As your business grows, so do your responsibilities. Sooner rather than later, it becomes unsustainable to run every part of your marketing strategy manually.
This is where marketing automation comes in.
Marketing automation is when you use tools and software to automate repetitive tasks and optimise your marketing efforts.
If you aren’t sure what this would look like in your business, here are a few examples of the tasks marketing automation tools are used for:
- Follow-ups
- Email sequences
- Scheduling social media posts
- Abandoned cart reminders
- A/B testing
- Meeting reminders
- Lead scoring
- A lead generation quiz
Market automation tools are changing and improving all the time.
Here’s how they will help you enhance business efficiency and growth in 2025, alongside some recommendations of our favourite tools that can be easily integrated with ScoreApp.
What are the benefits of marketing automation tools?
When you choose the right tools, marketing automation will streamline your lead generation process, improve your conversion rate, and create a much better customer experience.
Here are some of the benefits marketing automation can bring to your business:
Higher-quality leads
Marketing automation tools can be used to make your messaging more specific – which will bring more perfect-fit clients to your business.
By automating the repetitive parts of your marketing and sales strategy, your teams can focus on nurturing strong relationships with your strongest leads to encourage them to convert.
Typically, businesses that utilise marketing automation tools to nurture relationships with their leads experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. These nurtured leads then make purchases that are 47% larger than those that aren’t nurtured.
Personalised communications
You can use marketing automation tools to segment your audience by their behaviour, interests, or quiz scores.
By establishing core customer groups, you can create targeted email sequences that meet people with what they need at different stages of the buying journey, rather than sending everyone in your database a generic message.
Around 72% of customers only engage with personalised messages now. By using marketing automation to personalise your communications, you have the opportunity to convert more leads than ever.
Aligning your marketing and sales team
Marketing and sales teams need to work together to improve your conversion rate – and marketing automation makes this easier than ever.
Not only do you remove human error from both marketing and sales, but your teams will use the same consistent messaging to speak to your leads throughout their customer journey.
Better decision-making
Marketing automation tools collect a wealth of data. You can use the advanced analytics available to make data-driven decisions about your messaging, sales process, and even your products and services.
2025 marketing automation features to look out for
Now that you know what marketing automation is and the benefits it has for your business, let’s get into how the technology will develop in 2025.
AI-powered automation
AI tools are central to marketing automation in 2025 – and can be a game-changer in driving personalised and data-driven marketing strategies.
AI marketing automation tools use artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms to streamline your workflows and automate repetitive tasks.
You can use AI to manage customer interactions and analyse huge amounts of data to offer predictive insights. This can help you tailor your communications and content to create personalised campaigns that target each lead based on their individual behaviour and preferences.
You might be wondering what this looks like in practice…
ScoreApp has been leading the way with AI automation for some time. Our integration with OpenAI’s GPT-3 means you can build your lead generation quiz using one of our ready-to-use templates in as little as 3 minutes!
Once completed, your lead receives a report based on how they answered your quiz. This is automatically generated and will break down where they are performing well, where they are struggling, and some recommendations for improvement.
From here, you can use our AI assistant to create automated email marketing sequences tailored to the needs of every lead.
Multi-channel campaign management
Marketing automation platforms are becoming more and more adept at managing multi-channel campaigns.
This means instead of attempting to manage all of your marketing channels separately, you can integrate email, social media, and SMS marketing into unified campaigns.
This approach allows you to reach your customers across multiple touchpoints with ease, so you are always front of mind when they are making purchasing decisions.
Not only that, but these tools take away the manual work in multi-channel campaign management. Automation tools streamline the coordination and timing of your marketing activities, so your prospects receive consistent messaging on every platform.
Real-time customer engagement
Real-time engagement is another growing trend in marketing automation.
Chatbots, for example, can be used to have live human-like conversations with prospects as they browse on websites or social platforms.
These tools can be set up to provide instant responses to frequently asked questions, track orders, and provide individual shopping recommendations.
The result is a much more personal buying experience: one that can improve lead generation and customer satisfaction levels while freeing up your team to deal with more complex tasks.
Predictive analytics and lead scoring
Marketing automation tools are increasingly using predictive analytics to prioritise leads.
The in-depth data these tools collect on leads include behavioural insights and buying intent information. AI-powered lead scoring models will analyse the information you collect and then rank prospects based on their likelihood to convert.
This data can be massively helpful for your sales team, and makes it far easier for them to allocate their resources most effectively.
For example, you set up a ScoreApp lead generation quiz and include a few pre-qualifying questions. This means you can use our aggregate score and answer reports to identify which prospects are ready to have a call with your sales team, and which need to stay in your marketing funnel and drip-fed valuable content to move them along the customer journey.
