The difference between Zoho Marketing Automation and Zoho Campaigns

The difference between Zoho Marketing Automation and Zoho Campaigns

Greetings Marketers!
This post aims to differentiate between Zoho Marketing Automation and Zoho Campaigns. By the time you get to the end of the post, you will be able to choose a product that objectively suits you.

What is Zoho Marketing Automation?
A multichannel automation solution which helps you shape your business' marketing pipeline. You can create landing pages, forms, and pop-ups, run campaigns on email and SMS with confidence, and automate the customer journey with workflows. The software also has deep measurement and analysis functionality built-in. 

Zoho Marketing Automation, mainly addresses the following needs of a business:

  • Top of the funnel:

    • Lead generation: Landing pages, sign-up forms, pop-up forms, and offline marketing tracking capabilities.

    • Web behaviour: Analyze website pages, track traffic sources, set action-based goals, and create custom links.

  • Middle of the funnel:

    • Campaigns: Email, WhatsApp, SMS, social media, and pop-up campaigns.

    • Nurturing: Automate workflows, score leads, and personalized content.

    • Lead Life Cycle Management: Personalized stages, lead scoring, lead segmentation.

  • Bottom of the funnel:

    • Lead attribution and reporting: Key performance indicators like number of verified leads, conversion rate, click-through-rate, time spent on page,

    • Marketing Planner: Set goals, create & coordinate tasks, and track activities for campaign transparency.

    • Budgeting and RoI: Get campaign level and holistic view of the outcomes of your marketing activities to track ROI.


What is Zoho Campaigns? 

A powerful email and SMS marketing platform to create and send targeted campaigns to your audience. The software allows you to automate your campaigns based on triggers and execute multi-step campaigns flawlessly. It also offers vast campaign analytics and measurement capabilities.

So what are the differences?

 

Zoho Marketing Automation

Zoho Campaigns

 

Description

Helps you create & run full-funnel marketing, beyond email and SMS marketing. For instance,  landing pages, WhatsApp, social media, and lead lifecycle management, amongst others.

Used for creating, sending, and tracking email  & SMS campaigns. Primary focus is on delivering targeted and engaging email messages.

Marketing Campaigns

Email, WhatsApp, SMS, social media, webinars

Email and SMS campaigns.

 

Lead Qualification

Lead segments, lead scoring (advanced- web behaviour based, field based, email activity based scoring), custom lead stages, assign tags.

Lead segments, lead scoring (email activity & workflow).

Automation

  • Automate marketing communication, segment audiences, nurture leads, and qualify with Journeys. Leverage templates, triggers, and generate detailed reports.
  • Journey X-ray reports to analyse the least and most engaged path chose by contacts.

Crafts workflows for campaigns based on user behaviours and email responses with pre-built templates.

 

Analytics

Track pages, identify sources, set goals with reports. Generate custom links for source tracking and insights into impactful channels.

Generates reports for email campaigns but website analytics are not available.

 

 

Marketing Planner

Set goals, plan campaigns, track progress, and collaborate seamlessly with detailed insights using the online planner, ensuring optimal budget control and successful marketing operations.

Doesn't offer distinct marketing planner. you can schedule campaigns. seek team approvals, and specify access for each team member

 

Lead Generation

Signup forms, Pop-up forms, and Landing pages

Does not offer landing pages and pop-up forms, but it does allow for the deployment of signup forms.

Ecommerce
  • Connect your ecommerce store with the platform and bring in contacts, revenue, product related information. The platform comes with a dedicated ecommerce dashboard, helps e-commerce brands sell better and engage faster over different channels.
  •  Has dedicated e-commerce email marketing automation capabilities, along with RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) model for brands to analyse the customer group.
Can connect ecommerce store, and engage in email and SMS marketing for running promotional communications to ecommerce business contacts. It doesn't have RFM analysis.

