Digital marketers who work remotely need affordable and efficient tools to streamline their work. These tools foster a remote-friendly environment so that your productivity doesn’t get hampered. 

In the wake of current pandemic, industry giants, medium-sized businesses, and small business owners are enjoying the perks of remote work. Talking about the digital marketing sector, remote work tools are becoming the “work essentials”.

But how do you choose the best remote work tools from the massive pool? Not to worry! Here are the top remote-working tools for digital marketing.

Slack for Communication

Slack has transformed the way remote employees used to communicate. It is one of the most versatile communication tools that the digital world can ask for. If you want to experience seamless communication, then Slack is the right option. Let’s have a look at what it has to offer:

• Slack Channels: You can communicate among team members through private or public channels. Moreover, you can create channels with selective members, or message them directly.

• Slack Connect: You can collaborate with other stakeholders, partners, or guests by inviting them to join your workspace.

• Voice/Video Calls: Slack allows you to call your team members directly through the direct message inbox. You may also have a group audio or video call with a maximum of 15 participants. Moreover, you may also share your screen with your team members for better communication. If you use other video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Webex, or Google Hangouts, you can instantly join the meetings without affecting the Slack conversations.

• Workflow Builder: You can automate most of your tedious tasks and focus on important projects. You can automate routine tasks such as getting feedback without conducting meetings, daily standups, approving travel requests, and more.

• Pricing: Standard Plan at $2.67 per month

You can set reminders, save your messages in drafts by messaging yourself, set work status, share files, integrate other apps, spend virtual water cooler moments, send gifs, and more. It works on both desktops and smartphones smoothly.

Zoom for Video Conferencing

Virtual communication has disrupted the digital world with its endless features. The pandemic has transformed our perception of video conferencing tools. One such platform is Zoom. It surpassed the world’s expectations and jumped from 10 million participants in December 2019 to more than 300 million participants in April 2020. 

Here’s what to expect from this astounding virtual communication tool:

• Chat and meetings option: With Zoom you can join video or audio calls from any device. You can sync your calendar with Zoom to have a streamlined experience. It also comes with passcode protection so that no one can breach your privacy.

• Personal rooms and workspaces: In case you already use other video conferencing platforms (Polycom, Cisco, etc.), you can easily connect them through Zoom Conference Rooms. Furthermore, you can access its whiteboard or huddle room features to carry out training sessions.

• Phone System: You can leverage Zoom’s Phone Pro Global Select plan to connect with your stakeholders, partners, or team members globally. You can port your number to Zoom and call anyone from its mentioned 42 countries.

• Webinar Hosting: With Zoom, you can host endless webinars with 100 interactive participants and up to 10,000 attendees. You can also manage the webinar registrations through CRM integration options.

• Integration Options: Zoom offers a wide range of integration options for other apps like Slack, G-suite, Hubspot, Zapier, Calendly, and more. 

• Pricing: $14.99 per month for Zoom meetings.

SendX for Email Marketing

Email marketing is an inseparable part of digital marketing. It is one of the main marketing channels to close important deals, welcome subscribers, nurture audiences, conduct surveys, and the list is neverending.

With email marketing tools you can schedule the emails according to the time zone of the receivers. Remote working has allowed digital marketers to automate most of the email marketing process so that they can spend more time on analysis and less time on execution.

SendX is one such affordable email marketing tool that digital marketers can use to generate more leads and boost conversions from anywhere in the world. Here are the best features to look out for:

• Email Campaigns: SendX allows you to send unlimited emails and ensures top-notch deliverability based on more than 30 parameters. With a simple drag-and-drop feature you create engaging and high-quality email campaigns without any hassle. 

• Email list building: One great thing is you can add unlimited emails in your interface and you’ll only be charged on the number of opt-in subscribers. SendX with its intuitive approach helps in building high-quality email lists through advanced custom tags, forms, landing pages, and segmentation options. You can leverage this tool to generate quality leads.

• Email Marketing Automation and autoresponders: With an intuitive interface, SendX allows you to leave your email marketing process on auto-pilot mode. You can set action-based triggers to send emails to your subscribers whenever they perform any action. They operate on smart technology wherein you can choose the option of Geo Send or Smart Send to boost your open rates and engagement metrics. 

• Bulk email blasts: If you want to run bulk email campaigns, this tool can cover it all. To ensure sending bulk emails without spamming, SendX leverages the best technology to maintain a high email deliverability rate. Moreover, you can track and monitor your bulk email metrics with ease.

• Forms and landing pages: SendX makes designing forms and landing pages a breeze. With a wide range of pre-made templates, you can easily create high-quality forms and landing pages. Moreover, you can use targeting and behavioral options to target the right set of audience.

