Many marketing software companies have integrated CRM systems into their platforms for seamless sales and marketing workflows. Fortunately, marketing and sales teams have tons of options to choose from. Two of the best marketing and CRM platforms are HubSpot and Marketo. Here’s why you should consider these two as your top contenders based on our HubSpot vs Marketo review.
HubSpot and Marketo: Overview
HubSpot was launched in 2006 because its founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, wanted to create an inbound marketing software based on trends and growing demand at the time. Their success in the last couple of years has made their comprehensive software highly recommended by big brands and small businesses. They offer “hubs” as features to help businesses in operations, sales, marketing, services, and commerce. Over 190,000+ customers trust HubSpot and use their hubs.
Before it became part of the Adobe umbrella, Marketo was a standalone marketing platform. It focuses more on account-based management. Phil Fernandez, Jon Miller, and David Morandi founded the software in 2006. In 2018, Adobe bought the marketing software. Marketo has helped Charles Schwab and Lenovo with their marketing campaigns.
Hubspot Features
Since Marketo’s marketing platform includes a CRM integration, there will also be a brief discussion on the Sales hub.
Marketing Hub
HubSpot allows you to create custom forms to generate more leads. Another way to obtain more leads is via live chat. You can use their live chat tool and chatbots to assist leads with inquiries. The forms and live chat options are integrated into the HubSpot CRM, which will fill with new leads automatically. Finally, you can integrate Salesforce into HubSpot for more valuable lead intelligence and workflow automation.
Another notable feature of their marketing hub is their management features. Manage contacts and add notes about specific leads. You can also monitor your campaigns and get insightful data. Finally, build automated workflows to simplify your team’s workload.
The last feature of the hub is through analytics and reporting. Through updated data, you’ll know how your campaigns are performing. Plus, get insights about your website, too!
Sales Hub
HubSpot’s Sales Hub helps you generate leads and add them to your CRM software. For example, they have lead management, prospecting, and sales automation. Aside from those, you can create and track emails to ensure that your leads are engaging with your emails. You can further increase revenue by building a personalized lead pipeline and offering payments. Finally, you can download reports and get insightful data on how to make your sales team more efficient.
Marketo Features
Cross Channel Marketing
Is your marketing team doing multiple marketing strategies? Marketo can help you execute all strategies in one place. They will help you with social media, email, paid search, SEO, conversational, event and webinar, and SMS marketing. You can build landing pages and forms with their editor. Plus, you can run website campaigns.
Sales Insights
Marketo promises that you get real-time access to customer insights. You can prioritize leads. Plus, you can track lead activities like email opens or website clicks. Sales teams can automate workflows and use personalized emails to increase engagement and conversion.
Content Personalization
Create content and store them in one place. You can also build web and landing pages for personalized experiences. Additionally, you can conduct A/B testing and use Adobe Sensei AI to understand which content works best for which lead.
Marketing Analytics
Get advanced insights and reports on your marketing campaigns. Plus, you can customize your dashboards to monitor the data that matters most to your team. Finally, you can view business intelligence analytics reports and build visualizations to get better insight into your data to improve performance.
Pricing
HubSpot has various pricing plans for its hubs. Considering that the marketing and sales hubs were discussed, here are the pricing plans for the following.
Marketing Hub
- Free
- Starter - starts at $20/mo/seat
- Professional - starts at $890/mo (3 seats)
- Enterprise - starts at $3,600/mo (5 seats)
Marketo doesn’t have upfront pricing. However, interested potential clients can ask for a quote. Before asking for a quote, Adobe provides a tier system on what to expect per plan. Here are the tiers.
- Growth - Ideal for small business marketers
- Select - Ideal for experienced marketers
- Prime - Ideal for progressive marketers
- Ultimate - Ideal for advanced marketers
On the Growth plan, 10 users can use the software. Plus, you can make 20,000 calls a day, with other inclusions like:
- Lead and account database
- CRM integration
- Email and social marketing
- SEO
- Campaign reports and insights
On the Select, Prime, and Ultimate plans, you can have 25 users and make 50,000 calls a day. Everything’s included from the Growth plan on all plans, plus other major inclusions on these tiers.
Select:
- AI-powered personalization
- Event & webinar marketing
- Marketing calendar
- Custom data fields and objects
- Attribution & ROI dashboards
Prime and Ultimate:
Everything in Select, plus:
- AI-powered audiences
- Predictive content
- Dynamic chat
- Target account management
- Advanced journey analytics
- (Ultimate only) Marketo measure
Another thing to note about Marketo’s pricing is that you can buy more add-ons to customize your plans based on your needs.
Integrations
HubSpot has around 1000+ app integrations for all hubs. Meanwhile, Marketo has only 41 apps available for integration. HubSpot is the clear winner since you can connect various apps in one platform.
Conclusion
HubSpot and Marketo have their strengths and weaknesses.
HubSpot is an excellent starter tool for new small businesses. Most users find the software easy to use and let people track their leads in one place. Plus, many praise HubSpot for its automation! However, many users find that HubSpot can get expensive. Plus, with long-term use, they find limitations in integrations and reports.
In terms of pricing, Marketo allows for more flexibility. Although they provide quotes to interested clients, the clients can purchase add-ons. Plus, some users like how comprehensive Marketo is because of its tools and features. However, many users report the outdated interface and difficulty with setup.
Both are equally excellent options. At the end of the day, you can choose which is best for your team’s performance and productivity.
