The 13 best campaign management software tools in 2024

I don't know if there's any class of business tools more vague than campaign management tools, but here we are, getting specific about my favorite ones as a content marketer and manager.

Assessing the best campaign management tools is really about finding the best options for specific types of campaigns. 

Can some of these tools function for multiple campaign types? Sure. But that doesn't mean there are any easy picks for handling everything from your social media accounts to your email outreach to your CRM.

All that said, based on testing by the Zapier team—and my years of experience using and writing about these tools—here are my software picks for managing campaigns across a range of project types.

The 13 best campaign management software tools

• HubSpot for all-in-one campaign management

• ActiveCampaign for AI

• Salesforce for lead-focused CRM

• Vtiger for value CRM

• Hootsuite for social media marketing

• Vista Social for niche social profiles

• Trello for organizing campaign tasks

• Asana for managing campaigns for small teams

• Brevo for email campaigns with sales KPIs

• Mailchimp for automating email outreach

• ConvertKit for monetizing email leads

• SimpleTexting for SMS campaigns

• SlickText for modular SMS marketing tools

What makes the best campaign management software?

Since this is an admittedly abstract class of tools, I broke campaign management software options down into six essential use cases:

• Sales/marketing

• Social media

• Project management

• Email

• SMS

Within those categories, I judged each option for how it stacked up by these criteria:

• Multiple or specific campaign types: Campaign management software can be designed to oversee either specific types of campaigns (like social media) or multiple (SEO, advertising, etc.), but either way, they should have holistic capabilities for managing campaigns from start to finish.

• Actionable features: Each campaign management app should also have features designed for taking actions within campaigns, proactively planning them, or organizing tasks.

• Automation and AI: The best campaign management platforms should have automation features for managing campaign components over time, potentially including AI companions or services to enhance automation capabilities.

This predictably turned out to be a pretty hulking list, so I relied on testing and reviews from the Zapier team, along with my own experiences using campaign management software, to pick the baker's dozen best.

The best campaign management software at a glance

Best all-in-one campaign management software

HubSpot (sales/marketing)

HubSpot pros:

• Comprehensive suite of tools

• Highly intuitive interface and best-in-class user experience

• Robust free CRM option

HubSpot cons:

• Premium plans can be cost-prohibitive

• Purpose-built platforms have richer features for email, content, social, and SMS

HubSpot is basically synonymous with sales and marketing, and its flagship CRM gets the nod here for best overall campaign manager. I get that there's an admittedly fairly blurry line between sales software and general CRMs, but, like Baby, you can't put software this comprehensive in a corner.

HubSpot's CRM checks every box on this list for campaign management. It has tools for managing leads, applying automations, deploying AI and chatbots, organizing workflows, overviewing deals, reporting, producing content, and connecting social profiles—and it even has a beta version of a brand tool for additional social and SMS features. It's about as all-in-one as it gets.

The real calling card for HubSpot is its user experience. I've seen a lot of marketing software, and this is consistently among the easiest to use and can be onboarded faster than a beached johnboat. The user interface is easy to navigate, and individual modules are all highly intuitive.

If you're looking for a budget option, the Starter package is fairly strong, but you'll need an upgrade for social and advanced content tools. You'd also get slightly richer utility from platforms built specifically for email, social, SMS, and content, but I can say with confidence that if you want a one-stop Spot for managing all your sales and marketing campaigns, you'd be well-served by this one (if you've got the budget for it).

If it's not quite all-in-one enough for you, connect HubSpot with Zapier. Then you can build out custom automation sequences to manage all your campaigns across thousands of apps. Learn more about how to automate HubSpot, or start with one of these pre-made workflows.

HubSpot pricing: Free plan available; Starter ($20/seat/month); Professional ($1,300/5 seats/month); Enterprise ($4,300/7 seats/month)

Best campaign management software for AI

ActiveCampaign (sales/marketing)

ActiveCampaign pros:

• Well-designed CRM-style dashboard

• AI-generated templates that apply branded colors and logos

• Integrated generative AI

ActiveCampaign cons:

• Pricier than other email tools

• Generative AI available only for premium tiers

You could argue that any kind of CRM-type software like this basically needs native AI features to be worth its subscription fees these days, and you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find one without any AI features. But ActiveCampaign gives you more than just a handful of obligatory AI tricks.

