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20 Marketing Collaboration Tools to Improve Productivity and Teamwork
As your business scales, your marketing team will grow and evolve too.
While this growth is happening, it’s important to maintain reliable avenues for collaboration and communication on your marketing team. Otherwise, your business won’t be able to perform at the highest level. The good news is that marketing collaboration software can help with this.In this article, we’ll cover what marketing collaboration software is, why it’s important, and 20 of the best tools currently on the market.
Marketing Collaboration Software
Marketing collaboration software helps marketing teams maintain easy communication, manage projects and campaigns, prioritize tasks, establish schedules and editorial calendars, promote organization and productivity, and more.
Why is marketing collaboration software important?
No matter which industry your business is in, what size your team is, whether you’re in-office, remote, or a mix of both, marketing collaboration can help your team improve in a number of areas — all of which impact your bottom line. Some examples include improved and streamlined…Communication
Teamwork
Productivity
Organization
Efficiency
Task management
Scheduling
Data sharing
Transparency
Content creationMarketing Collaboration Features
Here are some common features found across many marketing collaboration tools today.Group communication
Shared files, documents, calendars, notes, and other assets
Task management and time/ progress tracking
Document management
Campaign management
Editorial calendar
Content creation capabilities
Content, file, and data organization
Integrations (to connect the marketing collaboration software to your other marketing and business tools)
Audio and video conferencing
Marketing automation
Reporting and analyticsMarketing Collaboration Software
Here are 20 of the best marketing collaboration software available today.
1. HubSpot Marketing HubHubSpot Marketing Hub is a marketing automation platform that allows you to attract your target audience, convert website visitors, and run inbound marketing campaigns at scale. Marketing teams can seamlessly collaborate to plan and execute large-scale, omnichannel marketing campaigns.
Marketing Hub also allows for frictionless collaboration with other teams — such as sales — in order to offer delightful customer experiences. This is known as CRM-powered Marketing — HubSpot makes it possible by pairing marketing automation tools with an all-in-one CRM platform.
Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Marketing Hub to attract your unique audience, convert visitors into customers, run complete inbound marketing campaigns at scale, and automate redundant processes, all via one, easy-to-use platform.
2. SlackSlack is a platform that allows for easy communication and collaboration on any scale. Slack Channels serve as central communication areas where you and your team can chat with one another and share relevant information, files, tools, and more.
Send messages via chat, host video calls, or speak with your team via voice call all without leaving the tool. There are also over 2,200 integrations and apps, such as Google Drive and Office 365, to help your team streamline workflows.
Additionally, the Slack Connect feature makes it possible to communicate and collaborate with teams at other companies the way you do with your own.
3. TrelloTrello is a collaboration and productivity tool for managing, tracking, and sharing work projects and tasks. The tool organizes your work into Kanban-style lists — that means your work is separated into categories for an easier workflow (such as to-do, work in progress, and complete).
Your team can communicate and tag each other on each project card, share and attach files, add due dates, move cards into different Kanban-style lists to track work, and archive cards once they’re complete.
4. AsanaAsana is a task and project management platform that allows both remote and distributed teams to organize and manage work. Teammates can collaborate on project lists, timelines, or boards, all of which have individual tasks and stages that you can customize, share, and archive. The tool’s messaging feature makes it easy to distribute, assign, and manage work.
Automate various project management tasks to save your team time and integrate your tool with one of 100+ apps that bring together all of your work to improve collaboration and coordination across your team.
5. Monday.comMonday.com is a work operating system and project management tool that allows you to create workflows for any project. There are over 200 templates workflows available that marketing can use, as well as other departments such as IT, sales, design, web development, operations, and HR and recruiting.
Your team can manage and collaborate on all aspects of a project from a single location. The 200+ templates mentioned above are completely customizable and allow all team members to visualize your project, and its different stages, in a way that’s preferable to your team (e.g. map, calendar, timeline, Kanban-style list).
You can also integrate Monday.com with your other tools and apps to access and manage all parts of your projects and campaigns without leaving the tool.
6. TeamworkTeamwork is a collaborative project management software meant for managing and delivering client work on time and on budget. You can simultaneously manage multiple projects of varying complexity with Teamwork’s Board View, dashboards, and project health status updates.
Hold all team members accountable for their part of a project or campaign by assigning responsibilities and using time tracking to determine how long certain tasks are taking.
7. CoScheduleRather than collaborating and handling your marketing via various spreadsheets, tools, calendars, and emails, CoSchedule’s actionable Marketing Calendar is where your team can see, schedule, and share all aspects of your marketing jobs and campaigns.
