How Support Automation Sustains Customer Relationships Posted on June 23, 2021June 14, 2022 by Guest Author We live in a digital world. It’s a world that’s changing faster and faster each day. They say if you can’t feel your competitors breathing down your neck, you’ve already been overtaken. To keep up with competitors, entrepreneurs should always be looking out for new technologies that give them a competitive advantage. And support automation is one that should be at the top of the list. Whatever your growth strategy looks like, support automation can lend a hand. In fact, businesses can automate many of their tasks, freeing up their time for other important items they need to get to (that automation can’t help them with). In this article, we’ll take a look under the hood of support automation. We’ll outline what support automation is and how can it sustain customer relationships? What is Support Automation? When it comes to automation tools, there are different kinds out there. There’s marketing automation, sales automation, email automation, and support automation. Each serves an important purpose for the department using them. But, when used correctly, they can positively impact the rest of the company. Support automation is a way of fixing your customers’ problems automatically. It’s providing service support without the limitations of office hours. It’s a way of saving your staff time and effort by automating certain tasks. If there’s a standardized, routine function, it’s a prime candidate for automation. For example, if a company receives hundreds of emails, all asking the same question, it could make sense to reply using an automated response email. So, instead of spending hours sifting through these emails, only to manually respond with the same solution to each, you can set up an automation that does it for you. How does this work? Well, some systems can scan inbound emails for keywords. That helps identify the nature of the query and send a more specific, personalized email reply. Robotic process automation, or RPA, is capable of performing all these tasks and more. Chatbots are a particularly sophisticated application. They can be programmed with a bank of common questions and answers, so each response is personalized and helpful. Increasingly, they’re connected to clever artificial intelligence, allowing them to cross the line from automotive to adaptive. Let’s take a look at this in more detail. Why is Support Automation Important? As organizations attract more customers, it becomes more difficult to maintain high standards. Some customer service tasks are repetitive. Think about working in a call center, answering the same queries over and over. Support automation fixes that. It saves you and your staff time so you can do things that can’t be automated. Service functions can be automated at every stage of the customer experience. Companies can offer personalized customer journeys that create a better experience of engaging with your organization. It’s streamlined. It’s joined up. It just makes sense. It all adds up to better customer service. You can help more people, faster. If business is a race, support automation gives you a head start. How Does Automation Help Support Customer Relationships? Automation can support customer relationships in many ways. It makes the process of engaging with an organization much smoother. It’s also adaptable and can integrate data quality software, enabling you to offer a personalized service cost-effectively. It can: Address Concerns Quickly Source A recent study revealed that 90% of customers rate an immediate response as “important” or “very important” when they have a customer service question. We live in a global society, a 24/7 world. Without support automation, it’s not feasible to do that all the time. Have you ever wasted hours searching a frequently asked questions page on a website? With the invention of automated chatbots, those pages are becoming a thing of the past. Companies can set up automated support that identifies a customer query and directs them to the right page on your website knowledge base. Automated customer service software that spans multiple platforms also helps raise a customer concern faster and makes sure it goes to the relevant person. Helps Customers Help Themselves Your customers want convenience. Allowing them to help themselves achieves this in several ways. You can set up your prompts so that certain pieces of content you create can be shared to address their questions, like a quick fix guide or a relevant piece of video content online. It allows customers the choice. They can access the information to fix a problem or wait for a member of staff to become available. Deliver Service on a Larger Scale One of the greatest assets of support automation is the way it helps companies cope with increasing demand through digital workforce technologies. The more customers you have, the more staff you need to serve them. Support automation gives you an easier way to scale up your business. Chatbots can perform a troubleshooting function. If there are common issues that occur with a product or service, a chatbot can be programmed to provide information. Support automation allows companies to offer unique experiences to many customers at once. Most customer relationship management (CRM) software can now send outreach emails triggered by certain events. That could be anything from a purchase to a period of inactivity. Improve Staff Productivity Support automation can help your staff as well as your customers. In a busy call center, support automation is vital. Automating incoming and outgoing calls improves the productivity of a customer service agent. It can save time by automatically calling up any information you hold about the caller. Support automation reduces the workload on each individual, freeing them up to do more complicated tasks. This improves the employee experience, which in turn improves the all-important customer experience. Key Takeaways In business, it’s easy to get carried away with the idea of going out and finding customers. In this modern-day fairytale, sales staff become knights in shining armor, customers damsels in distress. The reality is less exciting. It’s more economical to take better care of your existing customers first. The companies that build strong relationships with their audience get a bigger chunk of their lifetime value. Support automation is a great way to achieve this because it helps you to deliver better and more personalized customer experiences. This can be a lasting source of competitive advantage and a driver for business success. Author Bio Tammy Wood has been involved with SEO for two decades. Her current role is Director of Technical SEO for Automation Anywhere, an automation company. When not chasing keywords, Tammy enjoys reading, buying shoes, and writing articles about both RPA and SEO. Here is her LinkedIn.
