Dynamics 365 Marketing vs HubSpot Marketing Hub - How Do They Compare?

Marketing is growing in complexity and agility. In the B2B space, prospects and customers expect tailored, accurate content and marketing solutions that bring value and align with their specific goals. We look at two leading marketing platforms, Dynamics 365 Marketing vs HubSpot Marketing Hub, exploring the key differences, features and benefits.

Why choose HubSpot or Dynamics 365 to power your marketing efforts?

In the B2B world, marketing success largely depends on relationships, loyalty and communication. That’s why many in the sector have come to rely on digital marketing software to expand their visibility, capture and analyse data and deliver targeted communications that connect with customers and prospects. 

With the right software solutions, Marketing teams can deliver their strategies with confidence and precision. A good platform should also facilitate a seamless relationship between Marketing and Sales, ensuring leads are nurtured and qualified before they’re handed over.

Dynamics 365 Marketing and HubSpot Marketing Hub are two leading marketing platforms, boasting extensive data-driven capabilities and sophisticated features, particularly for FinTech and Financial Services businesses. But which is most suitable for your particular business needs? Let’s dive into the features, limitations and benefits of each platform, so you can make an informed decision.

Product Comparison: Dynamics 365 Marketing vs HubSpot Marketing Hub

Microsoft and HubSpot are two big-game players in the marketing, sales, service and CRM solution space. Let’s start our Dynamics 365 Marketing vs HubSpot Marketing comparison by taking a look at the key benefits, capabilities and limitations of each of these marketing platforms.

Dynamics 365 Marketing

Brought to the market by Microsoft, the Dynamics CRM was released in 2016. Dynamics 365 Marketing promises to help you win customers and earn loyalty faster. The application will integrate seamlessly into any Microsoft suite and the tool can analyse and learn from data across Microsoft Outlook and Office - so it’s a desirable choice if your teams are already familiar with Microsoft products and interfaces.

Overview and key benefits

Dynamics 365 is often heralded for its easy-to-use and deploy interface, although there are mixed feelings on review platforms. We recommend a free trial period before making any solid decisions or commitments. However, it’s a ‘low-code’ platform, so should be easy to configure to your exact needs.

With AI-driven analytics, the tool can use analytical algorithms to analyse data and emphasise opportunities for developing and enhancing customer accounts. The sales tool is also completely mobile, meaning Sales Managers can access real-time alerts about their activities, leads and contacts.

An integration with LinkedIn was acquired in 2016, connecting Microsoft Dynamics 365 to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This feature allows users to access the profiles of prospects directly through the CRM, along with messaging and notifications. 

Dynamics 365 Marketing delivers recommendations to your teams, which is a powerful feature that can enhance the buyer’s journey and engage target audiences in real-time.

Limitations

While Dynamics 365 Marketing is fully scalable with extensive business operations, data storage is relatively low, and additional storage can also be costly. 

The software offers AI-powered automation, but workflow triggers are limited compared to HubSpot Marketing Hub. This can be a problem if your Marketing team relies heavily on automation and lead nurture workflows.

While Dynamics does promote its user-friendly interface, it doesn’t have the ease of use HubSpot can offer, so it could take a while for teams to fully adopt and embrace the system. Similarly, while mobility is a key USP, the app can be somewhat limiting and many features don’t translate as well onto the mobile app. 

The platform is also costly compared to competitors, with the Marketing solution costing £1,131.30 per user per month, and £565.60 for subsequent users.

HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub is one piece of its suite of growth tools that feed into its world-renowned CRM platform and the inbound methodology. Therefore, not only does HubSpot Marketing Hub boast an extensive marketing toolkit, it integrates seamlessly with the other Hubs and a wide range of third-party software solutions.

Overview and key benefits

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub comes with a tiered pricing structure, which can be upgraded at any time:

• Sales
• Professional
• Enterprise

HubSpot is renowned for its content and inbound marketing capabilities, making the entire content creation and distribution process more tailored, automated and effective. HubSpot’s primary goal is to attract, nurture, convert and delight customers through targeted content, and the platform is designed to empower your team to do this at each touchpoint in the buyer’s journey. 

In Marketing Hub, teams can automate workflows, segment lists and integrate with emails and social media for greater insights and business intelligence. Recent functionalities include a personalised drag-and-drop email creator, which enables even non-digital-savvy team members to easily create email campaigns and perform marketing functions that power their efforts.

HubSpot’s Sales Hub is also home to many functionalities that house marketing contacts, with details of their stage within the buyer’s journey and previous activity and interactions. This gives Sales Managers greater insights into behaviours and readiness to buy, aligning Sales and Marketing teams and processes.

HubSpot is also renowned for its excellent Customer Support team, training academy and knowledge base, offering hours of training and instructional content to its users, plus knowledge-sharing forums.

Limitations

Limitations tend to be determined by which plan you go for and the capabilities within that plan. For example, a Starter plan will allow you 1000 contacts, but Enterprise allows you 20,000 contacts. The plans are scalable as your business grows but there are big jumps between, and while an upgrade may be more costly, it should be a consideration from the offset.

To experience the full benefits of HubSpot, it’s recommended that you run most of your activity through the platform. This could mean migrating websites and email campaigns onto the platform. Once done, it makes life a lot easier, but it’s understandably a deal-breaker for some.

Features comparison: Dynamics 365 Marketing vs HubSpot

So let’s look at Dynamics 365 Marketing vs HubSpot Marketing Hub side-by-side with our key features comparison table below:

Dynamics 365 Marketing vs HubSpot: Which marketing platform is more suitable for Financial Services?

The marketing needs of Financial Services businesses span way beyond traditional marketing approaches. Personalisation, data, insightful reporting and optimal communication are all essential to delivering the most effective strategies. Here at Inbound FinTech, we’re an elite HubSpot solution partner for a reason. We believe in its power as a marketing CRM for FSI businesses, and we’ve seen the proof time and time again. 

When comparing Dynamics 365 Marketing vs HubSpot Marketing Hub, they offer similar capabilities with certain key differentiators, but it’s your key business needs and goals that will determine which platform is right for you and your teams. But if you want a marketing platform that enables you to seamlessly integrate content marketing strategies and analyse, automate and design a successful and efficient strategy, generating a steadfast ROI, HubSpot can transform your performance.

With its sales and marketing integrations, intuitive content creation functionalities and lead generation tools, plus its unrivalled support network, HubSpot outguns its competitors.

How Inbound FinTech can empower your marketing efforts

We hope you found our Dynamics 365 Marketing vs HubSpot Marketing Hub useful in your search for the right marketing software. If you’re leaning towards HubSpot’s solutions, Inbound FinTech has an extensive team of fully certified and experienced HubSpot experts. We know the platform’s capabilities inside out and can advise and direct your marketing strategies to help you get the most out of your marketing spend and maximise the use of HubSpot’s powerful tools. 

If you’d like to know more about Inbound FinTech’s range of HubSpot services and dedicated inbound marketing services, check out these pages or get in touch with our team to discuss your business needs and challenges.

Inbound FinTech is an Elite HubSpot Solutions Partner and digital growth agency, based in the UK’s financial district but with a hybrid global team. Our HubSpot onboarding and integration capabilities help FinTech and Financial Services businesses to increase performance and grow fast. Get in touch with our team to discuss a project or find out more about our digital growth services.