Marketing automation software has come a long way in recent years.  It is more than just email senders and list management, there are now a host of tools that can handle everything from 20+ social media feeds across different sites, payment portals, centralized multisite management, and everything else in between.  Here are a few of our favorite tools for automating your marketing life.


MailChimp
MailChimp is the leading email marketing and auto responding service.  The service is free for all to use when your list is relatively small, and once it grows there are a variety of affordable monthly payment options.  MailChimp allows you to use A/B testing to split your list, email new subscribers a set series of emails automatically and interfaces with a host of different plugins, systems, and content managements systems such as Wordpress.  One of the cheapest, easiest to use, and most popular email services, MailChimp is a strong choice to take your email marketing to the next level.


Hootsuite
Social media marketing can be tricky because of the fast-paced nature and changing preferences of users.  A year of building your presence on one website can go to waste when a cool new site comes out of nowhere capturing more of your target demographic.  Automation in the social media space is important so that individuals and companies can manage their social media presence across a host of different sites with different posting requirements and audiences.  Hootsuite is one of many tools that allow just that type of management all from a central hub. 


With Hootsuite you can schedule future social media posts, respond quickly to comments from many networks, and get an overall sense of how your brand is doing and what people are saying about it.  Browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox are also available. These extensions allow you to post to your sites without even opening the Hootsuite program. 


Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft is one of many all in one automated marketing tools.  The power and range of options of the tool is amazing.  From lead management, to helping close sales, to auto responding in multiple ways for individuals, to organizing all your content and social media in one central place.  This program also helps with the actual processing of the sale.  A fully functional e-commerce storefront and payment-processing network is part of the package.  This payment system can link with popular players like Paypal and Amazon payments.  While on the higher end of the price spectrum, Infusionsoft is recommend by thousands of users and could be the right fit for your business.


Pardot
Busy marketers that have multiple campaigns across a suite of website also desire a place where they can see how they all these are doing in one central place.  Pardot is a software tool that gives you exactly that.  Pardot allows the user to track their conversions, spending, lead generation, and engagement across all their marketing campaigns whether they are advertising, email, social, or otherwise.  This software is specifically for business-to-business relationship management, however, rather than business to customer.  If you have a large, complicated marketing plan or multiple sites that you manage, consider Pardot to organize your marketing life all in one place.  

Every business would love to know exactly what their customers think about their products and services. Short of a crystal ball, that’s no easy task.

Customer surveys are one of the most proven ways to quickly gather data on your customers. It’s critical to know exactly what your best customers think, giving your business the position and opportunity to keep them happy and cultivate them into brand advocates. Follow these five tactics below to create effective and proven customer surveys that turn into a reliable source of customer information.

Keep it simple and short. When was the last time you spent more than 30 seconds taking a survey? Exactly. Keep the questions simple, short and easy to understand. Brevity is important for the survey. Don’t turn off otherwise willing customers.

Be specific and clear. A great survey is specific and clear. Ask about specific concepts, services and products to provide easily identifiable results you can use. Be clear about what you’re asking about and avoid general questions that cover different areas.

Avoid leading questions. Reliable and accurate results will come from questions that are neutral with no assumptions. Avoid questions that lead respondents toward a certain answer, as well as those that use assumed facts, bias or preferences. They can really mess with your results.

Think about your end goal. You might only have one opportunity to gain honest opinions from your customers. You must cut non-critical questions from your surveys. Use only questions that have a specific purpose and a reason for inclusion that provides important results.

Importance of timing. Many studies suggest that survey open and click-through rates are historically higher on different days and at different times. Take heed of this research and keep close track of your result ratios to find the best timing for your surveys. Also think about the [timing of your survey in terms of when the product or service was consumed.

Offer incentives. Want people to do something for you? Give them something in return. Offer incentives like a discount, account credit or free giveaway for their time. Research suggests that incentives can increase survey results by up to 20 percent.

The dream of every investor is to find the next big thing before it’s a big thing. If only it were that easy.im

When it comes to find the next game-changing stock, every investor would like to say they saw Apple, Google, Starbucks or Amazon coming ahead of time. But there was a time many would have laughed at investing in what would later become the next big thing, and even more who missed out on the investment for any number of reasons.

The truth is there is no shortage of promising stocks, and you can be just about anywhere – the gym, a work happy hour, standing in line for coffee – and get plenty of free advice on how to go about finding them. It’s true there are many methods and strategies to investing in your next great stock. It’s also true that your odds of accurately predicting the next big winner are incredibly low, if not impossible.

