Top 14 Performance Marketing Software Platforms

Performance marketing software is a digital tool that helps track, analyze, and optimize digital marketing campaigns with tangible metrics like clicks and leads. The right platform can reduce overhead costs and boost performance. Here are the top tools to choose from.

We track so many aspects of our lives these days: sleep cycles, workouts, spending habits — the list goes on.

If you’re part of a marketing team, you’re no stranger to tracking in your professional life as well. From customer behavior and preferences to campaign results and lead sources, this data helps inform future marketing decisions and reduce ad spend.

But accurately tracking and analyzing this volume of data isn’t easy, which is where performance marketing software can help.

These tools help teams understand what’s working (and what’s not) so every dollar delivers measurable results.

In this guide, our team of experts offers their top platform picks so you can find the perfect match for your business.

What is performance marketing software?

Performance marketing software is a tool that tracks, manages, analyzes, and optimizes marketing campaigns based on measurable results and key goals.

Unlike general marketing platforms, performance marketing tools focus on measurable outcomes like conversions, return on ad spend (ROAS), or cost per acquisition (CPA), which makes optimizations more straightforward.

Performance marketing that requires this type of tracking and automation software includes:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media marketing
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
• Email marketing

What to look for in a performance marketing tool

As a marketer or business owner, you have hundreds of options for performance marketing tools. How do you choose the best one for your team or business? Here are a few things to look for:

• Marketing channels: Prioritize a tool that specializes in the marketing channel where you spend the majority of your budget — or choose a tool that supports a range of paid and organic channels.
• Team capabilities: If you manage marketing campaigns with colleagues or clients, you need a tool that allows your team to collaborate.
• Integrations: Many performance marketing tools connect to each other, allowing you to manage campaigns more efficiently. Check for relevant integrations before purchasing your tool of choice.
• Scalability: Choose software that can grow with your campaigns and accommodate larger budgets or more data over time.

14 top performance marketing software picks

Here are the top 14 software programs our experts recommend:

1. ConversionIQ
2. Optmyzr
3. Adalysis
4. Opteo
5. Trackier
6. Cake
7. Semrush
8. Kogneta
9. Search Commander
10. Google Keyword Planner
11. Hotjar
12. Google Analytics
13. Google Ads
14. Klaviyo

1. ConversionIQ

ConversionIQ is HawkSEM’s proprietary software that tracks the full customer journey across multiple platforms to give a holistic view of your marketing efforts and make more effective optimizations.

Provided to every HawkSEM client, this product was designed to help capture target audiences, discover actionable insights, and convert high-quality prospects.

With this software, we’ve improved lead qualities by 60%, reduced cost-per-acquisition (CPA) by 40%, and increased lead volume by 2x for clients like Microsoft, Columbia University, and Datadog.

Customer relationship management (CRM) teams that already have an existing solution benefit the most from our technology.

Highlights:

• Improve forecasting: This tool helps you leverage forecasting to better predict a campaign’s results.
• Use integrations: Easily track revenue and conversions across platform integrations, such as Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Instagram, and Facebook.
• Optimize results: Analyze, understand, and optimize marketing campaigns more confidently.
• User-friendly: The platform is user-friendly, which makes it easy to view important metrics and make informed marketing decisions.

Pricing:

ConversionIQ is included in our management services and is free for clients after onboarding.

2. Optmyzr

The Optmyzr team has been around since 1998. Its team members were some of the first people who helped create and manage Google AdWords, now known as Google Ads.

Through the years, the company has won multiple awards, opened offices around the globe, and managed many happy clients.

So, what can Optmyzr do for you? The company has two marketing solutions: OPTMYZR Core and Campaign Automator. The former helps you create and run better campaigns, while the latter automates your entire process.

Highlights:

• Easy to use: GetApp and Software Advice users love that the software is easy to use and has all the necessary functions and features.
• Multi-functional: The all-in-one platform provides the data, metrics, integrations, notifications, reports, and other features your marketing team needs to scale business and make impactful decisions.
• Helpful customer support: Users on review platforms mentioned their customer support team was helpful and provided customized inputs and solutions based on the users’ needs.
• Suitable for enterprises: Because this solution’s features are geared towards heavy reporting, it is especially useful for larger businesses.

