Best CRM Software for Digital Marketing Agencies

Why I Like It

HubSpot is often thought of as the King of CRMs, and for good reason. It’s one of the most comprehensive, all-in-one CRM systems available today. Not only will it benefit your marketing team, but also your sales and creative teams. 

Additionally, HubSpot CRM integrates with over 500 different tools, many of which are often used by marketing professionals. Best of all, HubSpot CRM is highly scalable but comes with a free plan, making it ideal for growing digital marketing agencies.

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

Unless you really don’t need the suite of tools that HubSpot offers, digital marketing agencies and teams just can’t go wrong with this CRM. Aside from the usual customer relationship management tools, key features also include:

• Email sequences and communication automation.
• Social media alerts and monitoring.
• Automated marketing workflows for email and social media.
• Contact segmentations.
• Cross-channel monitoring.
• Lead management, nurturing, and qualification.
• Detailed reporting and analytics of marketing campaigns, traffic, and performance metrics.

Because it also caters to various departments, your sales and marketing teams will be able to work together in a way that few other CRMs will allow. Not only will that benefit your clients, but your business as a whole should see a higher ROI.

Why I Like It

To be fair, Monday Sales CRM is, as the name implies, more focused on managing sales and leads than it is marketing tasks. That said, it’s a great CRM tool for creating customized workflows that will help boost productivity and increase your team’s efficiency, while still keeping your contacts, communications, and projects organized. 

Consequently, your creative teams will be able to focus on more important marketing tasks without getting bogged down.

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

What makes Monday Sales CRM a good option for digital marketing agencies is its integration capabilities. Unlike many CRMs that are tailored for marketing agencies, Monday provides invaluable sales and analytical insights. Its key features include:

• Visual and customizable sales pipelines.
• Task and lead capturing automatization.
• Robust reporting and analytical capabilities.
• Time tracking and activity management.

However, it also integrates with over 150+ tools and apps that marketers need, including Canva, Hootsuite, MailChimp, and more. This essentially lets you build a highly customized CRM that can meet your unique marketing requirements, while still providing you with key insights that other platforms would overlook.

Why I Like It

While Insightly does offer a free plan, agencies might benefit more from exploring the various available packages. The CRM starts at $29/pm, per user, you can choose to opt for a marketing-specific plan, or all-in-one package that starts at $349/pm for two users.

With the right features, you can benefit from Insightly’s powerful project management features, CRM system, marketing automation tools, and more. However, it can get significantly more expensive as you scale up.

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

While Insightly is a powerful tool for lead generation and project management, digital marketing agencies can still benefit from using the platform. Some of the key features include:

• Capable of linking emails, contacts, and tasks directly to projects.
• Strong mobile platform for managing customer relationships on the go.
• Comprehensive marketing insights, analytics, and reporting tools.
• Integrates with over 1200+ apps and supports automated workflows.

While not the most versatile or affordable plan on this list, Insightly’s package options range from those suitable for small agencies to fully-fledged comprehensive solutions.

Why I Like It

Bonsai is a lightweight, easy-to-use CRM that’s tailored for smaller agencies. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, Bonsai focuses on ease of use and efficiency, making it great for teams who aren’t familiar with a CRM system. 

Although ‘decluttering’ does mean fewer features, Bonsai does offer an excellent curated selection of tools via a well-functioning platform. With packages starting at $25 per month, that’s not bad at all.

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

Bonsai CRM really is an all-in-one platform, but one that focuses on minimalism and prioritizing simplicity, ease of use, and comprehensive tools. Its capabilities include:

• Branded client portal that allows for effective communication and collaboration.
• Integrated contract management tools that allow digital signatures.
• Built-in time tracking tools to monitor project progress and billable hours.
• Automation of administrative tasks like invoicing and client communications.

Bonsai also comes with hundreds of marketing-specific templates, including proposals, contracts, agreements, invoices, forms, and more. Finally, what it lacks in native integration capabilities, you can make up for by using Zapier, which is compatible with the system.

Why I Like It

Productive markets itself as an all-in-one agency management system suited to agencies of all shapes and sizes. Naturally, their portfolio of tools reflect that, covering everything from planning and resource management to reporting and billing. 

Additionally, their packages are well-suited for scalability, starting at $11 per month – though few businesses would need their largest, quote-only packages. 

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

Like several other CRM tools, Productive offers a wide variety of features. However, each is specifically optimized to bring the most benefit to digital agencies. Some of their top features include:

• Profitability tools to track time spent on client projects and analyze ROI.
• Advanced scheduling features to manage team workload and client meetings.
• Clear visualization of the sales pipeline and its stages.
• Flexible billing tools for itemized, project-based, or retainer invoices.

These are just some of the features offered by Productive CRM, and any digital marketing agency should include Productive on their shortlist. With a 14-day free trial available, you can even try out the platform before making a final decision.

Why I Like It

Zoho CRM is well-known for being an affordable, highly customizable CRM, making it a great option if you’re looking for a flexible platform that won’t break your bank. Not only does the platform provide an excellent free CRM, paid plans start at a reasonable $20/pm, per user. 

