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Best Email Marketing Tools For WooCommerce in 2023

Email marketing is the highest-ROI channel for eCommerce brands, generating $40 for every $1 spent — almost double the $22.24 per $1 from SEO.

WooCommerce is one of the most popular tools for running online stores but its built-in email system is very limited. New and small businesses may be fine with this but you’re not going to generate $40 from every $1 with WooCommerce’s standard email features.

In this article, we look at the best WooCommerce email marketing tools that will help you achieve this kind of ROI. These are email marketing systems with native WooCommerce integrations and specialist eCommerce features for cart abandonment, transactional emails, customer retention and plenty more.

We weigh up the pros and cons of each system to determine which email marketing tool is the best for WooCommerce users in 2023.

What are the best email marketing options for WooCommerce?

Email marketing is fundamental to our business strategy here at Venture Harbour. We’ve analysed over 670 email marketing tools and we update our findings every year to rank the top email marketing systems for different business types.

You’ll find the complete list in the latest version of our annual review of the best email platforms.

As a WooCommerce user, you can instantly narrow this list down to five email marketing tools. The rest don’t include native integration for WordPress/WooCommerce or deliver the eCommerce-focused features you need from a system.

Unfortunately, eCommerce brands are underrepresented in the email marketing software space.

This leaves us with five email marketing tools capable of integrating seamlessly with WooCommerce and delivering the features you need:

ActiveCampaign Omnisend Klaviyo Drip Privy

Before we take a closer look at these five WooCommerce email marketing systems, let’s explore the pros and cons of using the standard email features in WooCommerce.

Pros & cons of WooCommerce’s email system

You’ll find WooCommerce’s default email system in the back end of WordPress under WooCommerce > Settings > Emails:

As standard, WooCommerce allows you to capture and store customer email addresses in lists. You can create emails for different actions – for example: new account, new order, cancelled order, etc. Using triggers, you can automatically send them to customers at the right moment.

You can edit the content of your emails and add images using the WordPress editor. However, you’ll have to edit the relevant PHP files to make more drastic changes or add custom CSS to customise the visuals.

Alternatively, you can use WordPress plugins or WooCommerce extensions to add greater functionality.

WooCommerce has a set of extensions for email marketing and the AutomateWoo extension is the first place you should start. The extension costs $99 per year (the equivalent of $8.25/month) and helps you create automated follow-up emails, cart abandonment reminders, birthday emails and a variety of other automated and personalised messages.

At this price point, the AutomateWoo extension is good value for money but it’s no match for the other WooCommerce email marketing systems we’re looking at today. Even with the extension, you still have to do quite a lot of manual work. You’ll also need to invest in other tools to run a complete email marketing strategy.

Unless you’re just starting out and you’ve got a very small customer base, it makes more sense to invest in a more capable email marketing platform. Ideally, one that can fully automate campaigns and generate revenue while you sleep (or get on with other stuff).

What we like:Triggers – You can set triggers to automatically send eCommerce emails to customers.WooCommerce extensions – You can enhance WooCommerce’s default email system with extensions (at a cost).Where they could improve:Features – Even with extensions like AutomateWoo, you’re not getting a complete email marketing system.Automation – A lack of automation features requires you put a lot of manual work into email marketing.No A/B testing – You’re not getting any analytics or testing features to optimise your campaigns.WordPress interface – Managing emails in WordPress’ dated back-end system is a pain.Who should use WooCommerce email?

We only recommend WooCommerce’s built-in email system for the newest and smallest eCommerce companies.

If you’re only getting started and still building up your email list, you can get the basics done with WooCommerce. Once you’ve got a few dozen contacts on your list, you’ll probably want to consider extensions like AutomateWoo. It’s pretty good value at $99 per year but less capable than the tools we’re looking at in this article.

However, you’ll need other extensions and plugins for customising emails, adding signup forms, optimising campaigns, etc. – and this all adds to your software expenses.

It doesn’t take long at all for more comprehensive email marketing systems to offer more value for money. The other tools we’re looking at today will help you achieve far more with less effort.

As soon as you want to start automating email campaigns, recommending products, personalising emails and retaining customers, you need a serious email marketing system.

So, now, let’s take a closer look at the best email marketing tools for WooCommerce websites.

1. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is the top-rated system in our annual email marketing platform review. It’s also the highest-rated marketing automation platform on G2 with a score of 4.6/5 from 9,799 customer reviews and 4.6/5 on Capterra from 2,100 reviews.

We’ve used ActiveCampaign as our email marketing system for more than five years now. You can read our comprehensive review for more details.

The platform’s customer relationship management (CRM) system helps you make the most of your customer data and powers your email campaigns across the entire customer journey. You can automate email responses to any action using triggers and create custom automation workflows using multiple triggers.

For example, you can create automated cart abandonment campaigns for customers who fail to complete the purchase. You can also create dynamic workflows using multiple triggers and conditional logic.

You don’t have to create every automation workflow from scratch, either. ActiveCampaign comes with a library of over 500 automation templates for you to use and edit. This covers you for most of the essential campaign types any eCommerce store needs to run. From cart abandonment and purchase confirmations to transactional emails, customer service, and more, ActiveCampaign has you covered.

Email marketing is one of ActiveCampaign’s biggest strengths but not the only role it can play. This is a multichannel platform that allows you to integrate email with SMS and website messaging for full coverage. This means you can create multichannel automation and the platform’s optimisation system even allows you to split-test different paths in a sequence.

For example, you can test upselling campaigns with a mix of email and SMS to find the right mix of channels and frequency of messaging across both. Earlier, we mentioned the lack of analytics and testing features in WooCommerce’s email system so ActiveCampaign is a huge upgrade in this regard.

Pricing

ActiveCampaign runs plans starting from $29/month. However, as a WoCommerce user, you’ll want to sign up for the Plus plan (or higher), which starts at $49/month. Pricing is determined by the number of contacts you store in the platform’s CRM and you’ll find a breakdown of the fees on ActiveCampaign’s pricing page.

What we like:Easy to use – ActiveCampaign is easy to learn for new users with minimal training, thanks to excellent usability and UX design. Email automation – You can automate advanced email campaigns across the whole customer journey using conditional logic, predictive content, intelligent insights, customer scores and plenty more features.Reasonable cost – While not the cheapest system we’re looking at today, ActiveCampaign is one the most advanced and significantly better for money than comparable email marketing platforms. Where they could improve:Reporting – ActiveCampaign has improved this aspect of its system over the years but the other tools in this article still do a better job of visualising reports for email campaign performance.Who should use ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign is best suited for WooCommerce sites generating less than $5m in revenue per year. For smaller retailers, the platform drives growth by automating email campaigns and helping you to make the most of your customer data.

If you want to maximise revenue by increasing customer loyalty, purchases per customer and how much they spend, ActiveCampaign removes most of the manual workload. This allows you to focus on other areas – like customer acquisition – while the system automates growth at the retention stage of the customer cycle.

2. Omnisend

While ActiveCampaign provides an email automation system for various business types (eCommerce, SaaS, retail, etc.), Omnisend is designed specifically for online stores. It’s not as powerful or flexible as ActiveCampaign but the focus on eCommerce comes with its conveniences. For example, all of the email templates and content blocks are designed for eCommerce.

Omnisend has a dedicated WooCommerce plugin to integrate seamlessly with your website. This is one of the highest-rated email marketing plugins for WordPress with an average score of 4.9/5 from 56 reviews.

Reporting is one of Omnisends’s biggest strengths and, once again, reports are geared towards eCommerce campaigns by default so so they’re ready to use right out of the box. Deliverability is another key strength and this is something many email marketing platforms overlook.

Many email marketing platforms don’t even show deliverability insights but Omnisend puts these in plain sight so you can see how many recipients are actually receiving your emails. You can also view interaction metrics in the same view to monitor open rates, engagement, CTRs and other interactions.

Automation is limited compared to ActiveCampaign but Omnisend does include a library of workflow templates covering most of the essentials for eCommerce brands. You can easily set up automations for cart abandonment, purchase confirmations, order status updates and other interactions.

Unfortunately, you can’t automate full campaigns like you can with ActiveCampaign. You can’t personalise content to the same extent, either, but Omnisend can handle the most common customer interactions. The system includes workflows for welcome emails, abandoned carts and plenty more.

You can also customise workflows and create your own using Omnisend’s automation builder. Again, it’s less capable than ActiveCampaign’s builder, which allows you to create more advanced workflows, but it’s super easy to use and a great tool for quickly creating simple automations.

Pricing

Omnisend offers one of the most generous free plans for WooCommerce users who are just starting out. As long as you’ve got no more than 250 contacts, you can send up to 500 emails per month as well as 500 web push notifications and 60 SMS messages.

You get access to the vast majority of Omnisend’s features on the free plan, too. The main limitation is how many messages you can send and this is the key factor in pricing across plans. The Standard plan starts from $16/month for 251-500 contacts and the Pro plan from $59/month – also for 251-500 contacts.

Pricing increases in increments of 500 contacts with the Standard plan jumping up to $20/month for 501-1,000 contacts, $25/month for 1,001-1,500 contacts and so on.

You can check how much Omnisend will cost you for different contact list sizes on the company’s pricing page.

What we like:Reporting – You get eCommerce focused reporting that’s ready to use from day one.Deliverability – Omnisend offers a range of features to maintain high deliverability, including email warm-up (sending emails gradually to improve your sender reputation) and insightful reports to monitor your deliverability and reputation.eCommerce content blocks – Omnisend offers lots of content blocks to integrate products and discounts directly into your email campaigns. Their form templates also include a range of creative ways to engage visitors – such as with a wheel of fortune.Where they could improve:A/B testing limitations – While you can add splits in automation sequences, we weren’t able to set a goal to run effective A/B tests within an automation sequence.Templates – The templates are visually underwhelming.The campaign builder – Performance is a little sluggish compared to the other tools we’ve tested.Who should use Omnisend?

Omnisend is great for new WooCommerce users looking for a free entry into email marketing. It’s also a great option for companies with large email marketing lists. It offers a cheaper price point than ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo (the next system we’re looking at) for equivalent list sizes.

The downside is you’re not getting ActiveCampaign’s advanced email marketing automation features. So it really comes down to whether you want an affordable system that’s great at the basics or a slightly more expensive system that can do much more (ActiveCampaign).

3. Klaviyo

Klaviyo was one of the first specialist eCommerce email marketing systems and the platform is now used by more than 100,000 online store owners.

Like Omnisend, the company has developed a WordPress plugin to integrate the system with your website. However, user reviews are mixed with an average score of 3.4/5 stars from only 11 reviews.

As an eCommerce specialist, Klaviyo also does an excellent job with reporting. In fact, it does even better than Omnisend in this regard. The system uses predictive analytics to forecast future revenue predictions. It also sets benchmarks for you to target, based on the performance of your eCommerce rivals.

Klaviyo’s campaign builder is intuitive and performance was smoother for us than it was with Omnisend. The platform’s templates are also designed to a higher standard. This makes it easier to create professional-looking campaigns without any design expertise.

Like Omnisend, Klaviyo can automate email campaigns for key moments across the customer cycle: purchase confirmations, product recommendations, cart abandonment emails, etc. However, you can’t create dynamic workflows with conditional logic or any of the advanced automation ActiveCampaign makes possible.

Pricing

Klaviyo also offers a free plan for up to 250 contacts, allowing you to send up to 500 emails per month and 150 SMS messages. However, the paid plans are more expensive than both Omnisend and ActiveCampaign for comparable contact list sizes.

Honestly, this is Klaviyo’s biggest downside but it does offer a more usable system than Omnisend and better reporting features. So it all comes down to how much you’re willing to pay for these. It’s a little more difficult to make the case for Klaviyo over ActiveCampaign, given the fact it’s more expensive and less powerful – except for its excellent reporting features.

