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The 13 best campaign management software tools in 2024

By Bryce Emley · September 24, 2024
Hero image with the logos of the best campaign management software

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?

How we evaluate and test apps

Our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.

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

Campaign type

Best for

Standout feature

Pricing

HubSpot

Sales/ marketing

All-in-one campaign management

Comprehensive suite of features across campaign types

Free plan available; paid plans from $20/month

ActiveCampaign

Sales/ marketing

AI

Automatically loads branded elements into campaigns

From $15/month

Salesforce

Sales/ marketing

Lead-focused CRM

Robust lead and pipeline management features

From $25/month

Vtiger

Sales/ marketing

Value CRM

Great user experience and impressive feature list for much cheaper than premium CRMs

From $15/month

Hootsuite

Social media

Social media marketing

Well-integrated AI features

From $99/month

Vista Social

Social media

Niche social profiles

The most comprehensive social profile integration suite on the market

From $39/month

Trello

Project management

Organizing campaign tasks

Customizable for tracking progress across multiple campaigns

Free plan available; paid plans from $6/month

Asana

Project management

Managing campaigns for small teams

Automations built into project boards

Free; paid plans from $13.49/month

Brevo

Email

Email campaigns with sales KPIs

Robust transactional email reporting and monitoring capabilities

Free plan available; paid plans from $9/month

Mailchimp

Email

Automating email outreach

Automation and AI features built into content-building interface

Free plan available; paid plans from $13/month

ConvertKit

Email

Monetizing email leads

Multiple tools for helping monetize content

Free plan available; paid plans from $9/month

SimpleTexting

SMS

SMS campaigns

Native generative AI

From $39/month

SlickText

SMS

Modular SMS marketing tools

Additional marketing tools like surveys, forms, and automations

Free plan available; paid plans from $29/month


Best all-in-one campaign management software

HubSpot (sales/marketing)

Screenshot of the HubSpot interface

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.

Add new HubSpot contacts to Google Ads customer lists

Add new HubSpot contacts to Google Ads customer lists
  • HubSpot logo
  • Google Ads logo
HubSpot + Google Ads

Add new HubSpot contacts to Mailchimp lists

Add new HubSpot contacts to Mailchimp lists
  • HubSpot logo
  • Mailchimp logo
HubSpot + Mailchimp

Add new HubSpot contacts to Mailchimp

Add new HubSpot contacts to Mailchimp
  • HubSpot logo
  • Mailchimp logo
HubSpot + Mailchimp

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)

Screenshot of the ActiveCampaign interface

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.

Add or update ActiveCampaign contacts for new Acuity Scheduling appointments

Add or update ActiveCampaign contacts for new Acuity Scheduling appointments
  • Acuity Scheduling logo
  • ActiveCampaign logo
Acuity Scheduling + ActiveCampaign

Add or update ActiveCampaign contacts for new Calendly invitees

Add or update ActiveCampaign contacts for new Calendly invitees
  • Calendly logo
  • ActiveCampaign logo
Calendly + ActiveCampaign

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)

Screenshot of the Salesforce interface

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.

Create Salesforce leads with new Gravity Forms submissions

Create Salesforce leads with new Gravity Forms submissions
  • Gravity Forms logo
  • Salesforce logo
Gravity Forms + Salesforce

Add new Facebook Lead Ads leads as leads in Salesforce

Add new Facebook Lead Ads leads as leads in Salesforce
  • Facebook Lead Ads logo
  • Salesforce logo
Facebook Lead Ads + Salesforce

Send new Unbounce leads to Salesforce

Send new Unbounce leads to Salesforce
  • Unbounce logo
  • Salesforce logo
Unbounce + Salesforce

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)

Screenshot of the Vtiger interface

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.

Add new Facebook Lead Ads leads as leads in Vtiger CRM

Add new Facebook Lead Ads leads as leads in Vtiger CRM
  • Facebook Lead Ads logo
  • Vtiger CRM logo
Facebook Lead Ads + Vtiger CRM

Send funnel events to Facebook Conversions from Vtiger CRM

Send funnel events to Facebook Conversions from Vtiger CRM
  • Facebook Conversions logo
Facebook Conversions

Add or update Vtiger CRM leads and create corresponding Google Ads contacts in customer list with email

Add or update Vtiger CRM leads and create corresponding Google Ads contacts in customer list with email
  • Vtiger CRM logo
  • Google Ads logo
Vtiger CRM + Google Ads

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)

Screenshot of the Hootsuite interface

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. 

Schedule or publish new RSS items on Hootsuite

Schedule or publish new RSS items on Hootsuite
  • RSS by Zapier logo
  • Hootsuite logo
RSS by Zapier + Hootsuite

Post new Youtube videos to your social networks with Hootsuite

Post new Youtube videos to your social networks with Hootsuite
  • YouTube logo
  • Hootsuite logo
YouTube + Hootsuite

Log new Hootsuite outbound messages as rows in a Google Sheets spreadsheet

Log new Hootsuite outbound messages as rows in a Google Sheets spreadsheet
  • Hootsuite logo
  • Google Sheets logo
Hootsuite + Google Sheets

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)

Screenshot of the Vista Social interface

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.

Schedule posts in Vista Social when tasks change in ClickUp

Schedule posts in Vista Social when tasks change in ClickUp
  • ClickUp logo
  • Vista Social logo
ClickUp + Vista Social

Send Slack channel messages for newly scheduled Vista Social posts

Send Slack channel messages for newly scheduled Vista Social posts
  • Vista Social logo
  • Slack logo
Vista Social + Slack

Schedule new posts in WordPress in Vista Social

Schedule new posts in WordPress in Vista Social
  • WordPress logo
  • Vista Social logo
WordPress + Vista Social

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)

Screenshot of the Trello interface

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.

Create new Trello cards from new Google Calendar events

Create new Trello cards from new Google Calendar events
  • Google Calendar logo
  • Trello logo
Google Calendar + Trello

Create Trello cards weekly at scheduled times

Create Trello cards weekly at scheduled times
  • Schedule by Zapier logo
  • Trello logo
Schedule by Zapier + Trello

Create Trello cards from new Google Forms responses

Create Trello cards from new Google Forms responses
  • Google Forms logo
  • Trello logo
Google Forms + Trello

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)

Screenshot of the Asana interface

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.

Create new Asana tasks from new Google Calendar events

Create new Asana tasks from new Google Calendar events
  • Google Calendar logo
  • Asana logo
Google Calendar + Asana

Add new Typeform entries to Asana as tasks

Add new Typeform entries to Asana as tasks
  • Typeform logo