By Ryan Kh
Utilizing technology in the form of cloud-based applications has never been more important for businesses to streamline processes and improve their bottom line. Apps allow managers to become more efficient and offer instant access to crucial information from practically anywhere in the world. With the integration of cloud technology into our daily lives this has never been easier to accomplish. If you’re looking for an app to make connecting with team members more efficient or wanting to connect with customers in a more personalized way, these apps are absolute must-haves.
Campaign Monitor
When it comes to email marketing campaigns, delivering a world class customer experience doesn’t have to be overly complicated or difficult to implement. Campaign Monitor’s easy to use drag and drop email template creator puts the look of custom designed emails at marketers’ fingertips. Personalized emails have been shown to increase revenue by 760%, so it’s for good reason that Campaign Monitor has focused on this capability of their customers. The platform integrates with other business tools like WordPress and Salesforce to build customer profiles that allow you to send personalized emails based on individual’s name, age, gender, transaction history and more.
SugarCRM
Did you know that studies show 75 percent of customers spend more money when they have a good customer service experience with a particular company? Now, more than ever, maintaining positive customer relationships is a crucial part of the success or failure of any business. The SugarCRM application makes fostering these important relationships a breeze by offering instant access to all relevant files pertaining to your customer across all of the devices in your organization. SugarCRM allows any member of your team to become a “customer expert” with a few clicks. With business moving at the speed of light, having a solid CRM tools integrated with your other business apps will keep sales and customer service teams engaged with potential and current customers.
Hootsuite
Social media is here to stay. It’s as simple as that. Out of the three major social media platforms, Instagram is ranked third in total expected revenue for 2017 with $1.53 billion in mobile ad revenue. Hootsuite offers easy-to-use tools for maintaining your company’s social media presence no matter where you find yourself. The app allows users to update existing posts and create new content in an instant. One of the best tools the Hootsuite platform offers is the ability to track messages and mentions in real time allowing brand marketers to capitalize on customer engage and address customer concerns.
Optimizely
How visitors engage with your website from the moment they land there has a significant impact on whether they browse, subscribe and ultimately buy. Optimizely is a tool that work on top of your current website to allow web and marketing teams to run A/B and multivariate tests to find the best possible user experience that leads to higher conversions. Another awesome tool set Optimizely offers is personalization. With Optimizely, marketers can personalize a webpage based on the location of the visitor and what you already know about them. This could be showing different clothes to cold weather versus warm weather shoppers or displaying a popup that says “your cart is waiting” to a returning shopper who abandoned a cart.
Squarespace
Having a visually stunning website that works across all platforms and devices isn’t a luxury but a necessity in today’s digital landscape. Squarespace services anyone from world class photographers to shoe giants like Airwalk. With an easy to use website editing solution and pre-built templates, marketing departments can make changes and deploy new websites without activating their design and development teams. Squarespace also integrates with other business tools to allow teams across the organization to run campaigns and streamline processes.
Being a business manager in today’s ever-changing market can be a bit daunting, but with the help of these five amazingly innovative applications you can grow your bottom line revenue while giving customers the experience they crave. Don’t get left behind. As the great Richard Branson once said “Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change.”
Ryan Kh is an experienced blogger, digital content & social marketer. Founder of Catalyst For Business and contributor to search giants like Yahoo Finance, MSN. He is passionate about covering topics like big data, business intelligence, startups & entrepreneurship. Follow him on twitter: @ryankhgb
