Author: Franz Malten Buemann

The more you know about your buyer personas, leads, and customers, the easier it is to effectively target them. This entails identifying the channels and platforms in which they spend their time and understanding their needs and challenges.
It also means knowing how your leads find your business — how and by which method they come across your company. This is known as a lead source.

Lead Source
In this blog post, we’ll review the definition of a lead source, why lead sources are so important, common types, and best practices for managing and tracking them.

Why do lead sources matter?
By understanding and identifying lead sources, you’re able to gain context around why and how your audience members find you. As a result, you can improve the customer experience and buyer’s journey with targeted content, communications, interactions, and more.
This allows you to determine which lead sources are most valuable to your business so you can hone in on them as well as measure your success over time in attracting and converting leads.
Additionally, knowing which lead sources bring in the most qualified leads helps you focus your resources where they matter most and where you’ll get the greatest ROI.
Identifying and understanding your lead sources is also a major part of lead management, the process in which you manage — or nurture — your leads until they decide to convert.
These are all details you need to improve the buyer’s journey, effectively target your unique audience, and shorten the sales cycle.
Types of Lead Sources
There are several types of lead sources. Here are some common examples.

Email marketing (email campaigns)
Organic search (lead sources from the search engine results page/ SERP)
Paid ads (PPC, display ads)
Social media
Direct mail
Referrals or word-of-mouth
Gated/ premium content offers
Blog articles
Events (in-person or virtual)

Backlinks (link from a page on one website to another — if another website links to your website, you have a backlink from them)
Traditional advertising (billboards, TV, radio)

Next, let’s talk about a handful of best practices when it comes to your lead sources. You should keep these in mind while identifying, analyzing, and improving your lead sources.
1. Identify and track your lead sources.
If you’re looking to identify, track, and measure your lead sources, you’ll likely use a lead tracking tool. These tools are often part of your CRM, marketing software, or sales software.
Lead Source Tools
Here are some examples of powerful tools that can help you with lead source tracking.
1. HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM platform for scaling businesses with powerful marketing, sales, service, and ops software and tools. There’s more than one way to use HubSpot to collect, track, manage, and measure leads and lead sources.
For instance, with HubSpot CRM Lead Management and Tracking Software, all contact records for your leads are logged automatically. That includes all of your interactions and communications with those leads as well as all related sales activity — this provides insight into how, where, and when interactions with leads happened.
Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Lead Management and Tracking Software to automate and view contact records, view lead and contact communication history, and manage your leads all from a centralized location.
With HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, your Lead Collection and Tracking Software focuses more on leads and lead management within the marketing org so leads and lead data are readily available for the sales team.
This tool makes it easy to keep an eye on your lead’s email opens, content downloads, page visits, social media interactions, and more so you can track lead source data with ease. It also helps you organize all of your lead and contact information and interactions in a single database. You can segment your leads and score them based on qualification.
Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Lead Collection and Tracking Software to organize contact data and interactions, segment leads, and score those leads all from a single and integrated database.
2. MoData
MoData is a sales analytics and revenue acceleration tool with pipeline reporting features that come with lead source tracking capabilities.
Pair this tool with your HubSpot CRM (using the integration) to compare your lead sources as well as your sales reps so your data and team members are aligned and on a central source of truth. View, send, and share out-of-the-box reports, as well as customize pipeline dashboards with ease.
3. CallRail
CallRail is a call tracking and marketing analytics platform that offers reporting for lead attribution by source. This feature uses multi-touch attribution to provide you with reports for every lead source and interaction type that your team cares about in CallRail, throughout every stage of the buyer’s journey.
View all of the lead sources you’re tracking in the tool — your top five lead sources are displayed in a graph with more details about your other sources below. You can view raw leads versus qualified leads as well as filter by company, time frame, and report model.
2. Determine which sources bring in the most qualified leads.
After identifying your lead sources, determine which of those sources bring in the most qualified leads for your business.
Again, a tool like HubSpot can help with this — it assists with tracking your leads and the sources by which they come from and then segmenting those leads based on an assigned lead score (which tells you how qualified they are).
In fact, HubSpot automatically scores your leads for you based on the criteria that you choose (based on behavior or characteristic). This is not only helpful for your marketing team but it also helps sales reps prioritize their lead follow-up.
3. Then determine which of those sources are converting the most leads into customers.
Once you’ve determined which sources bring in the most qualified leads, identify the source that converts the greatest number of leads into customers.
In other words, which lead source do you see the most customers coming from? Maybe it’s the source that you see the most qualified leads coming from, but maybe not. So, take some time to determine which lead sources you see the greatest number of new customers coming from.
4. Experiment with different channels to bring in more qualified leads.
Just because you know which channels and sources are currently bringing in the greatest number of qualified leads, and where the most conversions are currently coming from, doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax. As your business grows, your audience grows, too — and that evolving audience may not spend time exactly where your initial audience did.
Experiment with different channels to see how many qualified leads and conversions you can bring in. This experimentation may be how you surface your most valuable lead source. 
5. Measure and analyze the success of your lead sources.
Measure the success of your lead sources over time. This is something you’re already going to be doing throughout the previous steps (e.g. scoring leads, identifying the most effective lead sources, etc.) but it’s also important to spend time here. In doing so, you’ll be able to ensure you’re focusing your resources in the right places.
The data obtained from your lead source analysis will also help you more effectively target, reach, resonate with, and convert your audience on the channels they like to use and via the touchpoints they like to interact with most. Remember, this part of the lead source management process should be ongoing.
Tap Into Your Lead Sources to Improve the Buyer’s Journey
Begin identifying your lead sources to improve upon the buyer’s journey with highly-tailored content, interactions, and communications, all via the channels and sources your audience prefers. Remember, the more you know about your audience, leads, and customers, the more effectively you can target and reach them.

