Best AI for marketing: essential AI marketing tools for SMBs

For many SMBs, using artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing efforts is a must. Marketing teams can leverage AI to access valuable insights, personalize the customer experience, optimize content and automate key marketing activities.

Finding the best AI for Marketing and which tools are right for your business can be challenging.

In this article, you’ll discover eight helpful AI marketing tools for SMBs, including key features and use cases. You’ll also learn what an AI marketing tool is and why AI plays an important role in marketing success.

What is an AI marketing tool?

AI marketing software uses technology that mimics human intelligence (like natural language processing and machine learning) to enhance marketing efforts.

Marketers use AI to automate marketing tasks, optimize marketing activity and make informed decisions.

Here are a few examples of what the best AI for marketing can do:

• Optimize email campaigns by personalizing content, testing subject lines and segmenting audiences

• Streamline social media management by scheduling posts, analyzing engagement and generating captions

• Predict sales and performance by identifying trends, customer behavior patterns and sales forecasting

• Analyze competitors by monitoring their pricing, content strategies and market trends

• Improve ad spend by adjusting bids based on audience engagement and preferences to get the best results

• Enhance content creation by writing blog posts, website copy, social media captions and emails

Learning how to integrate AI into your marketing processes can help you streamline processes and give you a competitive edge. Let’s look at some of the tools that can have the biggest impact on your marketing efforts.

The top AI tools for email marketing

Email marketing is effective for reaching new customers, nurturing leads and promoting your business. An AI system analyzes customer data to predict buying behavior, identifying patterns like:

• Purchase history

• Browsing habits

• Buying preferences

The software uses this information to segment email lists, increase email opens and boost conversion rates.

Here are some of the most effective AI email marketing tools.

Pipedrive: best for integrating AI-powered emails into your sales workflow

Pipedrive is a sales CRM that helps you manage your sales pipeline, from performing outreach to closing a sale. The software uses AI technology to incorporate emails into your sales process.

According to Pipedrive’s State of Sales and Marketing Report (2024), 35% of sales and marketing professionals use AI tools to streamline their workflows. Pipedrive's AI email features help teams scale their operations more efficiently. Here’s what Oliver Elm, International Sales Consultant at Mazepay, has to say:

Pipedrive’s AI email features enable you to create emails that nurture leads at different sales pipeline stages.

For example, you can use Pipedrive’s AI email writer to craft quick, personalized emails based on where leads are in the buying journey. If you’re responding to an initial inquiry, tell the email writer to generate an engaging introduction highlighting your value proposition.

For leads further along the pipeline, the email writer can create follow-up emails to address specific pain points or provide tailored offers to move them closer to a buying decision.

It’s easy to create AI emails with Pipedrive. Head to the email composer, click “Write my email” and describe what you want the email to say. Choose the tone and length of the email from the drop-down list. Select “Generate email” and your email copy will appear:

Pipedrive also detects the tone of your prompt and offers suggestions to match, ensuring all emails align with your brand voice.

You can condense email threads into simple summaries with Pipedrive’s AI email summarization tool. The summary shows key points, saving you time, reducing overload and enabling faster communication with leads and prospects.

Price: plans start at $14 per month when billed annually

Free trial: yes

Ideal users: SMBs looking to optimize email marketing and align email activity with the sales process

Key features:

• Generating personalized emails for leads and prospects based on where they are in the sales pipeline

• Summarizing email threads at the click of a button so you can act fast to convert leads into deals

• Segmenting email contacts based on criteria, such as deals, activities and products

Grammarly: best for AI writing and email proofreading

Creating and proofreading emails takes time – a luxury not all SMBs can afford, with 33.9% of small business marketers struggling with a lack of time.

Grammarly streamlines email creation and proofreading. The copywriting assistant tool checks grammar, spelling and punctuation. The platform also offers suggestions to improve clarity, conciseness and readability in written content – like emails.

Frost & Sullivan used Grammarly to increase its writing team’s productivity, reducing editing time by 66%. Tonya Fowler, Frost & Sullivan’s Global Research vice president of best practice, says:

Grammarly’s AI suggestions also help you maintain your brand voice, tone and style throughout all your emails.

