Which tool is right for your marketing team?
Marketers are constantly juggling several tasks at once such as emails, social media strategies, campaigns, ads, customer data, and a million other things. A good marketing tool enhances your ability to personalize messaging, automates repeatable marketing tasks, and tracks the performance and success of marketing efforts.
So how do HubSpot Marketing Hub and Dynamics 365 Marketing stack up? Learn the similarities, features, and key differences below to figure out which one (or both) best aligns with your marketing goals.
Email Marketing and Nurture Campaigns (Dynamics 365 Wins this Round)
Both powerhouse marketing solutions increase automation with one key feature: Email. Both have lead scoring and tracking functions, can create segmented contact lists to target specific audiences, and contain basic templates to build out emails. Dynamics 365 Marketing, however, offers a few additional features that make email marketing more powerful for marketers.
Dynamics 365 Marketing
Customer Journeys - build nurture campaigns with more options that can easily intersect with other campaigns in an easy-to-update visual builder.
Real-Time marketing tool - Can create triggered reactions such as text messages or transactional emails to send automatically after an action is completed. These actions could be a web form being submitted, someone engaging with your site, etc.
Content blocks – Create reusable blocks of text, footers, buttons, images, links, etc., to easily build email templates and customize them on the fly.
HubSpot Marketing Hub
Transactional (triggered) emails are an additional monthly add-on, but are easy to create and use.
Only includes one default footer option (no pre-built template blocks).
Create, customize, and clone email templates.
Ads Tracking and Management (Where HubSpot Wins!)
HubSpot Marketing Hub can track ads from LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc., to easily calculate Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), and Cost Per Lead (CPL), and overall ad spend to help track where leads come from. The connections between various ad platforms and Hubspot is typically seamless to integrate.
Dynamics 365 Marketing can also track ads on various platforms but requires some extra work through webhooks to do so. Overall, not as comprehensive as HubSpot in this aspect. However, leads generated from Facebook can be sent to Dynamics 365 Marketing with native functionality within Facebook Ads. Leads generated from Google Ads can be integrated with Google Ads API with minimal effort and leads from LinkedIn can be configured inside Dynamics 365 Marketing.
Social Media Management and Content (Video)
Both of these powerful marketing tools have social media features but are limited in capabilities. If social media is one of your top priorities, consider integrating a specialized social media tool to do the posting and use either of these marketing solutions to track performance.
Dynamics 365 Marketing and HubSpot Marketing Hub can both do the following simple features:
Can plan out social media posts on various platforms, and post for you automatically.
Host and manage video files, upload to webpages, social media, and track views.
Direct messaging can be done within both platforms
Events and Webinar Management (Another Win for Dynamics Marketing)
Dynamics 365 Marketing has a detailed events management tool that can track everything from registrations, attendees, speakers, venues, schedules, and more. It is included out of the box and helps marketers plan in conjunction with Microsoft Teams.
HubSpot Marketing Hub’s events feature is also included but requires an integration with a webinar platform such as GoToWebinar or Zoom. Even then, functionality and syncing information only pulls first names, last names, emails, and doesn’t track other event or webinar details such as scheduling, or in-person venue (if there was one).
Landing Pages/Form Capture
Users can create landing pages for websites within Dynamics 365 Marketing by integrating into their website-building platform (Wix, WordPress, etc.). For the ability to include forms on these web pages that gather prospects’ contact information, you’ll need to integrate with Power Apps, which is simple and easy to do. Another strength of Dynamics 365 Marketing is users can set up UTM codes to show the traffic of those who clicked on the webpage from the emails sent in D365 marketing.
HubSpot Marketing Hub includes the ability to build web pages and connected forms with no additional integrations needed, just the connection to your website platform. HubSpot Marketing Hub can also track landing page visits and form completions in Hubspot.
Support and Resources (Education)
HubSpot Marketing Hub has basic-level 24/7 support with HubSpot experts and are just a chat away. When HubSpot users have questions or experience roadblocks, there is an online Help Center full of additional resources like HubSpot Academy (online courses for high adoption), and a community of other HubSpot users to troubleshoot ideas and issues with each other. However, when chatting with a live agent, their approach and answers can be quite general and not as personable to help you solve your specific problem.
Dynamics 365 Marketing does not come with instantaneous 24/7 support options, BUT you can submit IT requests to the Microsoft Help Desk. There are also many Microsoft Partners that do make 24/7 support agreements with Microsoft technology users, which can grant you one-on-one guidance. There are also many helpful online resources and articles on Microsoft’s support site, Microsoft Learn, as well as the Microsoft Community.
