The Ultimate List of Must-Have Multi-Channel Marketing Tools

The-Ultimate-List-of-Must-Have-Multi-Channel-Marketing-Tools-for-2019

Can’t figure out which tool to include in your marketing tech stack? You’re not alone. The last time Scott Brinker checked, he counted 6,829 different marketing solutions available commercially, so it’s really not that easy to choose.

Luckily, we at Callbox took the time to painstakingly sift through every trusted review and recommendation resource recently published. As a lead generation services provider, we see these tools as essentials that can positively impact businesses and contribute to their success. We looked for the top-mentioned tools across various listings in a handful of categories and found a number of platforms that stood out. The list covers several marketing channels including:

So, without further ado, here are the top B2B lead generation tools, apps, and platforms you need in your multi-channel marketing stack :

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Tools

It’s 2019, and email still plays a central role in multi-channel marketing. In fact, the latest stats from Content Marketing Institute show that 79% of B2B marketers rank email as the most effective distribution channel for demand generation.

But email campaigns only work well when powered by the right email marketing tools. Choosing the email platform that best fits your requirements comes down to your budget, the number of contacts you have, the tool’s automation features, personalization/segmentation capabilities, and tracking/reporting. Here’s a list of the most highly-recommended email marketing tools available today:

MailChimp

MailChimp is a widely used email marketing and marketing automation service. Although it’s a popular email marketing platform among small startups, It offers a wide range of plans for SMBs and enterprise customers.

One of its key selling points is its ease of integration with a whole ecosystem of apps and services. MailChimp provides a full range of value-added features essential for modern email marketing campaigns, including email tracking, signup forms, spam filter diagnostics, auto-responders, and split testing.

Pardot

Pardot is Salesforce’s marketing automation solution tailored for B2B companies. Together with a whole host of marketing capabilities, Pardot includes an email marketing system that supports longer and more complex B2B sales processes.

Pardot offers several useful features such as template builders, email automation, email personalization, and testing/tracking capabilities.

Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is a CRM and marketing automation platform primarily geared toward SMBs. Its email marketing solution is ideal for businesses with 2 to 25 employees that generate between $100,000 to $3 million in annual revenues.

Infusionsoft’s email marketing capabilities allow you to craft professional-looking templates, develop and manage campaigns, and optimize every aspect of your email marketing program.

Aweber

Aweber offers a full suite of email marketing and auto-responder tools aimed at small businesses and startups. It provides flexible pricing plans based on the number of contacts you need to reach and the available features you choose.

Aweber’s email services include email creation tools, drip and auto-responders, signup forms, and unlimited emails.

GetResponse

GetResponse is a popular email marketing platform for both SMB and enterprise customers. GetResponse claims to maintain a deliverability rate of 99.5% for its users.

Email lists form the core of GetResponse’s services, enabling users to import, maintain, and grow their contact database through list-building and list management features. GetResponse is ideal for sending out newsletters and doing nurturing campaigns.

Related: 7 Ways File Sharing Tools Make Easier for B2B Marketers

Social Media

Social Media Tools

With 75% of B2B buyers using social media to support their purchase decisions, this channel continues to be a crucial part of the modern multi-channel marketing stack. Today, more than 9 in 10 B2B marketers rely on social media to reach and engage decision-makers.

In a crowded and noisy social media space, only marketers with the right tools can connect with their target audience. Social media tools roughly fall into four broad categories: campaign management, social listening, and content creation.

Buffer

Buffer is a web and mobile app with an organized layout and interface that streamlines the process of managing social media accounts and publishing updates.

Buffer also provides features for optimizing engagement, tracking analytics, and team collaboration. The platform is a popular choice among brands, SMBs, agencies, and individuals, especially since Buffer offers a clean UI, excellent customer service, and an extensive knowledge base.

Oktopost

Oktopost is a social media management platform mainly tailored for enterprise-level B2B companies. The tool provides a robust set of features that help marketers with lead generation and marketing attribution through social media.

More than just a tool for scheduling social media updates, Oktopost allows users to track and monitor multiple profiles, boost social media engagement, and facilitate employee advocacy.

Brand24

Brand24 is a social media listening and monitoring tool. It helps you keep up with what people are saying about your brand, company, or product on social media—and lets you respond in a timely manner.