You can visit Klaviyo’s pricing page to see how much the platform will cost you for the size of your email contact list.

What we like:Email templates – These are some of the best eCommerce email templates we’ve seen.Benchmarks – Klaviyo sets tangible targets for you to hit, based on the performance of similar eCommerce companies.Predictive forecasts – Intelligent insights model when a customer is likely to buy from you, or how much you’re likely to make in a future month enabling you to better allocate your time and budget.Where they could improve:It’s expensive – Klaviyo brings some powerful features to the table but you have to for the privilege.Automation – The range of automation actions are simplistic and lacking sophisticated automation actions such as split testing paths.Email campaign editor – A tad basic and it offers only one eCommerce-specific content block (a list of products from a product feed).Who should use Klaviyo?

Klaviyo is most suitable for large eCommerce companies that will get the most value out of its reporting and predictive insights features.

It could also be a good option for high-turnover companies with small in-house teams that want a simple, usable system with email templates that will save you from hiring designers.

4. Drip

Drip is an eCommerce automation system specialising in email marketing and email capture with forms and popups. With the platform’s campaign builder, you can create emails, web forms and popup designs by editing Drip’s templates or creating your own designs from scratch.

It’s a pretty simple editor but it’s easy to use and effective enough for creating basic resources. This is a fair description of the system as a whole. It’s the least advanced platform we’ve looked at so far but, in many ways, it’s the most usable and this will benefit WooCommerce users that have less experience with email marketing and this type of software, in general.

The templates are designed well and Drip keeps them updated. This means you don’t have to make too many changes to create quality campaigns. Again, this will benefit users with less design and email marketing experience, even if you have to upgrade to a more advanced system in the future.

In terms of automation, Drip includes a simple automation builder that you can use to edit workflow templates or build your own. However, the platform only includes five templates for WooCommerce and the workflows themselves are very basic.

In fairness, the platform makes it easy to set up basic automations for welcome emails, cart abandonment and post-purchase emails.

The builder itself is easy enough to use but you’re limited by how many actions you can use and the lack of a drag-and-drop interface makes it slower than it could be.

Pricing

Drip only runs one plan with pricing from $39/month for up to 2,500 contacts. Pricing increases as your contact list grows, jumping to $49/month for up to 3,000 contacts, $69/month for up to 3,500 contacts and so on.

You can send unlimited emails on this plan and you get access to all of the platform’s features. You don’t have to worry about upgrades or feature restrictions; you simply pay more as your list of email contacts grows.

It’s a simple pricing model that’s refreshing to see and you can find out how much Drip will cost for your current email list on its interactive pricing page.

What we like:Simplicity – Everything about Drip is simple, possibly too simple for larger or experienced WooCommerce users, but a great option for newcomers. Where they could improve:Templates – While the templates included are quality, we would like to see more of them and more eCommerce-specific options.Campaign builder – The workflow UX could improve with drag-and-drop editing and enhanced functionality.Content blocks – More eCommerce content blocks in the email campaign builder.Who should use Drip?

Drip is best suited for new and small WooCommerce users who want a simple, affordable system for basic email marketing. If you don’t have any previous experience with email marketing, you’ll benefit from the simplicity of this platform.

It’s a big enough step up from the standard email system in WooCommerce to justify the monthly software fees but you may find you outgrow the system once you’re ready to implement a more sophisticated email marketing strategy.

5. Privy

Privy isn’t exactly an email marketing platform in the traditional sense. It initially launched as a conversion tool for capturing leads with popups, banners and coupons but the company has expanded to include more email marketing features over the years.

It now comes with an email builder, email templates and basic automation features with a free plugin for WooCommerce users.

This gives you two options. First, you can integrate Privy with a dedicated email marketing platform and use it as a lead capture tool (popups, banners, etc.) – and the company itself even recommends doing this. Alternatively, you can use Privy as a standalone solution if you’re happy with the limited email marketing features it offers.

The platform includes a good amount of email templates but the overall quality is quite low. They’re perfectly usable for campaigns but you’ll have to put more work into customising designs than you would with Drip, for example.

The email builder itself isn’t the most capable or robust tool we’ve used, either. Again, it’s fine for creating basic email campaigns but it’s not the fastest or most intuitive tool.

Unlike the other tools we’ve looked at today, Privy doesn’t include an automation builder. Instead of genuine workflows, the platform refers to autoresponders as “Automations” so you’re limited to sending triggered emails to single events.

You can’t build workflows around rules, actions and multiple triggers with Privy.

Privy’s real strength is its conversion toolkit for creating popups, banners and coupons for capturing customers and email leads. The system includes plenty of templates built around common eCommerce problems and goals – eg: cart abandonment and cross-selling campaigns.

It’s a great tool for adding conversion tools to your WooCommerce website.

Pricing

Privy offers a free plan for up to 100 email contacts and full access to its popup features. This is great for new WooCommerce websites looking to build their first email list. However, keep in mind that the free plan doesn’t include Privy’s main email marketing features.

Pricing for the Starter Plan starts from $30/month for up to 1,500 contacts. You can send unlimited emails on this plan and you also get full access to Privy’s email marketing features.

The Growth Plan starts from $45/month for up to 2,000 email contacts and 75 SMS contacts. As you can probably guess, this plan incorporates Privy’s SMS marketing features for multichannel campaigns.

You can visit Privy’s pricing page to find out how much it will cost you for your current list.

What we like:Conversion tools – Pre-built popup templates improve conversion rates for key eCommerce actions (cart abandonment, cross-selling, etc.).Reporting – Privy tracks the revenue generated from each campaign or popup built in the platform.Where they could improve:The overall email marketing offering – Privy isn’t far from being a full eCommerce marketing platform but it’s let down by a basic email and automation platform.Template designs – They’re visually lacking and require external design support.Lack of automation templates – While Privy doesn’t offer workflow-style automations, the lack of templates means you have to build from scratch. Who should use Privy?

Privy is best for new WooCommerce sites that are more interested in building their first email list. The conversion tools will help you win more customers and email contacts, which will form the basis of your email marketing strategy.

Once you’ve got a list to work with, you can try Privy’s email marketing features to see how much of an impact they make. However, you’ll probably get the best results by using Privy alongside a more capable email marketing system.

Choosing the right email marketing tool for your WooCommerce store

Choosing the best email marketing platform for your needs depends on several factors. You have to consider your budget, email marketing goals and the growth stage of your eCommerce business. If you’re an established WooCommerce business looking to use email marketing as a growth strategy, your needs are very different from a company that’s only just launched its website.

Changing email marketing provider in the early days isn’t too difficult but switching providers can get more challenging over time. If you’ve got 500k email contacts, contact profiles and customised automation workflows baked into a system, changing providers becomes a bigger job.

It pays to find the right email marketing system as early as possible and most providers offer free trials so there’s no harm in trying different options out.

Compare pricingToolMonthly price for 2,500 contactsMonthly price for 10,000 contactsMonthly price for 100,000 contactsActiveCampaign$49$139$559Omnisend$35$115$720Klaviyo$60$150$1,380Drip$39$154$1,199Privy$45$150$780Our verdict

If you’re just launching your WooCommerce store, we recommend starting out with something simple like Privy’s free plan or Drip while you build your email list and get started with the basics of email marketing.

Once you’ve got a list and you’re ready to get more serious with email marketing, we recommend moving over to Omnisend or ActiveCampaign for a more capable solution. We’ve been using ActiveCampaign at Venture Harbour for well over five years now and the platform continues to meet our needs as we grow.

FAQCan WooCommerce send emails?

Yes, WooCommerce includes a basic email marketing system, allowing you to send purchase confirmations, cart abandonment emails and other eCommerce messages.

Does WooCommerce have email marketing?

WooCommerce allows you to auto-send emails for actions like product purchases and select contacts to send marketing emails to. However, you’ll need a proper email marketing system for designing emails, automating campaigns, targeting audiences and optimising campaigns to maximise revenue.

How do I set up email marketing in WooCommerce?

The best way to set up email marketing in WooCommerce is to use paid extensions like AutomateWoo or email marketing systems with WooCommerce integrations.

The post Best Email Marketing Tools For WooCommerce in 2023 appeared first on Venture Harbour.

Best Email Marketing Tools For Shopify in 2023

Email marketing is one of the highest ROI marketing channels for Shopify businesses – with $40 generated per dollar spent according to Omnisend. 

Whether you’re looking to reduce cart abandonment, drive repeat customers, build demand for new products or all of the above, email marketing can help.

While Shopify does offer its own email marketing app, we’re going to weigh its pros and cons against five leading eCommerce-focused email marketing platforms to see which email marketing tool is best for Shopify users in 2023.

What are the best email marketing options for Shopify users?

There are over 670 email marketing tools that we monitor for our annual review of the best email platforms. As a Shopify user, you can happily eliminate 665 of them for either not offering a Shopify integration or simply being too generic. 

This leaves us with five platforms to consider outside of Shopify Email, each offering a deep integration with Shopify, which we’ve tested first-hand.

ActiveCampaign – Omnisend – Klaviyo – Drip – –

First though, let’s take a look at Shopify Email.

The Pros and Cons of Shopify’s Email App

Shopify’s in-built email marketing solution is fine to start out with if you’re just starting to build out your mailing list.

It has the non-trivial benefit of not requiring any integrations or backend work to get up and running, though this comes with strings attached.

Firstly, it lacks some fundamental features that enable email marketing to generate a high ROI (such as A/B testing and email content personalization). The template designs are mediocre, and for an email marketing tool built for eCommerce they have very few blocks 

What we like:One-click automation templates – Because there’s no need to setup integrations, you can ‘turn on’ automation workflows without any backend setup. Any sales driven by email marketing are automatically attributed to the correct emails or automations. While other tools make this setup easy, it does feel like magic having this all working without any additional work.Segmentation – Shopify allows you to build segments by building logic-based queries. While this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s extremely powerful and makes building highly-targeted audiences very easy. Where they could improve:More automation templates – Shopify offers six automation templates. Six! That’s 494 less than the next tool on our list.Email template designs – The Shopify email templates feel like they’ve been put together as an afterthought, and lack the design finesse of those offered by the other five tools. No A/B testing – Perhaps the biggest giveaway that Shopify’s email offering is a bit of an afterthought is the lack of one of the most important features for optimising email campaigns.It’s glitchy – The email designer can get glitchy with parts of the page jumping off the screen as you type and sometimes needing to refresh the page to unstick the editor. Who we would recommend Shopify Email for:

If you’re setting up a new Shopify store and building a list from scratch, this will get you going for free. You can always switch to a more feature-rich tool when your needs outgrow Shopify Email.

1. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is not only the top-rated platform from our annual email marketing platform review, it’s also the highest-rated marketing automation platform on G2 with an average rating of 4.6/5 from 9,771 reviews. 

As users ourselves, I can vouch for their platform’s ease of use, powerful features and refreshingly affordable pricing. 

And while their platform isn’t exclusively built for Shopify users, they have a native Shopify integration (which you can enable from the Shopify app store) that sends all of your customer and sale data into ActiveCampaign. 

This allows you to trigger emails and automations when people visit certain products, drop out of your cart/checkout, purchase products and much more. 

Unlike Shopify Email, ActiveCampaign offers over 500 automation templates that you can use to get started with.

These automation sequences can include email, SMS and site messages to deliver cohesive messaging to your customers across multiple channels. What’s particularly impressive about ActiveCampaign is that you can split test different paths in a sequence – for example, whether a combination of email and SMS outperforms just email. 

Pricing

As a Shopify user, you’ll need ActiveCampaign’s Plus plan to get access to their Shopify integration. This starts at $49/month for 1,000 contacts – you can see the exact pricing for your list size here. 

