25 Marketing Automation Platform Success Stories [2024]
Marketing can be time-consuming, but what if you could automate it? Enter the world of a marketing automation platform. It streamlines repetitive tasks like emails, social media posts, and ad campaigns, giving businesses more time to focus on strategy and creativity.
By centralizing all your marketing efforts, this platform allows for better data analysis, targeted outreach, and personalized customer experiences—all without manual intervention. It’s especially appealing for startups and mid-sized businesses that need to maximize efficiency.
Building this platform involves orchestrating software development, user experience design, and securing reliable data integration. While it's a complex journey, the payoff is a scalable solution that can revolutionize how businesses approach their marketing initiatives.
Ready to make businesses feel like marketing geniuses without lifting a finger? This could be your next venture.
In this list, you'll find real-world marketing automation platform success stories and very profitable examples of starting a marketing automation platform that makes money.
1. Flodesk ($25M/year)
Martha Bitar, Rebecca Shostak, and Trong Dong envisioned Flodesk out of a mutual frustration with existing email marketing tools that were either too complex or didn't support beautiful designs. Martha noticed small business owners struggled with current platforms while working at HoneyBook, and Rebecca's template business faced continuous issues as customers found it difficult to implement aesthetic email designs on platforms like MailChimp. Realizing they were addressing an underappreciated gap, they conducted numerous customer interviews to validate this pain point.
During development, they closely engaged with their target audience of creatives and small business owners, refining their product based on direct feedback. This approach allowed them to ensure they were genuinely solving the right problems and building a user-friendly platform. A challenge they faced was balancing development with their full-time jobs and bootstrapped resources, but their early focus on customer interviews and prototype testing helped them persist. Their key lesson was the importance of deeply understanding their audience's needs before writing any code, ensuring a product-market fit from the start.
How much money it makes: $25M/year
How many people on the team: 49
Flodesk, co-founded by Martha Bitar, skyrocketed to over $25 million in annual recurring revenue by solving small businesses' email marketing woes through flat-rate pricing, user-friendly templates, and an effective referral program, reaching 5,000 paying customers within months.
2. Dux-Soup ($4.8M/year)
Will van der Sanden, the Founder and CEO of Dux-Soup, came up with the idea for his business after his wife expressed frustration with manual lead generation for her publishing company. Recognizing the potential in LinkedIn scraping, Will saw a gap in the market for a product that offered more value at a lower cost than existing options. The result was Dux-Soup, a LinkedIn automation tool that now has over 70,000 users and nearly $5 million in revenue.
How much money it makes: $4.8M/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 20
Dux-Soup is a LinkedIn automation tool that helps business owners and sales & marketing professionals generate more leads, increase efficiency, and save time; with over 70,000 users and revenue of nearly $5 million, it offers automated top-of-the-funnel LinkedIn outreach activities, targeted LinkedIn campaigns and multi-touch & personalized LinkedIn drip campaigns for lead generation.
3. Filestage ($3M/year)
Hey, my name is Niklas Dorn and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Filestage. We started the company in 2015 after realizing how messy and complicated the feedback process was for agencies and marketing teams when it comes to content creation. Our software makes it easy for teams to share, comment, and approve any digital content, and today we have over 600 customers and 50,000 users worldwide.
How much money it makes: $3M/year
How much did it cost to start: $200K
How many people on the team: 50
Filestage is a content review and approval software that started in 2015 and now has over 600 customers and 50,000 users worldwide, offering an efficient approval process for digital content such as videos, images, pdf, podcasts, and entire websites.
4. Dashly ($2.4M/year)
Dimitri Ive came up with the idea for Dashly when he realized that there was a need for a platform that could bring all customer conversations from various channels into one place. By merging user data and communication channels, Dashly simplifies how businesses communicate with their loyal customers. Since its launch in 2018, Dashly has grown to a team of 95 experts and generates $200K in monthly recurring revenue.
How much money it makes: $2.4M/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
How many people on the team: 95
Dashly, a conversational marketing software, grew from a team of five to 95 experts and currently has a $200K MRR, providing a platform that simplifies the way businesses communicate with their loyal customers by bringing all conversations from a live chat, emails, socials, and messengers into one place.
5. GreenRope ($1.92M/year)
metrics for our business are our customer satisfaction and retention rates, which remain consistently high. We currently have over 1,000 customers in over 20 countries, ranging from startups to universities and municipalities. Moving forward, we plan to continue evolving and improving our platform to meet the changing needs of businesses and provide even greater value to our customers.