• Email Newsletters: Creating email newsletters is super easy with SendX. You can create high-quality newsletters with the help of pre-made and highly responsive newsletter templates. Moreover, you can access its massive library of 500,000+ free stock photos.

• Pricing: $7.49 per month for 1000 subscribers.

Basecamp for Project Management

Working remotely has changed the way of managing projects and tracking work progress. You don’t have to create exhaustive spreadsheets and update it manually.

With ample project management tools in the market, you can streamline your process of managing multiple projects in one go. One such versatile tool is Basecamp. Here are the best features to look out for:

• Message Board: With these specialized boards, you don’t have to scroll through heaps of lists or cluttered documents. Basecamp’s boards are concise and fit right into a single page. You can pitch ideas, review progress, make announcements, and more. 

• To-dos and Scheduling Options: Basecamps allows you to create to-do lists wherein you can delegate tasks to your team members. You may also set due dates, schedule projects, and track work progress to maintain productivity.

• Sharing files: When you create a project in Basecamp, it has a separate section to share documents, images, pdfs, spreadsheets, and other files with the team members of the project.

• Chat options: You don’t have to hop on to other communication apps and tools to have a quick update. Basecamp has a real-time chat option known as “Campfires” to have a quick conversation.

• Automatic Check-ins: You don’t have to follow a micro-managing routine with Basecamp. If you need an update regarding a project, just use this feature to create a thread where team members can put the updates regarding the project’s progress.

• Pricing: $99 per month.

Todoist for Task Management

Lethargy, mismanaged schedule, missed deadlines and exhaustive work routine are some of the common problems that remote workers experience. Digital marketers have to keep an eye on multiple touch-points such that it becomes overwhelming.

Therefore, technology has given us a boon in the form of a task management tool. Todoist has been doing wonders in managing long task lists and reminding us of the little work updates that we tend to forget. Here’s how it works:

• Manage your tasks: With Todoist, you can add or create your task list with ease. You also have the option to put recurring reminders for weekly meetings or calls. Furthermore, you can have a quick overview of all your tasks in one go.

• Prioritization features: Todoist allows you to set the priority level of your tasks. You can mark your favorite projects, labels, or tasks separately. It also gives you an option to highlight the most important task from your entire list that has to be done on an urgent basis. You can also add sub-tasks or pointers under your main tasks.

• Collaboration opportunities: With Todoist, you have the option to assign tasks to other members or collaborators of your projects. You’ll get notifications when collaborators comment or add updates regarding the progress of the project. 

• Productivity and Progress: To make your work engaging, Todoist has a special feature called “Todoist Karma”. As you keep completing your tasks on time, you’ll be rewarded with karma points in your interface. You can also see colorful visuals and graphs regarding your daily and monthly progress in Todoist.

• Integration Options: To make your work easy, Todoist provides a range of integration options to other tools and apps like Dropbox, Zapier, Google Calendar, Amazon Alexa, and more.

• Pricing: Premium Plan at $3 per month.

Hootsuite for Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is one of the important tenets of digital marketing. But you don’t get to hop over another person’s desk for a quick validation about a social media post. And you cannot ping your teammates and now and then for little tasks.

Social media marketing tools can be a great asset in managing and streamlining your social media handles. These tools are more than just a scheduling platform. Hootsuite is one of the best social media management tools that can transform your brand presence. Here’s what to look out for:

• Publishing and Scheduling: Hootsuite comes with a built-in planner wherein you can plan, curate, and schedule your social media posts on all or selected channels. You can also get a quick overview of your published and scheduled posts to stay updated. This tool also provides you the access to stock photos, quick editing, and video publishing options.

• Engagement Options: To keep up your social engagement metrics, Hootsuite allows you to monitor your post’s performance and keep an eye on the trending topics. With a single click, you can boost your post and respond to the comments on your post. You can also manage, dismiss, filter, and reply to your customer’s messages in your inbox.

• Advertising: To target the right set of audiences you can simply boost your organic Facebook post automatically or manually through Hootsuite composer. You also have the option to turn your organic LinkedIn posts into a sponsored content ad. To get the most out of Hootsuite, you can leverage Hootsuite ads to smoothen your advertising workflow.

• Monitoring and analyzing: Hootsuite provides you an option to set up custom streams so that you can keep a tab on trending topics and profiles. You can also conduct keyword research with the help of custom filters through Hootsuite Insights. If you want to integrate third-party apps like Talkwalker, you can do that with ease. Finally, you can analyze your social performance and calculate your overall ROI with the help of the Hootsuite Impact feature.