What we like:Easy to use – Despite being incredibly powerful, ActiveCampaign needs very little training or explanation on how to work. The user interface just makes sense. Powerful features – As your email and automation needs grow more sophisticated, ActiveCampaign has a lot of advanced features like predictive sending, predictive content, conditional content and custom audiences to optimize your campaigns with. We’ve been using ActiveCampaign for almost a decade and have yet to outgrow it.Reasonable cost – It’s not the cheapest software (and they have raised their pricing over the last few years) but it does offer a lot for a very reasonable price. Where they could improve:Reporting – the quality of reports in ActiveCampaign have come a long way over the last few years, but they still feel dated and a bit disorganized. The other tools in this list do a far better job of visualizing how campaigns impact your eCommerce revenue.Who we would recommend ActiveCampaign for:

Shopify stores generating

2. Omnisend

Unlike ActiveCampaign, Omnisend is dedicated exclusively to eCommerce businesses – with a strong focus on Shopify and Shopify Plus users. 

This is apparent as soon as you create an account with Omnisend, as they encourage you to sign up using your Shopify account to automatically import all of your product data and analytics.

As a newcomer, Omnisend has differentiated itself by focusing heavily on the areas that most email marketing platforms neglect – like reporting and deliverability. 

When you log in to Omnisend, you are greeted with the simple, yet elegant metric “Revenue from Omnisend” which is then segmented by campaigns and automations. For marketers that need to constantly prove the value and ROI they add, this is a welcome touch.

When it comes to deliverability, Omnisend don’t hide these stats in some dark corner of the platform hoping it’s never seen. They put it front and centre, with tools and tips to improve and maintain your sender reputation and list hygiene.

The automation workflows and email campaigns don’t have any notable features that stand out, but they’re easy enough to use. 

Omnisend does have a wide range of Shopify templates to help you get up and running quickly. These are grouped by goal (e.g. increase cross-sells) which is a nice touch to help spark ideas when focusing on a particular area of you funnel. 

Pricing

Omnisend has one of the most generous free plans for Shopify users who are just starting out and have fewer than 250 contacts. Their email marketing plans are also less expensive than ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo (the next platform we’ll look at).

You can view Omnisend’s pricing page here to see how much it’ll cost for your list.

What we like:Reporting – they’re not just vanity-metric free, but genuinely make proving the ROI of email marketing a breeze.Deliverability – Omnisend offers a range of features to maintain high deliverability, including email warm-up (sending emails gradually to improve your sender reputation) and insightful reports to monitor your deliverability and reputation.eCommerce content blocks – Omnisend offers lots of content blocks to integrate products and discounts directly into your email campaigns. Their form templates also include a range of creative ways to engage visitors – such as with a wheel of fortune.Where they could improve:A/B testing has limitations – While you can add splits in automation sequences, we weren’t able to set a goal to run effective A/B tests within an automation sequence.Templates – they’re visually underwhelmingThe campaign builder – UX is less smooth than other tools we’ve tested.Who we would recommend Omnisend for:

Omnisend is ideal for eCommerce sites with large customer lists that will get value from the high deliverability and in-depth reporting. It’s also a great free option for beginners with fewer than 250 contacts.

3. Klaviyo

Klaviyo were among the first platforms to focus exclusively on eCommerce and are now used by over 100,000 eCommerce businesses.

Like Omnisend, they’ve done an exceptional job of making sense of your data and attributing sales back to the campaigns that influenced them. But unlike Omnisend, Klaviyo goes a step further by forecasting your predicted future revenue and benchmarking your performance against similar eCommerce businesses.

This is one of my favourite features in Klaviyo as it gives you a tangible target to aim for with everything from your open rates to revenue per recipient. 

The campaign builder and automation flow canvas in Klaviyo is easy to use and the templates are of a high design standard, making it easy to build professional looking campaigns with no external design support.

There are a few notable omissions, such as a lack of split testing paths in the automation flows, but otherwise it does everything you’d expect of a high-end email automation platform. 

Pricing:

The main downside with Klaviyo is the price. While they do offer a free plan, Klaviyo costs more than both Omnisend and ActiveCampaign at almost any level of contacts. 

You can view Klaviyo’s pricing page here to see how much it’ll cost for your list.

What we like:The email templates are some of the best-designed we’ve seen.Benchmarks allow you to see how your performance compares over time to companies in a similar niche.Predictive forecasts can model when a customer is likely to buy from you, or how much you’re likely to make in a future month enabling you to better allocate your time and budget.Where they could improve:It’s expensiveThe range of automation actions are simplistic and lacking sophisticated automation actions such as split testing paths.The email campaign editor is a bit basic and offers only one eCommerce-specific content block (a list of products from a product feed).Who we would recommend Klaviyo for:

Large eCommerce businesses with a team dedicated to email/SMS marketing, as well as those with limited access to design resources.

4. Drip

Drip may have been around since 2012, but it’s been in the last few years since they were acquired by Leadpages that they’ve pivoted to the eCommerce niche. Their product very much feels that way, rather than being built specifically for eCommerce. 

There are a lot of nods and sprinklings of eCommerce features throughout their platform, but it does often feel like a generic email marketing tool. 

To give credit where it’s due, Drip is incredibly simple to use and is refreshingly quick to get up and running. 

The email templates are well-designed and don’t require too much editing or design support.

When it comes to automation, Drip has only nine pre-built templates for Shopify users. And to call them templates is probably a bit of a stretch given how sparse and basic they are. The workflow builder is fine, but significantly slower (you can’t drag and drop) and has fewer actions than the other tools in our list.  

Pricing

Drip has one pricing plan starting at $39/month for up to 2,500 contacts. There’s no free plan (just a 14-day trial). You can view Drip’s pricing here to see how much it’ll cost for your list size.

What we like:Everything about Drip is simple. Maybe a bit too simple, but it is nice to use a tool that doesn’t offer any bells and whistles. Where they could improve:Adding useful eCommerce templates Improving the workflow UX with drag and dropMore content blocks in the email campaign builder Who we would recommend Drip for:

We’d recommend Drip for small eCommerce businesses on a tight budget with basic email marketing requirements that are beyond Shopify’s email app, but below what’s offered by the other tools mentioned. 

5. Privy

Strictly speaking, Privy is not a dedicated email marketing tool. The focus and difference of their platform is on increasing conversions and building your list using website displays (i.e. popups, banners and coupons). In fact, Privy generally encourages users to combine Privy with an eCommerce email marketing tool. 

However, as they do offer email marketing (and many eCommerce companies do just use this) we’ve included them in our round-up. 

After integrating your Shopify store, you’ll notice that Privy pulls in your sale and product data, ready to use inside your email campaigns. 

The email templates in Privy are quite poor, and the email builder itself is nothing to write home about. It is perfectly usable for basic email marketing, though.

Unusually, you won’t find a visual automation builder in Privy. What they refer to as ‘Automations’ are essentially autoresponders (i.e. a single triggered email) rather than a workflow of emails based on rules and behaviour. There is also a notable lack of any pre-built automation templates to get started with.

But as mentioned, this isn’t Privy’s bread and butter. Where they excel is in their conversion tools which are well-designed and built around solving specific eCommerce problems like encouraging cross-sells and reducing cart abandonment. 

Pricing

Privy offers three pricing plans and is free if you have less than 100 contacts. Their paid plans start at $30/month for up to 2,000 contacts. 

You can view Privy’s pricing here to see how much it’ll cost for your list.

What we like:Plays – These pre-built popup templates claim to improve conversion rates of various offers to above-average levels.Reporting – By integrating with your Shopify store, Privy is able to report on the revenue made by each campaign or popup built in Privy helping you understand what works.Where they could improve:The overall email marketing offering – Privy isn’t far from being a full eCommerce marketing platform but it’s let down by a basic email and automation platform.Template designs – They’re visually lacking and require external design support.Lack of automation templates – While Privy doesn’t offer workflow-style automations, the lack of templates means you have to build from scratch. Who we would recommend Privy for:

Privy is ideal for eCommerce businesses that are currently focusing more on building their list (not engaging an existing list). If you’re starting a list from scratch but have a good amount of traffic, Privy will help you build up your list faster. You can always combine it with one of the other tools in this list when your email marketing needs outgrow Privy’s platform.

Choosing the right email marketing tool for your Shopify store

The right email marketing software will help you communicate the right message to the right customers at the right time. Given how important a role email marketing plays in eCommerce marketing, this is an important decision to get right.

You can always change email marketing provider, but my recommendation is try any of the tools you’re curious about that fall within your budget. As most tools offer a free trial, there’s no harm giving them a spin to see which one works best for your business.

Compare PricingToolMonthly price for 2,500 contactsMonthly price for 10,000 contactsMonthly price for 100,000 contactsActiveCampaign$49$139$559Omnisend$35$115$720Klaviyo$60$150$1,380Drip$39$154$1,199Privy$45$150$780Our verdict

If you’re just starting your Shopify store, I’d recommend either using Shopify’s Email App (the easy option), Omnisend (most powerful and free) or Privy (the best for list growth).

But if you already have customers and are looking for something more powerful I’d recommend either ActiveCampaign or Omnisend.

FAQDoes Shopify have email marketing?

Yes, the Shopify Email app is free for up to 10,000 email sends per month and enables you to send email campaigns and automation campaigns to your customers.

How do I email customers on Shopify?

You can email your customers on Shopify by clicking “Marketing” and then “Campaigns” if you’ve installed the Shopify Email app. You should then see a large button that says “Create Email” which will take you to an editor to build an email campaign.

How do I set up email marketing on Shopify?

Go to the Shopify app store and search for ’email’. You should then be able to install the Shopify Email App in a matter of clicks. Then, navigate to ‘Marketing’ in the sidebar of your Shopify admin where you will see options to build email marketing campaigns.

The post Best Email Marketing Tools For Shopify in 2023 appeared first on Venture Harbour.

5 Best Data Studio Connectors for Marketers

Google Data Studio is one of the most popular tools for visualising insights from multiple data sources, allowing you to combine and analyse on a bigger scale. Before you can bring all this data together, though, you need something called a Data Studio connector, which pulls the data in from your analytics tools and automatically updates insights so your reports are always up-to-date.

In this article, we’re looking at the five best Data Studio connectors that allow you to combine data from dozens – or hundreds – of different sources so you can perform enterprise-level data analysis.

What are we looking at in this article?

In this article, we review the best data connectors for Data Studio that allow you to compile insights from your most important marketing and sales platforms.

Here’s a quick preview of what we’re covering today:

What is a Data Studio connector? A quick definition to clarify what we’re talking about in this article.Supermetrics review: The simple, reliable Data Studio connector.Funnel review: The best for big data using dozens or more sources.Dataslayer review: The affordable Data Studio connector for SEM & PPC.Adverity review: The best for data analysis features.Windsor review: The most affordable option for 2-3 data sources.Comparison: A head-to-head comparison of pricing, features and usability for all of the connectors featured in this article.

Once we’re done with our reviews, we compare each tool in a head-to-head to see which ones come out on top for pricing, features and usability.

What is a Data Studio connector?

Google Data Studio is an online tool for visualising and working with data, which you can use to create customisable dashboards and interactive reports. It’s a powerful reporting tool if you’re looking to pull in data from multiple sources and want to create dashboards/reports that prioritise the insights that matter most to you.

Here’s an example of what an interactive dashboard might look like in Data Studio:

You can access the interactive version of this dashboard here if you have an active Google account.

Data Studio is essentially a visualisation tool but it needs data to work with and it doesn’t natively collect this data itself. You have to pull this data in from sources like Google Analytics, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

To connect these data sources with Data Studio, you have to use something called connectors. Google provides free connectors for most of its own products, allowing you to pull in data from Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Sheets and more than a dozen other platforms.

At the time of writing, there are 20 Google connectors officially supported by Google and 582 connectors built and supported by Data Studio partners for tools like ActiveCampaign, HubSpot and hundreds of others.