Pricing:

Optmyzr Core pricing starts at $209 per month, and Campaign Automator starts at $272 per month. Custom quotes are available and newer businesses (less than three years old) can get a discount on a new software setup.

3. Adalysis

With Adalysis, you can run automated PPC ads and improve results by analyzing, optimizing, and monitoring campaign results.

That’s because Adalysis includes features like insights, notifications, A/B testing, campaign creation, reporting, campaign performance monitoring, and data visualization.

This SaaS product also has impressive auditing capabilities. Users can run customizable audits to check landing pages, ads, campaigns, search terms, placements, ad extensions, and keywords.

Highlights:

• Comprehensive features: You can automate and run A/B tests, customize audits, receive results across six metrics, and run thousands of tests simultaneously.
• Multiple pricing options: Adalysis offers different pricing plans depending on monthly ad spend. You’ll need a custom quote for ad spend above $500,000.
• Suited for diverse teams: Adalysis is adaptable to suit the needs of marketing agencies, in-house PPC teams, and small businesses. With this solution, you can automate PPC ads, create streamlined workflows, implement bulk actions, and get recent forecasts and AI-powered suggestions.
• Pre-built template library: Share reports with clients by editing pre-made templates and adding custom branding to them.

Pricing:

Pricing is tiered and begins at $149 per month for ad spend up to $50,000.

4. Opteo

Trusted by names like Dropbox, DoorDash, Etsy, and Spotify, Opteo streamlines processes for marketing teams. It reveals the improvements and setbacks of your campaigns in a systematic way.

It keeps a pulse on trends, offers access to summaries and reports, and provides data-backed insights — all of which will help improve conversion rates.

Opteo also has a “scorecard” feature. These scorecards help you evaluate your account’s performance based on a score of 100. These scores are an overview of search term coverage, remarketing, budget limitations, match type breakdown, and projected spending.

Highlights:

• Provides better visibility: The solution allows users to weed out search partners, placements, and site categories with bad traffic. This allows you to make your product visible on sites with a good reputation and gives you higher visibility from quality leads.
• Slack integration: All notifications and alerts can be sent directly to your Slack account, as Opteo integrates with the app.
• Budget management: You can set budgets and preferences on Opteo to get notifications, scores, spend progress, and budget status. This will help you keep track of critical changes and Google Ads spending.
• Ad alerts: Opteo allows you to create alerts to spot errors, issues with budgets, and to track multiple KPIs, account flatlines, and failed payments.

Pricing:

Four pricing options are available: Basic, Professional, Agency, and Enterprise, at $129, $249, $499, and custom pricing per month, respectively.

5. Trackier

Trackier is an affiliate marketing software trusted by names like Wakefit, Yoga Bar, and Times Internet.

The company touts its impressive 300-plus API integrations, presence in more than 20 countries, and awards from the likes of Finances Online and Crozdesk.

And for a good reason, too. Features include coupon code support, multi-touch attribution, payout in various currencies, smart links on AI, pixel management, and a feature-rich API.

You can also integrate the platform with ecommerce stores like Shopify, Shopee, Amazon, and WooCommerce. It has everything a marketing team working with influencer partnerships and affiliate networks can ask for.

Trackier’s management software makes affiliate tracking easy.

Highlights:

• Intuitive and easy: Customers report that the solution is intuitive and easy to use for tasks like campaign monitoring, editing, reporting, and billing.
• Multiple integrations: The product has many integrations, making it easier to run campaigns (not to mention everything becomes centralized because of these integrations).
• Personalized dashboards: Manage relationships with personalized dashboards for affiliate programs with project goals, performance metrics, and commission rates.
• Automate processes: Trackier allows you to set up automations for monthly payouts, KPI monitoring, and conversion rate thresholds.

Pricing:

You’ll have to get in touch with the company to get an estimate on pricing.

6. Cake

Cake, also known as Get Cake, is a performance marketing platform that helps users analyze results in real-time.