How much money it makes: $1.92M/year
How many people on the team: 15
GreenRope, a self-funded CRM and marketing automation platform with over 1,000 customers in 20 countries, was built organically and focused on creating a positive, customer-centric culture without outside investment, with an all-in-one interface solving challenges in managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations.
6. Growave ($1.32M/year)
Eldar, the founder of Growave, started the business after realizing the limitations of his successful previous venture, ThinkLab. With a desire to expand into a dynamic market, Eldar and his team researched and developed a product for the growing e-commerce industry. Despite facing challenges and delays, Growave eventually launched as a free app and gained traction through forums and the Shopify App Store, steadily growing its customer base and revenue to over 12,000 merchants and $110,000 per month.
How much money it makes: $1.32M/year
How much did it cost to start: $100K
How many people on the team: 70
Growave, an all-in-one marketing tool for Shopify brands, went from struggling to be profitable to earning over $110,000 monthly with over 12,000 merchants using the app worldwide, thanks to an improved marketing and retention strategy implemented after the launch.
7. Rejoin Media ($1.2M/year)
Michael Gardon, the CEO of Rejoin Media, came up with the idea for his business after realizing that he wanted to break out of the 9-5 job and create a more flexible and balanced lifestyle. With capital to acquire sites and expertise in SEO and content marketing, Gardon launched Rejoin as a portfolio of web-based businesses, generating around $100,000 per month in revenue and growing at a rate of 20% per month. Today, he is focused on diversifying his business and building new products and marketing channels.
How much money it makes: $1.2M/year
How much did it cost to start: $50K
How many people on the team: 5
Rejoin Media's CEO, Michael Gardon, shares how he built his business portfolio, which generates $100,000 in monthly revenue, without the use of venture capital, and offers insight into achieving business success through resiliency.
8. User.com ($1.2M/year)
User.com was initially developed as a side project of the team's open-source platform, CivilHub.org. Recognizing the need for better customer engagement, Greg Warzecha created CivChat, which eventually evolved into UserEngage. After positive feedback and interest from beta users, UserEngage was transformed into a SaaS project in 2016. With international releases, an API, and various integrations, User.com gained momentum, leading to a successful international launch on Product Hunt, additional sales, and further growth opportunities.
How much money it makes: $1.2M/year
How many people on the team: 40
User.com is a full-stack marketing platform with customers in over 60 countries that reached close to $1m ARR last year, with plans to double it this year, and has a low monthly churn rate of below 5%.
9. Fomo ($1.08M/year)
Ryan Kulp, a marketer and self-taught developer, acquired a social proof tool called Notify in 2016 and rebranded it as Fomo. Through strategic product-led growth, integrations, and a focus on social proof, Fomo scaled its business by 600% and achieved over $1 million in annual revenue.
How much money it makes: $1.08M/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 5
Fomo, a social proof tool for eCommerce stores, scaled its original business by 600% and now generates >$1m in annual revenue through product-led growth via integrations and an extensive case study library.
10. StayFi ($960K/year)
Arthur Colker, the Founder and CEO of StayFi, came up with the idea for his WiFi marketing and management company after working as a marketing consultant for a short-term rental operator. He realized that there was a need for a solution that could collect marketing data from guests in rental properties, as the booking platforms didn't share this data. He built an MVP version of the product for his client and then expanded it to other operators in the industry.
How much money it makes: $960K/year
How much did it cost to start: $150K
How many people on the team: 6
StayFi CEO Arthur Colker founded a WiFi marketing and management company that operates in almost 10,000 short-term rental properties from 600+ companies across 10 countries, with a focus on helping customers to introduce their brand and market to guests to book directly.
11. Postoplan.app ($840K/year)
Alex Bozhin, founder & CEO of Postoplan, came up with the idea for his automated marketing platform for social media and messengers after working with various social media instruments in his marketing agency and feeling that something was missing. He saw an opportunity to revolutionize the market and create his own instrument for working with social media. After months of research and interviews with potential clients, he launched Postoplan and attracted over 1,000 users, including paying ones, through a Product Hunt launch.
How much money it makes: $840K/year
How much did it cost to start: $11K
How many people on the team: 27
Postoplan, an automated marketing platform for social media and messengers, has reached over $1M in revenues and boasts 112,000 users in 147 countries with an average annual revenue growth of +25% MoM, making it among Estonia's Top 5 most promising startups in 2020, a finalist for the Global Business Owners Startup Awards in 2021, and placing 2nd at Seedstars Tallinn in 2020, all while being the only marketing platform that enables automated posting to WhatsApp.
12. Digitail - Wander Media LLC ($600K/year)
Forrest Webber transitioned from real estate to digital assets after a big payoff, investing 100% into websites. The drive to create a business he could run from anywhere blossomed during his daughter's 100-day NICU stay, leading to $50k monthly revenue from 20 niche sites within five years.