• Pricing: $25.92 per month.

A Wrap-up

All set for smooth remote work experience? Make sure you take free trials of each tool mentioned above. Which tools do you employ? Put your thoughts in the comment below.

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Author’s Bio:This blog is written by Shivani Srivastava. A content marketer by heart, Shivani is passionate about writing anything in the field of the technological landscape. She’s written this guest blog for SendX: Email Marketing Software.

Here is what we will be covering

1. Create interactive email campaigns
2. Track results in real-time 
3. Create dynamic sign up forms 
4. Design attractive email templates
5. Trigger emails based on user actions 
6. Send messages based on subscribers time zones
7. Send out discount and loyalty cards for immediate reclaim

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On any given day, most of our email inboxes are bombarded with automated email newsletters. That has very little to do with our lives – thus, marking them all as unread, moving them to spam, or unsubscribing altogether. 

But now and then, we receive a newsletter that is oh so good – not only do we read it but also forward it and recommend it to our peers. 

Brands across the globe gravitate towards email marketing for its ease of use and impressive ROI. Although email marketing has been in existence for long, its results are quite astonishing. 

According to Internet Live Stats, almost 2.8 million emails are sent every second. 

Imagine the number of irrelevant emails that are sent out that eventually end up in the trash. 

While email marketing used to be a relatively impersonal communication process and sending out bulk messages, modern-day tools have created a far more customer-focused landscape where emails can be targeted based on the recipient’s behavior. 

So, apart from sending out invites, impersonal emails, and bulk messages, what else can you do with email marketing?

Seven things that will improve your email marketing

1. Create interactive email campaigns

A lot of them think emails are just an avenue to send a bunch of text and maybe a few images inside an email body. But why? The Internet is, after all, an interactive place.

Add interactive content to your email that allows your users to do important things such as –

1. RSVP to an event 
2. Conduct a survey or a poll to receive valuable feedback
3. Donate to a cause or an event 

Tools such as Typeform, Mindmeister, and Mapme help add interactive content to your emails easily to benefit both your customers and your organization. 

Not only will this help boost engagement and generate leads, but it also leads to a more interactive and seamless experience for your audience. 

Customers are more likely to open emails when they add value to their everyday life. 

2. Track results in real-time

Email marketing is fundamentally a game of numbers. If you are sending out emails in large volumes over the course of days or weeks, it is always imperative to track them to know the results, either to fine-tune the emails or change the campaign entirely. 

By integrating a CRM software into your emails, such as Zoho or Mailchimp, you can track your campaigns based on the number of clicks, time spent on each email, and so on in real-time to keep your finger on the pulse of your email marketing campaign. 

You can track new and lost subscribers, check if your emails are being opened, or see if your emails are being shared or not as soon as your users carry these actions. 

Not just this, you can also analyze the nitty-gritty of your delivery rate like how many emails bounce or how many report them as spam. 

3. Create dynamic sign-up forms 

Email marketing begins with collecting email addresses, which means you need a dependable and interactive way to capture a user’s attention and ask them for their information.  

Some businesses and marketers are downright pushy with constant emails. 

Steer clear of such methods and include dynamic sign-up forms that can be triggered depending on your users’ various actions would naturally perform on your site. 

This method allows you to create targeted messages that are only delivered to users who perform certain tasks, providing you with a discreet way to invite new users to join your email list. 

If integrating sign-up forms is difficult and expensive, you can also use QR Codes, created using an online QR Code generator like Beaconstac, so customers can easily scan it and include their information with a single scan. 

Rather than an obnoxious pop-up that appears on your site every few seconds, you can create these engaging sign-up forms using QR Codes, or a CRM that only displays on the screen when a user performs a specific task, visits a particular page, or scroll far enough down after clicking on your email. 

4. Design attractive email templates 

If you have noticed emails from companies in the recent past, you might have seen how much pizazz is being put into modern email marketing. 

Emails are now carefully formatted to divert the user’s attention through eye-catching graphics, careful layouts, and attractive fonts. Designing a snazzy email template is as difficult as formatting and laying out a webpage. 

But, by integrating a CRM software, it becomes extremely easy to create attractive email campaigns without any help from a graphic designer. There are hundreds of email templates to choose from, which helps put together a beautiful and engaging email. 

5. Utilize behavioral email marketing for specific targeting 

Not all consumers are the same. Your emails shouldn’t be the same either.

Email lists typically consist of different kinds of people with different behavior and interests. Marketers must research this and create content that matches those interests, otherwise known as segmentation. 

When you create segments or groups, there is increased engagement, higher conversion rates, and stronger customer loyalty. 