The company offers three resources: one for affiliate marketing, the other for lead generation, and the last for multi-channel marketing.

With the affiliate marketing solution, you get:

• Data-driven insights in real-time
• Customizable reporting
• Account management
• SOC 2 security
• 24/7 customer support
• Audit trails, referral rewards
• Email marketing templates
• Location and device targeting.

Multi-channel marketing has the same features, but it also offers fraud prevention and mobile measurement.

On the other end, the lead generation solution provides benefits such as:

• Field validation
• Schedules based on buyer profiles
• Multi-touch attribution
• Timely reporting
• One-click lead returns
• Tracking of calls using integrations like Invoca and Velocify
• Restricting the routing of leads

Highlights:

• Extensive features: If there’s one pro that everyone is gushing about, it’s that this platform has impressive features that top the competition.
• Multiple integrations: The platform integrates with others, such as Bing, Facebook, OpenMail, Payoneer, Authorize.net, BannerFlow, and Nura.
• Two-way APIs: Give your affiliates the ability to manage their workflows, campaigns, and performance through two-way APIs.
• Role-based permissions: Customize permissions and access levels based on user names, departments, and roles.

Pricing:

Custom quotes are available upon request.

7. Semrush

Semrush is a leading all-in-one platform that supports both organic and paid channels. You can use it to manage SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and PPC.

It can also give you a glimpse into your competitors’ marketing strategies — something we do here at HawkSEM.

“Using Semrush for competitor research allows [you] to easily gain insights into the sort of paid keywords the competition is bidding on, ad copy they’re running, and the scope of their paid search efforts (i.e., ad spend),” explains digital marketing expert Steven Dang.

“We use it to quickly get a bird’s eye view of the competitive landscape.”

Highlights:

• Comprehensive feature list: Semrush has 55+ built-in tools and countless third-party apps, making it a smart choice for an all-in-one performance marketing tool.
• Marketing integrations: This platform connects with many of the tools you already use, such as Google Ads, Google Search Console, most major social media networks, and many more.

Pricing:

Semrush has three paid plan tiers: Pro ($139.95 per month), Guru ($249.95 per month), and Business ($499.95 per month). The platform also offers a free plan.

8. Kogneta

Kogneta’s Keyword Multiplier Tool combines multiple keyword lists into a single list for an ad group. It also identifies variations to provide better coverage.

Dang explains that this tool “quickly and easily generates a great number of highly specific, bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) keyword ideas.”

Highlights:

• Simplifies keyword research: Building out keyword lists for PPC campaigns can be time-consuming, even for experienced marketers. This free tool generates variations instantly.
• Supports keyword match types: This tool lets you select broad match, phrase match, or exact match types to get the keyword list you need.

Pricing:

Kogneta’s Keyword Multiplier Tool is free to use.

9. Search Commander

Search Commander’s Keyword Multiplier also combines and multiplies keyword lists. As Dang explains, “These tools allow us to affix modifiers to root terms to generate specific keyword text strings that allow for better matching with search terms.”

Highlights:

• Allows variables: You can guide this tool to create more relevant keywords by providing variables (e.g., location).
• Supports negative keywords: Along with broad, phrase, and exact match type keywords, this tool also supports negative keywords.

Pricing:

Search Commander’s Keyword Multiplier is free to use.

10. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a tool for discovering and analyzing PPC keywords related to your business, product, or service. It also estimates search volume and keyword bids to help you plan successful search campaigns.

“Sometimes the simplest tools are the best,” Dang shares. “After all these years, we still put the embedded Google keyword planner tool to great use, using it for keyword ideation and keyword expansion exercises.”

Highlights:

• Keyword discovery: After you enter a word or phrase, Google Keyword Planner generates keyword ideas you can add to your PPC ad groups.
• Search volume analysis: Find the right keywords to target by checking search volume, search trends, and competition.
• Bid estimates: Use the tool’s top-of-page bid data to estimate how much you’ll need to spend to drive results in your own PPC campaigns.

Pricing:

Google Keyword Planner is free to use.