Savvy marketers know it’s rare to reel in customers at the first encounter with a brand. Winning people over takes time, thoughtful touchpoints, and a whole lot of trust. Fortunately, there’s a strategy that includes all of these and more. It’s called lifecycle marketing, and it’s how companies attract and retain customers beyond that impulse purchase.
All businesses create their own unique lifecycle marketing strategy, but the purpose is the same: to engage customers, increase revenue, and grow a brand.
Different from the buyer’s journey or conversion funnel, lifecycle marketing considers a customer long after they make a purchase. The focus is to bring in buyers and turn them into loyal brand advocates.
But what does that look like for your company? In this guide, we’ll cover:

What makes lifecycle marketing so effective
Marketing strategies to attract customers and keep them coming back
Considerations for engaging campaigns
How to use email for every lifecycle stage

Let’s jump in.
A lifecycle can be short or long. Companies like Nespresso or Whole Foods Market have shorter cycles and need to attract people back almost immediately after they purchase.
But companies with lifecycles like Mercedes or Avocado Mattress play the long game of customer retention and advocacy to bring in more business. The ultimate goal is to always get customers and keep them coming back.
No matter the cycle length, there are various stages that make up any lifecycle marketing plan. Understanding these will help you target your audience’s specific needs at each stage, whether they’re coming in as a lead, first-time buyer, repeat customer, or lapsed customer. Take a look at the main lifecycle stages below.
1. Awareness
This is when potential customers first learn about your company. As the top of your conversion funnel, it’s your chance to capture people’s attention and reel them further into your funnel.
2. Engagement
People begin interacting with your brand in the engagement cycle. They’re interested and want to learn about your offerings, whether by subscribing to your email list, following you on social media, or scrolling your website.
3. Evaluation
The evaluation stage is all about decisions. This is the time to make it easy for people to choose your brand by providing them with the right information to compare features, pricing, and value.
4. Purchase
Congratulations! Anyone who makes it through this stage is a customer. Your job here isn’t to promote your brand but to make a purchase as seamless as possible, so it’s simple for people to click “Buy.”
5. Support
It’s important to make sure you meet customers’ needs post-purchase, since people tend to drop off after the first buy. That’s why the support stage is about following up to make sure people are satisfied and maximize the value of their purchase.
6. Loyalty
Customers reach this stage when they’re so happy, they let everyone know about your brand. You want to nurture that advocacy to retain their business and help bring in new buyers.
While the lifecycle stages seem like a linear buyer journey, it’s important to remember that this is a cycle that should continue repeating itself. You can’t simply forget about a customer once they’ve made a purchase. If you put effort into developing a thoughtful plan, it can be much easier to meet and exceed your marketing, sales, and company goals.
Lifecycle Marketing Strategy
Strategy is the core of successful lifecycle marketing. Without it, you will likely bring in the wrong leads and will waste your budget on people who won’t turn into brand advocates. With it, you can:

