resource from Instapage.