5 tools to create and optimize your marketing funnel

You’ve rolled out an amazing product, but how do you determine whether your marketing funnel is targeting your ideal users and converting them into loyal customers who adopt your solution?

Creating a solid marketing funnel is a key part of your conversion and product-led growth strategy, helping you identify and optimize key customer touchpoints—from your website’s landing pages to blog posts—to deliver an amazing user experience (UX) and journey.

We’ve curated a list of the top marketing funnel tools out there, including several actionable examples of how to use these platforms to get in-depth knowledge of your customers and the different steps in their user journey.

6 reasons why your business needs marketing funnel tools

Having a solid marketing funnel is key to understanding the best way to sell your product or service to your customers. But the ideal marketing funnel takes time to design, test, and perfect. 

Marketing funnel tools take away the guesswork of designing your customer journey and help you quickly create a funnel that works for your users and your business. 

You can use marketing funnel tools to

• Design and build an effective marketing funnel

• Move customers more quickly and efficiently through the funnel

• Optimize your customer experience (CX)

• Measure the success of your funnel with metrics and insights on customer behavior

• Increase leads

• Get higher conversion rates

Top 5 tools to use for brilliant customer-centric marketing funnels

The tools you choose to help you implement your marketing funnel will depend on where you are in the process of setting up your website and funnel. 

Some tools offer a complete solution, helping you create a marketing funnel and design web pages relevant to each stage of the customer journey. Others are best for businesses that already have a website and marketing funnel in place, and need data on how well it’s performing, so they can optimize their marketing funnel and find out where there might be gaps.

Let’s take a look at the best marketing funnel tools out there today and where they fit in the process:

1. Contentsquare

Contentsquare (that’s us!) is a powerful all-in-one experience intelligence platform that lets you understand your customers and how they behave on your site, giving you insights into what they need and how they feel at every stage.

Use the intuitive, easy-to-use Funnels tool to map out the steps of your funnels. Instantly visualize how users are progressing through each stage, including how long they take and where they drop off.

Then, combine this with other Contentsquare tools to get deeper, more powerful insights:

• Notice a spike in drop-offs? Jump straight from your funnel to related session replays to watch exactly what happened (and understand how to fix it)

• Directly ask for feedback on what needs to be improved by launching Surveys at crucial moments of the user journey

• Find and fix moments of friction throughout the funnel with Error Analysis

• Understand how users engage with key pages (like landing pages or content) using heatmaps—color-coded aggregations of where users click, tap, move, and scroll

• Compare how different segments behave using granular filtering and customer segmentation capabilities, then make tailored optimizations based on each group’s specific needs

Combine Funnels with other Contentsquare features to analyze and optimize your marketing funnel with user-centric insights

2. Kajabi

Kajabi is a SaaS-based platform that helps you generate interest in your product or service and convert it into sales and new customers. With no-code, fully integrated landing pages, you can create a professional website experience with minimal setup.

Kajabi boasts built-in shopping carts, email reporting, and customized promotional offers. They also offer marketing funnel templates that help your team get started if you’re never made one before.

Kajabi is useful for top-of-the-funnel campaigns focused on bringing in new interest or first-time visitors to your website. However, it's on the pricier side compared to other options, so it might not be the best choice for startups or companies with tighter budgets. It also doesn’t offer user insight tools, like session replays and heatmaps.

Kajabi offers marketing funnel templates to help you get started

3. Systeme.io

System.io is an all-in-one marketing software tool for online businesses that includes:

• A funnel builder

• Dropshipping services

• An autoresponder

• Business automation

It takes you less than a minute to build a marketing funnel and landing page using the software's funnel builder tool, and it also has an email marketing tool and blogging capabilities. This lets you consolidate several marketing tools in one platform rather than having separate tools for funnel building and another for emails. 

Systeme.io is designed to be user-friendly, and it’s affordable with both free options and paid subscriptions. This is ideal for startups who need to use lots of different tools, but don’t have a large enough budget to subscribe to several products. However, Systeme.io doesn’t have live support, so you’ll need to rely on written help content for troubleshooting.

Systeme.io includes analytics that help you track your marketing funnel and sales performance

4. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell primarily targets customers who need to create sales funnels, but the tool is also capable of helping your team create and manage your marketing funnels. As a sales CRM platform, it helps you get full pipeline visibility and contextualize which stage of your SaaS marketing funnel your users are at.

Zendesk Sell brings your customer information onto a single platform, so your team can manage leads, contacts, and account information and refine your marketing funnel with up-to-date data. This tool is very useful for the middle and bottom of the funnel, because it shines a light on where users are leaving your website and helps you make changes accordingly. It’s also available as a mobile app, unlike many competitor products.

Zendesk Sell's pricing plans vary depending on your team’s size and needs. However, since this product is more geared toward sales teams, it might not be the right choice for every marketing department.

Zendesk Sell is a sales CRM for full funnel tracking

5. ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is a well-known funnel tool that's geared specifically toward helping businesses create and refine sales and marketing funnels. This is ideal for teams who've already established platforms for other needs and are looking for a highly focused standalone tool. 

ClickFunnels is easy to use and has detailed help content for guiding users through each step of the marketing funnel process.

The platform also has a drag-and-drop webpage editor, smart shopping cart features, and email and Facebook marketing automation.

One downside of ClickFunnels is its pricing, which is higher than most of its competitors.

ClickFunnels helps you create landing pages, build your funnel, and track funnel performance

Choosing the right marketing funnel tools for your business

When choosing a marketing funnel tool, pick one (or more) that best helps you understand your customer experience and learn where your users are losing interest or dropping off your website. Then, you can design or update your funnel using customer-centric insights to boost interactions and increase your conversion rate.

Consider your team’s size, budget, and existing tech stack when making your selection, and choose a product that allows for continuous discovery, data-gathering, and improvements to your funnel.

Frequently asked questions about marketing funnel tools