Grow your customer base by offering a better buying experience.

Improve sales by turning one-time buyers into repeat customers.
Turn buyers into brand advocates who rave about your company.
Improve your marketing ROI and lifetime customer value.

The best strategies account for how people interact with your brand at specific stages within the lifecycle. Here’s an example of how to use different marketing channels throughout the entire cycle.
Your company may do well with a simple strategy, or you may need to include more touchpoints and channels within each stage. For instance, a small art gallery may use social media, email, a website, and events to bring in artists and potential buyers.
But a major art museum like The Metropolitan Museum of Art will need a more complex marketing strategy to reach its thousands of visitors, attract donors, sell and retain memberships, draw in artists and exhibits, sell retail products, and host events.
No matter the size, all lifecycle marketing strategies are fueled by content. And with 70% of marketers actively investing in content marketing, you can miss out on potential buyers (and profit) if you don’t create relevant content for every stage.
Instead of blindly marketing to the masses, you must be strategic and tie your sales directly to your promotion efforts. Let’s walk through the strategies you can use at each stage.
1. Awareness
You want to attract as many people within your target audience as possible, so it’s time to create highly shareable, highly visible content. Awareness strategies include:

Create targeted audiences for each buyer persona, so you know the people you bring in fit your buyer profile.
Research and use keywords that can help people discover your brand when searching online.
Write blog posts that answer key questions your audience may have about common problems.
Share your offerings in an eye-catching paid or organic social ad.
Put up a billboard or banner ad in the places your audience visits.
Create a catchy ad on the podcasts you know potential buyers listen to.
Collaborate with guests or influencers your audience follows to cross-promote content.

It’s important to bring people in, but remember not to focus all of your efforts on acquiring leads. Although 67% of companies use lead generation as the sole metric to determine content success, returning customers spend 67% more than new buyers on average.
2. Engagement
Your strategy for the engagement stage is to share information about your offerings so people can see why your brand is the best. Bring people to your website or channels, and keep them there.
These prospects are still relatively high in the sales funnel, so you have to answer their questions with succinct content that’s easy to understand. Some engagement strategies include:

Design engaging landing pages that are simple to navigate.
Video demos to showcase the features of your product or service.
Blog posts, guides, or templates that provide solutions to common customer problems.
Whitepapers covering insightful research or industry trends.
Case studies that highlight the positives of doing business with your brand.
Email campaigns to address sticking points before they happen.

Engaging with customers is increasingly about personalization and instant gratification. In fact, 83% of customers who contact a company expect immediate engagement.
That means you need to have your channels dialed in and ready to respond, likely with help from automation technology. If you do, prospects will funnel into the next lifestyle stage.
Save time with HubSpot’s Marketing Automation Software
3. Conversion
You’ve impressed a potential buyer, and the time has come to transition them from a prospect into a customer. To do that, make it as simple as possible for them to convert (aka, buy). Think about what people would need to see when comparing your brand to a competitor. Here are strategies for making sure they’re confident in their decision.

Offer clear pricing and feature information on your site, so they can compare options.
Share customer testimonials to build trust in the post-purchase experience.
Create a demo or free trial to increase confidence in the full investment.
Send an email that answers questions senior leaders may have to make pitching easier.
Give a peek at your customer service experience for post-purchase support.