Brand consistency builds trust and credibility with your audience (59% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand they trust).

Price: free to use with paid plans starting at $12 per member per month when billed annually (Grammarly’s AI features are available on paid plans)

Free trial: yes

Ideal users: best for SMB marketers managing multiple email campaigns

Key features:

• Generating email copy

• Checking the grammatical accuracy of emails

• Delivering a consistent tone throughout the email copy

The best AI-powered tools for social media marketing

Social media AI software can schedule posts, generate visuals and create captions tailored to your audience’s preferences. Depending on the platform, it also analyzes audience behavior and engagement patterns to:

• Create personalized content

• Recommend the best times to post

Here are some of the top tools on the market.

Predis.ai: best for social media content generation

Research from Constant Contact shows that 54% of SMBs need help with social media marketing, particularly support with regular posting and generating new content ideas.

If you lack the time or creative energy to write engaging social content or create visuals, Predis.ai can help. The software uses AI to generate and schedule social media posts, automatically suggesting relevant content, creating visuals and scheduling posts for optimal times.

The AI also learns from past interactions and user feedback. It continuously improves its suggestions to match your audience’s interests and enhance the customer experience.

For example, if Predis.ai notices carousel posts with bold visuals receive higher engagement than single-image posts, it might suggest creating more carousel content with similar designs.

Wisdom Tech Academy used Predis to generate social captions and schedule posts to generate social assets. The Academy says:

Price: free to use with paid plans starting at $27 per month when billed annually

Free trial: yes

Ideal users: Social media managers who need help generating and scheduling social media content

Key features:

• Turning text into custom ad creatives

• Resizing ads for different platforms

• Optimizing ad copy

Ocoya: best for posting across multiple social media channels

Constant Contact’s research also found that 34% of SMBs say posting on social media is one of the most time-consuming marketing activities. Because of this, 44% say they’re most likely to delay social media posting.

Ocoya is a cloud-based content marketing solution that streamlines social media posting. The software creates and posts content across social media platforms – including Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. It also schedules posts across different platforms, optimizing timing for each audience.

Ocoya can post directly from your RSS feed in real time, meaning you can share new content from your website without manual input. For instance, if you publish a new blog post on “Top Marketing Trends for 2025”, Ocoya can instantly generate a social post with a compelling caption, relevant hashtags and an eye-catching image.

This feature frees time for you to focus on more important tasks (like strategizing upcoming campaigns).

Price: plans start at $15 per month when billed annually (RSS posting is available on the Gold plan, which is $79 per month when billed annually)

Free trial: yes

Ideal users: Social marketers who want to post social content across multiple platforms at once

Key features:

• Integrating with a variety of social platforms

• Automating RSS posting

• Scheduling multiple posts simultaneously

Effective AI tools for content marketing

AI can create high-quality blogs, videos and images, tailoring them to specific audience preferences. It can also identify gaps in content, helping you create content that differentiates you from competitors.

Here are some of the most effective AI tools for content marketing campaigns.

Ideanote: best for generating content ideas

Studies show that SMBs tend to stick with what they know. When it comes to content marketing, this means it’s easy to produce the same type of content about the same topic.

However, branching out into new topics can help you:

• Reach a wider audience

• Improve your search engine optimization

• Build your reputation as a knowledgeable and reliable business

Ideanote – an innovation platform for gathering, sharing and encouraging ideas – can help you break this cycle. Its AI-powered idea generator quickly produces content ideas based on your parameters. These parameters include the purpose, the company name and a summary of the project.

Imagine you’re working on a project to launch a new eco-friendly skincare line. You enter the parameters into Ideanote’s AI-powered idea generator as follows.

• Purpose: generate social media campaign ideas to promote sustainability

• Company name: GreenGlow Skincare

• Project summary: Launching a new line of eco-friendly skincare products made with natural ingredients, targeting environmentally conscious consumers

Based on this information, Ideanote’s AI (based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3) analyzes information from the internet and applies its knowledge to its idea suggestions. For example, it might analyze relevant trends, sustainability topics and competitor marketing strategies.

