9 AI Tools for Successful Marketing Funnels

If you work in marketing or digital sales, you need to utilize marketing funnels. It is an entirely automated process that effectively functions as an around-the-clock sales device for your agency or business. The funnel provides carefully curated content that nurtures your prospects as opposed to cold selling.

Because the sales funnel is now such a staple, experts provide us with numerous options to more efficiently create, test, and manage our funnels. Here's a list of 9 AI marketing funnel tools that will revolutionize the way you market your brand online.

1. DashClicks

DashClicks is a SaaS (software as a service) platform that promises a complete package of solutions for digital marketing agencies. Included in this is a complete CRM for tracking your leads, deals, and existing customers. You can also use software applications included in every subscription to quickly build websites and landing pages with their drag-and-drop web builder.

A huge benefit that DashClicks offers over other platforms is its Inbound software application that offers integration with other marketing platforms including:

• ClickFunnels
• Instapage
• Facebook
• Google Ads
• Kartra
• CallRail
• PhoneSites
• ManyChat

Even if you prefer to utilize one of these other platforms for your initial funnel build, DashClicks allows you to instantly integrate your campaigns from any of these platforms. After integrating your sales funnel, you'll be able to automatically create new contacts from leads, create new deals from every interaction, and create automated actions such as email follow-ups depending on where the contact lies within your sales pipeline.

DashClicks offers three tiers of paid plans, but you can access the basics you need for your new funnel campaign with the free plan. This includes 500 contact records with a data import utility, one Inbound campaign with built-in reporting and lead freshness tracking, analytics tools, a customized dashboard with a white-labeled domain, and much more. Their paid plans range from $97/month for their Pro plan to $597/month for their highest-tier plan.

Image Source: DashClicks Leads CRM Dashboard

The major benefit of this platform is your ability to get all of the automated tools you need to enhance your funnel performance all within one account under one subscription. In addition to these marketing funnel tools, you'll get everything an agency could ever need including a form builder, 50-250GB of file storage, reputation management tools, dedicated support, and much more. They even provide a dedicated fulfillment store including website page creation and content marketing at additional costs, so that you can rely on a team of experts to build your new sales funnel for you.

2. SendPulse

SendPulse is a multi-channel marketing automation platform that optimizes communication with customers through email, SMS, web push, and messenger bots. SendPulse combines these channels to improve customer reach and engagement. Pricing starts at $6.40/month for a subscription plan. Also, you can pay for each email separately at a rate of $32 per 10,000 emails on a pay-as-you-go plan. There’s also a full featured 7-day free trial.

The free plan of SendPulse offers an opportunity for smaller businesses to start with their marketing and automation or to test out the platform’s basic functionalities before subscribing. Features include:

• Sending 15,000 emails to 500 subscribers each month.
• Basic automation with 5 flows and 1 event.
• 3 chatbots with 10,000 messages per month.
• CRM with 5 users, 2 sales pipelines and 2 boards.
• Intuitive visual builders for emails, websites, forms and workflows.
• 1 website or bio link page.
• Pop-ups.
• Unlimited web-push notifications for 10,000 subscribers.
• Sending 12,000 transactional emails per month.
• Template libraries for emails, websites, forms and workflows.
• Detailed statistics reports and analytics.

However, even if SendPulse's free plan generously allows for a good number of emails, bots and subscriber count, users are limited in their ability to add more without upgrading their plan. Additionally, many advanced premium features are not included which may limit marketing strategies.

SendPulse’s paid platform offers far more extensive features and capabilities. Paying users can enjoy the advantages of multi-channel marketing with unlimited numbers of emails and higher subscriber limits. The platform also provides access to advanced marketing automation, where users can automate marketing campaigns across multiple channels based on user behavior. Additionally, there’s the opportunity to use advanced segmentation, behavioral variables and event tracking for improved personalization of marketing efforts. This robust nature of the SendPulse paid platform makes it a reliable tool for growing businesses and marketing teams to communicate and engage with their customers more effectively.

3. ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is one of the most popular sales funnel management tools among marketers and for great reason. This is a sales platform dedicated exclusively to building beautiful landing pages, collecting and tracking new signups, and seamlessly integrating payment solutions for immediate transactions.

Within the ClickFunnels platform, someone with zero HTML or CSS knowledge can quickly create multi-step sales marketing funnels that automatically walk prospects through the sales process. You can begin building from a variety of pre-existing templates or start from a completely blank page for full personalization. It also provides the option to create pop-ups with varying triggers, built-in timers, email marketing followup, and even SMS messaging with an additional integration.

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The basic ClickFunnels plan begins at $97/month and includes an unlimited contact book with the ability to create up to twenty unique marketing funnels. They offer two additional plans at $297/month and $2,497/month that offer unlimited campaigns, unlimited website pages, and email. The most expensive plan will also get you access to twenty-seven unique payment integrations, and the ability to use up to twenty-seven custom domains.

