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Are you struggling with marketing operations, planning, or executing strategies and campaigns? I hear you.
Many marketing operations managers are bogged down by campaign management, lead gen, and marketing analysis tasks despite using many tools that promise to help. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way.
In this article, I’ll introduce you to 8 marketing workflow software solutions that really deliver. Whether you’re struggling with content planning, approval processes, collaboration, or data analysis, these tools will help you supercharge your team’s productivity.
Contents
Marketing operations management involves planning, executing, and optimizing marketing activities within an organization. It focuses on the coordination between people, internal processes, and technology that enhance the effectiveness of marketing strategies to achieve better ROI.
Marketing operations software is a category of platforms developed to streamline and improve marketing management processes. Typically cloud-based, these types of software come with different features, such as campaign planning, content management, marketing automation, and collaboration tools.
Marketing operations management software offers important benefits to marketing teams, enhancing campaign management and collaboration. Here are five key advantages:
When you’re searching for marketing operations tools, there’s no shortage of features to consider. But there are some must-haves. Here’s what I’m looking for:
Marketing managers tackle a lot of tasks, including content planning, project management, and more. That’s why they need marketing tools to make these tasks smoother. Below are the best 8 tools to consider:
Marketing content planning calendar in Planable
Planable is a content collaboration and social media scheduling platform. Social media teams, freelancers, and digital agencies use Planable to plan, create, approve, and schedule any type of written content — from social posts to blog posts and emails to newsletters.
Planable offers a social media content calendar that lets you plan and schedule content across all your favorite platforms (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google My Business, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest), including long-form content posts like blogs, newsletters, and briefs.
But, there’s more. Imagine you have a post that you want to share multiple times based on a schedule that suits you best — be it daily, weekly, or monthly. With Planable’s Recurring Post feature, you can do that in a few clicks. No hassle of manually reposting.
Setting recurring posting times in Planable
Planable is the platform where your whole team can come together, brainstorm ideas, and fine-tune content drafts, making your content ready for publishing.
Another thing I like about Planable is that you can leave comments and share suggestions directly within the content.
Content collaboration in Planable
Planable makes it easy to get the green light on your content before it goes public. It offers you multiple approval levels, which is particularly handy for situations where several individuals need to review and approve your content.
So, whether you’re dealing with complex social media approval processes or other scenarios requiring multiple checks, Planable can help.
Approval levels in Planable
This feature lets you see who did what and when. It provides a clear view of the content development process, making it easier to track changes, approve edits, and revert to previous versions when needed.
With Planable’s free plan, you can create up to 50 total posts. When you’re ready to upgrade, Planable’s paid plans start at just $11/user when paid annually.
While Planable offers a super-intuitive tool for social media analytics and reporting, it lacks social monitoring and listening.
Planable is best suited for social media teams and content creators looking for a streamlined platform to efficiently plan, collaborate on, and schedule content across multiple social platforms you manage.
Zapier is an automation platform designed to connect and streamline workflows between various web applications. It operates on the principle of Zaps — automated workflows triggered by specific events in one app that result in actions in another app.
Zapier’s free plan is limited to 5 single-step Zaps. To benefit from unlimited Zaps, you’ll have to pay $71.29/month.
If you’re a marketing professional wanting to optimize your marketing workflows, use Zapier to automate routine processes and enhance productivity in your marketing operations.
Trello is an online project management tool that allows teams to manage, collaborate, and assign tasks.
What I like about Trello is that it’s highly flexible and can be adapted to many use cases.
You can use Trello for free for unlimited boards. Its paid plans start from $6/user/month, which comes with checklists and custom fields.
Trello is a great tool for marketing teams seeking a visually engaging platform for project management and planning.
Zoho Analytics is a business intelligence and data analytics platform to extract data, create insightful dashboards, and make data-driven decisions.
What makes Zoho Analytics a good marketing operations software is its ability to integrate marketing data from various sources. It allows you to enhance campaign management and optimize marketing strategies.
You can use Zoho Analytics for free on your local server (on-premise) for one user. Or, you can opt for paid and cloud-based plans starting at €30/user/month plus usage fees.
Try Zoho Analytics if you’re a data-driven marketing professional looking for a robust marketing operations tool to make solid campaign decisions.
Slack is a popular collaboration platform that facilitates real-time communication and document sharing among teams through channels and messages.
I’ve tried several Slack alternatives in the past, but Slack always stood out for me. I particularly like its user-friendliness and smooth communication features.
Slack’s free plan is a great starting point for small teams or individuals wanting to improve their communication at no cost. Its paid plans start from $6.75/month for unlimited app integrations.
If you’re after a communication platform with features like instant messaging, file sharing, and team collaboration in one place, Slack is the solution.
Zendesk is a customer service and engagement platform. It offers many features designed to help companies interact with their potential customers, resolve issues, and provide better support.
Zendesk offers a 14-day free trial. The cheapest Zendesk plan is €69/agent/month, and it includes a ticketing system and ready-to-use analytics dashboards.
Zendesk is more suitable for businesses aiming to improve their customer support operations, particularly those that focus on improving helpdesk efficiency, multichannel support, and customer satisfaction. With Zendesk’s pros and cons, the platform is more suitable for businesses aiming to improve their customer support operations, particularly those that focus on improving helpdesk efficiency, multichannel support, and customer satisfaction.
HubSpot is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) solution that provides tools to help businesses attract and engage their customers.
I’d say HubSpot has been the number one operations software for many marketing leaders for years because of its extensive toolset. However, this adds complexity, which might end-up defeating the initial purpose of managing marketing processes easier.
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub has a low-cost option at €20/month for 1,000 contacts. Other plans can get pricey, starting at €880/month for 5,000 contacts.
HubSpot is most suitable for marketing teams seeking an all-in-one platform to automate their marketing, sales, and customer service efforts for comprehensive growth.
Drift (now Salesloft) is a messaging and saas marketing software focused on conversational marketing and sales. Companies use Drift to engage with their website visitors through live chat and custom chatbots to improve customer interactions.
Drift’s pricing starts at $2,500/month, which might be a hefty investment for smaller businesses.
If you’re looking to enhance customer engagement and marketing efforts through real-time conversations and chatbot automation, Drift is a good solution for you.
Marketing and operations work together by aligning their efforts and exchanging key information. Operations provide the necessary infrastructure and processes to support new products and marketing campaigns. Marketing is responsible for demand generation, market data, and feedback that operations can use to optimize processes.
Marketing operations focus on the execution and coordination of marketing activities and campaigns. On the other hand, marketing management involves the strategic planning, decision-making, and leadership of marketing initiatives.
Without marketing operations, you’ll struggle with fragmented and inconsistent marketing activities. This will lead to wasted resources and difficulties in measuring the impact of your marketing efforts.
If you’re an operations manager, sign up for Planable. It’s a great tool for content planning, collaboration, and approvals. For advanced data analysis and reporting, you may find Zoho Analytics to be a helpful tool in making data-driven marketing decisions. You can also use Trello for visual project management and Zendesk for multi-channel client support.
Pasha is a SaaS content writer with 3+ years of experience, specializing in content planning, product analytics, reporting, and data management. When he’s not busy writing, he loves exercising, cooking Italian recipes in his kitchen, or immersing himself in the world of detective novels.
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