You can view the full list on Data Studio’s connector gallery page.

“Data sources use connectors to fetch your data from a specific platform, system, or product. You can use free connectors built by Google to access data such as Google Sheets, Google Ads, Google Analytics, and other Google Marketing Platform products, and more. You can also use connectors built by Data Studio partners via the Community Connectors developer program.“

About data sources, Data Studio Help

Over the years, many analytics platforms have developed their own Data Studio connectors that allow you to pull in data from a wide range of sources and this is what we’re looking at today. We’ve tested dozens of Data Studio connectors during the past six years and our team has selected their top recommendations for this article.

#1: Supermetrics: The simple, reliable Data Studio connector

Pricing from $89/month

Supermetrics is an analytics system built around connectors, allowing you to pull in data from multiple sources and manage insights within a single platform. Supermetrics also offers a dedicated Data Studio tool, which supports more than 70 connectors for importing data from the most popular marketing and sales platforms.

This specific product is called Supermetrics for Data Studio, which includes native connectors for Google products, the top social networks (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) plus a range of other systems including HubSpot, Shopify, Salesforce, Semrush and many more.

This isn’t the largest set of data connectors we’ll see on offer today and, although it covers all of the basic essentials, there’s a good chance you’ll be using certain tools that lack connectors in Supermetrics.

Key features:

70+ data sources: Integrations with more than 70 marketing and sales platforms.Source accounts: Manage 10+ accounts for every data source connected via Supermetrics.Unified dashboard: Manage all of your marketing data in one place.Supermetrics Charts: Create insightful visualisations that aren’t natively available in Google Data Studio.Automated reports: Automatically compile data and create reports for bosses and clients.BigQuery connector: Pull all of your data into Google BigQuery without writing any SQL code.

Aside from the data connectors themselves, Supermetrics allows you to manage 10 accounts for every data source on all of its plans – and more if you sign up for the Enterprise plan. the platform also helps you create reports and data visualisations faster using Supermetrics Charts that aren’t available in Data Studio.

How much does Supermetrics cost?

Supermetrics offers five different plans, starting from $89/month for the Single connector plan. As the name suggests, this allows you to connect one data source but this kind of defeats the point of using Data Studio or Supermetrics as a Data Studio connector.

Instead, you really need to start with the Essential plan to benefit from using Supermetrics for Data Studio. This costs $119/month and gives you up to nine data sources, which is a more reasonable offering for businesses using multiple data platforms.

The Core plan bumps your monthly fees up to $239 but gives you up to 24 data sources while the Super plan costs $579/month and covers you for three users and up to 45 data sources. If you need anything more than that, you’ll have to contact the company’s sales team to discuss pricing on the Enterprise plan.

Supermetrics pros & cons

Supermetrics pros:

Affordability: Competitively priced in a software niche that can get very expensive.Simplicity: Supermetrics takes the complexity out of managing data from multiple sources and its simple interface makes the platform itself equally as easy to use.Data accuracy: As with any platform like this, you get the occasional data inaccuracy but Supermetrics performs well in this regard, compared to many similar systems.

Supermetrics cons:

Limited data connectors: While Supermetrics covers most of the common marketing and sales data sources, it’s missing many of the connectors available with other systems.Price creep: Supermetrics has gotten more expensive per data source over the years.Speed: Data loads can take a while when multiple people have the same report open in Data Studio.Supermetrics verdict

Supermetrics is a robust Data Studio connector that makes it easy to compile data from multiple sources. It may not offer the biggest library of native connectors but it covers the essentials and its connectors are among the more stable and reliable that we’ve used.

Several platforms we use here at Venture Harbour lack native Supermetrics connectors – ActiveCampaign being the most important – but we were able to supplement most of these through the Data Studio Community Connectors developer program (at a price).

Despite this, Supermetrics offers good value in a software niche where data connectors can be very expensive. It’s not the cheapest option we’re looking at today but it may offer the best all-round value in terms of quality vs price, although we’re seeing some noticeable price creep in those plan fees.

#2: Funnel: The best for big data (and big budgets)

Pricing from $399/month

Funnel is an automated data collection system that allows you to import data from more than 500 sources and send it to a dozen of the most important destinations, including Data Studio, Google Analytics, Power BI, Amazon S3, BigQuery and more.

The system also includes more than 230 native data connectors and Funnel has a dedicated service for building custom connectors if you can’t find what you’re looking for. So, one way or another, Funnel should have you covered for any data sources you want to bring into Data Studio and we were able to connect everything we needed from its native library of “Core” connectors.

Key features:

230+ Core connectors: Connect to more than 230 of the most important marketing data sources in minutes.500+ data sources: Collect data from more than 500 marketing apps and platforms.Custom connectors: If Funnel is missing any connectors you need, they’ll create it for you (Plus plan or higher).Unlimited data: Import unlimited data without any additional fees or charges per GB.Scheduled imports: Schedule automatic data imports to collect and update insights.Data Explorer: Quickly explore your data, analyse insights and export from one system.Custom rules: Create custom dimensions and metrics using rules and calculations.Google Data Studio templates: Visualise your data faster by using or editing Funnel’s pre-built Data Studio templates.

Funnel gives you access to all 230+ Core connectors on all of its plans and it also covers you for unlimited data so you’re not charged based on how many connectors you use or how much data you import.

You can schedule imports, analyse your data within Funnel and create custom dimensions and metrics to represent insights in the most relevant way. The platform also provides templates specifically for Data Studio, which helps you visualise your data without building every report from scratch.

How much does Funnel cost?

As explained in the previous section, Funnel doesn’t price its plans based on the number of connectors you use or how much data you import. Given the extensive library of data connectors and the features available on all plans, this makes Funnel’s $399/month Essentials plan pretty good value for companies that need to integrate data from a lot of different sources.

On the other hand, if you only need to implement a dozen or two data sources, you could get better value from Supermetrics – provided it covers all of the connectors you need (or you can source anything missing from the Data Studio partner gallery).

Upgrading to the Plus plan will cost you $999/month and this gives you access to custom connectors, as well as unlimited users, multiple workspaces and roles and permissions. The Enterprise plan starts from $1999/month and gives you enterprise single sign-on, a customer success partner, priority support and data region choice (EU or US).

Funnel pros & cons

Funnel pros:

Data connectors: Funnel offers one of the most extensive sets of data connectors and the company will build custom connectors if you can’t find what you’re looking for.Usability: Although the initial setup can take some work, the platform itself performs excellently.

Funnel cons:

Expensive: Funnel is an enterprise system and it’s a pricey one, even in this category.Inconsistent connector quality: Some data connectors are more robust and accurate than others, which could have more to do with third-party APIs than Funnel.Funnel verdict

Funnel delivers one of the biggest libraries of Data Studio connectors available and its Essentials plan is good value for companies that need to import data from more than a couple of dozen sources. If you’re not looking to incorporate that many data sources, you might get better value elsewhere – for example, Supermetrics’ Essentials plan that covers you for up to nine connectors.

Elsewhere, Funnel is an enterprise analytics system and Data Studio connector with features to match. You can request custom connectors on the Plus plan and do more with the data you handle, particularly if you’re pulling in a lot of data from multiple sources.

#3: Dataslayer: The affordable Data Studio connector for SEM & PPC

Free plan available; paid plans from $59/month

Dataslayer is designed specifically for search engine marketing (SEM) and pay-per-click (PPC) reporting. Like most of the providers we’re looking at in this article, Dataslayer offers multiple products, including the Data Studio connector we’re interested in today:

Dataslayer for Google Sheets: Build marketing reports directly into Google Sheets.Dataslayer for Google Data Studio: Make the most of Data Studio’s dashboards with all your data from any source.Dataslayer API: Import your marketing data into third-party platforms in seconds.Dataslayer for BigQuery: Import your marketing data into BigQuery without writing any code.

Dataslayer says its products are “built for performance agencies” but an affordable pricing model makes Dataslayer for Google Data Studio accessible for business owners, freelance marketers and agencies of all sizes. You may also notice it claims to be “the best Supermetrics alternative” on its homepage so let’s see how well this holds up when using the two companies’ Data Studio connectors.

Key features:

40+ data connectors: Integrate data from more than 40 sources into Data Studio.Visual dashboards: Easily create visual dashboards for analysis and reports.Unlimited reports: Create an unlimited number of reports on all Dataslayer plans, even the free version.Supermetrics import: Migrate your queries from Supermetrics to Dataslayer without rewriting everything from scratch.Simultaneous logins: Share the same login with multiple users or add new users to the same account at no extra charge.

The first thing to note about Dataslayer is the focus on SEM and PPC, which is reflected in the 40+ native Data Studio connectors available. This is fewer than half of the connectors available with Supermetrics and, while Dataslayer offers a few connectors Supermetrics doesn’t (TikTok and WooCommerce are big examples), Supermetrics easily wins the connectors battle.

As we’ll see when we explore Dataslayer pricing in the next section, though, you could get more connectors for your money.

Getting back to features, you can create unlimited reports on all Dataslayer plans and you can share the same login with multiple users or add new users to your existing account at no extra cost. And, if you’re an existing Supermetrics user and you like the look of Dataslayer, you can easily import your data from Supermetrics using Dataslayer’s dedicated importing tool.

How much does Dataslayer cost?

Dataslayer’s pricing model is based on the number of API calls you make per day. So, unlike Supermetrics (and many providers), you’re not charged for the number of data connectors you use or how many users/logins are clocked on your account.

This means you can take advantage of all of Dataslayers data connectors on every plan, even the free plan. And, once again, you can create unlimited reports and have unlimited simultaneous logins on your account – the key limitation here is that you can only have 15 API calls per day on the free plan.

Here’s what Dataslayer has to say about its pricing model:

Dataslayer is charged based on API calls per day, rather than the number of users or logins. We have based the API limits on agencies’ typical usage and reporting requirements. For example: a spreadsheet that is refreshed daily to report on Adwords, Google Analytics and Facebook data will make 3 API calls per day.

That should give you an idea of what you can expect to achieve with 15 API calls per day on the free plan.

Dataslayer’s paid plans are designed for agencies with prices starting from $59/month for the Small Agency plan. This covers you for up to 500 API calls per day and opens online customer support with replies within 24 hours.

The Medium Agency plan costs $99/month and increases your daily API limit to 1250 and the Large Agency plan covers you for up to 4,000 API calls per day for $299/month.

Dataslayer pros & cons

Dataslayer pros:

Easy to use: Dataslayer is easy enough to use that you’re comfortable with the system in one afternoon.Affordable: If you can deal with its limitations, this is one of the most affordable Data Studio connectors around.

Dataslayer cons:

Limited connectors: Dataslayer lacks many of the connectors you’ll get from other systems but it covers most of the essentials for SEM and PPC.Online support: No phone support and email support only promises responses within 24 hours.Dataslayer verdict

Dataslayer offers one of the smallest sets of data connectors for Google Data Studio among the providers in this article. However, its pricing model makes it a compelling option if you can deal with this limitation. Aside from running a free plan and affordable pricing across its paid plans, you get access to every data connector on all Dataslayer plans – even the free plan – which provides incredible value.

Supermetrics may win the connector battle but Dataslayer is the affordability champion if you’re simply looking to pull in data from the most common data sources like Google Analytics, Google Ads, social channels, etc.

#4: Adverity: The best for data analysis features (and Data Studio alternative)

Free plan available; paid plans from $2,000/month

Adverity is a data management system that supports connectors for more than 600 data sources – the largest collection from any provider in this article. The platform is built around a network of data connectors and data destinations, allowing you to import from hundreds of sources and either manage it in Adverity or export data to third-party destinations, such as Data Studio.

You can use the free version of Adverity as a Data Studio connector, giving you access to the full library of 600+ connectors supported. So, if you’re looking for a straightforward data connector with comprehensive support for data sources (so you don’t have to create custom connectors), Adverity is hard to beat.