To top it off, Zoho is quite easy to use and can integrate with hundreds of third-party apps.

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

Zoho has always been considered as one of the best CRM tools for agencies, and for a good reason. While the available features cover many different operations within a business, its marketing and project management tools are excellent. Top features include:

• Supports email, social media, and live chat interactions.
• Zia, Zoho’s AI, offers predictions on trends, anomalies, and conversions.
• Advanced analytics tools for detailed tracking of campaigns and ROI.
• Supports omni-channel marketing either natively or through integrations.
• Excellent automation options for leads, paid advertising, and marketing.

There’s a reason Zoho CRM has been around for over two decades, and any digital marketing agency could benefit from giving it a try.

Why I Like It

Are you looking for a tool to manage your marketing activities and projects for clients, or would you prefer a CRM that’s designed to help you find leads, close deals, visualize your pipelines, and boost your ROI? If it’s the latter you need for your agency, Pipedrive might just be your match.

Pipedrive CRM is one of the simplest platforms on this list, with a user-friendly interface focused on sales management. However, its features are highly limited in other ways, so keep that in mind.

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

If you’re already thinking that Pipedrive’s feature set is too limited for your needs, you might not be interested in investigating any further. However, if the idea of a simple, straight-forward CRM focused on lead, sales, and client management is what you want, you may find its key features appealing:

• Customizable pipelines that reflect different stages of the customer journey.
• Automates repetitive tasks such as emails and follow-ups.
• Native mobile app with strong mobile support.
• Detailed communication tracking with activity and task mapping.

If you’re feeling unsure whether to include Pipedrive on your shortlist or not, you can try it free for 14 days.

Why I Like It

ClickUp is not just a CRM; more accurately, it’s a comprehensive project management tool with CRM features. Rather than putting me off ClickUp, I’ve found that this makes it a versatile option for agencies that manage multiple types of projects and client interactions. 

It’s also one of the most affordable, yet feature-rich options on this list, coming in at a very budget $10/pm, per user.

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

Personally, I find that the powerful project management features and versatile approach make ClickUp an excellent CRM for almost any business. However, digital marketing agencies could benefit greatly from the many tools ClickUp offers, including:

• Automation tools to streamline task assignment, notifications, and follow-ups.
• Highly customizable dashboards, workflows, fields, and more.
• Effective resource management tools, including task and time tracking.
• Ready-to-go templates for marketing strategies, campaign management, content marketing, and creative production.

The one downside of ClickUp is that the first-time setup can be really complex and time consuming, particularly if you want it to have specific capabilities. However, if you’re not new to CRMs, and you don’t mind the challenge, ClickUp might be your best match.

Why I Like It

Let’s get the elephant out of the room first – Keap is, without a doubt, one of the most expensive CRM platforms on this list, with packages starting at a rather budget-wrenching $199 per month for 1,500 contacts. 

To get access to the best features, you’ll need to opt for the Ultimate package, which starts at $299 per month for 3 users and 2,500 contacts.

So, why did I include it on this list when the price tag seems so high? Well, Keap competes on the same level as CRMs like HubSpot, but comes in at almost a third of the price – less when you opt for one of the smaller plans and scale up as you grow.

Favored for its strong automation and client management tools, and rich selection of features, Keap is considered particularly suited for small to medium-sized agencies that expect to see significant growth. 

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

Keap boasts on its website that it can help you automate tasks and workflows across your entire business, and they’re not wrong. Not only is the CRM ridiculously easy to use, but setting up automated processes is as easy as dragging and dropping a few things around.

That said, automation isn’t the only way that Keap proves its worth the cost. Other features include:

• Advanced client management tools, including appointment scheduling, payment processing, and automated follow-ups.
• Marketing tools for creating, automating, and evaluating email campaigns.
• Text and business phone line integration.
• Quotes, invoices, and payment management tools.

If you’re looking for a robust all-in-one solution without spending thousands a month, Keap could be the best CRM for your agency.

Why I Like It

If you use Google Workspace in your digital marketing agency, you just can’t go wrong with Copper CRM. It might not be the biggest, flashiest, or comprehensive of the CRM tools on this list, but it is the one that works the best with Google and its suite of tools.

The fact that it also has a clean UI that’s almost fun to use, integrates with 100+ apps (including a few that no other platform integrates with natively), and is scalable, there’s a lot to like about Copper CRM.

Most Important Features for Digital Marketing Agencies

While Copper CRM is undeniably tied to Google Workspace, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a capable platform. It’s many features include:

• Natively works with Google Workspace, including emails, calendar, and files.
• Easily automates tasks such as lead captures and follow-up emails.
• Very visual drag-and-drop intervise to manage the sales pipeline.
• Tracks tasks and activities, and includes reminders.
• Can integrate with LinkedIn, Facebook, MailChimp, and ActiveCampaign.
• Allows for web tracking of leads.

That said, its suite of tools does not match those of many other CRMs. Even so, its usability, integration capability, and scalability makes it an excellent match for any agency that uses and loves Google Workspace.