Do you ever feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to complete all your marketing tasks? Whether you’re a one-person marketing department at a small business or you’re running massive marketing campaigns for a huge corporation, it’s frustrating when your task list starts getting too long.
This is why many marketers invest in marketing software that can automate and streamline the marketing process.
These software platforms can help you send marketing materials to the right customers, post on social media more efficiently, and launch ad campaigns at scale.
Marketing software can also help you keep track of your marketing efforts. You’ll be able to track key metrics and produce reports that reveal marketing effectiveness. If you’re tired of using spreadsheets to gather marketing data, it may be time to switch to marketing software with reporting capabilities.
In the article below, you’ll find a list of some of the most popular types of marketing software platforms. Read on to learn more about how you can use marketing software to improve efficiency in your marketing department.
Marketing Automation Software
The first marketing software on our list may take a little while to set up, but it will save you time in the long run. Marketing automation software is useful for businesses that need to nurture leads through a long sales cycle.
It’s also helpful for businesses that run dozens of ad campaigns across multiple ad platforms. The best marketing automation software is designed to send specific marketing materials to leads based on detailed lead data.
This process would take a long time if you were asking a single employee or department to follow up with every lead. With marketing automation software, you can save time and send out marketing materials more efficiently.
Email Marketing Software
The benefit of email marketing software is it allows you to store all your email contacts in one place, then create emails and send them all within one platform.
Email marketing software also allows you to segment your email contacts into different lists. This is helpful for businesses that target different types of customers who may respond better to different types of messaging.
When you’re using email marketing software, you should pay attention to a few key metrics. Your open rate is one of these important metrics.
This tells you what percentage of email recipients are opening your email. Your click-through rate is also important. This tells you what percentage of people are clicking on the links in your emails.
You can also use email marketing software to test different subject lines to see which one is more effective. This is known as A/B testing. You can look at the open rates for each subject line to see which version prompted more people to open your email.
Customer Data Platforms
Do you feel like you have a good understanding of your customers? If not, your business could probably benefit from a customer data platform. This software can pull in customer data and communicate with other online marketing software platforms.
If you’re running email campaigns through your email automation platform, you can set up your customer data platform so that feeds customer data into the email platform.
The more data you have on your customers, the easier it is to target new customers with specific messaging that hits on their pain points. It can be difficult to keep track of all your customer information if you don’t have a customer data platform.
Online Chatbots
Today’s customers want to be able to reach your business on their terms. If a customer doesn’t want to call or doesn’t have time, they should be able to reach you via instant message at all hours of the day. That’s where a chatbot comes in.
Chatbots are a key component of your digital marketing software stack because they allow you to answer customer questions 24-hours a day. Of course, you won’t have to respond to customers at all hours.
Chatbots reply to customers with automated messages. If the customer has a question that the chatbot can’t answer, the chatbot can alert a member of your team that a customer requires assistance. Chatbots live on your website and are available for customers to use at all times.
Social Media Marketing Software
One of the issues with managing social media accounts for a company is the fact that you have to post on multiple platforms. Whether you’re posting every day or every week, it takes time to switch between platforms, create new posts, and manage the engagement on these posts.
If you’re running paid social media ads, you have an entirely different set of metrics to track and report on. Social media marketing software platforms can help you run social accounts more efficiently.
You can use social media marketing software to schedule posts in advance. It’s also possible to use social marketing software to post the same content across multiple platforms.
If you get a lot of engagement on social media, you may want to use social media marketing software to monitor and respond to any comments and replies.
You’re All Caught up on the Latest Marketing Software
Now that you’re familiar with some of the most popular marketing automation software platforms, you’re ready to put them to use at your company. Your next step is to find software that works for your business.
Some software platforms work better for large companies, and others are designed for small teams. If you need help finding software platforms that work for you, reach out to the marketing software experts at Smarketing Cloud.