You can also share your calendar in a read-only format so higher-ups and other teams can view your project plans and trajectory without having to worry about someone accidentally making an edit.
8. Evernote TeamsEvernote Teams is a collaborative note-taking app ideal for managing, arranging, and organizing your thoughts, ideas, to-do lists, and more. The tool makes it easy to collaborate, sync, and share knowledge, as well as ensure progress is being made on certain projects and tasks.
Evernote’s Spaces provide visibility into progress on team projects as well as relevant workflows and documents. You can make, leave, and search across Spaces for notes and notebooks that you created or other team members created.
9. Sharelov
Sharelov is a cloud-based marketing collaboration platform for brands and agencies to manage their teams, campaigns, assets, projects, and work. No matter what you’re working on or what your creative assets include, Sharelov makes it easy to collaborate, share feedback, and approve assets, plans, and projects.
Use the tool to establish your teams, improve ease of collaboration within those teams, and track team and individual progress in real-time. Team members can provide feedback for each other for every creative — this simplifies the process of managing internal and client feedback and change requests across individual projects.
10. AcousticAcoustic is a digital marketing experience platform — the platform’s Marketing Cloud tool helps you better understand your customers and their behaviors at scale.
Acoustic allows your entire marketing team to manage and collaborate on campaigns, content, insights, and personalization, all via a single tool. There are AI-powered analytics and insights features to help you understand customer behaviors and experiences.
11. ZoomZoom is a video conferencing, cloud phone, webinar, and online events software. It makes team collaboration and communication easy, no matter the industry or whether your team is in office, remote, or a mix of both.
Use one of Zoom’s many available integrations to connect the software with your other business tools (e.g. HubSpot, Google Workspace, Slack, etc.).
Host Zoom Webinars or Events depending on the level of collaboration and engagement you’re looking for. You can also follow up on a discussion topic, share links, or communicate with others in real-time using Zoom’s Chat feature.
12. Lucid ChartLucid Chart is an intelligent diagramming software that makes it easy for teams to collaborate on the visualization of complex ideas related to your team’s processes, systems, and organizational structure.
Individuals and teams can map out progress around a certain task and determine what needs to be done next and what’s missing. Then your team can align on and apply all resulting insights using Lucid Chart’s common visual language, which streamlines collaboration.
You can also use Lucid Chart to create, manage, and collaborate on business process maps, user flows, cloud architecture diagrams, scrum teams, and data flows.
13. CanvaSource
Canva is a graphic design and publishing tool that allows your team to collaboratively plan, design, create, publish, and share a variety of content types including logos, social media posts, documents, graphs and charts, prints, and more.
The tool makes it easy to invite team members to review and edit designs via shareable links, email, or Canva folders. Canva also ensures your team has everything they need to use brand-ready and team-approved assets — there’s a Brand Kit feature where your team can establish and save templates, fonts, colors, images, logos, and more.
14. Click UpClick Up is a cloud-based collaboration and project management tool that aims to bring all of your team’s work — docs, chat, goals, insights, and tasks — together in one place.
Within Click Up, your team can establish, refer to, collaborate on, and customize all aspects of every project including to-do lists, wikis and documents, emails, spreadsheets, events, reminders, goals, time-tracking, screenshots, recordings, resource management, and more.
Then, organize these project elements into one of 15 different views (e.g. list, box, mind map, Gantt) based on your team’s needs and preferences.
15. Funnel.ioFunnel.io is a data mapping and collection tool — it transforms collected data into automated marketing reports for your team to analyze, share, and build off of.
Once you connect all of your data sources — a process that Funnel.io makes easy with its over 500 marketing app integrations — it will be cleaned, organized, and mapped for you.
Then, decide where you want your finalized data and reports to go — whether in Google Data Studio, a data warehouse of your choosing, Google Sheets, etc. There, your entire team can identify insights and collaborate on how you’ll apply the information.
16. DomoDomo for Marketing combines your marketing team’s data with data from sales, finance, and other departments within your company so you’re able to increase transparency, improve collaboration, and maximize ROI across the company.
Data visualizations and predictive analytics and alerts help marketers identify and pull out the most important insights from the data.
Set alerts for data that deviates and/or hits your goals to accurately track progress. Your team can then create real-time visualizations of data (without any code), and access and collaborate on those insights via any device.
17. DropboxDropbox is a file hosting software that centralizes your team’s content and tools. It gives your team secure access to all of your files via one location. Your marketing team can collaborate with each other in Dropbox by storing, organizing, sharing, referencing, and downloading files.