Brand24 lets you specify searches for keywords and choose sources to monitor including most social media networks and other online platforms such as blogs, websites, and forums.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a handy platform for finding and analyzing the best-performing content and top-rated influencers in your niche or market. Its social search engine is a powerful tool for coming up with shareable posts and updates based on trending topics and widely-followed people.

BuzzSumo also lets you learn about which content and channels your competitors are focusing on, ensuring that each content you publish hits its mark.

SnapApp

According to a DemandMetric report, interactive content generates two times more conversions than static content. That’s why SnapApp should be part of your social media toolkit for 2019.

SnapApp is an all-in-one platform that lets you easily design and deploy interactive content pieces like quizzes, calculators, interactive videos, lead capture forms, and landing pages. As social media feeds continue to get overcrowded, it’s going to be unique content that stands out.

Related: 8 B2B Social Media Tips to Boost Holiday Engagement [INFOGRAPHIC]

Phone

Phone Marketing Tools

With all the changes in B2B marketing we’re seeing lately, the phone remains a crucial part of the multi-channel marketing mix—although its role has now been transformed as well. B2B marketing relies on the integration of inbound and outbound phone interactions with prospects to accelerate conversions.

Today’s lead generation campaigns use phone calls to turn touchpoints from other channels into relevant and personalized conversations. That’s why you’re going to need the following tools to make the phone a functioning part of your multi-channel marketing strategy:

Talkdesk

Talkdesk is a cloud-based contact center platform that’s used by over 1,400 customers and more than 30,000 users around the world. Its outbound dialing system offers a full suite of dialing and call management features that boost rep productivity and performance.

Talkdesk integrates seamlessly with Salesforce and provides smart list management capabilities including DNC integration and list optimization.

Aircall

Aircall is a cloud-based business phone system that provides phone numbers that can be used on any device. With Aircall, you and your team can place and receive calls whether at the office, on the go, or when working remotely.

Aircall offers services for businesses of any size—from small startups to enterprise-level companies—and is ideal for businesses with remote or international teams.

Bria

Bria is a softphone VoIP solution for service providers, enterprises, and OEMs. Bria boosts users’ productivity by serving as a unified communications and contact management tool.

Bria uses Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which means users can easily control voice calls through their app and can set up video/audio meetings.

ExecVision

ExecVision is a sales conversation intelligence platform that helps you train and coach reps. The platform identifies reps’ areas for improvement by processing calls and transcribing conversations.

ExecVision’s key features include call recording, collaboration, content management, dashboard, goals/quota management, learning plans, and other functionalities.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales CRM and pipeline management software that’s recently making waves in the CRM space. Integrating Pipedrive with your inbound and outbound phone system can greatly enhance rep productivity.

Pipedrive’s one-click integration enables quick and seamless workflow synchronization, while its click-to-dial and screenpop capabilities give your reps the information they need, right when they need it.

Related: Phone Sales Closing Techniques That Will Get You More Deals

Organic/SEO

Organic/SEO Tools

For most B2B marketers, the company website forms the core of their marketing strategy—and for good reason, too. Around 57% of B2B marketers claim that SEO generates more leads than any of their marketing initiatives, and organic search accounts for 95% of all web traffic.

To get the most out of this channel, you’ll need some heavy-duty tools like:

Google Analytics and Google Search Console

First off, these are two separate tools, but Google Analytics and Google Search Console work well together that you really should use both.

Google Analytics gives you insights into your site’s performance in terms of traffic, engagement (bounce rates and time users spend on site), navigation, conversions, and ROI. Google Search Console lets you know any issues that Google’s spiders encounter when crawling your site.

Screaming Frog

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls pages on your site and reports any SEO issues it runs into. The tool helps you find and fix problems with title tags, meta descriptions, headers, broken links, and other optimization glitches.

According to the tool’s pricing page, the Screaming Frog spider is free, but upgrading to the paid version lets you crawl more than 500 URLs and access other advanced features.

Page Speed Insights

Google’s Page Speed Insights is a tool that offers a fast and convenient way to test and measure the speed of a webpage. The tool gives a detailed report on what’s slowing down a given URL and also suggests ways to fix the identified issues.