Video and interactive content automation
Finally, marketing automation will extend to video content and interactive content experiences in 2025.
Certain marketing automation tools will allow you to automate the creation of personalised video campaigns. Viewer interaction with your videos will be tracked and content will be adjusted dynamically in real time.
This will provide a highly effective way of nurturing your leads and providing them with valuable content at every stage of your sales funnel.
According to Forbes, generative video is going to become increasingly popular: think ChatGPT, only instead of using a prompt to generate written content, you will be able to bring video to life in front of your eyes.
We’re big fans of using a video mini-course as a lead magnet here at ScoreApp, so this is an innovation we’re particularly looking forward to!
13 best marketing automation tools for your business in 2025
Now that we’ve covered the benefits of marketing automation and upcoming trends to watch out for, let’s get into the best marketing automation tools for your business in 2025.
Every one of the tools mentioned below can be directly integrated with ScoreApp, so you can connect all of your marketing channels together to create an unstoppable, high-converting marketing funnel.
1. ScoreApp
With ScoreApp, you get so much more than a lead generation quiz: you get a full marketing automation funnel.
You can easily build your quiz in as little as three minutes using AI-powered automation, and you can also use our AI assistant to create dynamic landing pages that attract more ideal customers to your quiz.
With ScoreApp, you can also automate lead nurturing, as quiz results will be analysed and each lead added to relevant email marketing journeys to be drip-fed educational content and personalised offers to encourage the chances of conversion.
Lead scoring is automated with ScoreApp too. By asking qualifying questions in your quiz, you can get an immediate overview of where each lead is in the customer journey – so your sales team can prioritise contacting the hottest prospects first.
Best of all: once it’s been set up, your quiz marketing funnel will run in the background for you – automatically attracting perfect-fit leads to your business, nurturing them strategically, and ultimately, bringing you more customers.
2. HubSpot
One of the most popular all-in-one CRMs on the market, HubSpot connects your marketing, sales, and customer service on one comprehensive platform.
AI-powered automation is built into HubSpot, and you can automate routine tasks with emails and forms.
You can also create chatbots to provide live information to customers and set up automated multi-channel lead nurturing campaigns across emails, SMS, and in-product marketing to ensure that every lead receives personalised messages throughout your marketing funnel, based on their preferences and behaviour.
HubSpot automates lead scoring and sends best-fit leads to your sales team. You can even set up internal notifications when a prospect takes a key action, so you never miss a sales opportunity again.
- Functions: CRM, email marketing automation, lead nurturing, analytics, and social media scheduling.
- Use Case: A comprehensive platform for managing inbound marketing campaigns, customer relationships, and automated workflows.
- Ideal for: Small to medium-sized businesses.
3. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is well-known as an email marketing platform – but you can also use it to bring together marketing automation and your CRM (or your ScoreApp quiz) to deliver an excellent customer experience.
ActiveCampaign offers lead scoring within the platform so you can see how engaged each contact is at a glance, and lets you manage multi-channel campaigns with ease to build highly-targeted content across email, SMS, social media, and ads.
You can also use ActiveCampaign to write emails with predictive content – creating up to 5 different content options for one email, which AI then analyses to make sure each contact gets the right version based on their behaviour.
Similarly to ScoreApp, ActiveCampaign can integrate with hundreds of other marketing tools to create streamlined customer experiences.
- Functions: Email automation, customer segmentation, SMS automation, CRM, and sales automation.
- Use Case: Building customer journeys using behaviour-based triggers to automate the entire sales and marketing pipeline.
- Ideal for: Small to mid-sized businesses looking for email and CRM solutions.
4. Mailchimp
Thanks to its intuitive platform and versatility, Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms out there.
You can create customer journeys in minutes, thanks to Mailchimp’s library of pre-built templates. Their AI assistant can also generate email content and subject lines and can provide suggestions on how to optimise your content as you write.
You can also automatically segment your leads by their preferences and behaviour, and create multi-channel campaigns beyond email, with SMS marketing and ad retargeting features.
Mailchimp is currently working on an AI lead scoring model that you will be able to use to identify who in your database is most likely to convert, and encourage conversion through hyper-personalised content built with generative AI.
You can utilise some of these features now by integrating Mailchimp with your ScoreApp quiz.
- Functions: Email marketing, A/B testing, segmentation, and retargeting ads.
- Use Case: Alongside email marketing, Mailchimp offers automation features including triggered emails and retargeting opportunities to improve campaign engagement.
