Dotdigital blog

Top marketing automation platforms 2025

From AI-driven insights to cross-channel workflows, finding the right marketing automation platform will fuel your growth and simplify campaigns.

91% of marketing decision-makers expect automation demands to increase in 2025. That’s not a huge surprise considering recent AI-led innovations in the martech space. With AI, automating workflows, sending contextual messages, and streamlining tedious tasks is simple.

What’s not simple, however, is finding the right automation tools for your business. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Tons of marketing tools help you automate workflows, but some offer more than others. To help, we’ve put together this list of top marketing automation platforms so you can find the right fit (and yes, Dotdigital is in the mix).

Let’s kick things off by checking out the key features you should consider before picking automation tech.

Key features of marketing automation platforms

Marketing automation platforms are great tools to help marketers reach their goals. With an automation platform, you can:

Automate personalized email campaigns
Segment audiences for precise targeting
Manage multi-channel customer journeys
Visually build customer workflows
Nurture and score leads effectively
Integrate CRM and ecommerce platforms
Analyze campaign performance for optimization
Create landing pages, surveys, and forms
Manage data security and compliance

When assessing your automation needs, you need to look for features such as:

Email marketing automation
SMS and messaging automation
Segmentation and audience targeting
Testing, optimizations, and predictions
Personalization capabilities
Cross-channel journey orchestration
Analytics and reporting

These capabilities help you tailor different elements of your campaign to individual customers. This includes content, channels, product recommendations, and send times. By making sure your marketing automation tools have these features, you’ll be able to:

Unify your marketing tech stack
Streamline workflows
Maximize marketing budgets
Create, manage, and automate campaigns across all channels

Top marketing automation platforms in 2025

It’s time to dive into the top marketing automation platforms available in 2025, starting with Dotdigital.

Dotdigital

Dotdigital brings together extensive automation and personalization capabilities to give marketers everything they need to hit sales and revenue targets.

The platform ranks amongst G2’s top performers for:

And, we’re ranked the number one communication platform as a service (CPaaS) in the world. Our commitment to seamless mobile marketing experiences is what sets our cross-channel automation platform apart from the competition.

Key benefits of Dotdigital

Cross-channel automation

Dotdigital supports marketers in providing truly cross-channel experiences. We offer seven core channels:

You can also automate customer journey touchpoints within the platform, including:

Facebook ads
Instagram ads
Google ads
TikTok ads

With Dotdigital, you don’t need a platform for each channel or custom-built integrations to ensure all channels work together. You can find and automate them all in our all-in-one software. This allows you to sync up your marketing touchpoints and create a seamless experience for customers.

Let’s look at an example to see cross-channel marketing in action. Imagine a customer has added a pair of hoop earrings to their cart, but they’re not ready to complete their order. Using Dotdigital, you can take them on a cross-channel experience that’ll close the sale.

Exit intent popover: Use a triggered ‘save my shopping cart’ popover to capture their email
Abandoned cart email: Send a reminder about their shopping cart with a unique discount to drive them to purchase
Post-purchase popover: Collect mobile numbers and SMS marketing consent after a purchase
Personalized coupon code SMS: Deliver a personalized coupon code via SMS to drive repeat orders
Bespoke retargeting ads: If they still haven’t converted, target customers with personalized product recommendation ads on Google, Meta, or TikTok
Welcome back popover: Greet your returning customer with a ‘pick up where you left off’ message

This approach keeps you visible and creates memorable, personal experiences.

Triggered automation programs

As well as building journeys, you can use Dotdigital to create flows triggered by customer actions. This type of automation helps improve the relevancy of your marketing. And relevancy is what customers really crave – messages that appeal to their needs in the moment.

In Dotdigital’s drag-and-drop program builder, you can trigger customer flows using:

Action triggers: Deliver automated messages following a customer action, such as an abandoned cart or high-intent page visit
List triggers: Automatically send campaigns every time someone joins or unsubscribes from one of your lists
Date triggers: Use birthdays, anniversaries, or renewal dates to trigger journey flows
Word triggers: Kickstart campaigns when a particular word or phrase is used in an inbound SMS message

Delivering relevant and timely messages is central to building strong customer connections. When your communications land at the right moment, customers feel understood and valued. It’s a level of personalization that increases engagement and delivers long-term growth.