You’ll find the full list of data connectors supported by Adverity here.

In addition to the free plan, Adverity’s paid plans open up the platform’s data management features, allowing you to use the system as the control centre for all of your marketing and sales data.

Key features:

600+ data sources: Select from more than 600 data connections natively supported in Adverity.Data Studio dashboards: Create dashboards in Data Studio faster with built-in templates.Predictive analytics: Connect your dashboard to Adverity’s predictive analytics to discover hidden trends and potential opportunities.Automated data integration: Automatically integrate data from different sources and use it to power your complete overview of marketing performance.Smart naming conventions: Eliminate reporting issues down the line with smart suggestions on how to standardise the naming of campaigns, ad groups, and ads in all your advertising channels.Forecasts: Ensure your budget is used to its full potential by creating a complete overview of your actual budget spend and forecast position by the end of the period.Report sharing: Easily share individual data widgets or complex dashboards both with internal or external stakeholders – while also keeping full access level control.

Adverity’s paid plans are designed for companies that need a comprehensive system for importing and managing data from multiple sources. You can import data using the platform’s native connectors and manage your data across workspaces and dashboards. Essentially, this is an automated, more intelligent alternative to Data Studio that also allows you to export insights to other platforms – including Data Studio – so you can send reports to contacts in accessible formats.

How much does Adverity cost?

Adverity offers a free plan that allows you to connect with hundreds of data sources through API connectors and provides the platform’s basic set of data management features. Clearly, Adverity is designed to be more than a data connector, though, and you can see from the pricing of its paid plans that this platform is built with enterprise companies in mind.

Pricing for the Premium plan starts from $2,000/month and gives you access to API connectors, data connectors, file connectors and customisable web connectors. This is built for companies that rely heavily on data insights and need to build a watertight system for connecting all of their data into a single platform with the ability to manage, manipulate and analyse everything in one place.

Final pricing is dependent on the volume of data you work with, the connectors you use, where you send this data, user access and a range of other factors. To get an accurate picture of pricing, you’ll need to speak to the company’s sales team about booking a demo.

Adverity pros & cons

Adverity pros:

Extensive data connectors: Adverity offers one of the most extensive native libraries of data connectors.Powerful data features: if you’re looking for an intelligent data system, this is far more than a Data Studio connector.

Adverity cons:

Learning curve: It will take time to get to grips with Adverity, especially on the more advanced plans.Expensive: As an enterprise data system, this is priced for companies willing to pay good money for data insights.Adverity verdict

Adverity is a complete analytics system for companies that need to collect and work with insights from multiple sources. This is geared towards companies that may use Data Studio as one of many destinations for marketing and sales data with Adverity being the control centre for data connection and analysis.

With the largest set of data connectors available from any of the providers we’re looking at in this article, Adverity tops the list in terms of scale. More importantly, it backs this up with powerful data management features and reliability for teams that can’t accept compromises with data analysis.

#5: Windsor: The most affordable option for 2-3 data sources

Free version available; paid plans from $19/month

Windsor is a data connection and analytics system built for smaller teams and more comparable with the likes of Supermetrics than Adverity. With support for 50+ data connectors and 21 connectors specifically for Data Studio, this isn’t the largest set of native data sources but Windsor is taking a smart, modern approach to data integration.

Aside from providing native Data Studio connectors for the obvious culprits (Google Analytics, Google Ads, the big social networks, etc.), it also supports integrations for Amazon MWS, Criteo, HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, Stripe and the newer names in social, including Snap and TikTok.

While many big names are still missing from Windsor’s data connectors, the company covers the most important channels for modern companies, which is a winning long-term strategy as it continues to flesh out its library of data connectors.

Key features:

50+ data connectors: Integrate data from more than 50 marketing sources.Unlimited reports: Create unlimited reports from data sources connected via Windsor.Unlimited users: Run unlimited user accounts without any additional fees.Attribution modelling: Break beyond last-click attribution with intelligent attribution modelling.Customer journey mapping: Find out the exact paths of your customers take along the buying process.Google Ads bid optimisation: Allocate budget for your Google Ads campaigns and improve their performance, relevancy and quality.

Windsor’s modern approach to data connection is also evident in its attribution modelling features that help you break past the outdated method of last-click attribution. The platform’s intelligent, multitouch attribution system helps you identify the value of interactions between conversion actions so you can optimise performance across the touch points that contribute to ROI.

Major platforms like Google Ads are moving away from last-click attribution to provide a more data-driven solution and Windsor is playing an active role in developing smarter alternatives.

The only downside is that Windsor’s multitouch attribution modelling system is reserved for its most expensive plans.

The platform also includes its own customer journey mapping system that helps you discover and pave the journeys they take through the buying process. This, combined with the attribution modelling features, allows you to identify and optimise the interactions that have a real impact on purchase decisions.

How much does Windsor cost?

Windsor runs a free plan that covers you for two data sources and allows you to create a single report as a single user. Paid plans start at $19/month for the Basic plan, which allows you to connect three data sources and create unlimited reports. You can also have unlimited users on all paid plans, which means you don’t need to worry about your software fees multiplying for every user profile on the account.

Upgrading to the Standard plan will cost you $99/month and cover you for seven data connections. This increases to 10 data connectors on the $499/month professional plan and you can export data to up to five different data destinations on this plan, too.

The Professional plan is also the first one that makes Windsor’s multitouch attribution features available.

If you’re looking to connect data from more than 10 sources, you’ll have to speak to Windsor’s sales team about pricing for the Enterprise plan.

Windsor pros & cons

Windsor pros:

Reliability: Windsor’s data integrations are as reliable as any we’ve tested.Attribution modelling: Machine learning attribution modelling improves upon the lack-click model while providing greater visibility than native Google Ads attributions.Affordable entry plans: Windsor’s lower-tier plans offer excellent value if you can accept the limitations on data connectors.

Windsor cons:

Limited data connections: Despite relative reliability, Windsor’s list of supported data connections is relatively small.Data connector limits: The data connector restrictions on the Standard and Professional plans can hike up your software fees.Windsor verdict

Windsor offers a relatively small library of data connectors for Data Studio but covers most of the essentials for modern companies. If you’re looking to integrate marketing and sales data from Google platforms, social channels and your CRM, Windsor is a tempting option – provided you’re using HubSpot or Salesforce as your CRM.

As things stand, Windsor is an excellent choice for new retail brands and companies prioritising social media marketing, especially on the more visual platforms. Stripe integration also makes this an interesting option for companies with a physical presence that want to combine online and in-store data.

Affordable entry prices make this a viable option for small and newer ventures, too, although companies looking to connect half a dozen data sources or more will probably want to look elsewhere.

What’s the best Data Studio connector for marketers?

To help you choose the right Data Studio connector for your needs, this last section compares the tools we’ve looked at in this article, head-to-head. When we test and compare new software tools, we prioritise the following three characteristics to make our software decisions easier:

PricingFeaturesUsability

Pricing is always a factor in any software purchase decision but it’s not only a question of price and working within a budget. You also want to know you’re getting the best possible quality for your money so we also want to explore the features available at each price point.

Finally, usability is the subjective quality that’s easy to overlook but makes a difference every time you interact with a software tool. This is particularly important for tools you or your team use on a daily basis and, in the case of Data Studio connectors, this largely depends on how you intend to use the tool.

The best for pricing

Software pricing is notoriously complex and often confusing when you’re first comparing different options. When it comes to making a final decision, it always pays to cross-reference pricing pages with feature lists and specifications to know exactly what you’re signing up for. But, during the early comparison stage, you can rule out contenders and narrow your list of options by looking at the starting prices and upgrade path. This gives you an idea of what you’re expecting to pay from day one but also the fee increases you’ll be facing as your needs mature.

In the comparison table below, we list the Data Studio connectors in this article that provide free plans, the starting price for their cheapest paid plan and the starting price for the most expensive plan listed on their website (this often excludes “enterprise” plans).

ToolFree plan?Starting priceTop planSupermetrics–$89/mo$579/moFunnel–$399/mo$1,999/moDataslayer$59/mo$299/moAdverity$2,000/mo–Windsor$19/mo$499/mo

As you can see, three of the tools we’ve looked at today offer free plans although Windsor’s free plan is aimed at single users and limited to two data connections. Dataslayer and Adverity’s free plans are more open and genuine options if you’re simply looking for free data connectors but you can see the prices of paid plans are wildly different.

Dataslayer remains affordable throughout the upgrade path while Adverity is designed for enterprise companies that need a robust data system for connecting, managing and exporting data.

The best for features

Pricing doesn’t tell us much without an understanding of what you’re getting for your money so we have to look at the features available in return for the software fees. Again, you can find all of the information you need on the respective providers’ websites but we can simplify the decision process by prioritising the most important features.

While comparing Data Studio connectors, we determined that the following five features were most important to us:

Data connectors: Not only the quantity of data connectors available but support for our most important data sources.Custom data connectors: The ability to request custom data connectors if they aren’t already available.Unlimited data: No restriction on the amount of data we can import through the connectors we use.Unlimited users: Many Data Studio connectors allow you to have unlimited users/logins on your account at no extra cost.Data Studio templates: Help you to create reports in Data Studio faster.

We mark features with an HTML tick icon () where they’re provided on the cheapest plan and while features marked with a tick and an asterisk (*) are available through upgrades or signing up to a more expensive plan.

ToolConnectorsCustom connectorsUnlimited dataUnlimited usersDS templatesSupermetrics70+––Funnel230+**Dataslayer40+–Adverity600+*Windsor50+–*

First of all, every Data Studio connector featured in this article allows you to import and connect unlimited data through connectors. So, whether you’re paying for two connectors or dozens, there’s no restriction on the amount of data you can import through each individual connector and you’re not charged for data volume in any way.

In terms of data connectors, Adverity is the clear winner and the company refers to the possibility of developing custom data connectors if something is missing from its library. Funnel has the second-largest library of native connectors and the company provides a dedicated service for custom connectors for customers signed up for its Plus and Enterprise plans (starting from $999/month).

Dataslayer and Adverity allow you to have unlimited users on all of their plans while Funnel and Windsor support unlimited users on some of their top-tier plans – so take a look at this if you want to provide access to your whole team.

Finally, all of the tools featured in this article include a library of Data Studio templates to help you build reports in Data Studio faster.

The best for usability

When it comes to Data Studio connectors, the importance of usability varies depending on how you intend to use the tool. If you’re simply looking to set up data connections and do everything else in Data Studio, then the usability of the connector itself is less of an issue.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a comprehensive data system to import, analyse and export data (to Data Studio and other destinations), then usability is a big deal.

For the sake of comparison, let’s assume the latter is true and you need a system that delivers on usability. When we analyse the usability of new software tools, we pay close attention to the following characteristics:

Smooth operation: The software runs smoothly without any lags or slowdowns as you interact with elements.Navigation: Elements, tools, settings and everything else you interact with are easy to find.Minimal clicks: Simple actions require no more than 1-3 clicks to complete and more complex actions (eg: settings changes) within a reasonable number of clicks.Action completions: The quantity of meaningful actions you complete vs time spent interacting directly with the software.

Based on these four factors, the following three data connectors stand out when it comes to usability: Supermetrics, Funnel and Windsor.

#1: Supermetrics

Supermetrics is probably the best-known data connector and it’s been in the game for a while now. Founded in 2013, the system was designed to simplify the challenge of merging data from multiple sources and gaining deeper insights in the data-driven world. In this sense, usability was a core design principle of the software and the company has refined the platform over the years to improve both functionality and usability.

With new competitors hitting the market every year, Supermetrics faces a lot of pressure to keep itself at the top of its software niche. All things considered, the company has done an excellent job over the past decade and, while the platform has been overtaken by some systems in terms of pure power, Supermetrics still strikes an excellent balance between power and simplicity.

