The world becomes virtual due to the COVID19 health crisis. People’s interactions become digital and virtual. Day by day unnecessary communications, meetings may go virtual. This would have an impact on sales as well.
For B2B customer acquisition, personal selling was one of the key factors. Now with the changing scenario, many of us looking forward to Digital Sales.
Many start-ups, SMEs are exploring Digital Platforms to leverage. Marketing automation tools would be the front runner for start-ups to explore to reach more customers, create awareness, build a brand, and customer acquisitions.
There are many marketing automation platforms like – Marketo, Eloqua, Hubspot, Pardot(Salesforce Cloud), Customer.io, Constant Contact.
They are good but are costly for many startups and SMEs who are starting their Marketing Automation journey.
For some of my startup customers who wanted to experience Marketing Automation, we used some platforms that provide free plans eg. Mailchimp, Sendgrid, Sendinblue, etc.
From our experience, we would recommend MailChimp to explore. It provides 7 Marketing Channels, Easy Automation, Contact Management, Content Studio, Tracking, and Reporting mechanism.
Below is the quick comparison of features from our experience (this is only for reference and people may have a different experience)
| Feature | Mailchimp | Sendgrid |
| Free Version | 2000 Contacts, 20000 emails | 2000 Contacts, 20000 emails |
| Import Facility | Easy – CSV, CopyPaste, API | CSV |
| Email Designer/Studio | Limited Templates, Easy to design | Limited Template, Little complex to design |
| Email Scheduler | No scheduler in Free Version | Scheduler is available |
| Retargeting Unopened | Available | Not Available |
| Help/Notification | Easy and intuitive | Normal Notifications |
| Mobile App | Available | Not available |
| Landing page | Yes | No |
| Signup Form | Yes | Yes |
| Ads | Yes | No |
| Social Post | Yes | No |
| Survey | Yes | No |
| Single Send | Yes | Yes |
| Automation | Better | Limited Options |
| Contact/Audience Management | Detailed and Useful | Limited |
| Content Studio | Yes | No |
| Reports | Interactive/Drill Down reports | Limited Report/No Drill down |
| Segmentation | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign Calendar View | Yes | No |
| Plan Comparison | https://mailchimp.com/pricing/ | https://sendgrid.com/pricing/ |