Lead nurturing software are typically CRMs or marketing automation software that help sales and marketers attract, qualify, and engage leads to turn them into customers. The top software offer features like contact management, pipeline management, automated follow-ups, and drip marketing campaigns to guide prospects through the sales funnel and optimize conversion rates. To help you choose the right one for you, we’ve evaluated the best available options.
Here are the six best lead nurturing software:
- Zoho CRM: Best overall CRM software for pricing and features (free starting price)
- Freshsales: Best lead nurturing software for sales automation (free starting price)
- HubSpot CRM: Best free lead nurturing software with upgrades (free starting price)
- EngageBay: Best lead nurturing CRM software for user support (free starting price)
- monday sales CRM: Best for an easy-to-use, visual sales pipeline (14-day free trial)
- ActiveCampaign: Best for automated email nurturing campaigns (14-day free trial)
Per our evaluation, Zoho CRM emerged as the best lead nurturing software, offering the best scoring the highest for core features and customization and tying for cost and third-party integrations. Read more to see each option’s key features, pricing plans, and primary use case, or skip down to learn how we scored each lead nurturing software across six categories.
Note: All per-user prices are with a one-year commitment unless noted otherwise.
Top 4 Lead Nurturing Software Features
The top CRMs for lead nurturing offer these core features:
Store, organize, and track your leads’ information in a centralized location so you and your sales team can access it anytime.
How We Evaluated the Best Lead Nurturing Software
In our evaluation, we first identified the six weighted categories important to lead nurturing software and assigned each category key subcriteria. From there, we assigned each subcriteria a score out of five and summed them all together to give each option an overall score, including the identification of use cases. Take a look at our evaluation criteria below:
Evaluation Criteria
We first looked at each lead nurturing software’s core features, such as lead management, activity tracking, and CRM analytics, followed by their cost. Next, we looked into ease of use, customization, and third-party integrations. Customer support rounded out our scoring to ensure users have the information and help they need.
With this category, we considered features like account and contact management, lead tracking, sales and marketing automations, and other functionality central to effective lead nurturing.
We evaluated each software based on subscription plans and billing options, including whether it provides a free plan and/or a free trial across available tiers.
We looked at real user reviews on Capterra, TrustRadius, and G2 regarding each option’s usability and looked at how comprehensive their knowledge bases are.
We assessed whether each lead nurturing tool allows users to tailor and personalize features—like deal stages, reports, dashboards, and pipelines—to their needs.
We evaluated whether (and how well) each option interacts with other third-party apps for email campaigns, calendar syncing, and social media management.
We considered feedback from verified users on G2 and Capterra and whether each option provides support and after-sales service to users via phone, email, and live chat.
Bottom Line: Best Lead Nurturing Software
Lead nurturing is essentially customer relationship management, but businesses can’t afford to waste time focusing on the wrong leads. Lead nurturing software zeroes in on the right leads, then enables teams to engage their audience with tailored lead-to-customer journeys. The top six lead nurturing software help you drive potential customers through the sales funnel. To know more about converting leads into customers, read our article on lead nurturing.
