Marketing Productivity Tools

When was the last time you got everything you asked for in you budget? If 2019 is another year of trying to figure out how to do more with less then these marketing productivity tools are for you. Not only will they allow you to do more with less, they fit any budget. Because, they are free!

Read through each one and then share the marketing productivity tools you use.

Boomerang

You can’t live with it and you can’t live without it. Email, that is. A marketing productivity tool on one end and simultaneously a chain around your ankle. So, here’s a way to spend less time on email and reduce your inbox clutter. Consider adding the Boomerang app. It is an extension for both the Gmail and Outlook email clients. And, it will reduce the time it takes for you to manage your emails.

There are many helpful features. For example, it allows you to set up a time to send an email at a later date. Instead of saving it in drafts and making a physical or mental note to hit send later, the app does it for you. This helps you avoid sending a message when you know the person isn’t available. And, for those hard to reach contacts, you can schedule your email to send at an off time when the odds of connecting might be greater.

Shrink Your Inbox

In addition, do you keep a message in your inbox until you answer the question or resolve the issue? If so, that usually results in an ongoing inbox expansion. And that means, it’s easy to lose track of that message and dozens of others. But, tracking the message is why you kept it there in the first place. Boomerang allows you to move the message to a folder or your archives and choose a follow up time. Only then does the message reappear in your inbox.

Lastly, Boomerang includes a read receipt type function. It tracks if the recipient opened, clicked on or responded to your email so you can determine an appropriate follow up.

The free version allows you to use the Boomerang option on as many as 10 messages a month. And, the paid option starts at $4.95 and includes unlimited emails.

G Suite

You probably have a gmail address already but, the G Suite is so much more than an email tool. In fact, it contains numerous marketing productivity tools. For example, Google Docs make it easy to share, collaborate, change and complete documents far easier than other methods. Do you originate documents or spreadsheets that need input or approval from others? If so, docs is far more effective than endlessly exchanging and updating files. Plus, it eliminates the error risk inherent with that process.

Another time and money saver is Google Hangouts. It provides free phone calls to many locations throughout the world. Plus it includes video and screen sharing capabilities. And, depending upon your needs, Hangouts might replace your paid conference call tools.

The G Suite is free for individual accounts while the professional version starts at $5.00 per month.

Hemingway

How do you make your writing more powerful and easier to understand? If you don’t write for a living or have a mother who was an English teacher, it’s a challenge. Ultimately, it takes practice. But, as John Wooden said, “perfect practice makes perfect. And, the Hemingway app allows you to write in a fashion that is closer to perfect. In fact, it provides insights into your writing and offers tips that make it better.

For example, sentence length often translates into complexity. The longer the sentence, the harder it is to understand. The Hemingway app highlights those lengthy, complex sentences making it easy to focus your improvement efforts. It also calls out complicated forms of words and offers simpler alternatives. Other shortcomings such as the passive voice and excessive adverb use are identified as well.

The browser version is completely free. The desktop version is a one time cost of $19.95 and includes export formats and direct publishing options not available in the free version. Plus, it works for both Windows and Mac.

You still have to write it, but after you do, the Hemingway app suggests changes that make your writing better.

Feedly

How do you stay up to date on your industry, important trends and customer related information without drowning in content? Feedly is a great option. It’s a news aggregator application that compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources. It allows you to pick and choose the ones that best fit your needs, delivering them to a news feed that you personalize. It’s available for various web browsers and mobile devices running iOS and Android. Furthermore, it’s available as a cloud-based service.

Unlike Google Alerts, Feedly better filters the content and delivers more relevant sources and topics. Plus, it allows you save articles to folders, that you create, making it simple to find past articles of interest.

Feedly Pro, the paid version, costs $5.00 per month and provides numerous benefits. You can share information with your staff, highlight and add notes to the articles you clipped and more. In addition, you can create team newsletters that contain the articles of your choice and then distribute it regularly.

Evernote

Have you ever had a moment of inspiration but were unable to record your idea? And then, you forgot the idea before you had a chance to write it down.

Note taking tools like Evernote allow you to capture ideas and inspiration in notes, voice, and pictures from any device. Plus, you can then sync it and access the information from your computer, smartphone or tablet.

It helps you capture and prioritize ideas, projects, and to-do lists.

Further, you can bookmark a webpage, clip the webpage, take a screenshot or copy a small section into an Evernote notebook for later follow up. And, Evernote Scannable allows you to scan paper documents, including business cards, and upload them into your folders.

The paid version provides greater team collaboration and integration with common applications.

IFTTT

When are marketing productivity tools not marketing productivity tools? When they create a task that cancels out the ones they eliminated!

It’s hard to get all your work done each day. Even though technology has never been better, it doesn’t always solve the problem. In fact, the applications and devices that are supposed to streamline our workflows, sometimes add extra steps. Especially when they don’t work seamlessly with each other. So, even though our productivity increases, there are still tasks that require us to repeat our steps. But, IFTTT is designed to minimize those issues.

IFTTT is short for “If This, Then That,” is a useful tool that automates tasks that might otherwise be repetitive. It also connects devices that are unable to talk to each other.

It works like this: users are guided through a process to make simple scripts, aka "recipes," where some type of event in one device or service automatically triggers an action in another. For example, I have an iPhone but use Google G Suite products for email. So, when I’m at an event or with a customer, and have new contact information, I add it to the contacts in my iPhone. But, that means when I send a follow up email, I need to retype the contact information into Google. It’s a few minutes of unnecessary work. However, the "Save New iOS Contacts To Google Contacts" recipe eliminates that duplicate step. When I upload a new contact on my iPhone, voila, it records that same contact information in Google.

Plus, if you use social media, there are dozens of recipes that save time. You can automatically share blog posts to your Facebook page or integrate photos from Instagram with Twitter.

The fact is, there are hundreds of applets for business and personal use. And, no matter which ones or how many you use, the price is always free.

InterEdge Marketing - Marketing Productivity Tools And More!

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InterEdge Marketing provides website marketing strategy, content marketing and lead generation programs that help organizations drive revenue.