Marketers, we are nearing the end of 2015, and it’s time to clean house for 2016. That means retiring outdated tools and replacing them with new, more effective solutions. Whatever your reasons, if your team is still using the following tools, you need to upgrade.
Today, most email marketing programs collect and report a fair amount of data from your campaigns. Simple email marketing tools are a great solution for businesses that are just launching their digital outreach, but more established organizations like yours need to step up their tools for gathering email data and translating it to their CRMs.
In fact, if any of your marketing automation tools don’t track results and communicate with sales in an effective manner, it’s time to change your approach. In 2016, replace your basic email marketing tool, or any subpar marketing automation software, with a program like Hubspot, Marketo or Act-On. Programs like these will track your email engagement together with the rest of your marketing interactions, collecting data in thorough, actionable profiles with robust data about your leads.
How could use the time and effort your team will save? We recommend putting that energy toward creating even stronger marketing content in the new year.
What happens when call tracking is manual? Inevitably, some information gets lost or miscategorized. Plus, your organization wastes time manually entering data that could be collected effortlessly with an appropriate call tracking program.
By using tech tools such as CallRail in 2016, your organization can better align marketing and sales operations and take conversion tracking to the next level. By keeping better track of the marketing tactics that lead to calls and the calls that lead to sales, your organization can better optimize your work across the board.
Facebook and Twitter offer some valuable audience analytics, and in the past you may have found that these paired well enough with free or basic tools to track your audience engagement on social media. But in 2016, it’s time to do better.
This January, retire your old analytics platform and debut a tool that can drill down to offer deeper insights about the value of your social marketing. For example, TrueSocialMetrics calculates the rate at which your posts inspired conversations, amplification (sharing) and applause (liking and favoriting) over a given period of time. These numbers offer a clearer look at the real impact of your social engagements.
Advanced social media analysis tools offer centralized reporting on everything from engagement to demographics, making it easy to create reports that reflect your overall social strategy. If you’re looking to improve marketing reporting across the board in 2016, these tools are a good place to start.
Are you thinking of hiring a partner firm to improve your marketing in 2016? We’d love to talk to you about the options that could best fit your needs. Contact us today.
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