- Ideal for: Small businesses or startups.
5. Zoho
Zoho is a wide-ranging CRM platform that can effectively be used as an operating system for your business. It aims to bring all of your departments together – from marketing to sales, and customer service to finance.
When it comes to marketing automation, Zoho has several features to enhance efficiency and growth. Their advanced real-time analytics help you evaluate and classify customers based on their behaviour. You can even see which parts of your website pages are converting best.
From there, you can create personalised journeys based on unique engagement paths for each lead to encourage conversions.
You can also automate multi-channel marketing campaigns to reach customers via email, SMS, WhatsApp, social media, and more.
- Functions: Multi-channel automation (email, SMS, social media), lead nurturing, CRM integration, and reporting.
- Use Case: A cost-effective solution that integrates seamlessly with Zoho’s CRM and other business tools, offering detailed workflows and segmentation.
- Ideal for: Small to mid-sized businesses using the Zoho ecosystem.
6. Salesforce Marketing Cloud
The world’s #1 CRM, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an AI-powered platform that uses automation to help you improve conversions and accelerate business growth.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud uses in-depth AI analysis and predictive analytics to build a real-time 360-degree view of every prospect.
Generative AI can map user journeys and create automated marketing campaigns across multiple channels, creating personal touchpoints across your website, app, and emails.
Speaking of emails, Salesforce uses automation to dynamically change the content of emails in real-time – including offers and product recommendations – to create truly personal experiences for every lead.
- Functions: Email and social marketing, customer journey building, AI-driven insights, and multi-channel automation.
- Use Case: A high-end solution for large enterprises that want to automate and personalise campaigns across multiple channels.
- Ideal for: Enterprises looking for sophisticated, scalable marketing automation.
7. Customer.io
A powerful customer engagement platform, customer.io puts personalisation at the forefront of marketing automations.
Customer.io allows you to manage multi-channel marketing campaigns – including email, push notifications, in-app experiences, and SMS – from one centralised platform.
The platform also gives you deep insight into the behaviour of each prospect – from their website visits to messages received and much more, so you can create journeys based on personal triggers to improve conversion.
The platform uses AI to analyse customer data in real-time, and provides complete flexibility in creating bespoke automated journeys.
Customer segments can be automatically integrated with your ScoreApp quiz, alongside Google, social media, and YouTube networks, automating the creation of hyper-personalised retargeting adverts across platforms.
- Functions: Behavioural-based email automation, push notifications, SMS marketing, and segmentation.
- Use Case: Sending automated personalised emails and messages based on how users interact with your app or website, to improve user engagement and retention.
- Ideal for: Tech startups and SaaS businesses.
8. Keap (formerly Infusionsoft)
Designed for small businesses, Keap is a popular CRM and marketing automation tool for small businesses.
Keap leverages AI automation to streamline business operations across every department – from email follow-ups to task management. The platform can be integrated with thousands of other apps – including ScoreApp – to reach customers across multiple channels.
Keap’s centralised CRM gives you a user-friendly overview of each lead’s journey through your marketing funnel, with clear insight into all their interactions. You can set up automated journeys using pre-designed templates, or create your own from scratch based on client actions and personalised response triggers.
Keep also uses AI for lead scoring, and has powerful tools to automate sales workflows – including sending targeted offers and generating invoices – which can free up resources within your sales team.
- Functions: CRM, email marketing automation, sales pipeline, and e-commerce integration.
- Use Case: Keap is excellent for small businesses looking to automate repetitive marketing tasks like email follow-ups, lead nurturing, and customer management.
- Ideal for: Small businesses and entrepreneurs needing a combined CRM and marketing automation tool.
9. Insightly
Insightly is a modern, scalable CRM platform for lead management and nurturing.
AI automation can be utilised across all business workflows, so you can customise messages, send customer follow-ups, add leads to your segmented lists, and nurture relationships on autopilot.
Insightly uses AI to analyse customer data in real-time, so lead scoring and segmentation can change based on live prospect behaviour. You can use this data to create prospect profiles to help your sales team focus their efforts on perfect-fit leads.
You can also use Insightly to capture and engage with leads across digital advertising channels and eCommerce platforms, to ensure that every touchpoint is highly targeted and multi-channel marketing campaigns run like clockwork.
Similarly to ScoreApp, CRM can be integrated with several other marketing tools.
- Functions: CRM, project management, email marketing automation, and workflow automation.
- Use Case: Insightly is a CRM with built-in marketing automation that helps businesses streamline customer journeys.
- Ideal for: SMBs that need CRM functionalities alongside basic marketing automation.