#2: Funnel

If Supermetrics’ simplicity comes with a few too many feature compromises, Funnel is one of the first data connectors you should look at. With more than 230 native data connectors, 500+ data sources in total and a dedicated service for building custom data connectors, this is a platform designed to truly combine all of the data you need into a single system.

As a Data Studio connector, Funnel also offers up one of the most comprehensive libraries of Data Studio templates to help you build reports faster in the Google platform. However, considering the software fees we’re talking about with Funnel, you’re probably using this platform as your primary analytics system, which makes usability all the more important.

Funnel packs powerful data features into a surprisingly intuitive system, given the depth of its capabilities. You won’t have any major problems using this system on a daily basis or customising the platform to meet your needs. The biggest usability issue we ran into with Funnel was the initial learning curve but this period was no more challenging than we would expect with a software system that includes such extensive analytics features.

#3: Windsor

As the newest platform featured in this article, youth can both benefit and harm the usability of a system like Windsor. The main downside with newer systems is they’ve had less time to mature but they also often benefit from being designed for more modern needs than their older counterparts.

You can see this is the selection of native data connectors on offer, a relatively small but modern set of data sources including the likes of TikTok and Snap.

We would also hope to see modern, fresh UI design from a newer platform but Windsor actually looks less polished than some of its older rivals. If you can look past the visual aspects of Windsor’s UI design, the functional performance of Windsor is more impressive.

The platform is responsive and its intelligent data features set it apart from the other tools recommended in this article – most notably, the attribution modelling technology and customer journey mapping features. You can also customise the system extensively to suit your needs and we’ve found Windsor’s support team is always there to help you get the best out of the system.

Which is the best Data Studio connector for you?

In this article, we’ve looked at five very different Data Studio connectors for a variety of needs. Whether you’re looking for the most affordable option for combining data from a few different sources (eg: Google Analytics, HubSpot and Facebook) or you’re looking for a complete data analysis system for managing insights on a much larger scale, you should be covered by the recommendations we’ve discussed today.

As always, if you think we’ve missed any Data Studio connectors that deserve a recommendation in this article, let us know in the comments section.

The post 5 Best Data Studio Connectors for Marketers appeared first on Venture Harbour.

5 Product Roadmap & Product Management Software

Software development is an ongoing process of optimisation, feature rollouts and strategic management. To maximise revenue, you have to win new customers but also hold on to existing ones by keeping them engaged and providing value as their needs become more advanced.

This strategic approach is more important than ever in the age of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) where you have to manage features across multiple plans.

Product roadmaps play a key role throughout the development cycle, providing a flexible blueprint for new feature ideas, updates and optimisations. In this article, we look at some of the best product roadmap and product management software tools to bring this all together.

What are we looking at in this article?

Most of this article is a series of reviews looking at each product roadmap and product management software tool. Before we start looking at specific products, though, we’ll quickly define what product roadmap software and product management software are – just to clarify exactly what we’re talking about in this article.

Here’s a breakdown of what we’re looking at today:

What is a product roadmap & product management software? A quick definition to explain exactly what we’re talking about in this article.Productboard review: Product management with the best roadmap tool we’ve used.Craft review: Product management for the whole team – and stakeholders.airfocus review: The collaborative, modular product management system.Linear review: The lightweight issue & bug tracking tool.GLIDR review: The evidence-driven product development system.Comparison: We compare the pricing, features and usability of each tool to help you choose the best options for your team.

Once we’ve reviewed each product, we’ll wrap things up with a comparison section where we compare the pricing of each tool, the features on offer and the usability to help you choose the right tool for your needs.

What is product roadmap and product management software?

If we define product management as a practice, that’ll do most of the explaining for us in terms of product roadmap and product management software. A quick Google search finds plenty of solid descriptions of product management and this one from Hotjar is a good example:

“Product management is the process of strategically directing every stage of the product lifecycle—from research and development to testing and positioning—to build technically feasible products that fulfill[sic] both user needs and business objectives.”

The same page featuring the above description goes on to discuss the role of product vision and roadmaps. It explains that teams define the product vision “based on user research, business objectives, and technical viability” and, then, “create a roadmap that sets out the main objectives for the product, estimates key milestones in development, and defines Key Performance Indicators”.

With this information, the roles of product roadmap and product management software are easy to explain.

What is product roadmap software?

Product roadmap software makes it easy for product managers and software teams to create, edit and manage product roadmaps. This normally includes an interface that makes it easy to put roadmaps together, such as a visual drag-and-drop editor for creating and editing roadmaps throughout the product lifecycle.

Product roadmap software should also include native features for setting goals, KPIs and other important targets. You want a tool that allows you to schedule key development tasks, such as feature rollouts, product updates and bug fixes – and track the progress of these tasks.

What is product management software?

Product management software is a complete system designed to power every stage of development throughout the product cycle. This should include a product roadmap tool, including everything discussed in the previous definition, as part of a comprehensive system for managing product development and optimisation.

Here are some of the most common features you should expect from a product management platform:

Roadmap builderFeature prioritisationFeature requestsSpec sheetsCustomer feedbackFeedback analysisSoftware experimentsPublic roadmapsTask management

That’s not an exhaustive list but it gives you an idea of what we’re looking for in a complete product management system. The platforms reviewed in this article provide most of the features listed above and some offer some unique features that are worth talking about. At the same time, some of them place more emphasis on certain features than others so it all comes down to choosing the right system for your needs.

We aim to help you do that with this article.

#1: Productboard: Product management with the best roadmap tool we’ve used

Pricing from $20/month

We’ve used Productboard to manage the development cycle of several products and its roadmap builder is one of the best we’ve used. The drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to craft roadmaps and the system supports formats for teams, team leaders, stakeholders and customers so you can create and share tailored roadmaps for every audience that needs access to them.

Another important characteristic of Productboard’s roadmap tool is the filtering system that allows you to group product features by release, sprint, time scale, or now/next/later buckets and view them collectively to manage progress through each stage of development.

Key features:

Roadmaps: Align everyone on your teams and easily tailor roadmaps for anyone in a few clicks.Product engagement: Engage your customers throughout the product lifecycle.Product feedback: Easily capture every product idea, request, and piece of feedback from colleagues and customers in one place.Feedback analysis: Analyse feedback from any angle with granular & high-level views to guide product decisions.Feature requests: Dig deeper to understand why users are requesting certain features so you can deliver the optimal solution.Feature validation: Collect feedback on your ideas from customers and see which ones resonate the most.Feature prioritisation: Use data to help prioritise what’s best for your customers and business.Customer portals: Create multiple portals for different audiences and decide which ideas to post on each.Insights: Understand your customers by centralising all sources of feedback in one place.Engagement: Share what’s planned and close the feedback loop with your customers.

Productboard calls itself “the customer-centric product management platform,” consolidating all of your feedback into a single place. You can view feedback about existing features, feature requests and even get feedback on feature ideas from customers – as well as team members – to inform decisions and prioritise ideas.

In all honesty, it would be nice if Productboard allowed you to do more with this data on its cheaper plans. If you sign up for the Enterprise plan, you get smart feature suggestions, advanced insights, trends from feedback and automated feedback insights.

We feel that these features should be available on the Pro plan, even if they’re restricted to a certain number of customers. As things stand, you have to sign up for the Enterprise plan to remove the manual workload from feedback analysis, which isn’t a particularly advanced feature anymore. Hopefully, Productboard will find a way to give customers access to these features on lower-tier plans in the near future.

How much does Productboard cost?

Productboard runs four plans starting from $20/month per “maker,” which the company defines as users who have “full access to edit, update, add, create and prioritize feature ideas, insights, and roadmaps”.

This may sound like a per-user pricing model but it’s not, in practice. On every plan, you can have unlimited contributors and viewers. As the Productboard pricing page describes, contributors “can share ideas, requests, and customer feedback and access feature data and roadmaps, but cannot make updates”. Meanwhile, viewers can access roadmaps and the portal (if shared with them) on a view-only basis.

So, it really comes down to how many “makers” you have on your team.

If you only need 1-3 people to have admin access, Productboard’s Essentials and Pro plans are very competitively priced. That being said, the price jump from $20/month to $60/month triples your software fees and the distance between the two plans grows if you have more than a few makers on your account.

Productboard justifies the price tag of its Pro plan with some serious feature upgrades, though. You get unlimited customer feedback capture, advanced feature filtering and prioritisation scores, custom fields, access to the Customer Feedback Portal and plenty more.

It’s a serious upgrade but, again, we feel there’s space for an intermediary plan between the Essentials and Pro offerings with limitations on customer feedback, custom fields, etc.

This is characteristic of the upgrade path with Productboard. The jump (both in features and pricing) between the Pro and Scale and the Scale and Enterprise plans are steep. As a result, each upgrade is a real commitment – one that rewards you with serious feature upgrades but forces you to really consider your needs.

Productboard pros & cons

Productboard pros:

Product roadmaps: Productboard makes it easy to create and manage feedback-driven roadmaps.Feature prioritisation: Feature insights help you determine the most important features for your customers.Combined feedback: You can collect feedback and compile feedback from team members and customers in one place.

Productboard cons:

Lack of project management: Productboard is heavy on roadmapping features but light on project management.Feedback analysis: The best feedback insights features are only available on the Enterprise plan.Upgrade path: A reshuffle of features and limitations would create an easier upgrade path with smaller jumps.Productboard verdict

Productboard is an excellent product management system and it’s still our favourite roadmapping tool. The platform provides tools for the whole product cycle, helping you to prioritise the most important features for your customers and your bottom line.

Compared to some of the other tools we’re looking at today, Productboard is light on task management features but integrations with Jira, Trello and plenty of other tools fill any gaps – the kind of tools most software teams are already using.

Aside from that, the only minor issue we’ve found with Productboard is the upgrade path, which we’re convinced could be eased up with a reshuffle of features across plans. Let’s give the company the benefit of the doubt and assume its upgrade model is the result of extensive research. But, from the customer’s perspective, the jumps between plans are bigger than they could be, especially if you have a lot of team members who need admin accounts.

#2: Craft: Product management for the whole team – plus stakeholders

Pricing from $39/month

Craft understands that product development is a team effort and its system is designed to help the whole team achieve more together. With product management software, systems are normally built with team managers in mind (for obvious reasons) but Craft wants to provide a platform that meets the needs of everyone – even company stakeholders.

The platform’s drag-and-drop roadmaps builder gives you complete flexibility to create, edit and manage roadmaps on the fly. The interface is a bit much to take in when you first get started – simply because of how much functionality there is – but an extensive library of templates and elements helps you put complex roadmaps together faster.

In the Strategic Inputs dashboard, you can create a central repository for all product information, ideas and feedback – from team members and customers. You can specify your objectives and key results (OKRs), customer personas, key selling points and every other strategic element of product development to align your actions with the broader go-to-market strategy.

Key features:

Product roadmaps: Create tailored roadmaps that seamlessly connect strategy to features.Roadmap views: Connect strategy to execution with views that allow you to visualise how objectives and key results/KPIs relate to specific features.Status monitoring: Get an instant snapshot of progress status, feature completion, and how features connect to OKRs.Prioritisation engine: Build your own automated prioritisation engine for features, updates, bug fixes and other improvements.Strategic input: Create a central repository of all product information and seamlessly connect each element to your ideation and planning processes.Spec editor: Create detailed product specs that reflect what you’re building, using best-practice templates.Tailored stakeholder views: Customise and share tailored views with stakeholders to get buy-in, communicate updates, and bring clarity to your product decisions.Capacity planning: Manage resource availability, prioritise your most important items and assign tasks without overloading your team.Feedback portal: Capture, organise and connect feedback to epics/features to prioritise what matters most for your customers.