The Importance of Customer Nurturing Campaigns In 2021 Posted on June 17, 2021September 8, 2022 by Guest Author Most visitors who land on your website aren’t ready to buy, but they are interested in what you have to offer. Customer nurturing campaigns are designed to attach to that interest and help it grow into the desire to become a customer and partner. That help, like sunshine on fresh seedlings, has become more important than ever because of the growth in competing products and social media entertainment that can pull customers away at any point. In 2021, a high-quality lead nurturing campaign may just be what’s required for you to overcome an increasing number of barriers to sales. What’s a Nurture Campaign? A nurture campaign is your customer-facing effort to provide the information a lead needs to progress through the buyer’s journey. Your aim is to deliver relevant information, often before they request it, to help a lead solve their problem or concern. Generally, it targets common pain points for your audience and educates them about broad solutions and your specifics. In some instances, you may demonstrate expertise or awareness of what the customer is going through at that moment. Nurture campaigns are very proactive and look for multiple ways to reach customers. Some of the more common options include: Email drip sequences Newsletters and welcome campaigns Text/SMS and messaging campaigns, now including some in-app messaging and notifications Sponsored content, though the content must be closely tied to the problems your products address Influencer marketing and thought leadership eCommerce Nurturing Targets the ‘What if’ In eCommerce, nurturing has become more critical because you’re now the window-shopping experience. Visitors aren’t necessarily looking to your store to purchase, even if they add something to a cart. They might be doing research, observing your hidden fees and shipping costs, or just passing the time to think about “what if.” Intent is becoming harder to determine by traffic data alone. Nurture campaigns hope to address this more passive audience by offering them the chance to indulge in that brief “what if” and can potentially lock them into a desire to buy. That light interest that comes with daydreaming allows you to exchange a newsletter or coupon for an email address or app notifications. Customers then are present to receive future campaign messaging as you work to educate, inform, and problem solve. Nurturing, instead of pure sales messaging, gives you time to share the daydream. By targeting the “what if” feeling, you demonstrate knowledge of the customer and make it easier for them to achieve this ephemeral aim. That might be a feeling of connectedness in times of distance, reducing problems in days of increased stress, or a chance to experience something new. The CNBC report linkedIn above notes that people are adding goods to carts for a wide range of reasons. Those are what your nurturing campaigns can target. Thankfully, it also notes that conversion rates are on the rise. Increased Importance for 2021 Most industries look quite different today in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic’s initial disruption. Some sectors have seen new groups of customers while others struggle to maintain the baseline sales they need. And, in 2021, it looks the economics of sales will continue to drive uncertainty and risk. Customer nurturing campaigns are emerging as a top way to help companies address one of the most significant expected changes: increased customer acquisition costs across all channels. Shopify notes a few significant trends that are making acquisition more difficult across advertising and media: Browsers are looking to get rid of third-party cookies, and more blocking is available. An Apple iOS update will make it harder to use targeted, in-app ads that rely on Facebook data. Customers are moving to some uncertain technologies such as voice-based commerce. Digital ads are getting more expensive, and some pricing is above pre-pandemic levels. Customer nurturing is essential in 2021 because it helps you reaffirm relationships and generate consistent revenue. Working on it first helps you build a buffer so you can experiment with new channels and techniques. Apply your nurture campaigns to new customers in the buyer’s journey and those who are still highly engaged after an order. 3 Best Practices for 2021 1. Start with Welcome Messaging Nurture campaigns need to set the stage for your relationship with a customer. Creating that relationship means they need to understand who you are. Welcome messages allow you to greet people, provide relevant information about what makes you different (you can personalize this with segmentation), and give people more ways to interact. Someone might want to follow you on social media, so you can embed relevant content and make excitement just a click away. You’re working against some passivity and apathy on the part of today’s consumers. Give them a reason to pay more attention that resonates with who they are, their beliefs, or their interests. 2. Target Everything You Send Segmentation should be a hallmark of your nurturing campaigns. It allows you to split groups easily based on their preferences and characteristics. Most companies will start segmenting audiences based on the products they look at, plus location, gender, age, and other elements you can determine. The way to improve this for 2021 is to start incorporating an understanding of behavior patterns. Is there a customer segment that only looks at items on sale? Do some groups browse most of your products but in only one segment? Are your leads from Instagram focused only on what’s new and popular? Analyze your data for these patterns. Adapt the content of your marketing for these specific groups and assign triggers based on behaviors. You may need newer automation tools for some of this behavior-based automation. Finding these triggers, however, can help you directly address new shopping habits. What if you clicked on an ad and the product fell flat, but something else caught your eye? You spent 10 minutes on the page, added it to your cart, but then left. A short time later, you get an email with an offer for that product telling you to splurge or explaining why it’s more enjoyable than that first product. Wouldn’t it be a compelling reason to give it another look? 3. Leverage Customer Support Teams Todays’ customer support teams operate across most channels where your business operates, even beyond direct sales channels. They’re on your social accounts, attached to your website, answering emails, taking calls, and more. Every place you have a presence is a place where your customer support teams will need to act. That connection provides a wealth of customer data for you to mine, much more than just pure sales and interest data. Customer support has the chance to spot trends, collect more feedback, and understand both the concerns of customers and their interests. Nurture campaigns should be informed by this information and regularly updated as concerns change. Allow the direct input of your customers to drive your sales messaging. Find the “what if” that your customers are expressing. Nurture that, and you’ll be on the path to pushing people through the customer journey to greater sales even as eCommerce continues to change. AUTHOR BIO Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an eCommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of eCommerce. He has years of experience in eCommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.
Should Your Agency Ditch Time-Tracking For Good? Posted on June 16, 2021June 11, 2021 by Katie Culp Streamlining your processes is always a good thing. And as you look at where your efficiencies are — and more importantly, where they aren’t — you might just discover that time tracking is taking up more effort than it’s worth, especially when it comes to building retainer business. The more clients that you can retain month after month, the more reliable income you’ll have coming in. Herein lies the issue with the time-tracking model, which often does more harm than good in terms of keeping your clients satisfied and sticking around. There are various issues with timesheets, including inaccuracies and a lack of focus on real results. If you’re billing your clients hourly, you’re missing out on an opportunity to better prove your agency’s worth through what really matters: performance. That’s a pretty big misstep if you want your clients to be aware of just how much value you’re providing. Here’s why time-tracking is on its way out — and the better billing models that you should be putting in its place. Why Agencies Use Time-Tracking Why did time-tracking become the go-to model in the first place? While retaining clients has always been a primary goal of agencies, they haven’t always had such a big range of tools with which to illustrate value and performance. This has meant a greater reliance on alternate billing practices that serve to connect the dots in some way between work performed and work delivered, with timesheets being a better-than-nothing way to do so. Lots of industries bill hourly. But unlike, say, the legal field, marketing clients have good reason to believe that what they’re paying for is a guarantee of positive results. And if they don’t get them with one agency, it makes sense that they’d look for another. There was a time when the hourly time-tracking model was an agency’s best method of billing. That time has passed, though, and the new model is value-driven and focused on goal measurements instead of minutes. So if you’re still using time-tracking, you’re showing your clients that you’re ready to work on their behalf — but you’re failing to show why that work is truly valuable to them. Shifting to Better Options What does an hour of work look like? How do you prove that it was well spent? Time-tracking fails to convey what your clients received in return for the time logged on the sheet. It’s also often riddled with inaccuracies, particularly if you’re not using software to log every hour, minute, and second that your team members are spending on each task (and if you’ve ever been subject to this type of software yourself, you know just how intrusive and distracting it can be). Fortunately, there’s a better model: value and performance-based pricing. Charging your clients based on results instead of time spent offers a number of big benefits, all of which can help you retain their business and boost revenue that will keep your agency running smoothly. It’s Both Qualitative and Quantitative Unlike hourly billing, value and performance-based pricing show clients the quality they’re getting out of your services — instead of just the sheer amount of your time they’re paying for. It’s Better for Your Books Project to project and quarter to quarter, you likely don’t know exactly how many hours you’re going to spend on a client’s behalf. What you do know, however, is what deliverables you’re offering and how those deadlines are going to be spread out. It’s Better for Your Client Relationships Great agency-client relationships are built on trust and transparency, both of which can get lost in the time-tracking model. Billing on completed projects and results gives much more insight into what your clients are getting in return for their investment, which helps turn a contract into a partnership. How Marketing Automation Can Help Today’s agencies have more tools available than ever to help them make the switch to value and performance-based pricing, and that includes marketing automation. Marketing automation serves to take the guesswork out of proving value, which leads to more retainer business. Some of what it can help you do include: Tracking the number of new leads or contacts being captured Building and monitoring campaigns for those tracked contacts Creating an ongoing funnel for customers Measuring workflows, deadlines, and other pipeline deliverables Tracking customer recommendations and referrals Collecting and reporting data on campaign performance Because marketing automation is an ongoing strategy, it also allows your clients to see how your work has evolved for them over time, both in terms of projects and in terms of results. The goal of a marketing agency isn’t just to tick off-hours on a timesheet — it’s to help clients reach more customers and reach those customers more effectively. Use marketing automation to prove to your clients that that’s exactly what you’re doing, and they won’t just be happier, they’ll also be more likely to retain your services.