Use the tool to manage team tasks, track file updates, and remain in contact with team members and even clients on projects. You can also deliver completed projects to higher-ups, other teams, or clients — whether they’re large files or a collection of files — with passwords, expiration dates, and delivery confirmation.
18. WrikeWrike is a project management software with features meant for increasing transparency and improving team-wide as well as cross-departmental collaboration. It allows you tocollaborate on work in real-time — no more communication across various channels such as email, meetings, and instant messages.
No matter the project, your team can use Wrike to make comments, edit work, set notifications, and build reports, and share insights with each other — all in real-time. You can also view your individual tasks, the responsibilities of other team members, as well as the status of specific projects to track progress.
19. Google DriveGoogle Drive is secure, cloud-based storage software that allows you to store, share, and access files and folders — from Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and more — via your mobile device, tablet, and computer.
Once you upload your content or files to Google Drive, you can create a shared folder for them to live in — this way, your team can access and collaborate on anything in the folder.
Edit and add comments to any of the files in the shared folder in real-time — if your team members aren’t already in the Doc, Slides, or Sheet, they’ll still receive an email notification about your edits or comments. You can also review the edit history on any of your files. And it’s alright if your files aren’t Google files — that’s because the platform supports over 100 file types including Microsoft Office.
20. Brightpod for MarketingBrightpod is a tool that simplifies marketing collaboration and planning — it’s a project management and time tracking software meant for digital marketing and creative teams.
The tool provides clarity around your team’s projects, campaigns, tasks, workflows, and deadlines. Individual teams can collaborate with each other as well as reference and communicate about other projects that are going on across the team via a single dashboard.
All projects that are listed on your dashboard have milestones and tasks so everyone on the team knows what’s expected of them what progress on each task looks like.
Grow Better With Marketing Collaboration Software
Marketing collaboration software can help your team easily communicate, manage projects, prioritize tasks, organize content, and more. Start using one of these tools to increase team-wide productivity and teamwork.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. -
User Experience (UX) Designer A Must Have Certificate for all Savvy Salesforce Professionals!
A few weeks ago, I appeared for the Salesforce Certified User Experience Designer Certification exam and – Yay – Passed! After I announced on the Social Media that I am now a Certified User Experience Designer, lots of people messaged me to ask about my expeirence and how to prepare for
The post User Experience (UX) Designer A Must Have Certificate for all Savvy Salesforce Professionals! appeared first on Automation Champion. -
Introducing a New Social Media Calendar
Back in 2015, we launched our first social media calendar. We were so excited to bring a new way of planning and scheduling to Buffer, and it proved to be a favorite feature among customers.Since then, Buffer has changed a lot. We’ve re-designed our interface and added new planning features, like Stories Scheduling, Campaigns, and Hashtag Manager. Inevitably, our calendar started to feel a little dated and out-of-sync with the rest of Buffer. It even began living on a completely separate codebase, which made it difficult for engineers to make updates and fixes.
What started as a quiet call for improvements became a chorus of feedback from customers. In fact, the word “calendar” has appeared a whopping 247 times in our feature request form since the start of 2020.
The most common theme? Having all social media channels visible in one global calendar view. Here are a few examples:
So, our design team got to work; interviewing customers, looking at existing usage patterns, and digging deeper into the ideal experience. This is how we summed it up in our design brief:
Which brings us to today, many prototypes later, launching a brand new calendar experience that’s available on free and paid Buffer plans.
Let’s take a closer look!
Total planning visibility
The new calendar sits within your publishing dashboard and you can access it from the menu on the left-hand side of the dashboard. You can choose between a weekly or monthly view.
The weekly view shows you the key details of each post you’ve scheduled for the week; the channel to which it is scheduled, a preview of the text, and a thumbnail of your image.
The monthly view gives you a higher-level snapshot of the month with timestamps for every scheduled post. It’s a great way to spot and fill gaps in your strategy.
If you want to exclude certain channels from the calendar, you can use the Channels dropdown to choose which channels are shown.
To add a new post to your calendar use the Create Post button. This will pop open the composer, where you can choose the scheduled time. Note: we’re currently exploring other ways to add and rearrange posts; for example by clicking on a timeslot and dragging and dropping. We’d love to hear whether this is important to you!
Check your calendar anywhere, anytime
The new calendar is built into our iOS and Android apps. It’s the quickest way to stay in sync with everything you have scheduled and add content on the go.
Much more to come
We’re excited to hear your feedback and to add more power to the new calendar. What should we add next? How can we make it twice as good? We have some ideas, including:Dragging and dropping posts around the calendar.