Page Speed Insights should be used regularly to make sure that all your pages load without delays or slowdowns.

Sumo

Sumo (formerly SumoMe) provides a suite of online marketing tools designed to help your website grow traffic and conversions. The tools cover six key digital marketing areas: list building, on-site analytics, social sharing, traffic boosting, communication, and e-commerce.

At press time, Sumo consists of 13 apps including lead capture forms, CTA templates, heat maps, contact forms, etc.

Crazy Egg

SEO increases the visibility of your website so that it can actually generate traffic. But once visitors reach your site, they’re on a journey toward conversion. At this stage, you’re going to need solid conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy and tools so that visitors can turn into leads and customers.

Crazy Egg is a web optimization tool that lets you easily analyze user actions and conduct A/B split tests. Its main features include user session recording, user behavior tracking, and A/B test handling.

PPC

Pay-Per-Click Tools

PPC leads are 1.5 times more likely to turn into customers than site visitors from other sources. This is why PPC complements (read: not compete with) marketers’ SEO efforts. The two strategies work hand-in-hand since each focuses on a different stage of the B2B sales funnel.

To seamlessly combine with other channels in the mix, PPC initiatives need the following tools:

WordTracker

WordTracker is a keyword research tool with a number of useful features for PPC campaigns. The tool presents data on search volume, PPC competition, CPC, and related queries.

WordTracker offers a streamlined UI and intuitive navigation. Most users who reviewed the tool point to the high quality of results that WordTracker returns.

AdWords Performance Grader

Wordstream’s AdWords Performance Grader is a free PPC campaign audit tool. It helps you gauge how well or poorly your existing AdWords campaigns are actually doing.

The tool is very easy to use. All you need is to enter your account’s email address and in less than a minute, the tool returns a free detailed report that includes a final grade on your overall AdWords performance.

Wordstream

For a more complete PPC management solution, Wordstream is a popular choice among marketers. Wordstream offers a wide range of PPC and online marketing tools that help you create, manage, and track PPC and social media campaigns.

Wordstream also supports managing different PPC campaigns across different platforms (Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, etc.) all in one place.

RollWorks

In early 2018, AdRoll launched RollWorks, its suite of online marketing solutions specifically tailored for B2B companies. The RollWorks platform is deeply rooted in AdRoll’s proven B2B retargeting expertise, enabling customers to implement highly targeted online campaigns.

RollWorks bills itself as an ABM and B2B marketing growth platform, so it’s definitely something worth considering if you’re looking in that direction.

Unbounce

A key component of PPC campaigns is landing pages. Unbounce is a tool that lets you design and create custom landing pages without writing a single line of code. The tool features a drag-and-drop landing page builder as well as an entire library of customizable templates.

Unbounce also offers other lead capture and conversion optimization capabilities, so it’s a great tool to include in your online marketing stack.

Related: 5 Strong CTA Examples (with Solid CTRs and Conversions) to Learn From

Chat

Chat Tools

B2B marketers are increasingly relying on chat messaging to support their customer acquisition efforts. According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), live chat increases conversions by 20%, and customers who chat are 3x more likely to buy.

So, if you haven’t already, you need to spruce up your online presence with the following proven chat tools:

Freshchat

Named the best live chat tool for 2019 by FinancesOnline, Freshchat is a cloud-hosted live communication and engagement platform ideal for customer support, marketing, and sales. Freshchat offers robust live messaging capabilities that bring chatting to a personalized level and adjust live conversations to meet your customers’ expectations.

The platform is an all-in-one hub for omnichannel engagement that lets small and large sales teams prepare and distribute contextual messages, capture and qualify leads, and collect valuable insights.

Zoho SalesIQ

Zoho SalesIQ is a live chat and visitor tracking software designed for SMBs and enterprise-level companies. The platform enriches prospect and customer engagement by providing a robust environment for live conversations as well as capabilities for gaining valuable sales intelligence.

With Zoho SalesIQ, each chat session with potential customers is processed and translated into useful sales intelligence indicators that can help sales teams make more informed decisions.

LeadBot

Drift’s LeadBot chat solution ranks as one of the top marketing chatbots available today. LeadBot lets you quickly and easily build a chatbot for your website that automates many lead generation activities such as booking a meeting, sharing relevant content, and handling queries.