How to Choose a CRM for Your Small Business Posted on June 10, 2021December 15, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick Having the right small business CRM can make a huge difference in the success of your business, especially when it comes to things like cultivating leads, turning leads into customers, and turning customers into brand loyalists. And throughout the sales process, there’s really not a singular point where it won’t be useful to you. So what should you expect out of a CRM solution — and how do you choose? We’re covering all of that and more, including sharing some of our top picks for the best CRM platforms for small businesses. Why Every Small Business Needs a CRM Just because your business is small doesn’t mean that your tech needs are. CRM software has become a mainstay in the business world. In 2017, 87% of businesses relied on cloud-based CRM solutions, versus just 12% in 2008. With a complete CRM solution, you get a ton of big advantages that can help you better run your business, including these benefits that a CRM can offer: 1. It Boosts Sales and Nurtures Leads The primary benefit of any CRM for small businesses is that it helps streamline sales and boost your revenue. How? Well, it starts with lead nurture and management after the initial lead generation. An online CRM allows your small business to capture more leads from your website and track them throughout the entire sales process. With your CRM stocked full of new contacts, you can nurture prospective buyers in your sales pipeline with targeted email campaigns until they are ready to buy. That means your sales team can prioritize leads, spending less time on unqualified people who are never going to pull the trigger and more time closing deals. Another big bonus of a small business CRM is that it delivers key insights so you can make smarter sales decisions. It can tell you which lead sources drive the most sales so you can allocate more time and money where it’s more beneficial. It can indicate which sales reps are struggling to hit their numbers so new strategies can be tested. And it can shed light on what your short and long-term sales forecasts look like. Did you know that following up too late is one of the biggest reasons that companies lose customers and fail to convert prospects? A CRM software helps your sales team provide appropriate, automated follow-up to turn existing customers into long-term purchasers with ease. 2. It Helps You Understand Your Customers The best way to serve your customers is to understand exactly what their wants, needs, pain points, and preferences are. But short of calling each client to pick their brain, this can seem like a monumental task. With a CRM, however, you can automatically gather information about your customers at a granular level and analyze that data to gain valuable insight that will help you make more intelligent customer-centric business decisions. Track trends, assess behaviors and identify opportunities, all with a few clicks of a button. Small business CRM software is particularly useful for companies selling complex products or companies with longer sales cycles. The constant data collection allows you to continuously perfect how you interact with each and every customer. Months of customer behavior data can be effortlessly recorded and analyzed, which lets you better understand the different decisions that guided customers throughout their entire journey. You can use this information to improve your small business marketing, tweak your email marketing and email campaigns, website design, and sales approach until you find the optimal way to reach your target audience. Another way you can leverage the insight gained through a CRM is to create more personalized customer experiences. When you have accurate oversight into the behaviors and preferences of your clientele, you can tailor your messaging and improve your products or services so that they are more closely aligned with their needs and expectations. Better, more personalized service is the key to differentiating your brand and developing deeper, more meaningful connections with your customers. This promotes loyalty and increases the chances of customer referrals. 3. It Improves Workflow No matter how small your business, your sales and marketing process always has room for improvement. The reality is that most businesses have a ton of manual processes in place, such as sticky notes and spreadsheets, that kill productivity. Small business CRM software removes the bottlenecks and makes it very easy to create workflows your team can stick to on a daily basis. Whether it’s automating follow-up on a new lead or delivering a consistent new customer onboarding process, a CRM can improve your entire team’s efficiency, from sales to customer service, which leads me to my next point. 4. It Increases Customer Support Customer support is the backbone of every small business. It impacts not only customer retention but also your revenue. So how do you deliver an extraordinary customer experience? By giving your support team instant access to detailed information about each and every customer. Let them discover their online history, their order information, and their past interactions with your company to ensure they really understand what each customer has gone through. A huge plus of CRM software is that it collects customer data in one place, making it easier to segment your customers based on their specific needs and interests. 5. It Maximizes Resources Small business owners are all too familiar with the challenge of wearing multiple hats. Even mid-sized organizations struggle to make the most out of limited resources. Marketing automation and a robust CRM allow companies of any size to do more with less because technology does the heavy lifting. As a result, even businesses operating on a skeleton crew can deliver high-level service and remain competitive with organizations of every size. With technology today, much of the sales and marketing tasks that used to be done by hand can be automated in a personalized manner. As mentioned earlier, CRM software can take care of the majority of administrative tasks, keep records, and make follow-ups with contacts for you. You have more time for the activities that have the most impact, running your business, and meeting with clients that are ready to buy. 6. It Enables You to Develop Best Practices Small businesses must find a way to maximize productivity and efficiency to keep costs down and operate as profitably as possible. The best CRM software can help you identify and implement best practices to ensure that every employee remains on the same page and that the business is run like a well-oiled machine. Having these best practices in place can also make it easier to onboard new employees, bringing them up to speed faster and providing them with the marketing tools and information they need to do their jobs more effectively. If you’re not employing a CRM system, you’re