For example, you can kick off a campaign with an AI-generated template that automatically pulls in your brand aesthetics. I was pretty impressed that it did this completely unprompted, by apparently searching the domain of my email address. If you want to apply branding from a different site, just switch up the brand kit with a different URL or upload images to feed it. 

Use these templates to create everything from promotional blasts to newsletters to new product highlights, complete with your custom colors and logos. Once you've built them, you can even use generative AI to fill out subject lines, write email bodies, compose website copy, and even automatically attune content for individual recipients based on connected contact data. 

ActiveCampaign's automations builder also incorporates AI to help build out sequences that help you acquire and convert leads, automate internal workflows, and prompt actions from clients. You can base these sequences on templates for common actions or build them from scratch. As you peruse the handy drag-and-drop automation builder, you can switch over to the AI builder tool to describe what you want to do in a natural language processing interface.

As a general sales tool, ActiveCampaign really shines for creating sequences through email, form, and landing page campaigns. While it has that in common with other email tools, it's structured a bit more like a CRM with a central hub for managing leads, deals, reports, and campaigns across your site and contact lists.

You can also connect ActiveCampaign to Zapier to automate workflows that keep your campaigns rolling across your tech stack. Learn more about how to automate ActiveCampaign, or take a look at these templates to get you started.

ActiveCampaign pricing: Starter ($15/user/month); Plus ($49/user/month); Pro ($79/user/month); Enterprise $149/user/month)

Best CRM for lead-focused campaign management

Salesforce (sales/marketing)

Salesforce pros:

• Impressive AI features

• Well-integrated lead management capabilities

• One of the biggest app marketplaces of any CRM

Salesforce cons:

• Premium packages required for many advanced features

• Somewhat narrow scope of use cases

• Premium packages get pricey

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Salesforce makes it on this list as one of the best campaign management tools—after all, it's generally pitted favorably against ServiceNow, HubSpot, Zoho, and Zendesk. As a contrarian at heart, I hate to continue the trend, but the fact is it's still one of the best CRMs out there for managing campaigns.

Salesforce has a confoundingly large number of products, but I'm talking mostly about Sales Cloud. It's not quite as comprehensive as HubSpot in terms of managing projects across campaign types, but for lead-specific campaigns, it's got what you need and more.

You can use Salesforce to create, progress, and monitor lead-generating campaigns, collect contacts and integrate them into sales processes, and report on campaign performance to ensure you're hitting sales goals. While it's not purely an email platform, it's also adept at helping you do more with those leads by automating outreach workflows no matter how leads enter your sales pipeline.

Salesforce is also an industry leader in AI utility. With its proprietary Einstein AI, Salesforce can assist with lead data capture, email syncing, content scheduling and generation, relationship discovery, and data insights like forecasting and lead and opportunity scoring.

Salesforce is a decidedly premium CRM, so you'll have to pay up for it—especially if you want advanced functionality like premium AI. But if you're looking for a sales-optimized CRM that can oversee lead-based campaign management, it's the gold standard.

You can expand its functionality further with Salesforce integrations via Zapier. With Zapier, you can go beyond Salesforce's already robust integrations to automate tasks that keep your projects moving with less oversight. Learn more about automating Salesforce, or get inspired by one of these templates.

Salesforce pricing: Starter Suite ($25/user/month); Pro Suite ($100/user/month); Enterprise ($165/user/month); Unlimited ($330/user/month); Einstein 1 Sales ($500/user/month)

Best value CRM for campaign management

Vtiger (sales/marketing)

Vtiger pros:

• Robust features at value pricing

• Capable of managing a wide range of campaign types

• Surprisingly strong email marketing features

Vtiger cons:

• Niche tools like SMS and social media are a bit limited

• AI requires premium plan

Vtiger is a bit of a hidden gem in the small business CRM world—all the attention goes to big names like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho; meanwhile, the awkwardly named Vtiger is out here offering comprehensive campaign management for value prices.