Here’s an example of how the tool generates ideas for a well-known fast food chain.

Kenny Andreason, product manager at Enreach, uses Ideanote to streamline the collection and implementation of ideas and feedback across the business. He says:

Ideanote also has an AI question generator, which creates questions to inspire new ideas.

For example, if you’re brainstorming a new content strategy, the AI question generator might ask, “What unique insights can your brand share that no one else is talking about?” It helps you approach content from a different perspective and uncover hidden opportunities.

Price: All features are free for up to 15 users with limited usage (e.g., 250 ideas). Paid plans offer the same features but with more usage (e.g., 1,000 ideas). Paid plans start at $6 per month per user when billed annually.

Free trial: yes

Ideal user: best for SMB marketers looking to create new and strategic content ideas

Key features:

• Generating new content ideas

• Producing new questions to broaden perspectives

• Collaborating and discussing ideas virtually

Writesonic: best for optimizing content for SEO

SMB and startup marketers can spend hours ensuring content is SEO-friendly. From adding internal links to including key phrases, the process can be tedious – but it’s necessary to help your business reach the right audience.

The good news is there are AI-powered tools like Writesonic that can optimize content on your behalf.

Writesonic is a generative AI content creation platform that integrates with marketing tools like Ahrefs and Google Search Console. It pulls live data from these tools and incorporates it into your content.

For example, when connected to Ahrefs, Writesonic analyzes keyword data from top-ranking articles. Then, it ensures your content covers all the necessary phrases to help you rank better on search engine results.

The platform also analyzes competitors and identifies content gaps. This analysis helps you pinpoint content ideas that consumers want to see but can’t find elsewhere.

Read Alan Ranger’s case study to see how these features can help you optimize your content and reach a wider audience. Ranger, a photography expert, used Writesonic to scale his content creation and saw an increase in blog impressions by 500%.

Price: free to use with additional features available on paid plans, starting at $16 per month when billed annually

Free trial: yes

Best for: SMB copywriters and marketers looking to optimize content and scale content creation

Key features:

• Pulling live data from other marketing tools

• Optimizing content for SEO

• Identifying and analyzing competitors

Standout AI marketing tools for reporting

AI reporting tools collect and analyze performance data, offering actionable insights to refine campaigns and track your return on investment (ROI).

Take a look at some of the most effective AI reporting platforms.

Google Looker Studio: best for summarizing large data

Data analysis is challenging for many SMBs due to limited resources, lack of technical expertise and time constraints. This is where AI-powered tools like Google Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) can help.

Google Looker Studio is a data visualization and reporting tool. It creates dynamic, interactive dashboards and reports from multiple data sources (like Google Analytics or Salesforce).

Its AI functionality allows you to create reports with a few sentences of instruction, breaking down large data sets into manageable components. As a result, you can quickly see charts with essential data and trends without technical expertise.

Say you type, “Show me the sales performance of last quarter by region”. The AI automatically generates this report, highlighting key trends across regions. With these insights, you can make informed decisions about future marketing activity. For example, investing more marketing budget in higher-performing regions.

Price: free to use, with paid plans starting at $9 per month, per user or project for enterprise customers

Free trial: yes

Ideal users: Business owners and marketers who want to access key data and trends without needing technical expertise

Key features:

• Gathering data from various sources

• Generating reports and dashboards with minimal instruction

• Providing data summaries in presentations

Databox: best for getting personalized, actionable insights

Research from Amazon Web Services found that 53% of SMBs don’t know what insights their data could provide. With the right tools, you don’t have to worry about manually uncovering insights from your data.

An AI-powered tool like Databox can analyze your marketing and sales performance to create personalized and actionable summaries. In one glance, you’ll get a concise overview of your key marketing metrics and recommendations to improve performance.

For example, Databox’s AI might provide a summary like this:

“Your Google Ads campaigns generated a 15% increase in conversions this quarter, with the highest ROI from mobile users in the healthcare sector. To maximize results, consider reallocating more budget to mobile ads targeting this industry and optimizing landing pages for mobile devices”.