Even so, here are five commonly used tips to help lead you to the next game-changing stock.

Knowledge and research are power.  Zacks VP Kevin Matras says to never get caught off guard by things you could have known about or should have known about beforehand. Many game-changers are simply ignored until they become part of a bigger trend. Research will set you apart, and is the only way to successfully find game-changers, says StreetAuthority Chief Strategies Andy Obermueller. If you’re limited on time, focus on a market or niche you’re familiar with.

See beyond today. One of the things all great companies have in common is a product that people have to have and can’t live without. What does that look like? Sometimes the key is to use your imagination and look beyond what the numbers show today to see opportunity. A product can be revolutionary, or it can be worthless with no potential market. History has proven this correct (see Netflix, Amazon) time and time again.

Invest in bold predictions. Because of the long odds (agreed upon nearly universally) involved, you have to be forward-thinking on a groundbreaking idea or revolutionary product. The ground floor of an opportunity is where the most money is made.

Eliminate what doesn’t work. Create a simple checklist to help you eliminate what history has already told you doesn’t work, which will greatly improve your odds of finding a big winner. Michael Cintolo of Cabot Wealth Advisory focuses on the price of the stock (staying above $10 per share), trading volume (staying around $50 million of dollar value per day), uptrend (demand above their 50-day moving average) and earnings estimates (15 percent for upcoming year).

Trust the chart. The price chart of a stock going back a year or two will show its volatility and if it’s rising rapidly. It will also show if big investors are buying in despite skepticism. Investopedia suggests if a stock has a volatile price pattern, it generally means the company has no clear advantage in the marketplace for its product or services versus the competition.

Research shows, mothers are influencing way more than their own families lives.  Whether they are connecting with family and friends on Facebook, adding Pins to their Pinterest board or researching their child’s ailments on WebMD, mothers are changing the way we view the Internet.

They have become the predominant user of social media in the past 3 years.  Leading the pack with most visits to social networks, mothers are more willing to Like and Share a brands page with their online community.  Online Brands have recognized this and have become more interactive by communicating directly with mothers through online conversations.

Brands have also noticed that Mothers rely heavily on product reviews and soundboards.  Mothers are more likely to purchase something that was recommended or reviewed.  Since mothers do the majority of their shopping online, brands have become aware of the importance of tracking their reviews and customer satisfaction.

Mothers are blogging queens.  A mother writes about 1 in 3 blogs you will find on the Internet.  Thanks to their words of wisdom and reviews, brands are able to notice what is trending, and how they can tailor their advertisements to the trends.

Brands have started tailoring their marketing efforts specifically to mothers by establishing an emotional connection with them.  This is done by focusing on what mothers care about.  Moms these days are not only buying groceries, but electronics, cars, and other major purchases.  Brand have recognized these changes and have made campaigns that focus on the needs of a mom in this day and age. With that said, it is worth your while to see how you can get your brand noticed by such a powerful sector of online consumers.

Corporate culture is often described as “how you do business.” So it stands to reason that in today’s data-driven culture, doing business necessarily blends analytics and business know-how.

When it comes to businesses who aspire to improve their corporate financial planning within a more data-driven decision-making culture, the key may be to widen the brain trust involved.

At least that’s the recommendation of Ben Lamorte, senior manager of customer excellence at financial management software vendor Adaptive Planning, who suggests financial planning decision makers need to collaborate with and involve operations managers throughout the corporate financial planning process.

How to undertake and achieve such an objective might not be completely obvious. How do your financial leaders involve the right operations managers to the right extent, at the right time, to drive more efficient planning?

Get operations on board. They key is to integrate the broad organization view of executives with the perspective of managers who see the day-to-day picture. So who to recruit? Find respected managers who are tech-savvy and comfortable with applications. Lamont says training should be accessible and accomplishments recognized to foster enthusiasm.

Implement customized driver-based plans with operations. The goal is to create integrated driver-based plans that emerge organically. With the help of the operations teams, start by asking department-level leaders what decisions the model should inform, suggests Lamont, starting with one department.  This collaborative focus on target decisions will also support finance and operations leaders to collectively define key performance indicators (KPIs).

All about analytics. By giving more people throughout the business more access to analytics and input into which metrics to track, it increases understanding as to what drives the company forward. Finance leaders should create dashboards utilizing visual analytics with real data to show operations managers and solicit feedback. The use of simple and tailored performance indicators is important. The key is to get insights that inform decision-making and influence department- and corporate-level goals.