Zoho Marketing Automation stands out for its comprehensive capabilities in product promotion. From robust contact management and marketing planning to precise ROI calculation and powerful web analytics with custom goal-setting, it offers a holistic suite. Unlike Zoho Campaigns, it extends its reach to include Lead Attribution, Website Tracking, Marketing Planner, Landing Pages, Workspace, Ecommerce Dashboard, Journey with path tracing capabilities, and 360 degree lead view. This expansive feature set positions Zoho Marketing Automation as the go-to solution for businesses seeking an all-encompassing approach to marketing strategy.  

If a business primarily wants to focus on just email and SMS marketing, then Zoho Campaigns can be a great option. However, if a business wants a more comprehensive marketing automation solution that covers multiple channels along with lead life cycle management, then they may need to check out Zoho Marketing Automation.



      • Sticky Posts

      • Marketer’s Space - Automating CRM Actions with Journeys – Part 2

        Hello marketers! Welcome back to another post in Marketer’s Space. In our previous post, we explored how CRM actions in Journeys help marketing and sales teams work together by nurturing CRM leads and pushing only engaged prospects back to sales. If you
      • Introducing automation and utility conversations in WhatsApp marketing

        We’re excited to announce the addition of two new features to our WhatsApp integration: Automation and Utility conversations. These enhancements will allow you to streamline your marketing efforts and engage with your customers more effectively by automating
      • Tip of the week 02 - The art of 'seeing' your leads

        What's the last page that your lead visited before signing up for your brand? What was the page that first convinced your lead to explore more about you? Where are your leads coming in from? Well, these are some perennial questions today's marketers live upon. And, knowing the answers to these questions is crucial, considering the vitality of leads in every business. In the journey of finding lead opportunities, it's important to understand that every detail about a lead is useful. While the channels
      • Zoho Marketing Automation Update: Topics, Contacts, and List Management

        At Zoho Marketing Automation, our highest priority is making it easier for you to use our product to accomplish your business goals. With that in mind, we are updating three of our pivotal features: Topic, Contacts, and List Management.   These existing
      • Important: Zoho MarketingHub is now Zoho Marketing Automation

        Hello Everyone,   We hope you all are doing well. We'd like to notify you that we have rebranded Zoho MarketingHub to Zoho Marketing Automation. We'll discontinue using the term "MarketingHub" from May 26, 2021. However, there will be no changes in the

        • Recent Topics

        • Attention API Users: Upcoming Support for Renaming System Fields

          Hello all! We are excited to announce an upcoming enhancement in Zoho CRM: support for renaming system-defined fields! Current Behavior Currently, system-defined fields returned by the GET - Fields Metadata API have display_label and field_label properties
        • Billing Management: #3 Billing Unbilled Charges Periodically

          We had a smooth sail into Prorated Billing, a practice that ensures fairness when customers join, upgrade, or downgrade a service at any point during the billing cycle. But what happens when a customer requests additional limits or features during the
        • No bank feeds from First National Bank South Africa since 12 September

          I do not know how Zoho Books expects its customers to run a business like this. I have contacted Zoho books numerous times about this and the say it is solved - on email NO ONE ANSWERS THE SOUTH AFRICAN HELP LINE Come on Zoho Books, you cannot expect
        • Citation Problem

          I had an previous ticket (#116148702) on this subject. The basic problem is this; the "Fetch Details" feature works fine on the first attempt but fails on every subsequent attempt, Back in July after having submitted information electronically and was
        • Open Sans Font in Zoho Books is not Open Sans.

          Font choice in customising PDF Templates is very limited, we cannot upload custom fonts, and to make things worse, the font names are not accurate. I selected Open Sans, and thought the system was bugging, but no, Open Sans is not Open Sans. The real
        • Failing to generate Access and Refresh Token

          Hello.  I have two problems: First one when generating Access and Refresh Token I get this response:  As per the guide here : https://www.zoho.com/books/api/v3/#oauth (using server based application) I'm following all the steps. I have managed to get
        • Zeptomail 136.143.188.150 blocked by SpamCop

          Hi - it looks like this IP is being blocked, resulting in hard bounces unfortunately :( "Reason: uncategorized-bounceMessage: 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [136.143.188.150] blocked using bl.spamcop.net; Blocked - see https://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?136.143.188.150
        • Apply transaction rules to multiple banks