missing out on lots of ways to be more efficient and purposeful in your day-to-day sales activities. If you know your business could use some of the benefits mentioned above, then it may be time to choose a CRM that’s perfect for you. Choosing the Perfect CRM for Your Needs Businesses that work well with their CRM can see a potential 300% increase in conversion rates and a 47% increase in customer retention and satisfaction rates. But to achieve these impressive benchmarks, you’ll have to choose the right software. Here are the big things to consider as you make your pick: Your budget Your team Your contact list Your preferred pay frequency What additional features you want built-in Support needs Your Budget Before you start researching options, you should determine what your marketing budget is. Keep in mind that the actual cost will probably exceed the base pricing when you factor in the time required to set up the software and train your employees, among other things. (Psst: There’s free CRM software out there for small businesses that aren’t quite prepared to make a huge investment. In fact, our Free Forever Plan is completely free, meaning you pay nothing to sign up, and there are no hidden fees. We promise.) Your Team If you have a certain number of people that will need access to the CRM, you’ll need to factor that into your purchase decision. If it’s too expensive, however, you could start with a single-user plan and then upgrade later on if the CRM is working out for you. Your Contact List The price you pay for a CRM is often related to how many contacts you have. If your contact list size is priced out of a CRM option that fits your budget, consider auditing it to remove any dead-end leads that aren’t going anywhere. Your Preferred Pay Frequency Most CRMs offer both monthly and annual pricing, with a discount for paying an annual fee upfront. If you’re able to work it into your budget, see if you can score a good deal with a CRM that allows you to pay annually instead of month-to-month. What Additional Features You Want Built-in Integrating your CRM with key features can lead to better lead nurturing capabilities and huge cost savings. This includes things like: Email Automation Integrating CRM with email marketing can be hugely beneficial for your business since it allows these two tools to work together for enhanced lead nurturing capabilities. This also means you can build beautifully designed HTML emails that help elevate your brand and messaging. Consider whether you want email automation to be included, and if so, how many emails you want to be able to send a month. Note that some CRM software providers cap your emails at a certain amount or don’t offer email automation at all. If it’s a feature you know you want, make sure that you factor it in when you’re looking over your options. Marketing Automation If CRM plus email automation is good, then CRM plus marketing automation is even better. But it’s a good bet that if the software you’re looking at doesn’t include email, then it doesn’t include marketing automation either. Sales and marketing automation often go together as two sides of the same coin, and if you don’t get marketing automation through your CRM, you’ll likely still have to get it from somewhere else. If you know you’ll need it, select a CRM tool that has it included so you can get all of your essentials in one application. Landing Pages and Forms Landing pages and forms are excellent lead generation tools, providing your prospects with a direct location where they can provide their information in exchange for high-quality resources and content. This allows you to enroll them into your lead nurture campaigns, and it advances them to the next stage of the buyer’s journey. Many CRM platforms allow you to create landing pages and forms, but not all, so pay attention to whether this functionality is included if it’s something you know you want. Support Needs Do you need access to 24/7 assistance or quick communication via email or chat? If so, look for CRM software that has accessible customer support options, which ensures that help will always be available if you need it. Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing a CRM The biggest mistake when choosing a CRM is to not see the value in it, which could lead you to underutilize the software. It takes time and money to implement new software, but it’s worth putting in the effort when you consider all that a CRM can do for you. As for the other big obstacles to avoid when choosing and using a CRM platform, they might not be so obvious, though they can be equally damaging. They include not setting distinct goals for your CRM usage (there are a lot of features available, so it makes sense to hone in on exactly what you need — no more and no less) and not aligning your CRM with the goals and strategies of your sales team. Sit down with your team in advance and talk about what they need to improve the customer experience and make more sales. This includes the sorts of data they feel they require to successfully push a lead through the sales funnel, as well as what major challenges they’re currently facing. A final mistake: assuming a CRM will fix any problems right away. Give everyone time to get acclimated and focus on long-term benefits instead of quick fixes. Our Favorite Small Business CRMs Narrow it down by starting your search with a popular and pre-vetted CRM system. Here are seven of our faves. 1. BenchmarkONE We’re a little biased here. But still, we’ve built a CRM system with built-in marketing and email automation, and we’re proud of the many ways in which it allows you to make more impactful and more timely connections with your leads. 2. Agile CRM The cloud-based Agile CRM platform provides tools for excelling in sales, marketing, and service, with integration-ready features that are easy to implement into your existing processes. 3. Zoho CRM Zoho CRM offers international expertise that can be a big advantage if your business runs operations outside of the U.S. — or if your clients do. 4. Insightly Efficiently organize each step of the marketing and sales process — including everything that happens after a pitch becomes a sale. 5. Less Annoying CRM Less Annoying CRM is entirely small business-focused, meaning they don’t waste your time with bells and whistles that look good on paper but aren’t suited for your purposes. 6. Nimble This scalable CRM promises a customizable experience for its users without the need for extensive setup, which is good news if you don’t have much time to devote to getting your CRM up and running. 7. Monday.com There’s a lot of automation baked into Monday.com, plus tools to help you find more efficiency in other departments, such as HR, IT, and even software development. When it comes to small business CRM, you have choices. Take your time and go with a CRM that offers you everything you need at a price that makes sense. We guarantee your perfect CRM is out there — you just have to find it.
