Looking for the best CRM for freelancers? Check out our list of the top six CRM solutions for freelancers in 2024 to get the best features for your business.
Marketing CRMs are software that combine standard sales and pipeline management features with powerful marketing capabilities that help you generate and nurture inbound leads. The top options offer tools like social media integration, email marketing, website visitor tracking, and marketing automation and analytics, which help you reach leads from multiple sources and bring them into your pipeline. We've reviewed the best solutions to help you choose one.
Below is our list of the top seven marketing CRMs for marketers and salespeople:
While all of the CRMs on this list are great options, we found that Zoho CRM offers the best overall value for sales and marketing professionals seeking a marketing CRM. Continue reading to dig deeper into each option, including its use case, pricing plans, and key features. Otherwise, skip down to see how we evaluated the CRMs across the six main categories.
Note: All per-user prices are with a one-year commitment unless otherwise noted.
Offers robust marketing features such as email campaigns, social media management, and more.
Price Range: Free to $52 per user, per month (15- to 30-day free trial)
Zoho CRM is a leading sales and marketing CRM that offers robust multichannel marketing features and a free plan. Starting at its paid Standard level, you'll receive access to marketing automations, email campaigns, social media management tools (earning it the top spot as a social media CRM), and more in addition to standard CRM sales tools. Zoho CRM also offers affordable marketing add-ons, such as Campaigns for advanced email marketing.
While Zoho offers a free level with basic sales and marketing features, you must upgrade to access most of its key tools. Check out HubSpot Marketing Hub if you're looking for a free plan that's truly usable.
Provides solid features in its free tier plus the ability to upgrade and integrate with Sales Hub and Service Hub.
Price Range: Free to $3,600 per month
HubSpot Marketing Hub is HubSpot's marketing platform that offers critical free and paid tools. When you sign up for the free version (aka HubSpot CRM), you'll receive some Marketing Hub tools like email marketing, web forms, and live chat, plus basic sales and service features. Upgrade to a paid Marketing Hub level for more robust versions of your existing marketing features plus additional ones like social media management and landing page A/B testing.
HubSpot's free version of Marketing Hub is highly useful, and its upgrades provide a solid amount of additional features plus seamless integration with the Service and Sales Hubs, but the paid tiers get pricey. For a free CRM with more affordable upgrades, check out Zoho CRM.
Give users access to native social media advertising management not typically provided by other CRMs.
Price Range: Free to $325 per month (15- to 30-day free trial)
Bitrix24 is an online workspace offering many sales and marketing tools, including robust social media management. What makes Bitrix unique is that within the CRM, you can manage your social media profiles, create lookalike audiences, and publish social media advertisements. Most CRMs require you to leave the platform when working with social media ads, so this native integration is useful for businesses that prioritize social media marketing for lead generation.
Bitrix24's paid social media features make it more convenient to use if social media is key to your marketing plan, but its UI can be tough to navigate. If you want an easier-to-use CRM that also offers great social media tools, consider EngageBay as an alternative.
Helps you launch drip campaigns with its pre-set automations and time-based triggers.
Price Range: Free to $350+ per month (30-day free trial)
Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that allows you to create a targeted series of emails with its wide selection of automations. Choose from its wealth of classic email automation triggers such as campaign activities, audience behavior, workflows, and even actions from your connected ecommerce store. You can also opt for date-based automation to target subscribers based on specific events like birthdays, anniversaries, and other recurring dates.
While Mailchimp offers a wide selection of email marketing automations, it has a steep learning curve, which can be challenging for newbies. For a marketing CRM that’s easier to learn, check out EngageBay, which won in the ease of use category and offers email marketing features.
Provides a highly affordable all-in-one package for marketing, sales, and service.
Price Range: Free to $110.39 per user, per month
EngageBay is a newer CRM and marketing platform with a free version and premium tiers. It offers separate marketing, CRM and sales, and service packages, but it's designed as an all-in-one platform. This is reflected in its bundle pricing, which is affordable and similar in cost to the individual plans. This means your marketing team can generate leads, sales team can close deals, and support team can handle tickets, all on a single platform for a low monthly fee.
EngageBay offers a basic free option and a discount on a two-year commitment, but if you have budget constraints and are looking for the best free bundle available, check out HubSpot Marketing Hub, which offers even better marketing, sales, and service tools for free.
Allows you to track marketing campaigns across channels with robust reports and dashboards.
Price Range: $25 to $500 per user, per month (30-day trial)
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a highly customizable CRM that lets you manage and monitor marketing campaigns. Sales Cloud is primarily sales-focused, but it’s an affordable alternative to Marketing Cloud for organizing your marketing plans and assets and associating them with your sales activities. Communicate your return on investment (ROI) to stakeholders and make budgeting decisions based on past campaign data with its reporting and analytics features.
Although Salesforce comes with advanced reporting tools and decent marketing features, its interface can be complicated. If you’re looking for a more intuitive marketing CRM with reports and visual dashboards across paid tiers plus marketing add-ons, consider Pipedrive.
Offers a la carte marketing add-ons to get the best possible sales and marketing features.
Price Range: $14 to $99 per user, per month (14-day trial)
Pipedrive is an easy-to-use CRM with a visual approach to marketing and lead management via its kanban-style pipeline. While its plans include some marketing features, where it really shines is with its marketing add-ons, including LeadBooster to generate leads, Web Visitors to track your site viewers, and Campaigns to market to your new leads via email. The add-ons transform this solid sales CRM into a robust marketing tool and one of the best email marketing CRMs.
While Pipedrive is great for teams that are willing to purchase a paid CRM plus add-ons, it's not right for those looking to start with a free plan and upgrade only when necessary. If this is you, check out HubSpot Marketing Hub for a great free place to start.
The best marketing CRM platforms provide the following features:
Design, launch, and optimize targeted email drip campaigns to support your business’ marketing funnel to capture leads, generate ROI, and build email databases.
Boost your business’ marketing campaigns with attractive emails and website pages built from pre-made templates and customizable designs with the help of a drag-and-drop tool.
Create, schedule, and monitor social media campaigns across channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more directly from your CRM via built-in tools or app integrations.
Find patterns in your marketing data, including email opens, social media interactions, and website traffic, to see which campaign generates the most ROI and recommend the next best action based on past marketing performance.
In our evaluation of the best CRM software for marketing features, we used six criteria to analyze our options, each containing subcriteria and holding a specific amount of weight toward the final score. Then, we used these benchmarks to assign each option a rating out of five, as well as to determine an overall winner. Finally, we identified a main use case for each option on our list.
Advertising and marketing campaigns are rarely successful in the 21st century without the support of CRM marketing software. But CRM software is more than a simple hub for connecting salespeople and marketers with their customers. In modern times, it can serve as a launchpad for your entire business model. Choose from this list of the best marketing CRMs or check out our article on the four types of CRMs, which includes marketing CRM software plus others.
This article was written by J.R. Johnivan and updated by Kezia Jungco.
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