MAILCHIMP
EMAIL MARKETING: Perfect for email marketing campaigns. Allows businesses to target users who have provided their email address or have previously purchased a product which makes your marketing highly targeting. Of all marketing endeavours, email marketing has the highest ROI - estimated at 38:1.
LINK: https://mailchimp.com/
hUBSPOT
CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Having a CRM allows a business to know exactly what stage of a customer lifecycle a user is at. For example, if you have an email address (user), that has never purchased, you could perhaps target them with a promotional email (''Try Tony's Tea now and save 10%''). If you know they have purchased a product you could send an email at an appropriate time trying to upsell/cross sell (''We hope you enjoyed Tony's Tea! Why not try our newest flavours!'')
LINK: https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm
LATER
SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULER: By syncing this tool with your Instagram account you can schedule posts in advance, thus saving you valuable time. For example prepare a full week of posts at the start of the week and the post will automatically post on the day and time you had previously scheduled.
LINK: https://later.com/
BANNERSNACK
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Quickly and easily create marketing material and promotional banners for use on your website or social channels without the need of a graphic designer. Also useful for creating infographics.
LINK: https://www.bannersnack.com/
MOZ
SEO TOOL: Optimise your SEO with this tool.
LINK: https://moz.com/moz-pro-free-trial
MAILER LITE
POP-UP'S ON YOUR WEBSITE: When a user visits your website and if for example they move their cursor to the exit button, a pop-up will appear with a message of your choosing. For example, before the user leaves, you could have a banner that pops up with an image and a message that says: ''Before you leave, why not get 10% OFF your first order!''. Also really good for capturing email addresses.
LINK: https://www.mailerlite.com/
CANVA
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Much like Bannersnack above, but with Canva you have a larger number of free banners to avail of.
LINK: https://www.canva.com/
WISTIA
VIDEO HOSTING: This differs from YouTube as the analytics provide much more insights. The video can be hosted on your own website and you can optimise for SEO. Wistia also allows you to capture emails while you can drill down to see how individual viewers are watching your videos with heatmaps. You can even attribute specific viewing activity to a viewer’s email address.
LINK: https://wistia.com/pricing
IMAGE SHARING/SOCIAL MEDIA: An often forgotten about social media platform. It is mostly used by people looking for inspiration. Pinterest is particularly useful for businesses focusing on food/drink, fashion and home improvements. Companies can engage with communities with an interest in their product category by using great imagery and directing those users to their website.
LINK: https://www.pinterest.com/
USER LIKE
LIVE CHAT ON WEBSITE: Engage with customers on your websites. It is often a small doubt or concern that stops a customer converting. If they can ask a question and quickly get a response, they are more likely to convert. Paid versions of this tool and other similar tools allow geo targeting.
LINK: https://www.userlike.com/en/pricing
HotJAR
TRACK USER BEHAVIOUR ON YOUR WEBSITE: This software allows the owner of a website to track a user on their site. For example, if a business is trying to sell more tours on their website but are having no success they can get a screen recording of how a user navigated while on the site. The findings from this can show that CTA (call to action) buttons are potentially in the wrong place and are not getting the required attention or that your page is taking too long to load and the users are leaving because of this. You can also view heatmaps to see where users are being directed on any given page - are they doing what you intend them to do? For example, purchase a product or complete a contact us form.