ClickFunnels also offers the powerful benefit of including built-in A/B testing tools, which allow you to test out new content and features within the same sales funnel. You can automatically pivot traffic to the best-performing pages and make optimizations as you go.

Finally, the platform offers all users access to support options and training tools. You can quickly access a library of resources for any particular issue you're facing with your sales funnel. Alternatively, you can quickly connect to a live chat and speak with an agent that will walk you through the solution for your sales funnel issues.

4. Systeme.io

Systeme.io is a powerful choice for marketing funnels due to the number of features being offered for no cost. Their free plan grants you the ability to create three sales funnels with up to ten total steps, a blog, a membership site, and much more. You'll gain the ability to send unlimited emails, unlimited file storage space, and the ability to add up to 2,000 contacts.

Systeme's free plan also grants you the following features, but limits them to just 1 per item:

• Automation Rules
• Workflows
• Tags
• Email Campaigns
• 1-Click Upsells
• A/B Tests
• Order Bumps
• Custom Domains

If you're looking to explore different options for your marketing funnels, Systeme.io offers all of the essentials to get started and then some. If you require a larger contact list or wish to create even more marketing funnels with these AI tools, you can upgrade to a paid plan which ranges from $27/month to $97/month. The most expensive plan grants you 15,000 contacts total as well as unlimited access to all other features.

In addition to the no limits offered with the highest-tier plan, you can migrate existing sales funnels into the Systeme.io platform. Finally, a team representative will meet with you one-on-one to coach you through all of the features and tools available to ensure that your marketing funnels are a success.

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While that covers the core features offered for marketing funnels, Systeme offers more with your membership plan including a drag-and-drop website builder that requires no coding knowledge. Rather than pay for additional memberships from other platforms, you can quickly create a beautiful website for your business or agency in addition to your next sales funnel. Within this membership site, you can create online courses for your members and easily regulate webpage access by membership tier.

5. HubSpot's Marketing Hub

HubSpot is one of the largest platforms available for marketing, sales, and customer service. It offers a vast number of free tools for anyone that signs up and furthers those benefits for subscribers. Rather than simply scaling membership fees behind certain limits, HubSpot tailors each of its plans to better suit the size and scope of a business with its Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans. These range from $45/month to $3,200/month for large-scale operations.

Before we look at the paid plans, we'll go over the vast offerings you can get access to at no cost at all. Simply sign up for a free membership and gain access to the following:

• Create up to 20 landing pages
• 2,000 email sends per month
• Simple website audiences for any 2 supported integrations
• Create standalone, pop-up, embedded, and collected forms
• Segment submissions into 5 active lists or 1,000 static lists
• 1 automated form follow-up email
• 10 custom properties
• Basic live chat and chatbot
• Ad retargeting
• Ability to work through the HubSpot mobile app

This free membership grants marketers access to several new tools generally not offered by platforms without a monthly subscription. The caveat is that nearly all of these features will come with HubSpot branding. You cannot customize your branding or place your landing pages on a custom domain. Nevertheless, it's great for your basic needs and allows you to test out the platform with zero investment.

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If you're ready to upgrade and take ownership of your marketing funnels, you can do so with their Starter plan. You'll gain five times the number of contacts, access to more lists, reporting dashboard, email reply tracking, three automated emails, and 1,000 custom properties.

The biggest selling point for HubSpot is the ability to not only create and manage sales funnels, but to manage all other aspects of your business including sales, operations, and customer service all from one platform. The company takes the approach of offering each Hub as a separate membership so that business owners can select only the services they need to get the job done.

Its Sales Hub also starts at $45/month and can take the leads gained from your landing pages and begin the process of auto-creating contacts from submissions and assigning them to a sales representative and their own respective deal in a sales pipeline. Additional subscriptions will also grant you the ability to create and automate tasks, integrate payments, create custom goals, host videos and documents, and much more. While the vast array of tools available is impressive, some platforms offer similar tools for less of a cost overall.

6. Wishpond

Wishpond is an increasingly popular platform that focuses primarily on digital advertising, landing pages, and marketing funnel creation. While it does offer some basic features through its free version, those members will be limited to just 200 leads total, which doesn't amount to very much even for a smaller-sized business.

Its paid memberships range from $44/month to $199/month with the ability to expand your total lead contact list to one million upon request. That paid membership will grant you access to all of the essential tools you need to get the job done. This includes a drag-and-drop web builder for landing page creation, an online form builder for easy lead collection, email marketing, automated follow-ups, payment integration, and appointment scheduling.