How much money it makes: $600K/year
How much did it cost to start: $294K
How many people on the team: 50
Forrest Webber's portfolio of 20 niche content websites generates $25-50k in revenue per month, with a team of 30+ contractors and employees, and he has built an agency, Digitail.co, which offers content, backlinks, and SEO research, making his team available to those interested in growing their online presence.
13. eWebinar ($600K/year)
Melissa Kwan, co-founder and CEO of eWebinar, came up with the idea for the business after experiencing the pain of having to run the same webinar over and over again for her previous enterprise SaaS startup. Recognizing the need for a scalable webinar automation solution, Melissa decided to create eWebinar, a platform that turns any video into an interactive webinar that can be set on a recurring schedule or made available on demand. With customers ranging from solopreneurs to publicly traded companies, eWebinar has achieved an MRR of around $50k and continues to focus on delivering the best product and customer experience.
How much money it makes: $600K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500K
How many people on the team: 0
Melissa Kwan, CEO of eWebinar, discusses how she identified the pain point of running the same webinar over and over again, leading her to build an automated webinar solution, with a current MRR of $50k and a focus on word-of-mouth marketing.
14. SheerSEO ($360K/year)
Ayal Aldema, the founder of SheerSEO, saw a gap in the market for online SEO tools when he couldn't find any reliable options and all he found were scammy desktop applications. With 10 years of software engineering experience and a previous successful website, he launched SheerSEO for free and relied on SEO skills to gain customers. Today, the business generates $30,000/month by selling its SaaS service to webmasters and SEO professionals.
How much money it makes: $360K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 1
Founder Ayal Aldema built SheerSEO, an online SEO software, to fill a gap in the SEO market, offering a free service to help clients optimize their sites, which now makes $30,000/month by selling SaaS service to both webmasters and SEO professionals.
15. CLOSEM ($360K/year)
Richard Miles, co-founder of CLOSEM, came up with the idea for the business after realizing the missed opportunities for follow-up in his own experiences with service providers. He reached out to his friend and co-founder, Laura Betterly, who loved the idea and saw the potential. Together, they created CLOSEM, a software tool that helps entrepreneurs and small business owners automate the process of following up with leads and increasing sales.
How much money it makes: $360K/year
How many people on the team: 1
CLOSEM is an AI-powered software tool that helps entrepreneurs and small business owners automate the time-consuming work of following up with leads, prospects, and customers, and increasing sales, grossing around $200,000 this year and confidently targeting $12MM next year.
16. Instoo ($360K/year)
Rohan Arun, the Founder of Instoo, came up with the idea for his social automation service after writing a viral article in 2017 about building Instagram bot farms. The article gained a lot of traction and ranked #1 on Google, giving him insight into the automation market. Inspired by this, he launched Instoo to automate business growth on social platforms, which now has thousands of global active users and generates an average monthly revenue of $30,000.
How much money it makes: $360K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 3
Instoo Founder Rohan Arun raised $3.9 million through his previous startups before launching Instoo, which now has thousands of global active users and generates $30,000 in average monthly revenue through its social automation service.
17. Groundhogg ($300K/year)
Adrian Tobey realized there was a significant gap in the WordPress ecosystem for an integrated CRM and marketing automation tool while working at his parents' digital marketing agency. He frequently encountered frustrations with existing solutions, particularly Infusionsoft, which had clunky and outdated web forms. This pain point inspired him to initially create a simple solution for better forms, which evolved into a broader vision.
To validate his idea, Adrian engaged with the WordPress community and his network of agency clients, identifying recurring issues and gauging interest in a comprehensive solution. He built the initial version of Groundhogg himself and released it to gather user feedback. The positive response and constructive criticism helped him refine the product, making it more robust and user-friendly.
Challenges like customer skepticism and the complexity of educating users about the new self-hosted CRM model were significant. However, Adrian relied on organic growth strategies like podcast appearances and engaging in industry-specific groups, which also offered crucial user feedback. The key lesson was the importance of directly addressing identified customer needs and continuously iterating based on real-user experiences.
How much money it makes: $300K/year
18. Ascend Marketing, Inc ($180K/year)
Jim Ackerman, the founder of Ascend Marketing, came up with the idea for his business after realizing that many small businesses struggled with marketing and advertising. He developed a highly prescriptive coaching program that included weekly one-on-one meetings, specific assignments, and personalized feedback and accountability. The program has been successful, with over 600 businesses completing it and only one refund requested.