          Is there any way to make transaction rules for one bank apply to other banks? It seems cumbersome to have to re-enter the same date for every account.
        • How to bulk update records with Data Enrichment by Zia

          Hi, I want to bulk update my records with Data Enrichment by Zia. How can I do this?
        • Need Guidance on SPF Flattening for Zoho Mail Configuration

          Hi everyone, I'm hoping to get some advice on optimizing my SPF record for a Zoho Mail setup. I use Zoho Mail along with several other Zoho services, and as a result, my current SPF record has grown to include multiple include mechanisms. My Cloudflare
        • How do I split a large CSV file into smaller parts for import into Zoho?

          Hi everyone, I’m trying to upload a CSV file into Zoho, but the file is very large (millions of rows), and Zoho keeps giving me errors or takes forever to process. I think the file size is too big for a single import. Manually breaking the CSV into smaller
        • Client Script Payload Size Bug

          var createParams = { "data": [{ "Name": "PS for PR 4050082000024714556", "Price_Request": { "id": "4050082000024714556" }, "Account": { "id": "4050082000021345001" }, "Deal": { "id": "4050082000023972001" }, "Owner": { "id": "4050082000007223004" }, "Approval_Status":
        • Sync Issue Between Zoho Notebook Web App on Firefox (PC) and Android App

          Hi Zoho Notebook Community, I'm facing a sync problem with Zoho Notebook. When I use the web version on Mozilla Firefox browser on my PC, I create and save new notes, and I've synced them successfully. However, these new notes aren't showing up in my
        • Messages not displayed from personal LinkedIn profile

          Hello. I connected both our company profile and my personal profile to Zoho social. I do see all messages from our company page but none from my private page. not even the profile is being added on top to to switch between company or private profile,
        • lead convert between modules

          Hello, The workflow we set up to automatically transfer leads registered via Zapier into the Patients module to the Leads module started to malfunction unexpectedly on September 25, 2025, at 11:00 AM. Under normal circumstances, all fields filled in the
        • Flow Task Limits - How to Monitor, Understand Consumption?

          So, I got an email last night saying that I've exhausted 70% of my tasks for this month, and encouraging me to buy more tasks. I started to dig into this, and I cannot for the life of me figure out where to find any useful information for understanding,
        • Cross References Do Not Update Correctly

          I am using cross references to reference Figures and current am just using the label and number, i.e. Figure #. As seen here: When I need to update the field, I use the update field button. But it will change the cross reference to no longer only including
        • Manage control over Microsoft Office 365 integrations with profile-based sync permissions

          Greetings all, Previously, all users in Zoho CRM had access to enable Microsoft integrations (Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks) in their accounts, regardless of their profile type. Users with administrator profiles can now manage profile-based permissions
        • How to Track and Manage Schedule Changes in Zoho Projects

          Keeping projects on track requires meticulous planning. However, unforeseen circumstances can cause changes to schedules, leading to delays. It becomes important to capture the reason for such changes to avoid them in the future. Zoho Projects acknowledges
        • Is there a notification API when a new note is addeding

          Trying to push to Cliq, or email notification when there's a new note added in module. How to implement this?
        • Zoho Sheet - Desktop App or Offline

          Since Zoho Docs is now available as a desktop app and offline, when is a realistic ETA for Sheet to have the same functionality?I am surprised this was not laucned at the same time as Docs.
        • Collaborate Feature doesn't work

          Hello Team. It seems that the collaborate section is broken? I can post something but it all appears in "Discussions". In there is no way how I would mark something as Draft, Approval, post or any of the other filter categories? Also if I draft a post
        • Edit Permission during and after approval?

          When a record is sent for approval Can a user request for edit permission from the approver? We don't want to give edit permissions for all the records under approval Only on a case-by-case basis How can we achieve this?
        • Zoho web and mobile application not workingn

          Both zoho forms web and mobile application aren't working. I have checked my network connections and they are fine.
        • Introducing the revamped What's New page

          Hello everyone! We're happy to announce that Zoho Campaigns' What's New page has undergone a complete revamp. We've bid the old page adieu after a long time and have introduced a new, sleeker-looking page. Without further ado, let's dive into the main
        • Prevent stripping of custom CSS when creating an email template?