Craft’s intelligent prioritisation engine allows you to define your own prioritisation model with unlimited custom fields – so you can score feature ideas on your terms. Alternatively, you can use the built-in WSJF, RICE and MoSCoW models to prioritise features for you – or test these frameworks against your own models for comparison.

One of Craft’s most innovative features is its Capacity Planning tool, which uses real-time tracking of your roadmap to estimate how long future tasks will take and which resources they require – all so it can predict the weight of future tasks for you. With this predictive data, the tool helps you manage workloads by showing you how much time and resources each task will take, allowing you to manage workloads and assign tasks without laying too much on your team at any one time or stretching resources too far.

With your product management strategy in full swing, you can also create custom views for stakeholders to show them all of the information they need and nothing they don’t. These tailored views will help you get buy-in for key decisions and secure the funding you need to demonstrate the impact of your updates.

How much does Craft cost?

Craft runs three core plans, starting from $39/month per user for the Essential plan and $89/month per user for the Pro plan. Unlike Productboard, this is a true per-user pricing model on the Essential plan, although the Pro and Enterprise plans both allow you to have unlimited contributors and viewers.

Craft describes contributors as “any team members who can view and/or comment on any unit built in craft.io (user story/epic/feature/roadmap)”. That’s a little more restrictive than Productboard’s definition of contributors and you can’t have any contributors at all on the Essential plan.

With the Essential plan, you also miss out on the bulk of Craft’s feedback and ideas features, including the Feedback Portal. You still get access to the Strategic Inputs dashboard but you’re unable to integrate with feedback or track and follow ideas.

Aside from that, you still get most of the platform’s planning and prioritisation features on the Essential plan, including feature prioritisation, story mapping, roadmapping and the drag-and-drop editor.

So it’s primarily the feedback features you’re missing out on with the Essential plan and the ability to have contributors on the system. Upgrading to the Pro plan will get you these and the Enterprise plan provides advanced security and customer support.

Craft pros & cons

Craft pros:

Product management: Craft is an excellent all-in-one product management system, covering the whole product cycle.Roadmap views: Advanced roadmap views allow you to manage product development by OKRs, KPIs, features and more.Resource management: The Capacity Planning feature helps you maximise the output of your team without overworking them or double booking resources.

Craft cons:

Convoluted UI: The overall architecture of the software produces crowded interfaces with nested menus and too many options within the view at any one time.Learning curve: It will take time for team members to get used to the system and some of its tools, particularly the Specs Editor.Craft verdict

Craft makes a real effort to provide a complete product management tool for everyone involved in development. With an extensive combination of planning, strategic and collaboration features, the platform makes a strong case for being the control centre of product development, helped by innovative tools, such as intelligent resource management.

With all the functionality built into Craft, the main drawback is the learning curve for new users. It’s going to take some time to get used to this system and the experience isn’t helped by the overall architecture, navigation and UI design of the product itself – for example, all of those nested menus you have to work through to find features/tools and learn where everything is.

#3: airfocus: The collaborative, modular product management system

Pricing from $15/month

If you’re looking for a product management system that puts the essential features into a simpler, easier-to-use package, then airfocus could be the system for you. The secret to airfocus’ simplicity is its modular design that allows you to piece together the tools you need and forget about the ones you don’t.

This keeps the system light and free of any features you don’t need while providing the flexibility to customise workspaces so they make sense to your team.

The same value of simplicity is felt in the platform’s features, too, starting with the roadmap builder. It’s not as capable as Craft’s builder in terms of options, settings and tracking but it’s a faster and easier tool to use, as a result.

Likewise, when it comes to editing roadmaps, you have fewer options to change (eg: task duration) but it’s faster to make changes overall. The downside to this is that airfocus isn’t as capable on the workload and task management front as Craft but this is quite common for product management tools.

Native integrations with Jira, Trello, Asana and other tools can make up for this.

Key features:

Roadmaps: Build roadmaps in minutes with airfocus’ drag-and-drop roadmap builder.Modular workspaces: Organise your team, product, or unit in workspaces – use views, fields, apps, integrations and permissions to define a home that makes sense for you.Custom views: Create the perfect views that are right for you, whether it is on a table, board, chart, or timeline.Prioritisation: Create a scoring framework that works for your team and allows you to frame your decision-making process into a conversation everyone can join.Priority Poker: An interactive, collaborative, and inclusive way to prioritise as a group and make decisions in the most time-efficient manner.Release timelines: See how your strategy is developing with a timeline view and move or edit items with the drag-and-drop interface.Customer feedback: Centralise feedback from email, chat, support, and other channels in one organised inbox and turn it into helpful insights.Feedback insights: Highlight and create insights from feedback – link them to ideas and opportunities to inform your discovery while keeping customers at the centre of your product.

To prioritise features, you can select from several prioritisation formula templates and customise them to suit your needs – you can find out more information on this documentation page, if you’re interested. Alternatively, you can create your own custom formula from scratch in a process that’s essentially a (very) simplified version of creating spreadsheet formulas.

Once you’ve settled on a prioritisation model, you can easily view tasks and feature ideas in key categories: quick wins, strategic, low-value items, items to cut, etc.

To boost collaborative ideation, airfocus has come up with a novel feature called Priority Poker. I say novel because it sounds like a gimmick and it’s certainly unique but it works surprisingly well as a collaborative tool for assessing items.

Basically, you create a session (or game) and invite everyone to provide input on tasks, feature ideas and other items. For example, you can call in software developers to provide input on how long it would take to implement a new feature, sales reps to confirm how much demand exists for the feature and stakeholders to judge its financial potential.

You can control the criteria players are able to evaluate (eg: software implications for developers, financial ones for stakeholders, etc.) to ensure feedback is always relevant.

With Priority Poker, you can quickly gain informed feedback from internal experts on the value, challenges and time frame of product development actions – not such a novel feature, after all.

How much does airfocus cost?

airfocus runs four plans starting from $15/month per editor for the Essential plan with five contributors included (contributors can read and comment on workspaces). You’re limited to one workspace on the Essential plan but you can create unlimited items and share roadmaps and views with unlimited viewers.

Upgrading to the Advanced plan will cost you $49/month per editor but cover you for unlimited contributors and workspaces. You also get airfocus’ advanced prioritisation tools with the exception of Priority Poker, which is only available on Pro and Enterprise plans.

The Pro plan costs $89/month per editor and also allows you to set goals with OKRs and opens the best of airfocus’ collaboration features. You can also create unlimited branded portals on the pro plan and create portfolio views.

airfocus pros & cons

airfocus pros:

Modularity: The modular architecture of airfocus makes almost everything customisable.Usability: Strong UX design is reinforced with heaps of customisability freedom, creating a clean but capable product management system.Priority Poker: Although the name sounds a bit gimmicky, Priority Poker allows you to create a customised, collaborative system for prioritising ideas and making data-driven decisions.

airfocus cons:

Timeline view: This is a useful tool but setting up a lot of tasks is more cumbersome than it could be – perhaps this will improve with further development.Collaboration: Some standard collaboration features are missing – eg: tagging, comment notifications, etc.airfocus verdict

If simplicity is a priority but you still want some of the advanced features of modern product management tools (prioritisation models, customer feedback, etc.), then airfocus could strike the right balance for you.

It doesn’t offer the same depth of features as Productboard or Craft but it delivers a comparable system in a faster, easier-to-use package. The downside of simplicity is fewer controls and you’ll notice this in the lack of basic collaboration features like tagging and comment notifications or the manual work involved in creating a lot of tasks at once in the timeline view.

In the case of airfocus, less may be more for some teams, while simply not enough for others.

#4: Linear: The lightweight issue & bug tracking tool

Free plan available; pricing from $8/month

Linear is unlike any of the other tools that we’re looking at in this article. All of the other products offer their take on an all-in-one product development but Linear only tries to do one thing and do it very well: issue tracking.

That may sound uninspiring compared to the grand offerings from Productboard and the other tools featured in this article but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

As Julien Danjou wrote for Mergify back in 2020, issue tracking is one aspect of product development where you can’t accept performance issues. You need a tool that works every time, all the time. And the problem with all-in-one solutions – like Notion and Jira, which he discusses in this article – is they tend to suffer from lag, slowdowns and other issues.

The same is true of the other tools we review in this article: they all suffer from lag to varying degrees because of how much code is running in the browser at any one time.

“Issue trackers have to be as frictionless as possible to maximize their effectiveness. Slow speed, clumsy interface, or complicated workflow frustrate users, and they then tend to dismiss their usage. As of today, Linear seems to have a head start on this particular use case because of its speed and GitHub integration.”

Julien Danjou, Why we switched from Notion to Linear; Mergify

Linear provides a lightning-fast issue tracking system built by software engineers for software engineers – and it shows from the very first session.

Key features:

Roadmap: Build your roadmap, set milestones and view all projects in one view.Project backlog: An overview of your project ideas, along with the tools you need to plan and prioritise your upcoming work.Bug tracking: Automatically track bugs and issues with your software.Velocity & estimates: Track your team’s workload and velocity throughout the development cycle.Shortcuts: Linear is optimised for efficiency with extensive keyboard shortcuts.Command line: Complete any action within seconds using the command line feature.Offline mode: Access and make changes with or without internet access.

Linear’s primary functionality is issue and bug tracking but the product has evolved over the years into a decent product development tool. You don’t get intelligent feature prioritisation or task management but it does come with a sleek roadmapping tool for visually planning projects with two view options: timeline and list.

Team members can collaborate on projects with comments that support full markdown and embedded code blocks, images, videos and other files.

Team leaders can create new projects, share roadmaps with multiple teams, create individual and team workflows and track team velocity to view progress in real-time. Linear can use this data to plot project graphs showing scope, velocity and progress over time and even estimate performance on future projects.

At its heart, though, Linear is an ultra-fast issue tracking system that developers will love using. With real-time data sync, an abundance of keyboard shortcuts, a built-in command line and Linear’s lightweight, high-performance architecture, this is the fastest tool of its kind.

How much does Linear cost?

Linear runs a free plan that covers you for unlimited users with a limit of 10 MB file uploads, 150 MB worth of uploads per month and 250 issues. Paid plans start at $8/month per user for the Standard plan, which gives you unlimited file uploads and issues, private teams, advanced history and admin tools – as well as priority support.

The Plus plan costs $12/month per user and brings advanced authentication tools, audit logs and expanded SSO.

Linear pros & cons

Linear pros:

Built for developers: Linear is built by software developers for software developers.Usability: Lightweight design, endless shortcuts and intuitive interfaces.Speed: Linear is built for speed and it only gets faster as you master the tool.

Linear cons:

Limited features: Linear is excellent at what it does but it’s light on features compared to the other tools in this article.Linear verdict

If you’re looking for an ultra-fast issue tracking system that enables your team to discover, track and solve problems faster, Linear is the tool you want. You’re not getting an all-in-one product development system with Linear but you are getting a tool that’s engineered to do one thing flawlessly and a few other things really well.

#5: GLIDR: The evidence-driven product development system

Pricing from $20/month

GLIDR is an evidence-driven product management system that brings all of your product knowledge, research and ideas into a single platform – so you can make informed decisions. The platform is built across two canvases: the Business Canvas and the Product Canvas, which allow you to distinguish between ideas for the company and individual products.

You can build your product roadmaps within the Product Canvas with flexible view options, including a timeline, Kanban and group filters for viewing items by status, theme and other criteria.

Across the business and product canvases, the platform centres around product management across three key dashboards: Ideas, Evidence and Experiments. Aside from adding ideas at the business or product level, you can also collect and manage evidence and experiments independently for business goals and product objectives.