How to Measure Customer Lifetime Value to Identify Your Best Relationships Posted on June 9, 2021June 9, 2021 by Jonathan Herrick If you’re running a small business, then you don’t have time (or money) to waste on tactics that aren’t effective. So how do you make sure that every effort is one that’s worth taking? There’s a lot of trial and error, but there are also certain metrics that can help you determine whether it’s worth putting your precious resources in one direction versus another. One of the big ones: customer lifetime value (CLV), which allows you to determine the ROI of every customer relationship — and in turn, determine which relationships are most beneficial to building your business and which aren’t. If you’re new to the idea of CLV, we’re here to help. We’ve put together this quick guide to customer lifetime value, including what it is, why it matters, and how to measure it, plus some quick tips on how to improve it. What is Customer Lifetime Value — and Why is it Important? Customer lifetime value is a metric that businesses use to figure out just how valuable a certain customer is to their company. Not all customers bring in equal value. Focusing on those who offer the most profitable and sustainable relationships is a great way to ensure that you put your marketing and sales resources where they’ll go the furthest. It also helps your business invest more in customer retention versus customer acquisition — with the former typically being a lot less costly and a lot more lucrative than the latter. CLV may be the single most important metric for your small business when understanding your customers. It gives you the data you need to answer some BIG questions about marketing, sales, product/services, and how to best serve your customers. For example: Marketing: What’s the most you should spend to acquire a new customer? Sales: Which prospects should I be spending my time with and working to close? Product: How to best align my products/services to match my ideal buyer? Customer Service: How much should I be spending to keep and support a customer? CLV gives you a picture of how much return business you can expect from a customer, which in turn will help you decide how much you’re willing to spend to acquire new customers for your small business. How to Measure Customer Lifetime Value When you’re responsible for a business, you become keenly aware of who your best customers are. That intuitive knowledge is a big part of understanding CLV, but there are also some specific measurements that you can use to hone in on your MVCs (most valuable customers). Notably, there isn’t one single mathematical equation that will cue you in on a customer’s value. Instead, you need to look at a number of different metrics to calculate your CLV accurately. These include: Annual revenue per customer Average number of years as a customer Average profit margin per customer Customer retention rates Initial cost of customer acquisition (total sales and marketing costs/number of new customers) All of these metrics give you a different piece of the puzzle that ultimately tells you which customers are bringing in the most value for your business. They also go hand-in-hand with figuring out customer acquisition costs, providing a necessary link between how much it costs you to acquire a new customer and how much value that customer brings you in return. Let’s walk through an example using some of the metrics above to calculate a CLV: Let’s say you own AAA Taxes, and you provide a tax preparation service that charges $500 per customer for your service. It costs you $250 through Google Adwords to acquire a new customer. On the surface, it seems like a recipe for disaster. Half of your fee is going to sales and marketing costs. However, once you understand that the average customer stays with you for nine years and delivers a CLV of $4,250, the ROI is undeniable. Revenue from Tax Service Per Customer = $500 Average number of years as a customer = 9 Years Initial Cost of Acquisition = $250 per customer Annual revenue per customer x number of years – cost of customer acquisition = CLV $500 x 9 – $250 = $4250 Once you determine the CLV, you can better assess how much money to spend to bring in new customers and how much to spend on customer retention. There are more in-depth ways to calculate your CLV, such as breaking down your customer acquisition costs in more detail and adding your customer retention rates, but the goal is still the same – to identify customers with high CLV’s so you can acquire more of them, and spot the customers with low CLV’s so you decide whether to focus on improving that segment of customers or eliminating them altogether. How Can You Use CLV to Determine What Relationships are No Longer Valuable? You have about a 60-70% probability of selling to an existing customer versus just a 5-20% probability of selling to a new prospective customer. Relying on CLV to identify your most worthwhile customers is key to maximizing customer retention potential. On the flip side, identifying which customers are just going to end up costing you more than they’re worth is also just as important. CLV is all about efficiency. The more you can center on the customers who are least efficient for reaching your profit goals, the better you can focus on the ones who are. If a customer costs you more in time and money than their overall worth to your business, it’s a sign that you need to shift gears and put your focus somewhere else. As for ending those unprofitable relationships, it’s a delicate line to walk, but it’s not impossible. If it’s been a longstanding relationship, be open about how you don’t think your solution is the right one for them and make suggestions on alternatives. Make sure to ask for feedback too about what might have gone wrong and where you can do better in the future. How to Improve Your CLV To improve your CLV, you need to improve the quality of your customers and customer relationships. Here are some ways to do it. Onboard with purpose. When you bring on a new customer, talk with them about their unique challenges and the value they’re hoping to get out of your product or service, then walk them through the specific features that can help them out the most. Consider sending them a series of onboarding emails to help them learn the ropes and manage expectations. Stay in touch. Keep connected with your existing customers by checking in on a semi-regular basis and by sending out a consistent stream of content that can help ensure they get maximum value out of their purchase. Prioritize customer service. Be available for your customers when they need you, with an omnichannel strategy that includes not just a phone number and email address but responsive chat and social media. While you’re at it, ensure your customer service staff is highly trained so that when your customers do need help, you’re able to provide it in the most effective way possible. How to Maximize Your Customer Lifetime Value Segmentation Not all customers are equally valuable to your business. For example, B2B may have a different CLV than B2C. Or, maybe a certain lead source, such as Facebook or referrals, are more effective. Use the CLV formula to better understand which customer personas are the most profitable for you. By identifying which segments or lead sources have a higher CLV, you will be better able to allocate your marketing and sales investment towards acquiring those customers. Personalization Customers want to connect with your brand and your business personally. But as time goes on and your business grows it gets harder and harder to engage with all of your customers in an authentic and meaningful way. By leveraging technology like marketing automation, you can better understand your customers’ online behaviors and automatically send the right message to them at the right time – increasing awareness, conversations, and conversions. Upsell and Cross-Sell The longer a customer stays with you and the more they spend, the greater the CLV. So if you want to boost the lifetime value for your customers, look for ways to promote new services or products to your existing base of customers. An upsell is when you find a way to increase revenues within the same product or service. An example would be selling a premium tax service as an upgrade for $700 compared to your standard $500 service offering. A cross-sell, on the other hand, is when you sell a new product to an existing customer that drives revenue. For example, if you were to sell a financial planning service to every customer that received a tax credit. Targeting your customers’ unique needs, you can nurture them with content and offers when they are ready to buy, making it easier to drive additional revenue and sales. The better you are to your customers, the better they’ll be to you. Improve your CLV, and you won’t just have happier customers — you’ll also bring a lot more profit to your business.