10. GoHighLevel
An all-in-one sales and marketing platform, GoHighLevel has been designed for marketing agencies and consolidates all of your tools into one location.
GoHighLevel provides automated management of multi-channel campaigns. You can connect with leads and automate follow-up across SMS, email, Facebook messenger, and even by phone call and voicemail.
You can easily engage with prospects in real-time and use AI to manage conversations, collect payments, and send customised follow-up messages. GoHighLevel even has its own calendar function so prospects can automatically schedule calls with your sales team without using your resources.
GoHighLevel can also be white-labelled so marketing agencies can sell it to their own customers at their own price.
- Functions: Marketing automation, CRM, email and SMS marketing, funnels, landing pages, and reputation management.
- Use Case: GoHighLevel offers automation for lead generation, nurturing, and customer follow-ups via email and SMS.
- Ideal for: Marketing agencies and businesses that require a comprehensive tool for managing both client campaigns and internal marketing automation.
11. Ontraport
Ontrapilot is a powerful automation platform that delivers more effective marketing on autopilot.
Ontraport has an award-winning automation builder, and a range of templates that can help you get customer journeys up and running in minutes – including marketing funnels, follow-up systems, and more.
Ontraport’s generative AI assistant can be added to any automation and used to create new content, personalise follow-up messages, and even analyse sales call transcripts to see where improvements can be made.
Ontraport also has sophisticated data analysis tools that help you to evaluate the performance of every part of your funnel, so it can be optimised to improve conversion over time.
The CRM capabilities of the platform help you to maintain personalised outreach – no matter how much your business scales. You can also automate multi-channel campaigns across email, SMS, and even calls from your sales team in one platform.
- Functions: Marketing automation, CRM, e-commerce, email campaigns, and membership management.
- Use Case: Ontraport is highly flexible, allowing businesses to automate complex customer journeys across multiple channels, including email, SMS, and landing pages.
- Ideal for: Mid-sized businesses and entrepreneurs managing complex customer relationships and automating sales processes.
12. Webhooks
While not a traditional marketing automation platform, webhooks enable businesses to automate tasks across multiple platforms by triggering specific actions using real-time information.
For example:
- When a customer fills out a form on your website, a webhook could trigger an automated email response or add them to an automated email sequence.
- When a customer adds items to their cart but leaves your website without purchasing, a webhook could trigger an email to remind them of the items and offer a discount to encourage a sale.
- When a customer enquires about your service, a webhook could send them an automated follow-up with a link to book a call.
- When a customer purchases an item, a webhook could send them a confirmation email, and notify you to begin processing their order.
Setting up webhooks does require some technical knowledge, so they are ideal for businesses with custom workflows that has a savvy in-house team who can automate tasks across different apps or platforms.
13. Klaviyo
Our final marketing automation tool you should consider for your business in 2025 is Klaviyo.
Particularly popular with e-commerce businesses, Klaviyo can be integrated with platforms like Shopify to send highly personalised and automated emails, SMS messages, and mobile push notifications.
Klaviyo has an AI assistant that can generate content across channels, including email, SMS, and respond to reviews. Segments can be updated live using real-time data to build out personalised email communications using the most granular customer information.
Klaviyo’s predictive analytics will evaluate your data to score your leads and even predict lifetime value, churn risk, and estimated order dates based on prospect behaviour.
AI tools also analyse your performance in comparison with your competitors and provide recommendations for how to improve your conversion rate.
- Functions: Email and SMS marketing, customer segmentation, A/B testing, automation workflows.
- Use Case: Klaviyo focuses on helping businesses improve customer retention and increase revenue through targeted campaigns.
- Ideal for: E-commerce businesses looking for sophisticated email marketing automation with a focus on driving sales and customer retention.
Start automated marketing in 2025 for sales without stress
And there you have it – a whistle-stop tour around marketing automation trends, and how major tools are embracing innovations to provide even greater opportunities for efficiency and growth in 2025.
When executed correctly, automated marketing can revolutionise your entire business. Thanks to artificial intelligence, you can learn more about your prospects than ever before.
You can also create personal communications, offers, and engagement opportunities with far less manual effort, so you can focus on conversion as you add value on autopilot.
ScoreApp already uses AI to help businesses across industries improve their lead generation – and lead quality. Our interactive quiz software can be used to create a full marketing funnel, and can also be integrated with each of the marketing automation tools we explored in this blog
With dozens of ready-to-use templates and real customer Scorecards to use as inspiration, getting started with ScoreApp couldn’t be easier.
Discover how marketing automation can enhance your business efficiency and growth in 2025 and beyond when you try ScoreApp for FREE.