11. Hotjar

Trusted by companies like Adobe, HubSpot, and Unbounce, Hotjar is a website analytics tool. Now a part of Contentsquare, Hotjar reveals where website visitors click, how they experience your site, and why they click away.

When you use it to analyze website traffic from marketing campaigns, you can learn more about the types of audiences they attract and which campaigns bring in the most qualified prospects.

“This tool allows us to ‘listen in’ on actual user sessions as they navigate through a web page or set of web pages,” explains Dang. This is particularly useful for gleaning insights on landing pages, including:

• Which sections are getting the most traction
• Where users are pausing or resting their cursor
• What the trajectory of their user session looks like

Highlights:

• Website heatmaps and recordings: See how visitors navigate your website and landing pages — and get ideas to improve them to increase conversions.
• User feedback and surveys: Ask visitors about their experience using your website to get even more ideas for optimizing conversions.

Pricing:

Hotjar’s Observe platform has three paid tiers: Growth ($49 per month for 100 daily sessions), Pro, and Enterprise; the latter two levels require a phone call. The platform also offers a free plan.

12. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a website analytics tool that monitors traffic sources and user behavior across. It provides data for both organic and paid campaigns, making it one of the most popular solutions for marketers.

Google Analytics 4 also offers AI-powered insights that reveal findings like your top-performing marketing channels and the most common touchpoints in your conversion path.

Highlights:

• Multi-channel insights: The biggest reason most users keep going to Google Analytics is that it shows and predicts insights based on customer data from different marketing channels.
• Free to use: The product is free, sealing the deal for most users.
• Analytics and forecasts: Get analytics based on customer segments, and use Google’s forecast feature to understand trends and create future campaigns.
• Third-party referrals: Find out where most of your traffic is coming from (which websites, search engines, and social media channels).

Pricing:

The product is free for all.

13. Google Ads

Google Ads has helpful built-in tools for analyzing PPC campaign performance. For example, the auction insights report makes it easier to understand how your ads perform in the ad auction.

“This sometimes-overlooked Google Ads report is an extremely handy way of quickly gathering data on how we stack up against our keyword competitors in terms of ad position, impression share, and overlap rate,” shares Dang.

Highlights:

• Reveals impression share: Learn how often your ads get the impressions they’re eligible to receive, which can help you assess Quality Score, targeting, and bidding.
• Shows outranking share: This report tells you how often your ads outrank the competition, which is helpful for competitive analysis.

Pricing:

Google Ads reports are free for all advertisers to use.

14. Klaviyo

With more than 150,000 customers and over 200 integrations, Klaviyo is a go-to for many businesses seeking successful email and SMS marketing.

With Klaviyo, you can get audience insights and see customer behavior in real-time. You can also view all customer communications, get predictive insights, and find customer information with the click of a few buttons.

Highlights:

• Automated solution: Klaviyo helps you segment customers and keep in touch through email or SMS. You can also get predictive insights and run A/B tests — all of which can be automated.
• Timely insights: Klaviyo updates customer trends in real-time, which is especially helpful during events such as holiday sales or Black Friday deals.
• Industry benchmarks: Find how your campaigns rank against your competitors’ based on factors like frequency, growth, average item value, and monthly revenue. Klaviyo also provides suggestions on how to improve campaigns.
• Template libraries: Get inspiration from premade SMS, sign-up forms, email, and automation templates. Edit the templates as you see fit with Klaviyo’s drag-and-drop feature.

Pricing:

The price of email services starts at $45 per month, and the price of email and SMS services starts at $60 per month. A free version is available too.

The takeaway

Performance marketing requires a lot of management, data analysis, and optimization.

Using the right software solution can enhance your marketing efforts, streamline workflows, and improve campaign performance.

If your marketing programs require too many resources, partnering with a digital marketing agency can offer some peace of mind, too.

As a team of performance marketing experts, HawkSEM leverages the most effective platforms to create custom strategies, make timely decisions, and help you get more sales and leads.

Does partnering with a team of trusted professionals sound like the right choice for you? Get in touch.

This article has been updated and was originally published in March 2023.