Have you ever thought about the impact of how you appear on a search engine? The statistics show that quite often it’s the first point of contact for another person – such as a potential client or employer – to find you, making it all the more important you have put your best online foot forward.

Suppose you meet someone at a networking event, or your information is a passed along through your network as a referral. Chances are they will head straight to an online search engine to do their due diligence in researching who you are and what you do. So what will they find?

An online reputation is essentially the sum of how you are viewed on all of the touch points on the Internet. As an individual brand or a business (or both), it’s critical to pay close attention to what comes up on the search results for your name in order to control and shape your online reputation.

Consider all of your touch points online and what comes up in a search. Is your personal website on the first page, and what does it represent about you? Are your social media platforms – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Google+ – represented in the search results, and do they accurately reflect your brand image and professional expertise? Do the comments, feedback and reviews throughout social media or on consumer sites such as Yelp cast you in a positive light?

Here are five tips to ensure you are putting your best foot forward when it comes to your online reputation:

Claim your brand name. Optimize your website for search engines through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and whether your brand is your name or a business, make sure no one else is controlling or misrepresenting a piece of your brand.

Manage your website design and layout. Ideally, this is on the first page of results. If your website is outdated or sloppy, it may lead others to think that about you.

Control perception on social media. Not only should you establish and build an online presence, but what you post on social media can shape your reputation. Post relevant, informative content on your industry on all channels to establish a positive presence.

Interact, engage but don’t overreact.  Be consistently polite and courteous with everyone with your brand in mind. Be reachable for your clients and customers, respond promptly and don’t overreact to negative comments or feedback.

Monitor the flow of information. People talk, so it’s important to know what others are saying about you. Utilize alert tools to monitor your brand and when you are mentioned online. Ask happy customers to post reviews, and feature them on your channels.

If you’re a business owner or manager, there is no hiding the impact Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can have on streamlining your sales functions and customer management, thus positively affecting your bottom line.

For any business, cultivating and maintaining relationships with current and potential customers is the core of doing business. It’s difficult to thrive, in any business, without those sustainable, long-term relationships.

The benefits of customer relationship management are numerous. CRM software employs many tools to streamline sales functions, including client management, profitability tracking, managing contracts, customer service, scheduling, client tracking, sales rep management, and more.  CRM software utilizes dashboard, analytics and reporting tools to provide businesses with an all-encompassing vantage point of operations and thus more control to create increased efficiency.

That’s why it is advantageous, if not critical, to implement CRM software into your business operations. Here are five of the CRM software options on the market that are most commonly the highest-rated in product reviews.

SalesForce.com is the market leader among cloud-based CRM providers for a reason. It serves a wide base of industries and business sizes, has more options than the competition, and several unique features.

Oncontact was No. 2 on a product review list by Toptenreviews.com.  User-friendly and intuitive, it offers a full range of services as a customizable application suite that automates the sales, marketing and customer service areas.

Sage is a good option for small- and mid-sized companies and features a familiar navigation system, interactive dashboard and detailed marketing campaign creation. This cost-effective option allows businesses to perform basic sales, marketing and customer support automation.

SugarCRM is geared toward small- and mid-sized companies in any industry. It excels in sales force automation, customer support automation as well as reporting and analytics, earning a full five stars from Reviews.com.

Microsoft Dynamics is both user-friendly and affordable, offering guided dialogue scripts, powerful reporting capabilities, great online support and organized data management.

If you haven’t heard, crowdsourcing has already been crowned the next big thing.

Crowdsourcing can refer to a wide range of activities, but in general it is defined as the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, information, or content by soliciting contributions from a large online community. Individuals within the undefined public each contribute at their own initiative to shape a greater end result.

Crowdsourcing is based on the ability to mobilize a vast number of mobile device (smartphone and tablet) users who are communicating with each other across networks and then make sense of the information that is being shared. The volume and scope of the information is vast, as are the number of crowdsourcing apps. All that is needed is access to mobile users – those who want to act and contribute – through an app. The information could be based on what users retrieved via location data, photos or video – or be information obtained about the users themselves.

Businesses make good use of the willingness of online users to discuss and share just about everything. Through analytics of the real-time data, companies draw strategic meaning of the data and develop a “social intelligence” as a basis for their decisions. The end result is that the real-time information contributed by users helps companies engage and interact with them as well as create products and services that meet their needs.