How much money it makes: $180K/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 2
Ascend Marketing founder Jim Ackerman developed a six-month 1-on-1 coaching programme to help small business owners improve their marketing, advertising, and sales systems, resulting in over 600 businesses enrolled with a unique 200% ROI guarantee and a $15k monthly profit selling 2 dozen programs yearly, and now the company provides a business opportunity for marketing professionals seeking to become marketing coaches.
19. Ignore No More ($156K/year)
Sophia O’Neal’s relentless desire to avoid mundane employment led her to launch Ignore No More, a SaaS-focused marketing agency. Inspired by Warby Parker's innovative branding, Sophia built a $21K/month business through savvy positioning and strategic no-code solutions, employing a globally diverse team.
How much money it makes: $156K/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 2
Case study about how Sophia O'Neal built Ignore No More, a profitable marketing agency for SaaS companies, working with 2-5 clients/mo and bringing in $13K-$21K/month, with a team of 10 employees speaking 12+ languages, showing how she went from freelancing to agency success despite financial struggles and setbacks.
20. SocialBu ($144K/year)
Usama, the CEO and co-founder of SocialBu, came up with the idea for his social media management platform while freelancing as a developer and managing social media accounts. He saw a need for a more powerful and affordable solution, so he built a simple tool that gained traction and eventually led him to create SocialBu. Since its launch, the bootstrapped company has made $300K in revenue and has plans for future improvements and features.
How much money it makes: $144K/year
How much did it cost to start: $2K
How many people on the team: 6
Social media management platform SocialBu is 100% bootstrapped and has made about $300K since its launch, and CEO Usama shares his process of building a social media management tool that solved a real problem and attracted users through online communities and organic traffic.
21. Smart Yeti Creative Agency ($96K/year)
Jeremy Kanne, founder of Smart Yeti, came up with the idea for his creative agency after realizing that technical companies needed help with messaging and marketing. With his background in civil engineering and a creative streak, Jeremy decided to combine his skills and provide affordable, high-quality services to these companies. The focus on technical clients and the introduction of retainer engagements have helped Smart Yeti attract and retain customers, leading to steady revenue growth of $1-2k per month.
How much money it makes: $96K/year
How many people on the team: 1
Smart Yeti is a successful creative agency offering fractional access to marketing services to highly technical companies and has seen YoY growth of 40%, with an average lifetime value of its customer of $50k in revenue.
22. Mindbox ($84K/year)
their revenue. Diversify your client base and focus on providing value to your customers. Additionally, prioritize feedback from clients and use it to improve and iterate on your product.
How much money it makes: $84K/year
How many people on the team: 6
Mindbox is a cloud-based marketing automation platform that unites a CDP, a loyalty program, omnichannel communications, and more, working with over 700 clients in Eastern Europe including L’Oréal, Panasonic, Burger King, and JBL and generating $7K/MO in the US with a 50% YoY growth where founder Ivan Borovikov shares his insights on starting and growing a business.
23. CPV Lab Pro ($84K/year)
Julia Draghici joined CPV Lab after it was already started by her husband and another partner. The idea for the performance marketing tracking platform came from the need to simplify their own work as affiliate marketers. They realized that there was a demand for such a tool and decided to develop it further, eventually growing the business to $50K in revenue within the first year.
How much money it makes: $84K/year
How much did it cost to start: $40K
How many people on the team: 4
CPV Lab is a performance marketing tracking platform for affiliate marketers that grew to $50k in revenue in the first year, has over 1500 users and 10% month-to-month growth through organic traffic, and offers tools to track and optimize multi-channel marketing campaigns for better performance.
24. Biteplay ($72K/year)
Henrique Chappuis, co-founder of Biteplay, came up with the idea for his business after realizing the potential of YouTube ads in generating revenue. He had previously experienced success with YT ads and saw the opportunity to automate the process and target relevant video placements. Through beta testing and educational courses, Biteplay gained traction and has since been featured as a top product on Product Hunt.
How much money it makes: $72K/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 0
Biteplay is a one-year-old SaaS that allows brands to place ads in relevant YouTube video content and create collaborations with influencers, generating up to $10k each month and growing revenue by 30% per month.
25. backl.io ($62.4K/year)
Philipp, a product manager in Switzerland, created SEO Kickstarter as he struggled to get traffic for his shared flat site without using ads. Frustrated by the manual effort of backlink outreach, he automated the process and launched a guide, now boasting $5K MRR.
How much money it makes: $62.4K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
How many people on the team: 0
A Product Manager builds a successful side business that generates $5K MRR by creating an SEO guide for startups, turning initial failures into a profitable venture with a Twitter launch strategy that brings in 87 sales and $3400 revenue within a day.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