To learn more about Dotdigital’s automation features, check out our guides:

Unified single customer view

To build great automation journeys, you need to really understand your customers. Dotdigital’s single customer view (SCV) brings all your customer data together—no matter where it lives—so you always have the full picture. That means wherever your data comes from, everything connects seamlessly in one place.

An SCV, helps you spot patterns, understand what customers want, and deliver super-relevant, personalized marketing. Clear actionable insights mean no more guesswork, just marketing that keeps customers coming back.

With Dotdigital’s SCV, you’ll get an instant overview of key things like:

Customer info (name, sign-up date)
Predictions and personas (likelihood to buy, risk of churning)
Channel preferences (email, SMS opt-in status)
Memberships and segments
Purchase history
Engagement (opens, clicks, visits)
Recent activity and product recommendations

This makes it easy to find your best customers, reconnect with those at risk of leaving, and generate a segment of your top fans in the click of a button (thanks to tools like WinstonAI’s lookalike segment builder).

With Dotdigital’s SCV, you’re set up to turn data into stronger relationships and smarter, more successful marketing.

Audience and segmentation

Creating lookalike segments isn’t all you can do with Dotdigital. Segmentation lets you personalize customer journeys by getting in front of the right audience with the right message. Dotidigital’s segment builder lets you target groups using real customer data. You can mix and match data like marketing preferences, email clicks, website visits, and order history in a couple of clicks.

Plus, with our AI segment builder, it’s even faster to find the right people. It’s quick and easy to create powerful segments based on eRFM (engagement, recency, frequency, and monetary value), or use predictive insights like likely next order date. So what used to be complex now takes just minutes.

We also have a range of customer dashboards, which show how each segment is performing in with clear visuals and instant insights. You can always see which customers are ready to buy, and where to focus next.

Hyper-personalization

Dotdigital makes hyper-personalization happen by reading every click, scroll, and tap, so your campaigns feel like they are just for them. By tracking web behavior, you can trigger experiences that match what each customer wants. No more need for guesswork or lost opportunities, just spot-on, relevant marketing.

With Dotdigital, you can:

Personalize your site and emails based on real-time browsing and buying behavior
Drop in product recommendations tailored to what customers want
Serve dynamic content that updates with every click, visit, and preference
Add unique coupon codes to spark more conversions
Catch attention with offers or subscription options with targeted popovers

Reporting and analytics

Find the stories hidden in your data with Dotdigital’s simple but powerful reporting tools. Our dashboards make it easy for marketers to get the big picture and all the details at the same time.

You can watch sales flow in on dashboards that track revenue, channel performance, and real customer journeys, not just clicks or opens. They let you zoom in on campaign-level stats for email, SMS, and chat to spot which messages drive conversions and where people drop off. Insights are clear, instant, and easy to use.

What’s more, our more advanced ecommerce dashboards go even deeper. Showing everything from personalized product recommendations to abandoned cart recovery and even revenue attribution, you’ll quickly discover what works for your audience. If you want to know what’s moving the needle, it’s already in your dashboard:

Email and SMS performance, side by side
Automation and journey reports for every triggered campaign
Transactional and commerce reporting to see the moments that matter
Abandoned cart, product recommendations, and retail dashboards built for real ecommerce decisions

WinstonAI

Alongside these features, Dotdigital users also have exclusive access to WinstonAI, our built-in marketing intelligence engine. Covering a range of capabilities, WinstonAI helps you work faster, reach further, and get better results. Let’s look at some of the ways WinstonAI supports marketers:

Write spot-on subject lines and optimize copy and tone with generative AI baked into the email builder
Build highly targeted segments in seconds using AI to sort your audience for you
See what customers will do next with predictive insights, like likely order dates and risk of churn
Move fast and change your email into an SMS or translate your campaign into another language, all with AI
Deliver smarter product recommendations that match customers to what they actually want

Adobe Marketing Cloud

Adobe Marketing Cloud is a suite of tools covering analytics, content creation, and campaign management. Marketers might choose this solution because it easily connects with other Adobe products. This makes it a popular option for brands already immersed in the Adobe ecosystem.

The platform has rich integrations, advanced reporting, and many creative features. It’s often chosen by large and enterprise businesses with complex needs. But the flexibility it offers comes with a steeper learning curve, and to get the most out of the platform, you’ll need to be using all the other tools in their product suite.