Send targeted emails based on the user’s reaction to your emails, open rate, and the amount of time spent on your email. 

6. Send emails based on the subscribers time zone 

Sending emails at a particular time is very important to obtain a high conversion rate. 

Timing is such an essential factor of a campaign that there are several studies about the best time and day of the week to send emails. 

For instance, Experian offers research that indicates that subscribers are quite active at night. The study suggests that sending an email between 8 pm – 12 am results in the best response rates. 

But, because of the diverse time zones and subscribers spread across the world, 8 pm in New York will be 9 am in Tokyo. Time zones play a significant role in email marketing. 

Switching to a CRM helps you send emails to your subscribers based on the time they live in. This means that the email that is sent from New York at 8 pm will arrive in everyone’s inboxes at 8 pm – regardless of their time zone. 

7. Send out loyalty coupons for immediate reclaim 

Sending out loyalty coupons and discount cards in emails is not a new trend. 

Several businesses and marketers send out loyalty cards with no context, pretext, and information on when to redeem, and how to redeem them to their subscribers, which ultimately leads to them unsubscribing you or marking you as spam. 

Loyalty cards that are generalized and sent out to subscribers are normally not even opened. And also, if they do, they are highly unlikely to be redeemed. 

Use tools that help in immediate reclaim of loyalty coupons such as QR Code coupons that help subscribers scan the QR Code or click on the link if a QR Code is not utilized. 

Suggest saving the coupon to a dashboard on your website upon clicking, so your subscribers don’t lose it and can redeem it as and when they want. 

Wrapping up, 

If you’ve just been relying on an old school, static email management software, it’s time to step into the new email marketing era. A little bit of automation goes a long way. 

Integrating email marketing with CRMs and implementing other relevant technology tools that allow you to automate helps with maximum efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

One of the best things about email marketing is it’s a low-risk channel to study when you’re getting your feet wet. 

Start building an essential email list, set up your first scheduled campaign right away, and slowly iterate until you have a holistic strategy. There’s no better time than now to get started!

Let’s set things straight from the very get-go here. This article is not a holy grail of techniques that you can use in digital marketing to become rich overnight. It’s much better actually. We’re going to present a series of steps which, if followed correctly, will take your company to greater and greater profits from email marketing year over year. It presents solutions which will scale with your business and help save up hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run. 

During the series, we’re going to take you through some steps which will help your company save up to $50k+ yearly in email marketing expenses. All labor-related costs will be calculated at a very inexpensive hourly rate of $20/h, which most companies don’t even dream of achieving.

Let’s start with the method which will bring you the most amount of time saving and satisfaction. We’re going to break costs down for you so you can fully understand how much money you can save. If you’re part of a larger company then you are probably going through loads of processes before building a new campaign.

1. Design.

Each new template needs a really good design in order to properly engage your clients and get healthy click-through rates. 8 hours/template at least. Of course, we’re counting things like going back to design for 599 times to ruin their lives by asking them to move the same element around in 10 different places. You will eventually spend fewer hours when using the same structure over a long period of time, but probably a lot more at the beginning.

2. Development.

Next up there’s the very tedious loop of coding the email, testing and bug fixing. At least 6 hours here as well…if your developer knows what he’s doing. This is also very likely going to take much longer at first and then less when you start using the same structure over several campaigns.

3. Content.

It probably takes you and your team at least 4 hours to come up with good content and a good strategy of getting as much engagement from the clients possible.

Now your email is finally built, and at this very stage, before even thinking of sending the email out yet, we’ve gathered costs of over $360 for the email campaign creation. Let’s multiply that by say 30 (an average of 2,5 campaigns every month). This will quickly escalate to over $10.800 per year, and remember – you didn’t even start sending the campaigns yet.

Now let’s look at the process again, bring it in the 21st century, and see what we can do to lower costs dramatically. Thankfully, there are loads of options for you to basically skip the first two steps, which not only add to your total costs but are extremely tedious and annoying to go through, for both you and your teams.

Instead of going through all of that, have your design team spend less than 4 hours on a drag and drop email template builder. The result will leave you with an exported HTML file that’s already been tested and optimized for the perfect end user experience. Not only will you be able to get to the end result much faster, but you’re also very likely to have much better open rates for your campaign since these designs have already been optimized to deliver results.

We started from a $10.800 total yearly cost, and just like that we were able to save $160 per campaign and taking into account a $22 expense for one of the builder templates, your savings amount to a sweet $4.778 over the year, making your work much easier in the process too.In part two of our series, we’re going to analyze how you can save even more money by being smart about the way you run your campaigns and build and curate your list. In the meantime check out this post where we analyzed how GDPR consent affected US businesses.