Among LeadBot’s key features are different “Skills” for different tasks, an easy-to-use Visual Builder for developing your chatbot, saving/indexing conversations, and advanced targeting/personalization.

Related: B2B Chatbots and How This Tech Can Improve Your Conversions

Mobile

Mobile Marketing Tools

It’s now been a few years since mobile was declared the next big frontier of B2B marketing, and it’s now clear that the channel impacts the B2B buying process. Recent stats compiled by Smart Insights indicate that 80% of business decision-makers use mobile at work, with 60% of B2B buyers saying that mobile played a key role in a recent purchase.

To ensure your mobile marketing initiatives perform well in 2019, here are a few tools you need to have:

AdMob

Google’s AdMob is an app monetization platform that lets marketers deploy targeted in-app ads. AdMob allows you to run and display ads on mobile apps whose users are also your target audience.

Because AdMob is a Google platform, it also leverages the solid targeting and monitoring capabilities you experience in other Google marketing and advertising tools.

SlickText

SlickText is an SMS marketing platform that lets you generate and drive traffic and conversions through text messaging campaigns. The platform offers a complete menu of features and functions for different SMS campaign requirements along with robust reporting capabilities.

SlickText showcases a smooth UX design and allows you to conveniently develop and manage SMS campaigns that target high-value prospects. It also supports two-way conversations between you and your contacts.

Repsly

Repsly is a cloud-based mobile CRM designed for field sales teams. The tool integrates and synchronizes key sales intelligence so that field reps are equipped with the tools and data they need.

Repsly also enables higher sales team productivity and close collaboration through a host of team management features. It’s definitely a must-have tool for remote teams and reps that rely on real-time sales intelligence.

Related: Mobile-First Indexing: What It Means for SEO and How to Prepare (feat. Timothy Hughes of Digital Leadership Associates)

Bonus: Lead Management/Nurturing Tools

Lead management and nurturing tools

A modern multi-channel marketing technology stack wouldn’t be complete without a lead management/nurturing platform that binds all the different processes and tools together.

This platform ideally needs to include both marketing automation and CRM capabilities in one package, so that marketers and sales reps gain a single, unified view of a lead or opportunity as the prospect moves through the funnel.

The following four lead management tools consistently rank at the top of various marketing software review sources, and each is an ideal solution for a given class of marketers:

HubSpot CRM

Winner of FinancesOnline’s 2018 Best CRM Award, HubSpot CRM is a free and simple CRM tool designed for quick and seamless deployment. The platform’s primary benefit is that it lets sales teams rapidly use the tool without changing anything in their existing workflow.

HubSpot CRM also integrates well with a number of leading marketing technology solutions, making it an ideal nerve center of marketing and sales activities for small businesses.

Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce Essentials is Salesforce’s small business package for its Sales Cloud and Service Cloud offerings. This means that Salesforce Essentials provides both sales intelligence and customer support capabilities for SMBs.

Since the platform has been engineered for small businesses, Salesforce Essentials simplifies the implementation of a full-featured, end-to-end CRM tool. Additionally, with Salesforce’s rich ecosystem of marketing technologies, the platform’s interoperability and integration with other tools won’t be much of an issue.

Marketo

Marketo is a comprehensive marketing automation platform primarily designed for large and enterprise-level B2B companies.

The main reason why more than 2,300 B2B organizations all over the world rely on Marketo is that it streamlines the entire marketing process, enabling users to get more out of their marketing and sales workflows.

Oracle Eloqua

Another leading marketing automation platform for enterprise-level organizations is Oracle Eloqua. Although developed for large B2B companies with vast marketing requirements, the platform actually simplifies marketing automation with its intuitive drag-and-drop design and a highly intuitive UI that clearly lays out each step of the marketing process.

Eloqua features a number of key capabilities crucial to modern multi-channel marketing processes, including lead management, campaign management, targeting/segmentation, marketing measurement, and sales-marketing alignment.

Conclusion:  As you pick and choose the right tools for your 2019 marketing tech stack, keep this list as a handy reference. In the end, it’s going to be your goals, requirements, and resources that determine which tools work best for you.

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