When to Gate Your Content Posted on June 3, 2021June 11, 2021 by Natalie Slyman To gate or not to gate, that is the question. There are big benefits to gating your content, but that doesn’t mean you should be doing it for every piece of content you create. If you did, you’d lose out on lots of traffic from people who are looking for quick access to the resources that they need. You’d also miss out on an opportunity to display your company’s thought leadership capabilities to a wide audience. The best approach is to strike a balance between your gated and non-gated content, utilizing both methods of content sharing to expand your audience, boost your brand’s authority, and drive more traffic and conversions. So how do you do it? Keep reading to learn how to identify when your content should be gated and when it shouldn’t — plus why gating content is important in the first place. What is Gated Content? Gated content refers to any piece of content that requires site visitors to fill out a website form before they can access it. Generally, these forms request contact information such as a name and email address. Once the information is provided, the content is available for download or is emailed. Benefits of Gated Content Any piece of content that you create for your brand is driven toward your larger marketing goals. Unlike blog posts and on-demand assets, though, gated content is designed to offer very rapid, very tangible returns. We’ve talked about the benefits of creating gated content before, but here’s a quick overview of the reasons that you definitely want to include at least some gated pieces in your content marketing strategy: increased lead flow. High-quality gated content takes time and effort to create. Do it right, though, and you’ll attract high-quality leads in return. When seeking out information, people are looking for both value and original insight — and when they find it, they’re usually willing to exchange something for it. It’s great for building your contact list. Gated content is one of the best ways to help your brand build up a robust contact list for your email marketing efforts. Just be sure that in addition to requesting a lead’s email address, you also include a direct option for opting-in to your email, such as a box that must be checked consenting to your newsletter. It helps you with segmentation. Segmenting your contact list is just as important as growing it. Use your gated content form to gather essential data that can help you decide how you should target specific leads, such as asking for information on industry, job title, and budget. Just don’t get too nosy — you don’t want to lose out on contacts because you made the form too invasive or long. It boosts your SEO. Any well-researched, well-written piece of content that you produce has the capacity to garner interest from other reputable sites. Because of the nature of their format, gated content tends to fit the bill, offering original insights that can’t be sourced elsewhere. This means more backlinks and mentions — and ultimately, more SEO prowess, as backlinks are the most important ranking factor. When to Gate Your Content If people are going to be offering up their information to you in order to access a piece of content, it needs to be worth it. Besides their modes of access, there’s a difference between gated content and general content in terms of quality and effort. While you obviously try to achieve both of those things with everything you create, there’s a much stronger expectation with your gated pieces that readers will find something they can’t get anywhere else. Any piece of content that you choose to gate should have a few key elements, including substantial information, highly unique tips, and/or proprietary data. Some examples of the types of content that fit the bill include: Long-form content or ebooks Extensive guides that outline a tried-and-true process or explain things that are difficult to master Tutorials on your product Data-driven reports that provide insights into a particular industry or audience base In all instances, before you decide to gate a piece of content, ask yourself if you’re giving as much as you’re getting in return. You don’t want to risk disappointing your readers, especially when the goal is to gain more qualified leads and contacts. Remember: the goal here is balance. Your content marketing strategy should cover both gated and non-gated content, with the latter coming out on a more consistent basis and the former coming out on a schedule that aligns with your content creation process. By coming up with a plan in advance, you give yourself time to gather the information needed to create killer gated content, whether that’s through surveys, studies, or other research endeavors. Both gated and non-gated content serve an important role when it comes to gaining more leads and making more sales. When you include both types in your strategy, you ensure that you’re dotting your Is and crossing your Ts for the most effective content strategy possible.
10 Software Tools to Add to Your Arsenal in 2021 Posted on June 2, 2021June 2, 2021 by Guest Author 2020 was perhaps the most challenging year for many businesses. In response to the pandemic, new strategies were developed, and old strategies were revamped in hopes of increasing growth and combating less than steady revenue. The latest data from the Content Marketing Institute’s 2021 B2B Content Marketing: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report shows that 79% of B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy. Of those, 70% made some level of adjustments to their strategy because of the pandemic. Source The pandemic really tested the resiliency of business owners like you. Fortunately, there are software and marketing tools you can include in your arsenal to help your business bounce back and reach your set goals this year. The only problem is that there are so many options to choose from, making the entire process a daunting task. Let’s make the search a bit easier by sharing ten software tools that you need to add to your stack this year. 10 Must-Have Software Tools 1. Virtual Team Collaboration Software In this time of the pandemic, several companies have started operating partially as virtual teams, if not entirely. Keeping everyone on the same page while working in different locations, however, can be challenging. According to Mural, virtual teams face challenges in communication, team relationships, and task management. Lack of focus and productivity also seems to be a problem. Having virtual team collaboration software in your arsenal can alleviate these pains of not working physically with your team members by providing an efficient communication avenue, transparent task management, and organized workflow arrangement. Project Management According to The Virtual Hub, project management tools give your virtual team a way to collaborate on projects by sharing documents, timelines, and status updates. They also help to improve productivity among team members by letting them discuss issues in real-time. The software tool Front does just that. It offers shared email functionality that lets you combine emails, apps, and teammates into a single view and create the workflows you need to power more impactful work. With Front, you can create shared inboxes so you can manage messages as a team. You can also tag your teammates on emails and work on drafts together. Because everyone can see who is working on what assignments, projects move smoothly with a lesser possibility of making mistakes. Source Time Tracking Software Monitoring your office-based employees’ attendance and productivity is easy because you can see them in person. That’s not the case with remote employees. You don’t know if they’re working ardently behind that computer screen or just slacking off. Time tracking software helps you monitor how much time you and your team members are spending on specific tasks and projects. The insights it provides allow you to evaluate your priorities and make changes if necessary. It will also help you gauge whether you’re getting your money’s worth based on your remote employees’ output. Freshbooks has these functionalities and more. This cloud-based time tracking software tool tracks working time, creates invoices, and provides very detailed reports. Plus, it has an easy-to-use interface, and it functions well on your desktop and mobile phone. Source 2. Video Editing Software According to a report published by Animoto, 93% of businesses got a new customer thanks to a video they shared on social media. Why? Well, video content is both informative and entertaining. It effectively drives traffic to your website and converts them into leads and customers. Video creation software tools like Animoto can help you produce a high-quality video using images, video clips, and music. In addition to the standard video editing features, Animoto also gives you over one million stock photos and thousands of licensed songs you can use to create your videos. It also lets you add a logo as a watermark to your videos to raise brand awareness. Source 3. Webinar Software Webinars are extremely effective in generating leads because they’re more accessible than traditional seminars and can attract more people who have a great potential to become customers. They also allow you to communicate with your audience before, during, and after your presentation. Livestorm is a good webinar software tool to add to your stack because it lets you pre-record webinar content or do live business presentations, depending