When you’re planning a new website, you have two fundamental elements to consider: web design and copywriting. While neither copywriting or design are more important for an effective website, the two creative disciplines must work together.

As a copywriter, I have seen my fellow writers over-emphasize the importance of written copy. At the same time, I have seen that some designers often neglect the importance that well-written and structured copy can have on a website. Great copywriting assists the design elements of a website by highlighting important information to drive conversions.

Let’s take a look at how website design and copywriting work together to create a great experience for readers and increase conversions!

How Great Copywriting Helps Designers

A professional copywriter can bring a lot of analytical and creative elements to any project. Without a doubt, all digital marketing professional agree that getting ranked on search engines is essential to convert customers into buyers. To do this you need optimized web content, and great copywriting accomplishes several goals, including:

• Catch the attention of your audience and keeps them reading more.
• Moves your audience toward a conversion by using a strong emotional appeal.
• Talks directly to the reader, making a personal feeling associated with your brand.
• Describes the benefits and results of your product.
• Demonstrates the value of your products by showing how you are the only solution the readers need to address their problems.
• Establish a strong value proposition.
• Builds trust and authority with your customers.

 

To this extent, website copywriting should be optimized for readers, enhanced for search engines, and formatted to meet the aesthetic layout of the website design. While it is vital to establish the right message and tone, website copy needs to match the visual layout created by a designer.

 

What Comes First: Copywriting Or Website Design?

My wife loves to bake. She makes delicious cookies and pies, and each of her tasty recipes requires a precise amount of ingredients added together in a specific order. You have to make the crust of an apple pie before you can add the filling if you don’t want the pie to fall apart in the oven.

The same requirements exist for a successful website development cycle. If you start with the copy before you know how it will be formatted and presented, then you are essentially adding the filling of a pie before you bake the crust.

The first step in the website development process is to design layouts and wireframing visual designs. The designer needs to define available space before a copywriter can create content to match the physical space and message.

I work with businesses across the U.S. with my partner, Alex Alexakis. As a leading Orlando designer, Alex knows how to create website designs that inspire and excite visitors to take action.

The first thing Alex and I do when creating a website is to understand the goals of the client and understand the needs of readers. As we learn more about the audience we begin drafting concepts and layouts for the website design. This includes looking at general placement, sizes, and ratios.

Once we have a general layout of the main elements for the website, I begin crafting copy to meet the needs of the audience and fit in the given areas. Over the years, Alex and I have worked out a process that results in high-powered content that drives qualified leads and increased conversions. Here is a brief overview of the three-step process we go through as we develop a website for our clients.

 

Purpose, Audience & Goals

The first step that every designer should take when building a website is to understand the purpose of the website. This step will look different based on your industry, client, and goals, but in general, some of the questions you can ask to understand the purpose of your website include:

1. Who is your audience? Building user personas for the top three segments of your audience will help you.
2. What are your business goals? Knowing the goals of a business helps you build a website that meets the needs of the audience and drive valuable conversions.
3. How will your readers consume the content? If your audience consists mainly of single mothers then you will need to optimize your website for iPads or mobile phones.

 

Customer-Based Design

One of the things that I respect most of the designers is their ability to use psychology to build a relationship and trust with visitors. The type of feelings that design fosters in readers (positive or negative) can have a huge impact on how well the website message is received.

This aspect of the User Experience is entirely in the hands of a web designer and should not be overlooked when designing content. However, when you are creating layouts be sure to anticipate the needs of your copywriter so you don’t create visually appealing pages that can’t house the necessary content to complete your vision.

An engaging site should match the personality of its audience. This will increase conversions and help a company meet their goals. Using the right font, colors and white space bridge the gap between the reader’s screen and their heart. Tapping into the unconscious side of website design helps a company appeal to their audience on a deeper level and copywriting can by itself.

 

Copywriting For A Purpose

While professional-looking website design is vital for success in today’s online world, it is only half the battle. Copywriting helps readers understand themselves and allow them to identify their needs. This introspective process allows your audience to find value in your products, and drive online conversions and sales.
Once the design of a site is sketched out, your copywriter can begin adding the filling of the site. Instead of wasting time writing content that does not meet the spatial requirements of a page, a copywriter can use the layouts as a framework as they write. The audience and website design also influence the messaging a copywriter will drive through their content, so having a general understanding of the design ensures that the copy meets the needs of your audience and business goals.

 

Author Bio:

Chris Giarratana is a professional freelance copywriter and digital marketing consultant with 13 years of experience helping businesses reach their audience with copywriting, PPC, and conversion optimization. You can learn more about him on his website.