With the Thanksgiving holiday less than a week away, I thought it would make sense to do a post discussing some of the tools I use that really make my job easier. Without these tools, it would take more resources, time, and energy to accomplish routine daily tasks.
- Marketing Automation Software– Whether you use HubSpot (like us), Optify, Eloqua, Marketo, or any of the other automation tools that are available, every marketer can agree that these make it much easier for us to do our job. From list development to workflows to web page analytics, these tools are easy to use and navigate while providing tremendous value for the organization.
- Hootsuite– Currently I am managing nine different twitter accounts for our organization. Could you imagine having to remember all those usernames and passwords and needing to log in and out of each every day? Hootsuite gives me the visibility I need to monitor not only these accounts, but also our prospects, clients, and keywords. I love the hootlet app for bulk scheduling and can honestly say that using Hootsuite saves me many hours during the week.
- Email Marketing Software– Again, there are many to choose from, but what I like about these are the programs we are able to run and the ability to synchronize with our CRM. I’ll schedule an email to go out on Tuesday, a follow up email for Friday going to anyone who didn’t open the first email, and a third email for the following Tuesday that goes to anyone who opened the first two. The automated process has really given marketers the advantage and ability to accomplish more with less time.
- Google Analytics-Even though we get some insight into web traffic with our Marketing Software, Google Analytics takes it to the next level. I have more visibility into where the traffic is coming from, how long they are staying on our site and what the traffic is clicking on or viewing while engaged on our site. This data is invaluable when trying to decipher the quality traffic from those who are just window shopping. Warning: it is very easy to get lost in the data when analyzing your website, so I recommend only allocating a couple hours per week for this, or you’ll spend too much time with too little return.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM’s) – Now this tool can fall under sales or marketing, but the bottom line is most organizations couldn’t function without having a CRM in place. There is so much data being stored and so many interactions occurring with your prospects that it seems almost impossible to function efficiently without a CRM. We have integrated our email and marketing software with our CRM (Salesforce) which again makes our lives so much easier. I can view the data of a prospect from our automation software or login to our CRM and see how many marketing touches a prospect has received. Having all of these integrated has made my life much easier and my work life much more productive.
I’m sure there are other tools available that make a marketer’s life much easier, but these five really stood out to me. What are some of the tools you couldn’t live without?