on your preference. After the webinar, you can track and analyze the data using the platform’s analytics tool. Source 4. Social Media Listening and Engagement An effective social media listening tool shouldn’t only track when your brand is mentioned on social media but also allow you to track keywords, phrases, and your competitors so you can find opportunities to leverage for your business. SentiOne helps you identify unhappy customers and address their issues. On top of that, it collects data, like mentions, in time charts, gender recognition, geolocation map, reach estimation, and influencer search, which you can use to optimize your marketing strategies that boost customer satisfaction and loyalty. Source 5. Email Marketing Automation To build quality customer relationships, you need to communicate with them regularly and on a personal level. One way to do that is through email marketing. Email marketing automation software allows you to send a targeted email at the right time and with the right context. BenchmarkONE’s easy-to-use platform helps you achieve this by allowing you to segment your email list, automate email drip campaigns, and personalize each email you send. It also saves your precious time by letting you know who your hot prospects are so you can focus on selling your products. With BenchmarkONE, you get access to a robust library of email templates you can use to make your emails more attractive and encourage your subscribers to take action. Source 6. Client Onboarding Software According to Thought Industries, a poor client onboarding process causes 52% of new customers to leave within the first 90 days. For people to understand how to use your product effectively, you need to accept the helping hand of a client onboarding software tool. An example of this is Appcues. Appcues helps turn your product into a growth engine by converting new users into fans. It offers an automated and personalized onboarding experience to the user so you can show the right experience to the targeted user at the right time. Source 7. Analytics Software Marketing analytics provides you with the data you need to further optimize every campaign you launch and reach your set marketing goals. Analytics software offers profound insights into customer preferences and the latest trends. Once you know what your potential buyers like, you get a higher chance to convert them. KissMetrics is among the first software tools that come to our mind when we talk about analytics. This efficient marketing analytics software tool allows you to track user behaviors and insights to improve and optimize the content you publish on your website and social media channels. Source 8. SEO SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of making it easier for your potential customers to find you on Google and other search engines. According to Backlinko, links ranking number one in Google’s search results receive an average CTR of 31.7% and are 10x more likely to be clicked than those listed below. Moz Pro can help you to achieve such success. This all-in-one SEO tool focuses on improving your rankings and search engine visibility. It helps you to strategically target keywords that your possible visitors would be interested in. It also ensures that your page content has the maximum potential to rank for your target keywords and recommends specific improvements. Source 9. Omnichannel Commerce Software The number of online shoppers increased by 27% as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. To fully cater to these consumers, many businesses have turned to omnichannel commerce – a multi-channel approach that provides customers with a seamless shopping experience, regardless of where they start and end their transaction. BigCommerce is a software tool that provides eCommerce businesses with multi-channel integration tools so you can easily transform your social media accounts into “branches” of your online store, making it easy for your customers to buy from you. Source 10. Customer Support Software Good customer support helps increase your customer retention rate, which, in turn, generates more revenue for your business because repeat customers buy more than new customers. One way you can ensure your business is providing your customer with quality support by answering their queries promptly through customer support software like HappyFox. HappyFox can help you maintain your customer’s satisfaction by assisting you in taking care of their needs. This practical help desk and customer support software solution handles all inbound requests in one ticketing system. It also offers a secure help desk with SSL integration and 24/7 support at no extra cost. Source Key Takeaways Adding any of these types of software tools to your arsenal can boost your team’s productivity and reach your marketing goals this year. Of course, introducing and implementing new technology in the workplace would mean that your team will have to learn how to use it and maximize its potential. For this reason, don’t introduce several software tools at once. Otherwise, the change can stress and overwhelm your team resulting in the underutilization of these tools. Give your team enough time to learn and adjust to the new software tool. Take advantage of any onboarding services that the developers may offer, and make sure that your team attends. That way, your team will fully understand how the new tool benefits them and their workflow. While adding any one or all of these software tools can significantly help you and your business meet your marketing goals, remember that they are just that: tools. You still need to ensure that you have a clear understanding of your target market and provide them with the right content for each stage of your marketing funnel. Only then can you maximize the potential of these software tools. Author Bio Kevin Payne is a content marketing consultant that helps software companies build marketing funnels and implement content marketing campaigns to increase their inbound leads.
How Chatbots Increase Top-of-the-funnel Conversion Rate Posted on May 27, 2021May 20, 2021 by Guest Author When Facebook released its chatbot platform in 2016, many in the marketing world thought that chatbots would be the next great digital channel, and with good reason. Over a billion people used the app at the time, and the intimate, 1-to-1 nature of instant messaging meant that the platform promised to be a place where businesses could create personalized customer experiences that translated into real conversions. As time has passed, we’ve come to realize that much of this hype was unfounded. Messenger is not the marketing behemoth that many thought it would be, and many are even calling the platform “dead.” Of course, this did not mark the end for chatbots as a whole. Rather it just marked a shift of the technology to a new context. From Messenger’s fall (and rise), marketers learned that the killer use case for chatbots wasn’t as a brand new digital channel but rather as a conversion rate optimization tool. In this article, we will discuss how marketers can use chatbots to make information on their websites and landing pages more accessible and make lead generation more engaging. In the process, we’ll establish how these changes translate into a higher conversion rate and greater marketing ROI. Before Digital Marketing Decades ago (in ancient times), when the internet didn’t exist, people would go to physical stores and offices to buy things. As technology progressed, phones became more prevalent, and some of that consumption started to happen remotely. Of course, even with this limited progress, one aspect of the buyer’s journey remained constant in the pre-internet era: the reliance on human interaction. Whether you were walking into a store or calling a business, it was likely that at some point in the buyer’s journey, you’d be talking to another human being to get the transaction done. Travel agents helped us plan vacations, receptionists helped us book dentist appointments, and store attendants helped us find the right clothes. Regardless of the industry or vertical, it was someone’s job to help consumers complete the buying process. The issue with this approach to buying and selling was that it was unscalable. The friction associated with getting people to leave their house and come into a store or take the time out of their day to make a phone call was high, so bringing in business was hard. Even if you could overcome these hurdles, your sales staff couldn’t scale with your customer base so, inevitably, your stores would get crowded, phone lines clogged, and customer experience would suffer. The Arrival of Digital Marketing The advent of digital marketing turned this model of human-driven selling on its head. As businesses shifted online, consumers could walk themselves through the buyer’s journey by navigating around a webpage. Instead of having to go through a travel agent, you could find and book all of the hotels, plane tickets, and activities that you’d need for a vacation on your own. Instead of speaking to a receptionist, you could book a dentist’s appointment through an appointment scheduling widget. And instead of having a store attendant suggest the right clothes for you, you could scroll through Amazon’s thousands of listings to find the exact right match for yourself. In other words, commerce became self-serve. For a long time, this shift was beneficial to consumers and businesses alike. Consumers were given the convenience of finding and purchasing products from wherever they wanted. You