You might expect software that comes in at a fraction of those CRMs' prices to be lacking in user experience, but it's every bit as responsive as those tools with a well-designed (if a bit cluttered) interface. Just head to your campaign class—be it marketing, sales, customer support, service, etc.—and pick your campaign.

You can use Vtiger to organize campaigns across email, social, SMS, lead generation forms, or more generally organized deals with centralized databases for your leads and organizations. On the flip side, Vtiger is a bit more limited than software for more dedicated use cases—social integrations are limited to Google, Facebook, Instagram, and X, for example. But its email capabilities are still pretty strong with template building, sequence automation, A/B testing, autoresponders, and ready integration into its robust contact management capabilities.

If you're looking for AI features, Vtiger has them, but you'll need to upgrade to its highest tier for predictive analytics, generative AI, bot management, and NLP querying. It may also leave you somewhat wanting for richer features if you're more interested in social campaigns or content management, but as a value-priced CRM, it's impressively capable when you compare it to premium CRMs. 

Plus, you can expand its functionality even more when you integrate Vtiger and Zapier to connect to thousands of other apps. No matter your campaign, you can automate workflows like these from across your software suite.

Vtiger pricing: One Growth ($15/user/month); One Professional ($42/user/month); One Enterprise ($58/user/month); One AI ($66/user/month)

Best campaign management software for social media marketing

Hootsuite (social media)

Hootsuite pros:

• Integrated AI for post templates and copy generation

• Social calendars with built-in holiday schedules

• Ad management for Facebook, LinkedIn, and X

Hootsuite cons:

• Premium pricing

Hootsuite is one of the original names in social media management, but instead of resting on its laurels, it keeps raising the bar for this software class.

You can handle basically every element of social campaigns with Hootsuite, from social listening to posting to establishing content calendars to reporting. You can even create ads and promoted posts in a dedicated module to deploy across Facebook, LinkedIn, and X and manage direct contacts within a single shared inbox. And the calendar module even includes niche holidays like World Photo Day and National Waffle Day so you can shamelessly shoehorn your unrelated business into timely trends.

Hootsuite hasn't shied away from investing in AI, either. Right from the home dashboard, you can start a new post with AI based on prompts to repurpose high-performing posts, create new messages from scratch, spitball new post inspo, turn web content into social content, and establish a holiday posting calendar. 

From there, you can start your new post with common frameworks like Problem, Agitate, Solution (PAS) and feature benefits, or get straight to a platform-specific message. There, you can set the tone and describe your general post topic, and AI will spit out three iterations complete with quasi-natural emojis and hashtags. 

Plus, it Hootsuite integrates with Zapier so you can expand its automation functionality even more with no-code workflows like these that connect your social campaigns to the rest of your core campaigns. 

Hootsuite connects to every major social platform, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Threads, so virtually no matter your social media needs, Hootsuite is an easy choice—if you can afford it.

Hootsuite pricing: Professional ($99/month); Legend ($149/month); Team ($249/month); Enterprise (by request)

Best campaign management software for niche social profiles

Vista Social (social media)

Vista Social pros:

• Tons of useful features

• Generative AI for publishing, ideating, and revising

• Connects with major and niche social platforms

Vista Social cons:

• Premium pricing

• Hashtag functionality is a bit lacking

Like ActiveCampaign, Vista Social is a marketing campaign platform—in this case, social media marketing—with the feel of a CRM. As such, it's a feature-packed tool with all the features you'd want for managing a social campaign: from publishing and calendar setting to social listening and reporting.

But Vista Social goes beyond the usual fare with additional maybe-not-essential-but-really-nice-to-have features. It also has perks like an employee advocacy dashboard so team members can share brand content within compliance, capabilities to build pages to consolidate high-value content and share across bios, a task management dash, reviews profile management, and a content idea repository.

Vista Social also has solid generative AI tools. You can generate ideas with NLP, spit out first drafts of posts, and tap the AI Assistant from the posting widget to spin your copy into a different tone or align with a preconfigured brand voice.