Pricing
Microsoft can be more expensive upfront as there are no differences between small, medium, and enterprise-level usage. All features are included as well, with the only add-on being additional contacts. Dynamics 365 Marketing includes 10,000 contacts, with premium support and extensive features out of the box.
HubSpot Marketing Hub is cheaper at a per-user, per-month level. At an organizational level, the basic plan is somewhat limited in features and lists, and increases in price with the addition of more complex and premium features in the Enterprise plan. Just like Dynamics 365 Marketing, HubSpot Marketing Hub is purchased more often than not as an add-on to its main CRM, HubSpot.
Customer Engagement
With the purchase and implementation of Dynamics 365 Marketing, an additional tool called Customer Voice is included. Customer Voice allows organizations to create NPS and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys to view and gauge customer satisfaction and track the results of those surveys in Dynamics 365 Marketing.
HubSpot Marketing Hub also includes a CSAT survey feature that can send surveys via chat, email, or display it on a webpage connected to HubSpot Marketing Hub. Results from these surveys can be tied to contacts and campaigns efficiently on both platforms. Sending and tracking survey responses is extremely valuable to users for measuring customer engagement and satisfaction.
Marketing Data Analytics and Reporting
Power BI marketing-specific templates are included within Dynamics 365 Marketing which can provide insightful marketing analytics. These reports provide detailed analytics across campaign performance, email opens, video clicks, and more to gauge success of marketing efforts.
HubSpot Marketing Hub shows built-in, simple analytics on marketing data, but would require additional work for more detailed analytics and additional reporting insights. HubSpot can integrate well with many data reporting applications and plugins, both including and outside of the Microsoft Stack.
Who is Hubspot Marketing Hub Best For?
Because it can be purchased at an individual/small business level, HubSpot Marketing Hub is great for start-up businesses. It can also be customized with additional features and functionalities, and work efficiently for medium to large organizations, across many professional service industries.
Who is Dynamics 365 Marketing Best For?
Dynamics 365 Marketing is best for B2B marketing. The way it keeps track of extensive company information, allows marketers to target organizations as a whole, as well as the right point of contact within the organization. Dynamics 365 Marketing can be used across business sizes and industries, however, due the complexity of some of its tools, medium to large businesses will gain the most worth.
Ready to Elevate Your Marketing Efforts?
Now that you know the features both marketing solutions have, you are ready to select the one that will best align with your marketing goals. To learn more about Dynamics 365 Marketing, read here.
Features | Dynamics 365 Marketing | HubSpot Marketing Hub |
Email Marketing and Nurture Campaigns | Triggered email campaigns called Customer Journeys. Transactional emails included (Real-Time Marketing). | Triggered email campaigns, called Marketing automation. Transactional/automatic emails purchased additionally. |
Ads Tracking and Management | Ad platforms are usually more complicated to track and integrate with D365 Marketing. | Can efficiently track ads on various platforms within HubSpot Marketing Hub. |
Social Media Management and Content (Video) | Social Media scheduling features included, with the ability to manage and upload video. Limited in scheduling social posts and additional features would be most efficient if integrated with an additional Social Media tool. | Social Media scheduling features included, with the ability to manage and upload video. Limited in scheduling social posts and additional features would be most efficient if integrated with an additional Social Media tool. |
Landing Pages/Form Capture | Landing pages and form builders included. Can use form capture to capture form submissions with custom/existing forms. | Landing pages and form builders included. Can use form capture to capture form submissions with custom/existing forms. |
Support and Resources (Education) | Offers custom support by submitting IT tickets, Microsoft Learn and Microsoft Community have detailed articles for adoption. Support is predominantly done through Microsoft Partners. | Offers 24/7 basic-level support, option of premium training with onboarding, HubSpot Academy. |
Pricing | $1,500 a month for a standalone module license.*(i.e. no sales or customer service modules, and less than 10 full user licenses). *Current Microsoft product users receive a discounted rate of $750. (i.e., existing sales module in use, 10 full user licenses) | Free for several basic features Monthly Plans for additional needed features are: Starter-$45 Professional-$800 Enterprise-$3,600 |
Event and Webinar Management | Provides event management capabilities out-of-the-box with Teams, allowing users to track all areas of event planning and coordination. | Provides limited event capabilities (can only track registrations and attendees). Will need an add-on to track other event details, like a webinar platform. |
Customer Engagement | Customer Voice Surveys are included and can be executed from customer journeys – such as NPS, product/service satisfaction, etc. | Provides limited event capabilities (can only track registrations and attendees). Will need an add-on to track other event details, like a webinar platform. |
Marketing Analytics and Reporting | Customer Voice Surveys are included and can be executed from customer journeys – such as NPS, product/service satisfaction, etc. | Survey tool is not included in purchase, but can be purchased and added on separately. |