Wishpond is also built for integration with Shopify stores, making it an excellent solution for eCommerce businesses. Its built-in reporting software not only tracks the quality of leads but provides day-to-day breakdowns of order activity. You'll also be able to set up additional email and SMS triggers based upon rules set by you and your team when actions are taken on your landing pages or website.

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While Wishpond offers the core features you need for marketing funnels and presents them well, its main drawback is that other platforms offer these same features for less. Platforms asking for more generally offer more core features to support your campaigns. In addition to this, there is currently no way to manage or post from social accounts directly from the platform.

If those issues aren't a dealbreaker, then Wishpond is a platform we can recommend due to its clean user interface and intuitive marketing funnel tools.

7. Instapage

Instapage is one that we would consider a direct competitor to ClickFunnels as both platforms are fully dedicated to the marketing funnel. However, while ClickFunnels provides a variety of solutions for different aspects of the sales process, Instapage promises a more in-depth landing page builder that might be more attractive to certain businesses.

For many business owners and marketers, the basics are all that's needed to get the job done. This is in no small part because your average business person will not know anything at all, or at least beyond the basics, of HTML or CSS coding and formatting. However, these simple web builders generally only feature very basic templates and lock their additional template library behind the most expensive plans.

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Instapage provides users with the best of both worlds by granting them the same ease of use as other building platforms, but without sacrificing the vast number of options. This includes hundreds of templates and layouts to work from, thousands of fonts, color schemes, and a built-in stock photo library. For those more technically inclined, Instapage still also supports third-party HTML, CSS, and Java.

Like ClickFunnels, you'll be able to conveniently A/B test various aspects of your funnel in real-time to get the most conversions possible. You'll be able to view reports of activity-based upon your content and make the necessary changes to improve underperforming areas.

If a dynamic builder is a high priority, then we highly recommend Instapage over other competitors. The downside is that you will still need to make use of other tools to manage other aspects of the marketing funnel and sales process. Instapage's primary concern is to help you deliver beautiful landing pages that perform and not much else.

8. Exceed.ai

Exceed.ai is a virtual sales assistant that can assist in qualifying the leads that you funnel through your landing pages. In the past, your team would need to contact every lead to determine which were worth pursuing. Now with the help of automated AI, you can eliminate that tedious work by having your leads speak with this sales assistant first.

The platform currently does not list public plans but instead shifts its pricing to the size and scope of your business. The AI is used for both marketing and sales and will communicate with all of your visitors as though it were a real person operating on your team.

This AI tool utilizes information provided by your company to assist in answering general questions from leads, gathering CRM data from your existing prospects, and providing a determination to the individual as to whether or not they qualify for the offer listed by your marketing funnel. For example, if the lead must meet a certain income quota to qualify for your offer, the AI chatbot will inform users that they do not qualify and eliminate the task from your plate entirely.

Image Source: Exceed.ai

Likewise, the AI assistant can continue the marketing and sales process by performing basic tasks such as scheduling appointments on your calendar. All of this collected data then appears in your CRM. If you are utilizing automation tools in conjunction, those leads and appointments will automatically be assigned to your sales representatives.

9. Akkio

Last, but not least, in our list of AI tools for successful marketing funnels is Akio - an automated conversion prediction software that converts your existing conversion data into an accurate prediction model.

Similar to Exceed's virtual assistant, Akkio provides what they call augmented lead scoring that compiles your historical marketing and deals data into a spreadsheet, and utilizes AI processing to predict future results. As with all predictive models, the tool becomes increasingly accurate as you feed it with more data to analyze. As a result, Akkio promises to combat the issue of customer churn, so that you can focus your resources on the leads that are most likely to convert.

Rather than dedicating staff to manually read spreadsheet after spreadsheet of lead data, experiment with Akkio at only $50/month to determine if this AI tool works for your marketing funnel needs. They also offer a free trial and a 20% discount for those who elect to pay in a lump sum annually.

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Utilize AI Tools for Successful Marketing Funnels

Artificial intelligence has forever changed the way we handle marketing and continues to improve with each passing day. The internet is filled with a variety of software and platforms that can assist businesses and marketing agencies with every aspect of funnel marketing from landing page construction, to lead qualification, and to appointment scheduling.

Each platform listed provides you with high-quality features you can use to get started with building your next marketing funnel. Depending on your needs and the tools currently used by your team, these recommendations can serve either all-in-one solutions or specific tools for hyper-focused purposes. Additional tools such as Facebook Ads, Exceed, and Akkio serve to augment the qualifying and nurturing aspects of your marketing funnel so that you can maximize your conversions and ROI.

Regardless of which tools your business chooses, it's important to note the power of the marketing funnel and how it can boost your profits. Investing in these tools will grant you a foundation for success that will serve you well into the future as AI continues to advance and change the way we advertise.