Maybe the most convincing perk of Vista Social is its range of social platform integrations. Most of these tools can connect to around eight to 10 of the major players (you know who I mean), but Vista Social can connect to less-served platforms like Google Business, Reddit, Snapchat, and Tumblr, which I can't believe is still a thing. 

And as another perk, it connects to even more third-party apps via Zapier so you can automate workflows across tools. Connect Vista Social to other social sharing tools or integrate into broader marketing workflows with app integrations like these.

Vista Social pricing: Standard ($39/month); Professional ($79/month); Advanced ($149/month); Enterprise ($379/month)

Best campaign management software for organizing tasks

Trello (project management)

Trello pros:

• Highly customizable task management

• Strong automation capabilities

• Functional reporting for tracking progress across campaigns

• Useful as a free project management option

Trello cons:

• No tools for executing tasks within campaigns

• Added expense on top of subscriptions for other platforms

Trello is a tool that probably needs no introduction, but it may need a bit of an explanation for its inclusion in a campaign management tool roundup. Trello may not be able to execute a campaign on its own, but what it can do is help you execute your campaigns across all these other platforms without letting any tasks slip through the cracks.

As a campaign management tool, Trello can help you keep projects straight if you're using separate platforms for handling multiple campaign types. You can create workspaces for each campaign and move individual task cards through project phases. 

Trello stands out because each card and board can be as modular as you need. You can assign users to cards from across campaign teams, make templates of your cards for repeat project types, make custom fields to suit each campaign's ecosystem, apply automations to keep things moving as you work through projects, and then monitor campaign progress with high-level reporting.

You may not be able to actually do anything with Trello, but an organizational tool like Trello can absolutely help you do what you do when you do a lot—especially when you use Zapier's Trello integrations to automate workflows across third-party apps. Just connect Trello to your favorite campaign software to automatically update cards or take actions in other apps when you make changes in Trello. Learn more about automating Trello, or take a look at these examples.

Trello pricing: Free; Standard ($6/user/month); Premium ($12.50/user/month); Enterprise ($17.50/user/month)

Best software for managing campaigns for small teams

Asana (project management)

Asana pros:

• Useful generative and natural language AI

• Automations built into workflows from the ground up

• Some capabilities to manage campaigns directly

Asana cons:

• AI is paywalled behind premium plans

• Fairly expensive for a supplemental app

Asana occupies a software space just below a small business CRM but above a pure task manager like Trello. 

Similar to Trello, Asana can be used to set up Kanban-style project views that help you visually manage tasks across campaigns, assign and manage teams, track projects through reporting, and maintain project timelines. 

But unlike Trello, Asana has at least some standalone campaign management potential. It has the ability to create and iterate workflows with built-in automations that can integrate third-party apps, complete with common triggers like form submissions. You can also set campaign-level goals to keep your eyes on KPI prizes.

Asana also has capable generative and natural language AI features to lend a helping hand by drafting up team descriptions, suggesting workflow improvements, and fielding requests for assistance within the app. 

As a small team tool, I like Asana's ability to keep team members aligned on separate campaigns within one app where you can consolidate monitoring and apply project management automations. It also has some standalone utility as a campaign manager with its integrated trigger sequences and extensive third-party app integrations, but realistically, you'll probably want it as a supplement to more robust campaign management apps.

If its native automations aren't good enough, you can automate across apps when you integrate Asana with Zapier. Trigger documentation changes in Asana or prompt actions in other software when you update within Asana. Learn more about how to automate Asana, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Asana pricing: Free plan available; Starter ($13.49/user/month); Advanced ($30.49/user/month)

Best campaign management software for sales KPIs

Brevo (email)

Brevo pros:

• Utility for multiple campaign types

• AI for content generation

• Distinctly designed for sales KPIs

Brevo cons:

• Additional use cases like social media are fairly limited

• AI is currently in beta testing

Calling Brevo an email tool is a bit limiting—it's really more of a more general outreach platform that includes SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, and Facebook Ads features. But let's focus on its real meat and potatoes utility: email.

To start, Brevo's got one of the better interfaces I've seen for email creation. I like that it shows you an instant rendering of how subject lines and previews will appear on mobile with a convenient button to deploy a generative AI tool that can instantly ideate subject lines for you.