Just like the engagement stage, personalization is the key to conversion. Research shows that online retailers improve conversion rates by about 8% when personalizing the customer experience. So try to make a potential customer feel unique, instead of being another number that gets you closer to your revenue goals.
4. Retention
Unfortunately, not enough marketing dollars are spent on retaining customers. Lead generation may seem sexier, but 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies who offer excellent customer service. If you can create a good experience and offer exceptional service right after people make a purchase, you can engage buyers and increase profits.

Set up easy-to-use support options like live chat, messaging, FAQ pages, or troubleshooting forums. For simple service issues, 65% of customers prefer to help themselves.
Onboarding materials that make set up and use simple and stress-free.
Offer a discount code or perk for a future purchase.
Announce a new product or offering with an engaging campaign — you can even offer exclusive first access to existing customers.
Targeted ads with additional offerings that complement a first purchase (i.e., a sleeping bag and mat for someone who buys a tent).
Emails to inform customers of updates or ways to improve their current purchase.

Don’t leave your customers to fend for themselves in this stage. Honing your retention marketing strategies means boosting your revenue and improving your overall customer experience.
5. Loyalty
The final stage in lifecycle marketing is all about loyalty. When customers become advocates, they can’t stop talking about your brand to anyone who will listen. They recognize your logo and will choose it over others without a second thought. They drive leads and sales and are repeat buyers. Strategies to cultivate this type of loyalty include:

Exclusive in-app features or loyalty club membership.
Incentives for sharing testimonials (i.e., discount codes or free products).
Events or webinars with team members or industry experts.
Referral programs for people who bring in new customers.
Social media features to raise brand awareness for both companies.
Reactivation campaigns for lapsed customers.

Customers who trust a brand are 95% more likely to remain loyal to it, so your job is to maintain peoples’ expectations and show them why their feedback is valued. A strong strategy here encourages customers to repeat the cycle and bring new prospects into the awareness stage.
Lifecycle Marketing Campaigns
Designing campaigns for each lifecycle stage may seem overwhelming. But a campaign doesn’t have to be complex to be effective.
Start by defining the purpose of your campaign. You can aim to attract new customers, retain current customers, build loyalty, engage lapsed customers, or increase customer lifetime value.
With a clear goal, you’ll have an easier time focusing on one particular stage or looking across the entire cycle to see how you can improve efforts at each stage.
Check out how REI, an outdoor retail company, uses lifecycle marketing to engage people at different stages on a variety of channels.
1. Awareness Campaign
When I searched “best lightweight camping tents” on Google, REI popped up on the first page of results. The blog post is part of their “Expert Advice” column, which invites people to learn more about their product features, testing processes, and ratings. Of course, you can purchase each featured tent from REI in a few clicks.
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2. Engagement Campaign
Say I’ve read a few blog posts from REI and am interested in the gear they sell. A website pop-up invites me to sign up for their email list, which I can’t resist. The subject line of one email I receive is “We see backpacking trips in your future.”
They know what I’m interested in and offer an email full of tips for planning a trip, including a gear list I’ll need before I go. Down the funnel I go.
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3. Conversion Campaign
I scour the gear list to see what I need for my trip and discover I don’t have a way to make my essential morning coffee. So I read a review post and decide to buy a lightweight AeroPress. A single click takes me to the product page, and I add the coffeemaker to my cart.
After signing in to my account, I’m taken to a checkout page that has my member ID, billing, and shipping information saved. It takes seconds to review and hit “Submit order.”
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4. Retention Campaign
My caffeine kick is taken care of, and I receive a confirmation email receipt for my purchase. It summarizes the order, outlines the return policy, and shares information about how I can donate used gear I may have laying around.
I’m a happy customer. A few days later, I get an email about the new gear line REI designed just for co-op members. It’s one-of-a-kind and available in limited quantities. As a backpack hoarder, I’m tempted.
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5. Loyalty Campaign
As an REI Co-op member for seven years, I’m on the path to being a lifelong customer. It’s one of my first stops when I’m looking to buy anything for my outdoor adventures. And I’ve even encouraged some friends to become members.
REI knows what matters to me and encourages me to participate in campaigns to protect wild areas, so they invite me to support the REPLANT Act in an email campaign.
By tapping into my values, I’m connected to the brand. And emotionally-connected customers spend about $699 per year with a company compared to regular customers who spend about $275.
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Lifecycle Email Marketing
The examples above highlight a handful of ways to use lifecycle email marketing to engage customers. But sloppily sending emails isn’t enough. They need to come at just the right time, so they don’t get buried in someone’s inbox. And they must be enticing enough to open. The average email clickthrough rate (CTR) is 18%, which means a lot of messages go unopened and ignored.
The CTR varies by industry, so take a look at this breakdown to get an idea of your benchmark.
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Don’t be disappointed if your rates are low at first. There are ways to spice up your campaigns and get people interested enough to click. You can:

A/B test your subject lines for length, messaging, and context.
Optimize the preheader text so people get a good preview.
Test the cadence, day, and time of day (i.e., Monday evening versus Tuesday morning).
Try personalizing the email with the recipient’s name.
Send emails from a person at your company instead of the company name.
Segment your email campaigns based on your audience segments (i.e., newsletter emails vs product emails).
Consider your brand voice and tone for cohesive messaging.
Make sure you have a clear CTA.
Add eye-catching design, along with hero images, videos, or graphics.

Before you test emails, you need to design a campaign that anticipates the various touchpoints your customers require to move from the awareness stage to the loyalty stage. Let’s take a look at how companies use email for lifecycle marketing campaigns.
1. Hilton Honors
Welcome emails are expected when you sign up for a company’s email list or loyalty program. I’m actually nervous my request didn’t go through if I don’t receive a Welcome email.
Here, Hilton sends a straightforward email for joining Hilton Honors and shares tips for making the most of membership. It’s easy to scan and offers informative content to learn more about the company or the program.
Lifecycle Stage: Awareness
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2. Outside Magazine
After signing up for Outside Magazine’s daily newsletter, I can look through the email to read recent stories that pique my interest. The publication shares articles and gear promotions through embedded links, making it simple to click on their site and read the full piece.
Informational emails help bring people to your site, where they’ll likely keep scrolling long past the initial article.
Lifecycle Stage: Engagement
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3. Backcountry
Let’s keep going on this outdoor theme with a promotional email from Backcountry. Touting the subject line “Final Hours: 20% Off One Full-Price Item,” it’s meant to grab people’s attention and get them to make an immediate purchase.
You can use this type of email for engaged customers who have already had multiple touch points with your brand. Maybe they’ve subscribed to your newsletter or have items sitting in their cart.
Lifecycle Stage: Convert
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4. Sierra Club
To remind donors about Earth Day and the various ways to give back, the Sierra Club sent this re-engagement email. It shares ideas to celebrate the holiday, explains how to raise money for the grassroots organization, and invites donors to free webinars from climate activists.
The on-brand combination of education and activism is a good way to remind supporters of their shared values and encourage donations.
Lifecycle Stage: Retention
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5. Thirdlove
We touched on personalization more than once in this post, but there are so many perks of custom emails. Take this example from Thirdlove.
Their marketing team not only sends emails from a variety of accounts, like individual team member names, but they also personalize emails by sending a collection based on buying habits. It’s intriguing to see your name this way, and clicking makes you feel special — even if hundreds of other people receive the same product options.
Lifecycle Stage: Loyalty
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Incorporate Lifecycle Marketing Into Your Strategy
You know the benefits, stages, and ways to incorporate lifecycle marketing into your company’s strategy. All that’s left is to start mapping the cycle for your customer segments and managing the people you bring in.
Once you’ve done the hard work, you can save time with marketing automation software that simplifies tasks like setting up email campaigns, tracking analytics, planning your SEO strategy, and more.
If you want to learn more about managing customers once they’re in the cycle, you can brush up on customer lifecycle management or see how to work with lifecycles in HubSpot.