Attentive

Attentive started as an SMS marketing platform, but now includes email marketing options. It’s popular with small and growing brands for its easy setup and focus on conversational, mobile campaigns.

While Attentive now offers email and SMS, it’s still missing crucial native channels like web, WhatsApp, and app. This can lead to disconnected workflows. As it’s mainly designed for smaller teams, marketers looking for a joined-up experience and full cross-channel capabilities may need to look at broader solutions as their needs grow.

Bloomreach

Bloomreach is an all-in-one marketing and personalization platform. It’s built for brands that want to deliver tailored customer experiences across multiple channels. This makes it a popular choice for large retailers and ecommerce brands.

Bloomreach offers many integration options for enterprise teams, though it can be complex and comes at a premium price. Marketers looking for simpler, more accessible personalization tools may prefer solutions designed for fast, easy setup and seamless use.

Braze

Braze is a mobile-first customer engagement platform. It’s known for marketing automation and personalization for app messaging and mobile campaigns. The platform helps brands deliver customer experiences across push, in-app, SMS, and email.

Braze has expanded its cross-channel features, but its roots remain in mobile. As more marketers look for seamless experiences across every channel, platforms offering mobile support and broad channel flexibility can help teams grow smarter and faster.

Emarsys

Emarsys helps marketers connect in-store and online data to deliver cross-channel experiences. The platform covers the essentials—email, SMS, web, and loyalty—and also offers AI capabilities. It’s a popular choice for brands with complex campaigns and big marketing teams.

The trade-off is a steeper learning curve, with some users needing ongoing support to get the most out of the features. For teams with limited time or experience, an intuitive platform can make all the difference.

Hubspot

HubSpot is best known as an all-in-one CRM and sales platform that also includes marketing automation. It’s well-suited for teams wanting to manage marketing, sales, and customer service from a single place. For marketers focused on segmentation, personalization, or reporting, HubSpot may fall short compared to purpose-built marketing platforms.

Insider

Insider supports brands, especially larger ecommerce businesses, in personalizing journeys across multiple channels. It offers tools for journey orchestration, segmentation, integration, and performance tracking. However, some find integrations clunky and have difficulty accessing the full depth of the platform. As marketers’ priorities shift toward unified, hands-on support and true cross-channel depth, solutions designed for ease of use and actionable insights stand out as prime options.

Iterable

Iterable is a newer name in the martech space, and it’s building momentum, especially in the US. Known for cross-channel orchestration, it helps reach customers across digital touchpoints.

While offering a polished UX, its integrations, commerce, and AI functions are still maturing. For marketers focused on unifying data and maximizing personalization, established platforms with deeper commerce and AI capabilities may offer a more complete toolkit as their needs grow.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform with a focus on email for ecommerce brands. Its simple setup makes it popular for brands just getting started or running smaller-scale operations.

While Klaviyo delivers on core marketing needs, its capabilities are best suited for businesses seeking straightforward campaigns rather than scaling up or crafting deeply personalized experiences. For marketers looking to go further, platforms built for growth and personalization can be a better fit. Seamless cross-channel automation, global customer journeys, deeper insights, scalable support, and web and app personalization can be achieved with more comprehensive, all-in-one platforms.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is part of the wider Salesforce suite, combining marketing, sales, and commerce tools in one system. It’s used by larger organizations looking for a holistic view of their customer and a central place for data. Marketers who want maximum flexibility and easy integrations with other tech may find more success with solutions focused on wider integrations.

How to choose the right platform

Picking the right marketing platform isn’t just another box to tick. It’s your recipe for growth, speed, and making everyday work easier. Here’s what to keep front and center as you compare your options:

Ease of use: Can you get started fast and stay in control, or will you need extra hands just to send a campaign?
Scalability: Will the platform keep up as your brand and audience grow, or will you outpace it in a year?
Integrations: Does it plug into your must-have tools, like ecommerce, CRM, and analytics, without the need for custom fixes?
Customer support: Are there real experts ready to help, or does support feel like a lottery?
Pricing: Is the cost clear and fair? Make sure the pricing fits your needs now and as you scale

A great platform should make you feel confident, not confused. Trust your instincts. And remember, fancy features mean nothing if they’re hard to use or tough to connect with the rest of your marketing tech stack.

Conclusion

The right marketing platform makes life simpler, helps your team thrive, and keeps your customers coming back. Getting this choice right sets the stage for smarter campaigns, faster wins, and real business results.