Once you're ready to create your email, you can start with a popular layout, load up a template, or code your own if you've got the skills. From there, you can use simple drag-and-drop blocks to design your email and even tap the (beta) AI assistant to create titles, paragraphs, and CTA buttons.

Armed with your emails and contact lists, you can assign automations, monitor workflow and event logs, and take advantage of a deep dashboard for analyzing transactional email performance—a handy specific feature most other transactional email tools oddly lack. 

All in all, Brevo has a lot of functionality in common with comparable software like Mailchimp, but it's more distinctively designed for managing sales KPIs across outreach campaigns.

Plus, you can integrate Brevo with Zapier to inject even more automations into your workflows by connecting to apps you depend on, triggering email campaigns, or integrating outreach processes into other workflows. Learn more about how to automate Brevo, or try one of these pre-made workflows.

Brevo pricing: Free plan available; Starter ($9/month); Business ($18/month); Enterprise (custom)

Best campaign management software for automating email outreach

Mailchimp (email)

Mailchimp pros:

• Rich automation features

• Intuitive content design capabilities

• Huge template library with native AI

Mailchimp cons:

• Can be costly at scale

Mailchimp is arguably still the standard by which all email newsletter platforms are gauged—and it's still innovating. Traditionally known more specifically for email, it's been branching (very loose monkey pun intended) into the broader marketing automation category.

As such, Mailchimp has some of the richest email automation features out there. You can start your campaigns with automation templates for customer journeys like new contact welcomes, tagged customer outreach, birthday offers, and abandoned cart notices to help you convert the leads you worked so hard to earn. 

You can also build out journeys with custom sequences that match your unique customer pipelines. If you need some inspiration, Mailchimp offers helpful starting points like email sign-ups, product purchases, and specific contact activities like page views and link clicks.

If you're noticing a theme, Mailchimp is adept at integrating contacts acquired across marketing channels with external sales efforts like products, website links, and webforms. You can even use Mailchimp essentially as a lite CRM to manage products, integrate SMS campaigns, create forms and landing pages, and even create websites via Wix integration. Plus, it's got hearty AI-powered features like a prompt library as well.

Mailchimp is working hard to be more than just an emailer, but for now, consider it a beefed-up email and contact management tool with a nice topping of automation assistance.

And as if it didn't have enough of its own automations already, you can also use Zapier's Mailchimp integrations to create automated workflows that help you incorporate outreach efforts across your campaigns. Learn more about automating Mailchimp, or try one of these pre-built workflows.

Mailchimp pricing: Free plan available (500 contacts); Essentials ($13/month, 500 contacts); Standard ($20/month, 500 contacts); Premium ($350/month, 10,000 contacts)

Best campaign management software for monetizing email leads

ConvertKit (email)

ConvertKit pros:

• Conversion- and monetization-focused platform

• Simple, intuitive, responsive interface

• Affordable plans and impressive 10K subscribers for its free email marketing offering

ConvertKit cons:

• Paid tiers scale up pretty quickly above 300 subscribers

• Only facilitates payment via Stripe

• Products have to be added individually

In a sea of tools designed to help you create content, ConvertKit is a decidedly conversion-focused platform designed to help your content actually make hay from the grass of your leads. 

I like the layout of the interface better than other a lot of other email tools, with its menu distinctions separated really clearly by purpose: Grow, Send, Automate, Earn, Learn—it's a small thing, but it really lends to its focus on actionable-izing your content campaigns. 

The Creator Profile hub is a good starting point, where you can create a centralized content and product space for subscribers to explore across your lead acquisition platforms. Speaking of which, you can use ConvertKit to create landing pages, forms, broadcasts, snippets, and sequences. 

Once you create your lead-acq (as we do not call it in the biz), you can apply automation sequences with a handy visual builder, create "if-then" rules, connect over 20 apps (including Zapier), generate digests in an RSS feed, and even cross-promote content across the ConvertKit Creator Network. And you can use ConvertKit's Zapier automations to automate email sequences in ConvertKit when you take actions in your favorite apps.

