Which marketing automation platforms offer the most robust integration options with CRM systems?

Most MAPs integrate to CRM. The biggest MAPs out there (Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Hubspot or Marketo) integrate natively with SFDC, Microsoft Dynamics and Huspot. You easily can do bi-directional sync and data is updated almost instantly. If they have a native sync, it won’t use your API calls quotas.

MAP (ELQ, MKTO, PArdot,HubSpot) have native integrations with many best in class CRMs like SFDC, MS Dynamics, SugarCRM, and HubSpot etc Custom bi-directional integration can allow you to keep your CRM and MAP today by adding filters / guardrails etc

Most online businesses would benefit from a marketing automation platform that includes CRM features. Small to medium businesses can take advantage of an all-in-one option such as Keap (Infusionsoft) or Hubspot. However, in the event that an all-in-one solution won't work, native integrations should be sought out.

If you're using SFDC for CRM management, Account Engagement (Pardot/Salesforce) is the best solution, mainly due to data consistency and accuracy. In addition, the data sync happens instantly between the platforms, which significantly helps the CRM teams. Hubspot, Marketo, and RD Station have easy end-to-end integration between their marketing automation tools and CRM software.

All the CRM nowadays sync natively with MAPs and can also connect with many other tools. That will allow the data flows from one tool to the other. You will then be able to segment better your campaigns and also your sales team will see the content their contacts interacted with.

A few tools are responsible for workflow automation between CRM and marketing automation. I strongly recommend the following: - Pardot (Salesforce) - HubSpot - Marketo - ActiveCampaign - Outreach (to make decisions, send messages, and prioritize activities that lead to revenue)

For some custom flows, I have always used the Tray.io, Workato and Zapier. Tray is my go to platform though as I have to manage many custom tailored solutions for marketing and sales teams

Reporting and analytics are super important to take data informed decisions and track campaign results and ROI. It’s also important to track the full customer journey from Lead to customer. The best way to do this is from your data warehouse, ensure all your tools are connected either to each other and for the most important tools (MAP, CRM) to your data warehouse directly and build your reports from the DWH using a visualization tool like Power BI or Tableau

Customization is important but don’t over customize it might become a headache to maintain. There are some great out of the box options and when they exist don’t waste time trying to reinvent the wheel and only customize or build what is not already available in the tool. It will save you lots of time and money.

One toll really missing from the conversations is actually Eloqua. Yes, I'm die-hard fan - ELQ is way better than many MAPs available today which allowed much more flexibility around the customisation & tailored solutions. Yes, If you go for full HubSpot Suite, then it can be the best solution but it can go expensive 1) If you are on first 2 year discounts 2) if you have a big database and goes over your threshold. having said that, I will still pick HubSpot and ELoqua any day

Certain tools are easier than others to use and learn. Having used several MAP, I find Hubspot the easier to use, then Marketo and Marketing Cloud the most difficult but they are all good robust platforms and Marketo and Marketing Cloud still today are more suited to entertaining companies (but hubspot is getting there). As for CRMs, SFDC is still clearly the leader but dynamics CRM and hubspot are also good options. Again I think hubspot is the easiest to learn and use.

Most MAP and CRM offer similar features, I would really look at which one fits your budget and would be easiest for your team to learn and master. Also ensure to take into account implementation costs that can end up very costly and implementation can take time. Also to build templates you will need someone with good CSS and HTML experience and a developer to build customizations.

Integration with at least the major CRM providers is table stakes now. It's not like it used to be where a complex integration managed by the vendor is one of a set of limited options. With enhanced integration capabilities from HubSpot, Salesforce and its product line, Boomi, and Zapier - any Marketing automation platform that you move to needs to have integration as part of an already supported, configurable function.