can literally order anything you want from Amazon, laying in bed (an activity which I myself am unfortunately afflicted with). For businesses, it made reaching customers considerably easier because platforms like Facebook and Google could get you in front of pretty much any of your potential customers, and, more importantly, since customers served themselves, it reduced reliance on your human sales staff. The Limits of Digital Marketing While digital marketing has undoubtedly given businesses unfathomable scale and customer convenience, it has also created a new set of problems that are coming to a head today. As online buying has become mainstream, the novelty of landing pages and websites has worn off, giving way to digital fatigue. Put simply, customers do not want to read through wordy landing pages, scroll through endless listings or fill out boring forms anymore. This is why top-of-the-funnel conversion rates are abysmally low across industries and verticals. Most ad campaigns, for example, yield sub-10% conversion rates. The Shift Back to Conversations To address these issues, businesses have been shifting back to the old model of selling by incorporating human interaction into the online buyer’s journey. The underlying logic behind this shift is that for all the convenience of online buying, people would rather have a conversation than reading text or fill out forms. In practice, we can see this shift manifest itself in the re-emergence of live chat widgets across websites. Source It’s rare for you to go to a site today that doesn’t have a friendly chat or call CTA prominently displayed, asking you to talk with an agent who can address your questions and help you complete the buying process. Automation for Scalability With the shift back to a customer service-driven approach to selling, businesses have resurrected the scalability issues that they faced before the shift to digital. Businesses again find it hard to scale their live chat operation with the amount of traffic that they receive. Inevitably the number of conversations that buyers initiate outstrips the number of agents, and wait times skyrocket. Additionally, lack of availability outside of work hours means that businesses can’t deliver a conversational buyer’s journey at all times. This is where automation comes into the picture. Using chatbots, businesses can create automated customer service agents that walk customers through the buyer’s journey without human assistance. Source This approach to online selling treads the line between unengaging self-serve web pages and engaging but expensive human-driven buyer’s journeys. Like self-serve web pages, chatbots are completely automated, meaning that they scale perfectly with website traffic ensuring instant response to customer queries. Relatedly, since chatbots do not need to sleep, they are available 24/7 to answer queries. Perhaps most importantly, however, since chatbots are software, they do not come with the associated costs of a human-driven approach to selling. Source Of course, with all these benefits, they still maintain the conversational nature of human interactions that cut through the mundaneness of regular landing pages and that customers appreciate. Conclusion The concept of selling through conversations is not a new one. For millennia, human beings have been buying, selling, and trading products by talking to each other. The advent of the internet and digital marketing flipped this paradigm on its head. With the emergence of landing pages and websites, we moved into an era of self-serve buying that quickly became the norm, and we forgot the art of conversational commerce. But, falling attention spans and conversion rates have brought the trend back into vogue. Customers today want to engage with businesses conversationally. Of course, this trend has come with its own set of problems—namely, an inability to scale human conversational agents. Automation is the solution. Using chatbots, businesses can deliver the high-converting, conversational experience that customers want at a price point that businesses can afford—the end result: more delighted customers and a higher conversion rate. Author Bio Arnav Patel is a Content Marketer and Chatbot Specialist at Tars, a product that helps businesses increase conversion and automate customer service requests using conversational technology. Arnav builds chatbots and frequently writes about conversational design on the Tars blog.
4 Best Marketing Tools for Agencies Posted on May 26, 2021May 20, 2021 by Katie Culp Running a successful marketing agency is no easy feat, which makes it all the more important to take a shortcut when you can get one. Thanks to a boom in tech support tools, today’s agencies have access to a huge suite of productivity-driven software and platforms that they can use to run their offices smarter, faster, and more efficiently. And when every minute counts, it’s worth investing in the ones that can free up your time and allow you to better prioritize how you spend your days. If you find yourself putting your own initiatives on the backburner in favor of your clients’ needs — or if you could just use some support in your day to day operations (and honestly, who couldn’t?) — then check out this list of the four best marketing tools for agencies and discover smart solutions for putting your strategies to work. 1. Marketing Automation Software Obviously, we couldn’t put together a list of must-have marketing tools without first mentioning marketing automation software. This savvy tech solution is your partner in crime when it comes to managing your clients’ needs across a variety of platforms. Having a marketing automation tool offers more value to your clients, ensuring you’re indispensable and an asset to their overall success. You can also use it to manage your own in-house marketing efforts, with built-in analytic tools that make it easy to monitor the outcomes of all that hard work. Some of the many benefits offered by marketing automation software include: Automated lead tagging and scoring Automated email marketing and contact list segmentation Automated engagement based on customer behaviors There are lots of automation platforms out there, so we recommend narrowing down your search based on your budget, the size of your agency, and the size of your client and contact base. As for our favorite tool in this category, that’s an easy one. Check out all that BenchmarkONE can do for your agency and get in touch if you’d like a demo. 2. Social Media Automation It seems like with every week comes the introduction of a new social media channel, feature, or trend that your marketing agency needs to master on the fly. And while there aren’t any shortcuts for staying ahead of the game, there are shortcuts for making sure that you don’t fall behind with your social media posts or engagement. Social media automation tools allow you to aggregate all of your (and your clients’) various channels onto one simple dashboard. From there, you can schedule posts in advance, cross-post between accounts, and follow along with mentions, comments, shares, and likes. Look for a social media automation platform that covers all of your normal channels and that provides the right range of features for what you’re trying to accomplish. One of our faves is Falcon, which hits the sweet spot between offering a ton of features while still being rather intuitive to use. 3. Project Management Software Pretty much any business in any industry can benefit from project management software, and marketing is no exception. Some of the many perks offered by project management software include: Sales pipeline and project planning In-house communication and collaboration tools Budgeting tools Scheduling and time management tools Centralized document storage These platforms provide a one-stop shop for managing and tracking projects from concept to completion, and are especially handy for keeping everyone on the same page at the same time — and ensuring that you always know where you’re at on budget. There are tons of project management software options out there, but we’re big fans of Basecamp due to its streamlined interface and wide-scale integration capabilities. 4. Workflow Automation The more automation you have, the more time left over for everything else on your to-do list. Workflow automation is no exception, allowing you to set up customized workflow practices that take place regardless of user input. For example, automatic updates to your all-in-one CRM when a new contact reaches out over email, or the automatic sending of attachments to Slack so you don’t miss anything. Workflow automation software follows the basic “if this, then that” structure of algorithms. You choose what actions trigger what responses, with near-limitless possibilities for app integration depending on the software platform you choose. On that note, check out Zapier for a workflow automation tool that works across more than 30,000 different apps. What Tools are Right for You? This is far from an exhaustive list of tools that can support your agency (CRM, user testing tools, and data analytic tools all have a place in your mar-tech stack, too, for starters). But, it should give you a quick look at just how impactful the right software can be for your business. If budget is an issue, many tools offer free versions with limited features and/or free trials so that you can see if it’s worth it before you invest. Allocate your resources wisely, keeping in mind that the more efficiency you have, the more profit potential that comes with it.