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One of the major lessons marketers have learned over the last year is that text-heavy content isn’t enough to generate interest. Visual content is the way forward. There is so much more content available online now. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes—what would they prioritize when there are so many choices? The answer is visual…
The post How to Use Visual Content to Boost Your Customer Base appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

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92% of U.S. workers feel that they could collaborate better with their colleagues.
Managing multiple projects at once, delegating tasks, and collaborating across teams is difficult on a good day — but can become downright impossible when unforeseen obstacles get in the way. The data proves that project management is no walk in the park for most of us.
When that impacts the business, it becomes an even bigger problem. Miscommunication and inefficiencies in your project management process can lead to confusing and stressful experiences for your employees. It can hinder your company’s ability to satisfy your clients’ needs or hit end-of-year goals.
Fortunately, there are plenty of free project management apps to keep your team on track without breaking the bank.

In a free project management tool, you’ll typically be able to create various projects, come-up with to-do lists, assign tasks to team members, and track a project’s progress until completion. Paid project management tools offer more storage, more projects, and more seats for the team. But for small teams, a free project management tool will do the trick.
The low buy-in makes it a natural choice. With free project management software, your team can collaborate much better, reducing the risk of miscommunications and keeping everyone up to speed on team-wide projects. It’s also helpful for individual team members. They can use it to boost their productivity and ensure they’re on track.
To streamline your process and ensure everyone on your team is on the same page, take a look at these exceptional free project management tools.

1. HubSpot Project Management Software

HubSpot’s project management tool includes task creation, task automation, and pre-made to-do lists. It’s specifically designed for marketing teams and integrates seamlessly with Marketing Hub. With this tool, you can keep track of tasks alongside your marketing projects — so that both are integrated and not managed on different tools.
Features include:

Task management right alongside your marketing workflows
File attachment capabilities to keep track of important assets
Pre-made to-do lists to immediately launch projects
Custom templates for recurring projects
Landing pages, emails, and workflows available in the same tool

Pricing: Free with HubSpot Marketing Hub
2. Project.co

Project.co is a client-facing project management system that connects your team with your clients’ teams in one place. Each piece of work you do can be set up as its own project, with its own discussion feed, notes, tasks, team, and payments. You can also record time spent on each project.
A variety of different task and project views are available, including calendar, scheduler, and Kanban view — to give you an overview of the work that’s happening within your team.
Features include:

Ability to quickly add/invite both internal and external users
Discussion feed for each project — with email alerts (and the ability to reply by email without logging in)
Variety of task views — which can be filtered — giving your whole team, each department, and even individual users their daily/weekly task lists
Reporting tools that measure your most and least profitable or efficient projects
Ability to integrate payment solutions and quickly, securely take card payments through the system

Pricing:
Free for 14 days; $10/user/month
3. Toggl Plan

Toggl Plan is an effective project management tool to automate your task delegation process and visualize which project tasks have been completed, and which haven’t. If your team often collaborates with other departments on projects, this might be a useful tool for you.
Features include:

Gantt-chart visualization to track important deadlines and projects
Integrations with Slack, Github, Evernote, and others
Team collaboration option through shared calendars and task notes

Pricing: Free for 14 days; $8/user/month (Team); $13.35/user/month (Business)
4. ClickUp

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ClickUp provides a few impressive features to customize the all-in-one project management tool to suit your team members, including the option for each user to choose one of three different ways to view their projects and tasks depending on individual preference. If your marketing team overlaps with sales, design, or development, this is an effective solution, as it provides features for all of those four teams.
Features include:

The ability to organize your projects based on priority, and assign tasks to groups
The option to set goals to remind teams what they’re aiming to accomplish
Google Calendar two-way sync
An easy way to filter, search, sort, and customize options for managing specific tasks
Activity stream with mentions capability
Image mockups
57 integrated apps