Creating a post by clicking on a timeslot.
Viewing and filtering Campaigns.Share your thoughts
Excited about the new calendar? Have some ideas for us? Send us a tweet @buffer or use the Share Feedback button we’ve added right above the new calendar in your Buffer dashboard. -
4 Key Tech Trends in Customer Service to Watch
Today’s hottest customer service technologies focus mostly on providing assisted service and freeing up support reps’ time — reflecting the increasing shift to digital self-service platforms and analytics capabilities. These technologies reflect emerging technology trends designed to support a company’s ability to better understand and anticipate customer needs. An increase in ROI and deployment of these technologies indicate that leaders are looking toward a better experience for the digital customer. Four key customer service technology trends: Trend No. 1: Technologies that enable reps are bringing most value to service organizations Trend No. 2: The future lies in understanding the preferences and behaviors of digital customers Trend No. 3: CSS leaders expect most gains from data and analytics Trend No. 4: Substantial investments on the horizon in the deployment of AI and chatbots Source: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/4-key-tech-trends-in-customer-service-to-watch
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Saudi Arabia engaging customers with cutting edge technology
As Saudi Arabia diversifies its economy, businesses must prioritise customers to constantly innovate and continue to attract a broader audience. The most recent KPMG Banking Pulse Quarterly report indicates that the top drivers for investment in Saudi Arabia have shifted into the digital realm to transform the customer experience. As investments continue to pour into emerging, profitable sectors, this will lead to a more…
The post Saudi Arabia engaging customers with cutting edge technology appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine. -
Here at the Majors Law Group, we believe that you should never have to go through the fear and difficulty of the legal process on your own. Most individuals dealing with Bankruptcy or a Personal Injury claims are often in un-chartered territory. For more advice look into our site.
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Salesforce Acquires LevelJump – Native Sales Enablement App
Salesforce has just made its second acquisition of the year, with the purchase of LevelJump – this follows the acquisition of ServiceTrace a couple of months ago. LevelJump made the official announcement yesterday, having been acquired by Salesforce for an undisclosed sum. LevelJump is a… Read More
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[FREE EVENT] The Key Drivers of DevOps Success
We all know that Salesforce DevOps is the future of building on the platform. But why does it matter so much? DevOps is essential for effectively harnessing the latest Salesforce innovation, and for maximising your business value and ROI. Without these practices, you’ll fall behind… Read More
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The Complete Guide to Call Center Management
Congratulations, call center manager! You’re stepping into a world full of exciting challenges, impressive individuals, and constant evolution. There’s never a dull moment in a call center with a myriad of opportunities for growth and success.
Of course, all new positions come with learning curves. To help start you off on the right foot, we’ve put together a guide about all things call center management, so you know exactly how to succeed and can teach your agents how to do the same. Whether you’re a new manager or a seasoned pro brushing up on the fundamentals, this guide is for you.
The Contact Center Guide to Managing Spikes in Call Volume
Why strong call center management is important.
According to research from the Harvard Business Review, 71% of managers surveyed said employee engagement is an important factor in the overall success of a company.
In every industry, managers are the backbone of their workplace. They motivate employees through goal setting, help resolve conflicts, and play a large role in improving employee morale. Without proper management, call center agents could be left to handle overwhelming days on their own, lack incentive or structure to grow within their role, and become bored and burnt out fast, leading to high turnover and poor customer experiences.According to the Harvard #Business Review, 71% of managers surveyed said #employeeengagement is an important factor in the overall success of a company. So #callcenter managers, be sure to keep your agents engaged!Click To Tweet
7 steps to success as a call center manager.
Even though being a great manager sounds a bit overwhelming, there are a few things you can focus on from the get-go to ensure that your call center is as successful as possible.
1. Start by hiring the right call center agents.
When it comes to hiring call center agents, consider more than just their professional experience. Being an amazing agent takes a great deal of patience, empathy, and problem solving. Although you may not be able to tell if someone possesses these qualities strictly based on their CV, you can get a better idea if their personality is suited for the job by integrating a role-playing exercise into your interview process.
Have a situation in mind and act as if you were the customer on a phone call with the candidate. Pay close attention to how the candidate handles the conversation. If they struggle to find the words to assist you or are unable to demonstrate empathy in their response, offer them feedback and try the exercise again. If they still aren’t able to resolve the problem in a way that satisfies the needs of your call center, it could indicate that the candidate won’t be a good fit.TIP:
Develop an interview scorecard based on your company’s needs and use it to rate potential candidates after their interview. The higher the score, the more likely they are to be a great fit.2. Develop and implement a thorough training strategy.
