Marketing
Top 5 Marketing Automation Tools for Small Businesses
For reasonable monthly or annual rates, marketing automation tools are available to small businesses to save time and money on their online marketing strategies. These tools make it efficient and practical to schedule your emails, blog and social media posts ahead of time, and can even manage your contact lists and hiring automatically.
Most businesses use a combination of marketing automation tools to organize and synchronize their online marketing efforts. Here we list the Top 5 Marketing Automation Tools to help your small business succeed online.
1. GetResponse
Automation Type: Email Marketing
The importance of email marketing can’t be overstated; it’s integral to create a rapport with your customers, gather information, keep track of transactional emails and, of course, grow your contact list. GetResponse has a ton of great features to help you create and publish your emails, but it’s automation really shines among others in its class. Schedule time or action-based automated emails, to a list of contacts segmented to your specifications.
Simply import contacts from your hard drive or other services like Gmail and Salesforce. From there you can set up automation for:
- Birthday, Anniversary or Welcome Mails
- Transactional Mails
- Follow-ups
- Newsletters
GetResponse has an easy-to-use interface to help you build professional-looking emails, and sends you analytic reports to help you points of strength and weakness in your campaign.
2. Zen Desk
Automation Type: Customer Service
Eventually every business hits the point where their online customer service can no longer be contained manually. Zen Desk wants to help by automating your tickets, managing customer communications from email, web, social media, phone or even live chat.
Zen Desk goes a bit further, collecting data from your tickets to let you better serve your customers in the future. It’s also compatible with other popular online marketing tools, so you can share data across apps. Conflict resolution is made quick and easy with the team of Zen Desk behind your ticket system.
3. HootSuite
Automation Type: Social Media
To make sure you’re reaching a broad range of potential and existing customers, all businesses should have a presence on multiple social media networks. Unfortunately, it can get unwieldy to organize so many different accounts without a social media automation tool like HootSuite. This all-in-one tool lets you control all your social media accounts in one place, and even collect data on how well your posts were received and what people are saying about your brand.
HootSuite lets you keep a pulse on your business’ profile over various platforms, helping you up your social network game and take your company to the next level.
4. Recruiterbox
Automation Type: Hiring
Hiring online is a great way to reach talented individuals your company needs to grow, but it can be time consuming and expensive. Recruiterbox aims to take away some of the stress involved with hiring online; post openings, manage candidates and use their thorough analysis to make the right choice.
Recruiterbox offers:
- customizable application forms
- helpful questionnaires
- online and offline communication
- detailed search options
5. Evernote
Automation Type: Transactional and Accounting
Organize your accounts from your mobile device, tablet or desktop computer with the ever-helpful Evernote. Lifesaving features include:
- Save bills
- Scan and store receipts
- Scan business cards to organize your contacts
- Easily search your library of information
- Take a picture of your notes and save it as a PDF
Evernote makes it easy to manage your eCommerce accounts and professional contacts in one place.
Which tools do I need?
Depending on your business, you may need one or all of these incredible apps to help your business reach its next level of success. Streamline the efficiency of your communications and bookkeeping with the help of these online tools.