Pricing: Free; $5/user/month
5. nTask

Another free software that comes with a variety of features for project and task managers is nTask. This program has a couple of free-range tools for anyone looking to work as an individual or a professional project manager.
nTask supports multiple projects and task creation. Users can also define team leader roles, budget, milestone and time tracking criteria that are specific to relevant projects. Understanding the needs of advanced project managers, nTask also offers an interactive Gantt chart feature. It can be personalized by a simple drag and drop mechanism to align the project to ongoing real-life changes.
Features include:

A powerful in-app collaboration system
Integration with Slack and many other third-party apps
The ability to invite stakeholders to view ongoing projects
Resource management
Team management via an admin-controlled process
Multiple workspaces dedicated to different projects and tasks

Pricing: Free (Basic); $2.99/user/month (Premium); $7.99/user/month (Business); Custom (Enterprise)
6. Teamwork

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Teamwork is a project management software and collaboration platform that helps in-house and remote teams stay organized and productive. Each project lets you easily upload files, assign tasks and deadlines, and chat with teammates. By centralizing your project information, you can help eliminate more misunderstandings and missed deadlines.
Features include:

Easy integration with HubSpot

Teamwork Chat Instant Messenger to help you stay in your workflow and be most productive
Time tracking to understand capacity and where a team spends their time
Dashboards, Substasks, and Milestones to help track progress of projects

Pricing: Free; $10/user/month (Deliver); $18/user/month (Grow); Custom (Enterprise
7. Freedcamp

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Freedcamp is a feature-rich project management tool that’s designed for personal and professional use. Each project has its own tasks, milestones, files, discussions, and timelines, as well as an issue tracker and calendar. The dashboard gives you a clear, concise overview of what’s going on in your team, including activity, projects, and tasks.
Features include:

Message-board discussion feed, with the ability to create and carry out discussions on any topic
Powerful calendar view that lays out all upcoming events
Third-party integrations including Google Drive, Google Calendar, Dropbox and more

Pricing: Free; $1.49/user/month (MInimalist); $7.49/user/month (Business); $16.99/user/month (Enterprise)
8. Asana

Asana, one of the most well-known project management solutions, has a clean and user-friendly interface. The all-in-one tool lets you create boards to visualize which stage your project is in, and use reporting to keep track of finished tasks and tasks that need your attention.
Features include:

The ability to create templates to automate mundane tasks
The ability to collaborate and share information across the team, privately and securely
The option to set security controls and designate admins
Over 100 integrations for a more efficient start-to-finish process
The ability to create custom project fields, share documents, and filter tasks

HubSpot integration for seamless syncing of workflows and contact activity

Pricing: Free (Basic); $10.99/user/month (Premium); $24.99/user/month (Business); Custom (Enterprise)
9. Monday.com

Monday.com, a project management tool that also offers HR and IT tools, allows you to create team member status updates so your remote and flexible teams know their coworkers’ schedules. It allows you to easily access project updates at-a-glance so that nothing falls between the cracks.
Features include:

Customizable workflows to prioritize your team’s needs and take care of menial tasks
Gantt chart for visualizing due dates and project timelines
Integrations with popular tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Calendar
Team member status updates for remote or flexible team members

HubSpot integration so that everyone can collaborate on contact and deal management

Pricing: Free for 14 days; $8/user/month (Basic); $10/user/month (Standard); $16/user/month (Pro); Custom (Enterprise)
10. Wrike

Wrike stands out as an exceptional project management tool for teams who want the option to customize workflows and edit and revise projects from within the platform itself. The tool offers the ability to color code and layer calendars, and its mobile app allows colleagues to update project information on-the-go. You can add comments to sections, videos, or documents, and create custom fields to export data most relevant to your company.
Features include:

Security measures to ensure only authorized personnel can access information
Activity Stream to allow project managers to micromanage small tasks, see activities in chronological order, and tag team members
The option to unfollow activities to declutter your own personal Stream
Email and calendar synchronization
Built-in editing and approval features

Pricing: Free; $9.80/user/month (Professional); $24.80/user/month (Business); Custom (Enterprise)
11. Paymo