Call center agents are only as good as the training they receive. Ensure you’re prepared to welcome all new employees with a structured onboarding process. One single training strategy will ensure all of your agents are on the same page and will provide consistent service to all customers.
5 Best Practices for Training Remote Call Center Agents
3. Set goals for agents individually and as a team.
Goal setting is an effective way to keep employees engaged, measure short-term and long-term success, and determine whether your management techniques are working. Remember the acronym S.M.A.R.T when it comes to setting goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound). Some examples of individual agent goals might include:Answer X number of phone calls per day.
Receive an average score of X on a customer satisfaction survey over 30 days.
Finish X number of training webinars in Q1.Setting collective goals is also important as it helps motivate team members to work together collectively, fostering a sense of solidarity that can be especially tricky to develop remotely. Some examples of team goals might include:
Reduce average hold times by X% in Q2.
Respond to all social media customer complaints within X hours.
Receive an average score of X as a team on a customer satisfaction survey over 30 days.4. Run reports and regularly review KPIs.
An essential part of managing a successful call center is regularly analyzing several different KPIs and finding areas for improvement. Ensure you’re set up for success with software that puts all the information you need, right at your fingertips.
When you start digging into your reports, be sure to check these specific KPIs:Average time in queue – the average duration customers wait on hold for assistance.
Service level – the percentage of calls answered within a specified time frame.
Average abandonment rate – the percentage of customers who hang up before interacting with an agent.
Average time of work after calls – the amount of time agents spend working on related tasks after they’ve hung up with the customer.
Average handle time – the amount of time agents spend on a call and working on related tasks after they’ve hung up with the customer.
First call resolution –the percentage of calls that are resolved without the need for transfers, escalations or call-returns.
Agent turnover rate – the percentage of agents who leave to work at another place of employment.
Important KPIs for Measuring Customer Satisfaction
5. Use call volume forecasting for effective scheduling.
Scheduling an entire department of call center agents can be tricky to say the least. One way to ensure you always have enough coverage is to keep your eyes on daily call volumes and look for weekly trends. Note which times on which days are busiest and be sure to schedule your agents accordingly.
6. Focus on preventing employee burnout.
Effective scheduling is your first defense against agent burnout. Your second is employing technology that alleviates some stress from your agents. Voice call-backs are a great place to start. Basically, if a customer calls, they can choose whether they’d like to wait on the line or have an agent call them back.
Offering the option for a customer call-back gives agents some breathing room and takes a bit of pressure off them to race through calls and clear the queue. It also encourages more authentic agent interactions, as they have the time to really focus on the customer’s needs.
Encouraging employee engagement is also a large piece of the puzzle when it comes to preventing agent burnout and creating a healthy work environment. Here are a few employee engagement ideas:Set up competitions for agents based on daily numbers.
Encourage gatherings like virtual coffee talks or lunchtime group walks.
Provide snacks for in-person meetings or allow employees to expense a meal during a virtual event.
Host a virtual “matchmaking” event where a group of employees get to chat one-on-one with many different people.
Offer flexible work hours and scheduling to suit agents’ individual needs.7. Teach empathy by showing empathy.
One of the most effective tools a call center agent can use to handle any type of customer call is empathy. The best way to teach empathy is to lead by example. Be sure to set up one-on-ones with your agents where you not only set goals and chat about performance, but also lend an ear and ask them if there’s anything they need to be happier at work. A happy agent is in turn a more patient agent and one who is able to deeply empathize with customers when they require support.#Managers, set up one-on-ones with your #callcenter agents and ask them what they need to be their happiest at work. A happy agent is in turn a more patient agent, one who is able to deeply connect with #customers.Click To Tweet
How do you know if your management techniques are effective?
Monitor agent performance, turnover rates, and overall satisfaction to determine whether your call center management techniques are effective. If your agents are accomplishing their goals and generally enjoy coming to work, that means your management skills are probably in pretty great shape.The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo. -
The chance you’ve been waiting for
It’s here, right now, today.
The open-source project that needs a contributor.
The community charity that needs a volunteer fundraiser.
The co-worker who needs coaching on a new presentation.
The startup idea that needs someone to go out on a limb and talk about it in public.
The local elected board that needs to be covered now that newspapers don’t do that any more.
The free-to-use courses online that teach everything from language to technology.
The friend who would love to hear from you by phone.
The Wikipedia article that needs editing.
The codebase that needs bugs fixed.
The story that needs to be told…
Opportunity is another word for a problem to be solved. And opportunity is often there, but it rarely knocks.