          Anyone have a workaround for this? Zoho really needs to hire new designers - templates are terrible. A custom template has been created, but every time we try to use it, it strips out all the CSS from the head.  IE, we'll define the styles right in the <head> (simple example below) and everything gets stripped (initially, it saves fine, but when you browse away and come back to the template, all the custom css is removed). <style type="text/css"> .footerContent a{display:block !important;} </style>
        • Bulk Moving Images into Folders in the Library

          I can't seem to select multiple images to move into a folder in order to clean up my image library and organize it. Instead, I have to move each individual image into the folder and sometimes it takes MULTIPLE tries to get it to go in there. Am I missing
        • Latest updates in Zoho Meeting | Breakout rooms and End to end encryption

          Hello everyone, We’re excited to share a few updates for Zoho Meeting. Here's what we've been working on lately: Introducing Breakout Rooms for enhanced collaboration in your online meetings and End-to-end encryption to ensure that the data is encrypted
        • Systematic SPF alignment issues with Zoho subdomains

          Analysis Period: August 19 - September 1, 2025 PROBLEM SUMMARY Multiple Zoho services are causing systematic SPF authentication failures in DMARC reports from major email providers (Google, Microsoft, Zoho). While emails are successfully delivered due
        • Accidentally deleted a meeting recording -- can it be recovered?

          Hi, I accidentally deleted the recording for a meeting I had today. Is there a way I can recover it?
        • To Zoho customers and partners: how do you use Linked Workspaces?

          Hello, I'm exploring how we can set up and use Linked Workspaces and would like to hear from customers and partners about your use cases and experience with them. I have a Zoho ticket open, because my workspace creation fails. In the meantime, how is
        • How to access email templates using Desk API?

          Trying to send an email to the customer associated to the ticket for an after hours notification and can't find the API endpoint to grab the email template. Found an example stating it should be: "https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/emailtemplates/" + templateID;
        • How to render either thumbnail_url or preview_url or preview_data_url

          I get 401 Unauthorised when using these urls in the <img> tag src attribute. Guide me on how to use them!
        • Update Portal User Name using Deluge?

          Hey everyone. I have a basic intake form that gathers some general information. Our team then has a consultation with the person. If the person wants to move forward, the team pushes a CRM button that adds the user to a creator portal. That process is
        • Zoho Bookings No Sync with Outlook

          Zoho Bookings appointments are showing on my Outlook Calendar but Outlook events are not showing on Zoho Bookings. How do I fix this?
        • Unable to retrieve Contact_Name field contents using Web API in javascript function

          Hello, I've added a field in the Purchase Order form to select and associate a Sales Order (Orden_de_venta, lookup field). I've also created a client script to complete some fields from the Sales Order (and the Quote), when the user specifies the related
        • Updating Woocommerce Variation Products Prices Via Zoho CRM

          I can update product prices with this flow: But I can't update variant products. I got a code from Zoho for this, but I couldn't get it to work. It needs to find the product in the CRM from the SKU field and update the variation with the price there.
        • Emails Disappearing From Inbox

          I am experiencing the unnerving problem of having some of the messages in my inbox just disappear.  It seems to happen to messages that have been in there for longer than a certain amount of time (not sure how long exactly). They are usually messages that I have flagged and know I need to act on, but have not gotten around to doing so yet.  I leave them in my inbox so I will see them and be reminded that I still need to do something about them, but at least twice now I have opened my inbox and found
        • Power of Automation :: Automatic removal of project users once the project status is changed.

          A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate complex tasks and
        • Customizing Form Questions per Recipient Group in Zoho Campaigns/Forms

          Hello everyone, I would like to ask if it’s possible in Zoho Campaigns or Zoho Forms to send out a campaign where the form questions can be customized based on the group of recipients. Use case example: I have prepared 20 questionnaire questions. For
        • Next Page