But what I really like about ConvertKit is what you can do to monetize all that sweet, sweet automated content. You can sell products directly through your emails by adding them to your profile and integrating Stripe to get straight to selling. You can also use the Tip Jars feature to ask for some compensation for your incredible content and even set up affiliate streams by recommending other profiles in the Creator Network.

ConvertKit's base utility is on par with Mailchimp and Brevo with really intuitive dashboards, responsive features, and robust learning resources. But if you're looking for a way to not just build lead lists but actually monetize those leads via your content beyond just cold outreach, ConvertKit is as good as it gets.

ConvertKit pricing: Newsletter (free, 10,000 subscribers); Creator ($9, 300 subscribers); Pro ($25, 300 subscribers)

Best overall campaign management software for SMS

SimpleTexting (SMS)

SimpleTexting pros:

• Simple, highly intuitive interface

• Native generative AI

• Useful autoresponse automations

SimpleTexting cons:

• Pricing is loosely structured

• Somewhat expensive as a standalone tool

Text message marketing isn't dead, as anyone on a party voting contact list during campaign season can attest to. And the possibly too obviously named SimpleTexting may be the best tool for maximizing these campaigns.

SimpleTexting has the feel of premium email campaign managers—many of which also include some SMS functionality—but with dedicated text marketing tools that can really enrich this niche campaign type. Currently in beta testing, its native generative AI is built right into applicable parts of the platform, helping you generate message copy with NLP prompting, complete with preloaded suggestions for common message types.

You can use SimpleTexting to blast messages ad hoc, on a schedule, or on recurring intervals to your integrated contact lists. And for successful outreach, you can set up autoresponders specific to lead segment with timing settings for immediate response or predetermined delays. 

If you've used similar tools for email marketing, SimpleTexting should feel pretty familiar to you from the jump. The interface is really simple, but its features are powerful for setting up text messaging outreach with automated responses. You could potentially get similar functionality from other campaign management software with SMS utility, but if you're primarily targeting leads via mobile device, you'd have a hard time finding a more functional tool than SimpleTexting.

Plus, you can use Zapier's SimpleTexting integrations to build out no-code automations for scaling text outreach by incorporating them into workflows across apps like these.

SimpleTexting pricing: $39/month (estimated; final costs vary by usage)

Best campaign management software for modular SMS marketing tools

SlickText (SMS)

SlickText pros:

• Over 10 additional marketing tools to enrich campaigns

• Automation capabilities

• Ability to create separate opt-in phrases for simple subscription opt-ins

SlickText cons:

• Gets expensive at scale

• Automations available at $139/month and above

At first glance, SlickText is a pretty basic SMS app. You build out a contact list, send messages via blast or schedule, monitor your inbox for responses, check open and response stats—basically all the expected fare. You can also set unique textwords that give recipients another easy way to subscribe by texting a single phrase (more on that later).

Within the text composing interface, you can send your text as a test to yourself, organize tags, upload attachments, and even apply dynamic expiration dates for when you're nudging subscribers to take advantage of a timely offer.

SlickText doesn't have the most premium feel, but the interface is extremely simple to learn. Where the software really picks up steam, though, is its additional marketing tools. Once you've built out your basic campaigns, you can level them up with modular tools that do things like set up automated workflows, create webforms to send your subscribers to, make website pop-ups, host text surveys, orchestrate loyalty programs, and even design marketing flyers. 

And you can connect to more apps using SlickText Zapier integrations to automate SMS across marketing workflows and beyond. Trigger text messages from actions in other apps and improve outreach documentation with your favorite project management tools. Here are some examples.

SlickText's pricing comes at a pretty steep scale if you're interested in additional textwords and texts per month. And while the free plan won't give you a lot of real utility for executing campaigns, it's fairly well featured so you can get a feel for what running a campaign on it would be like.

SlickText pricing: Free plan available; Paid plans scale by texts per month, starting at $29 (500 texts)

Automate your campaign management software

One important element of picking the right campaign management software is making sure it fits into your existing workflows and software ecosystem. Zapier Tables can help you keep those disparate tools connected to a single automation-first database that keeps your valuable data accessible—and actionable.

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