Here’s a look at a few of the basics surrounding crowdsourcing apps:

Gathering Information – The ways in which crowdsourcing apps can be utilized to gather information is nearly limitless, but it is entirely based on shared information. Companies can use apps or social media to solicit opinions and ideas, ask users to rate products or services, engage communities of online experts, offer rewards to users to supply specific content, ask users to input real-time data (such as for news, traffic or weather), and so on.

Using information – The uses for the real-time data collected via crowdsourcing is nearly as limitless. Businesses can analyze the user data to learn about the behaviors and patterns of users, consumer trends, demographics or gain insight into online curators and influencers.  Real-time data solicited from users can create products like Waze, a mapping app that asks its 70,000 users for traffic information, to ones like Outsmart Flu, which tracks flu symptoms via a map, and everything in between.

Creating or tailoring an app – Many of the most popular apps and services are the result of a tremendous amount of effort from developers as well as deep-pocketed investors. However, there are a number of crowdsourced, collaborative platforms that can help developers, like these from Mashable. If you’re not a coder or developer, you can find a crowdsourcing platform to get your app developed or funded.

How to best monetize your video content is a topic that generates a lot of discussion and debate. You have compiled a library of video content, and even a video series or campaign. So now what?

While television is still the main way people access video content, changing viewing habits continue to provide new opportunities for online video content. A Nielson study revealed that nearly 25 percent of videos viewed in high-speed Internet households happen on a screen other than the TV.

So how do you corner that market? While there is no magic formula for generating another line of revenue for your business, there are options. Remember that great content and an engaged audience is valuable. Outside of monetization options on YouTube, what are the best options to drive returns on your video content, and which have the most potential?

Monetize through sponsorships. When a company has a large or loyal audience, or a certain niche, sponsorships can be created through a branded video player or page, or pre-rolls from the same brand. Sponsorships can be created surrounding videos that have already been created.

Pre-roll advertising. One of the easiest – and thus most common – ways to drive income from video content is to sell 15- or 30-second spots preceding the video. You can work with a third party platform for targeted messages.

Video on demand, subscriptions and pay-per-view. There isn’t much evidence out there that users will pay for content created for an online market. But a-la-carte options, like Netflix or Amazon Prime, are gaining traction in place of monthly cable or satellite TV. Think about your premium content and how to deliver it directly to consumers.

License your video content. If you create the right type of video, and it’s high quality, others might pay for the right to use it. Netflix is a great example of this, and other companies may choose to use the training or educational videos you have created rather than incur the cost to produce their own.

Product placement. Just like the tried and true method on TV, other brands – especially those that are complimentary to yours – might be willing to pay to be associated with your high-quality and targeted video content.

Customer service is an aspect of business that most companies can’t afford to get wrong. For many successful companies, customer service is more than just a department, it’s a business philosophy.

The statistics that support the need for great customer service can be astounding. Some research shows that fewer than 10 percent of dissatisfied customers will let you know about it, but 300 percent more people will know about your business from unhappy customers versus satisfied customers.  Basically, an unsatisfied customer will tell everyone they know about a bad experience – at the click of a button – except the company itself.

The lesson is that very few things are more valuable than happy customers, who can become evangelists of your brand, an extension of your marketing efforts and long-term loyal patrons.

Businesses should be doing everything they can to make customers satisfied, and these five tools can help provide great customer service and support.

Live person chats.
Offering customers a live online chat forum with agents is a great way to give free and easy support and avoids the nuisance of a call center. Olark and Live Person are two popular products.

Social media adapters.
Several products enable businesses to identify relevant customer conversations from communities and social media channels and route them to customer service agents. The integration allows inquiries that haven’t been answered in sufficient time to be escalated into wider business operations. Lithium Social Web, Chatter Communities, and Jive are three such products.

Integrated help desks.
A ticketing support system can help manage support requests for companies with a high volume of inquiries. Zendesk is an integrated system that takes customer communications from your website, email, phone, chat or social media platforms and lets you respond from one place.Help Scout and Parature also offer integrated systems.

Peer-to-peer communities.
Discussion forums and communities are great ways to offer support and can benefit both businesses and customers. They enable customers to share information, tips, and best practices with each other without the need to engage customer service agents. The most popular vendors include Rusic, Get Satisfaction and Lithium.

Self-service and tutorials.
Some inquiries and resolutions can be resolved by the customer themselves after they receive some direction. This allows the rest of the customer service system to deal with more serious issues and thus saves money. WalkMe is a popular point-and-click tutorial creation system.