With these insights, you can make data-driven decisions quickly and confidently. Instead of spending hours digging through spreadsheets or interpreting complex reports, you’ll know exactly where to focus your efforts.

The software also integrates with various marketing tools, such as Google Analytics, to centralize key metrics into customizable dashboards. As a result, you don’t have to worry about flicking between systems to access the data you need.

Take a look at Raisley as an example. The B2B SaaS company used Databox to centralize data in custom dashboards, gaining a 90% increase in accessible and visible data. Tom Maitland, co-founder of Raisely, says:

Price: free to use with paid plans starting at $47 per month when billed annually. AI-powered summaries are available on the Growth plan, which starts at $319 per month when billed annually.

Free trial: yes

Ideal users: SMBs looking to centralize marketing data and gather actionable insights without technical expertise

Key features:

• Create performance summaries

• Get personalized recommendations to improve performance

• Integrate with other marketing tools

Why should you get on board with AI in marketing?

For marketers, AI tools enhance efficiency, accuracy and personalization. They also improve decision-making, optimizing campaigns and spending to achieve the best results.

Let’s look at these benefits (and a few others) in more detail.

Improve efficiency

AI helps you optimize your marketing processes and streamline repetitive activities. As a result, you can be more efficient with your time and resources.

Think about AI marketing automation as an example. The software can automatically:

• Send personalized emails to leads based on their behavior (like clicking on a link or downloading a resource), turning casual interest into meaningful engagement by responding with relevant content at the right moment

• Segment audiences based on customer behavior, purchase history and engagement patterns, ensuring your marketing budget focuses on the leads most likely to convert

• Trigger follow-up emails at the optimal time to increase engagement, preventing leads from going cold while your team focuses on high-value tasks

• Schedule and post content on social media platforms, track engagement and suggest the best times to post based on audience activity

Make informed decisions

AI systems analyze past performance and external factors (like market trends or competitor activity) to make informed suggestions that improve your marketing activity.

Imagine an e-commerce brand that uses AI to analyze social media trends. It identifies increasing conversations about sustainability and recommends shifting marketing messages to highlight eco-friendly products.

As a result, the company updates its social media messaging to capitalize on this opportunity. Posts receive higher engagement, the website gets more traffic and the brand positions itself as an eco-conscious company.

Get a better understanding of customer behavior

Gain a deeper understanding of your target audience through AI-powered data analysis. These insights help you foster stronger customer relationships by addressing pain points proactively.

Here are a few examples:

• Perform customer sentiment analysis to assess emotions in social media posts, online reviews and survey responses. These insights help marketers identify customers’ feelings about products or services, informing future marketing activity.

• Use predictive behavior models to forecast future actions based on past behavior. For example, you can predict which customers are most likely to convert or churn. With this information, you can nurture leads effectively to secure a sale or prevent churn.

Increase your ROI

Optimizing your marketing activity is a great way to increase your ROI. The more effective your marketing activity is, the more likely you are to secure sales.

There are a few ways that AI can increase marketing ROI:

• Use predictive analytics. AI analyzes historical data to forecast trends and customer behavior. These insights allow marketers to identify the most effective strategies for the best results.

• Implement A/B testing. AI can automate and analyze A/B tests, providing insights on which messages, creatives or strategies perform best. This continuous optimization ensures you’re always improving campaigns, leading to better outcomes and higher returns.

• Optimize ad spend. AI enhances ad targeting by segmenting audiences based on behavior, demographics and interests. As a result, your ads appear for the right people at the right time, reducing wasted spend and increasing the likelihood of conversions.

AI for marketing FAQs

Final thoughts

With the right AI tools for marketing, you can make data-driven decisions that improve results and maximize ROI. Use this list of tools as your starting point. Consider what features and functionality you need to understand your ideal audience, stay ahead of the competition and optimize marketing activity to increase sales.

To align your sales and marketing activity, consider using an AI-powered CRM like Pipedrive. Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant analyzes your deals, contacts and emails, finding valuable insights and suggesting ways to improve your sales success.