Paymo’s free version only allows access for one user, but if you’ve got a small team or you’re a freelancer, this could be an efficient option for tracking billable hours and invoicing clients. Along with tracking finances, Paymo also allows you to organize project timelines, create to-do lists, and stay on top of your budgets for multiple projects at once.
Features include:

Kanban boards for easy, at-a-glance project updates
Time tracking to keep everyone on the same schedule
File sharing and Adobe CC extension for easy sharing of assets
Timesheet reporting to keep stakeholders in the loop
Project templates to jumpstart projects with a click

Pricing: Free; $9.95/user/month (Small Office); $15.79/user/month (Business)
12. Trello

Trello is a drag-and-drop tool that lets you move projects — personal, or professional — through workflow stages, all the way to completion.
You define what those stages are — whether it’s work project statuses like ‘On Hold,’ or personal project categories like ‘Things to buy!’ — with tasks represented as ‘cards.’ Each card can be given a name, assigned to an individual, given a due date — and have files, such as images, attached to it.
Features include:

Templates for a range of different project types, from business to education to personal productivity
Ability to add attachments such as images to any card on any board
Customise your workflow stages to reflect your actual process
Simple drag-and-drop movement of cards through workflow stages

HubSpot integration for syncing marketing, sales, and service workflows into to-do lists

Pricing: Free; $10/user/month; Custom (Enterprise)
13. Todoist

Todoist is a simple but powerful tool that lets you create powerful, interactive to-do lists. To-do items can be assigned priority levels, assigned to people in your team and flagged — with customizable reminders (although these are a premium feature). Actionable items can also be categorised into different projects, making a simple, easily understandable structure where each ‘list’ has a title (project name) and a series of actions. This all makes it an extremely flexible, customizable tool to get work done.
Features include:

Template lists to inspire and guide you
Recurring due dates for regularly recurring tasks
Productivity visualizations and ‘Karma’ points for completed tasks and streaks
Labels, notification and discussion feeds to keep you organized

Pricing: Free; $3/user/month (Pro); $5/user/month (Business)
14. MeisterTask

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MeisterTask is a project management tool that allows you to create Kanban boards, set recurring tasks, track project times, and create custom fields. You can automatically import data from other tools such as Trello and Asana, allowing you to get immediately to work without losing time.
Features include:

Up to 3 projects on the free version
File attachments for projects
Custom project icons to make tasks stand out
Time tracking so that no deadlines fall through the cracks

Pricing: Free; $8.25/user/month (Pro); $20.75/user/month (Business); Custom (Enterprise)
15. Bitrix24

Britrix24’s project management software includes Kanban boards, Gantt charts, task counters for easy prioritization, and reports for analyzing the time intensiveness of different tasks. You can also create to-do lists within tasks.
Features include:

Recurring tasks for easy task creation and automation
Integration with Billable Hours, which is especially useful if you work with freelancers
Task statuses to easily keep track of progress
Monthly reports on time spent on tasks

Pricing: Free; $19/month (Start+); $55/month (CRM+ and Project+); $79/month (Standard Business Plan); $159/month (Professional Business Plan)
16. Airtable

Airtable is a customizable spreadsheet and database app that can be used to create a project management tool for your team. Its project tracker template allows you to easily manage projects in a familiar spreadsheet-like environment, making it ideal for Excel and Google Sheets enthusiasts.
Features include:

Subtask creation within tasks
Ability to assign tasks and establish time estimates
Additional templates for keeping remote teams aligned, such as a team hub and asset tracker

Highly customizable for different teams
Integration with popular tools such as HubSpot, Asana, Dropbox, Google Workspace, and Slack

Pricing: Free; $10/user/month (Plus); $20/user/month (Pro); Custom (Enterprise)
Streamline Workflows with a Project Management Tool
Using a project management app will empower your team to work more efficiently and collaborate more seamlessly. With hurdles out of the way, you can guarantee that your team can focus on what matters: bringing in more leads, selling to more prospects, and empowering more customers to grow alongside your business.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.