Key features:

Product roadmaps: Build data-driven product roadmaps and customise development workflows.Feature prioritisation: Prioritise features confidently with connections between ideas, evidence, and experiments.Product specs: Capture critical features, user stories, epics, or strategies as product ideas. Then connect supporting evidence, and build product specs.Customer feedback: Use evidence of all kinds to support the ideas with promise and bypass the ones without.Software experiments: Test customer behaviour and analyse results with targeted experiments.Linked evidence: Gather knowledge from Intercom, Chrome, interviews, secondary research and experiments.Knowledge database: Keep all of your insights in one searchable location, and use it to spot patterns you might have otherwise missed.Public roadmap & portal: Give your users visibility into your roadmap and capture new ideas or feedback on existing ones.

From the Evidence dashboard, you can collect data from customers using the native Intercom integration to pull in feedback, use GLIDR’s Chrome extension to capture text from anywhere on the web (product reviews, social posts, etc.) or manually collect data from GLIDR through interviews, surveys, A/B tests and more.

This means you’ll need to be signed up to Intercom as a chatbot/customer service tool to get the best out of GLIDR. We actually use Intercom at Venture Harbour as the first step in our online customer support so we can vouch for the tool and the GLIDR integration works seamlessly.

With your evidence compiled in GLIDR, you can validate your product ideas by analysing feedback and running targeted experiments to see where your customers’ priorities align with yours. You can also create a publicly-visible product roadmap for customers to see which direction you’re heading in and collect further feedback and ideas to confirm you’re taking the right steps.

How much does GLIDR cost?

GLIDR runs four plans, starting from $20/month per user for the Starter plan, which covers you for one project, 5 GB of storage per user and most of the standard features: Business Canvas, Product Canvas, ideas, evidence, experiments, etc.

The big feature missing on this plan is feature prioritisation scoring, but GLIDR isn’t the only provider to limit this to higher-tier plans, and the Public Portal.

All in all, you’re getting a lot of product management features for $20/month per user, especially for smaller teams.

The Starter plan costs $50/month per user and this covers you for five projects, increases the storage limit to 20 GB per user and opens up both the feature prioritisation tool and the Public portal. You also get full access to GLIDR’s integration options, which include Slack, Trello, Jira, Intercom, Zapier and Figma.

Upgrading to the Business plan will cost you $100/month per user and cover 15 projects as well as 200 GB of storage for each user. You also get priority support and a few extra features, including access logs and the ability to limit project access.

The Enterprise plan opens up all of GLIDR’s remaining features and gives you “premium” customer support, starting with a dedicated account manager and a customised onboarding programme.

GLIDR pros & cons

GLIDR pros:

Data-based decisions: GLIDR puts feedback, research and validation at the centre of your data-driven product development strategy.Evidence: Extensive feedback, research and experiment features allow you to collect evidence across the entire product cycle.Public Portal: This feature allows anyone to check the public roadmap, request features and leave feedback.

GLIDR cons:

Pricey: GLIDR is the most expensive tool we’re looking at today when you compare fees vs features.Restricted features: Some features reserved for the enterprise plan feel like they should be accessible on lower tiers – eg: audit logs.GLIDR verdict

GLIDR is an impressive product management system for agile development teams. It doesn’t offer anything revolutionary in terms of features but the system’s own product design makes it easy to manage business, project and product goals independently while guiding every decision with evidence, research and feedback.

You get access to all of the core features on the Starter plan, too, which means you’re not forced to sign up for a more expensive plan to get all of the essentials. Yes, feature prioritisation and the Public Portal are obvious omissions on the Starter plan but they’re reasonable sacrifices given the price tag and other features made available.

What’s the best product roadmap & product management system?

Now that we’ve reviewed our favourite product management systems, we like to end these articles with a comparison section so you can see how our recommendations stack up against each other. Hopefully, this will give you a better idea of what you’re getting from each platform and which of them are most suitable for your needs.

Whenever we test and compare software tools, we always pay attention to the following three qualities:

PricingFeaturesUsability

These factors will be the basis of this comparison section and we’ve put together a couple of tables for pricing and features so you can easily see how the systems compare against each other. That leaves usability, which is a more subjective quality, so we’ll simply pick our top products from today’s recommendations and explain why we think they perform so well in terms of usability.

The best for pricing

First, let’s take a look at the pricing of each platform to provide an overall summary of cost and affordability. Obviously, there’s not much point in listing every plan, price and fee for each product because the information overload negates the point of a quick comparison – plus, you can get all of that information by comparing the pricing pages of each product.

Instead, we show which products offer a free plan, list the starting price for the cheapest priced plan available and, then, the starting price for the most expensive plan with pricing information listed on the respective company website – so the most expensive monthly fee will be higher, normally on an enterprise plan with no pricing information provided.

ToolFree plan?Starting priceTop planProductboard–$20/mo$60/mo*Craft–$39/mo$89/moairfocus–$15/mo$89/moLinearYes$8/mo$12/moGLIDR–$20/mo$100/mo

As you can see, Linear is the only product we’ve looked at today that offers a free plan so this instantly stands out if you’re on a shoestring budget. It’s also the most affordable tool when you look at the pricing across plans but it’s the most limited system in many ways, too.

Also, keep in mind that Productboard offers two plans with no pricing information available: the Scale and Enterprise plans. So, while the “top plan” pricing information in the table above lists the starting price for each company’s second-most expensive plan (enterprise pricing isn’t listed), Productboard’s plans can cost significantly more than $60/month.

All things considered, Productboard, airfocus and GLIDR all offer affordable systems at the cheaper end with impressive feature sets on their cheapest plans. It gets more difficult to separate the products as you upgrade, though. Productboard’s price increases are quite steep but it delivers the most advanced features as you upgrade while Craft, airfocus and GLIDR all take a different approach to separating features across similarly priced plans.

The best for features

Pricing isn’t everything when it comes to choosing software, especially when you’re selecting a comprehensive system to manage something as involved as product development. In the last section, you may have noticed the pricing strategy of each company in this article is fairly similar and this pattern is consistent when you look at the feature offerings across plans.

In the table below we show which platforms offer the following five key features:

Product roadmapsFeature prioritisation scoringCustomer feedbackIssue trackingPublic portal

We mark features with an HTML tick icon () where they’re provided on the cheapest plan and while features marked with a tick and an asterisk (*) are available through upgrades or signing up to a more expensive plan.

ToolProduct roadmapsFeature scoringFeedbackIssue trackingPublic portalProductboard**–*Craft*–*airfocus**–*Linear–––GLIDR*–*

All of the systems we’ve looked at today are capable product roadmap tools and you don’t need to worry about upgrades or signing up to a more expensive plan for this particular feature. If this is the main feature you’re looking for, Linear’s free plan is an excellent choice and it’s the best software issue tracking system we’ve used.

In fact, we often use Productboard and Linear alongside each other to get the best out of both systems.

Feature prioritisation is always an important feature of product management systems and Craft is the only platform that offers this feature on its cheapest plan. The only problem is, this is the most expensive starter plan we’ve looked at today – and by quite a distance.

Something you can’t see from the table above is that Productboard’s continues to get more advanced as you upgrade and the other systems start to fall behind by the time you upgrade to its Scale plan and there are still plenty of feature upgrades on the Enterprise plan.

Meanwhile, the other providers mainly add advanced security and customer service to their enterprise plans with the odd additional feature here and there.

So, if you’re looking for the best product management system in terms of features, then Productboard is the easy choice, as long as you’re happy to sign up or upgrade to the Scale plan.

The best for usability

Usability is always a challenge in articles like this because everyone has different expectations from software tools and we can only describe our own experiences. The truth is, you have to try systems out for yourself to get a feel for what they’re like to use on a daily basis. To be as objective as we possibly can on usability, we assess the following characteristics every time we test a new software product:

Smooth operation: The software runs smoothly without any lags or slowdowns as you interact with elements.Navigation: Elements, tools, settings and everything else you interact with are easy to find.Minimal clicks: Simple actions require no more than 1-3 clicks to complete and more complex actions (eg: settings changes) within a reasonable number of clicks.Action completions: The quantity of meaningful actions you complete vs time spent interacting directly with the software.

Based on these factors, two of the tools recommended in this article stand out to us as the best options for usability: Linear and airfocus.

Productboard was close to making the cut and giving us a top three to discuss but a few usability niggles with navigation and the steep learning curve (this second issue is mainly down to the volume of features) means we’re only talking about two tools in this section.

#1: Linear

Let’s be honest, Linear is the easy winner when it comes to usability and the only reason we really need to talk about other options is because its feature set is so different from the other options we’ve discussed today.

If you’re a developer or a UX nerd, you’re going to love using Linear; it’s just one of those tools where every action feels optimised for convenience and comfort.

I guess I’m one of those UX nerds myself because using Linear for those first couple of weeks reminded me of trying out Sublime Text for the first time, back when text editors were lifeless experiences of endless repetition and copying and pasting.

Back then it felt like, finally, developers had built a text editor that was designed and optimised for the job developers have to do on a daily basis – and it’s the same with Linear.

Linear combines simple, clean interfaces with logical navigation and lightning-fast operation and all of the keyboard shortcuts you could ever need. You’ll be learning new shortcuts every day for months to come and each one of them helps you get the job done faster.

The only question is whether your fingers can keep up with the pace Linear is capable of working at.

#2: airfocus

While Linear is a developer’s tool in every way, airfocus is designed for everyone involved in product management, not only the developers – so we’re talking about very different usability priorities here. In this sense, airfocus looks and feels like many other web apps designed for team productivity but every feature is optimised for speed and control.

Drag-and-drop editors make it easy to build and edit product roadmaps, sliders help you adjust prioritisation scores without writing any code and intuitive collaboration brings your team members together.

While using airfocus, you quickly realise how much effort the company has put into optimising the system to help you perform tasks with minimal effort. You rarely have to waste clicks or dive through menus to complete actions, which is a common problem with team productivity tools.

The modular design of the system enhances its usability even further by allowing you to pick and choose which features and tools you want on your system and exclude whatever you don’t need. There’s still a learning curve but the modular infrastructure means you won’t have anything unnecessary getting in your way once you’re familiar with the system.

Which is the best product management system for your needs?

In this article, we’ve looked at five of the best product management systems for a variety of needs. Productboard wins our top recommendation for its powerful features and competitive pricing but any of the tools we’ve looked at today could be the right system for you – it all comes down to what your priorities are.

If you didn’t find what you were looking for in this article and you’re interested in more software recommendations, take a look at these articles:

5 Best Project Management Software for Marketers5 Best Marketing Management Software & Tools5 Best Campaign Management Software & Tools

The post 5 Product Roadmap & Product Management Software appeared first on Venture Harbour.

5 Best Marketing Collaboration Tools

Marketing teams need more than general-purpose collaboration software to manage winning campaigns. If you search for “collaboration software” in Google, you’ll find plenty of tools for team messaging, video calls, collaborative document editing and task management. And, while products like Slack and Trello are great at what they do, they’re simply not designed for the more creative and technical aspects of digital marketing – such as campaign planning, predictive analytics and campaign automation.

In this article, we look at the best marketing collaboration software that will help you and your team manage these tasks more effectively. These tools will help you generate better marketing ideas, plan winning campaigns, manage the workloads of everyone on your team and optimise campaigns to get the best results.

What are we looking at in this article?

The bulk of this article includes reviews of the best marketing collaboration software currently available. Before we get into the reviews, we take some time to explain what you should look for in marketing collaboration tools to make it easier to distinguish between the more general-purpose platforms and the ones that will make a real impact on your marketing efforts.

This article includes the following sections:

What to look for: The key features to look for in marketing collaboration software.TrueNorth review: Create better marketing ideas as a team.ActiveCampaign review: Unite your marketing and sales teams.ClickUp review: Collaborate on projects, docs and marketing activities.monday.com review: Collaborative workload management.GatherContent review: The collaborative system for content marketing teams.Comparison: Pricing, features and usability of each platform compared.

Once we’re done with the reviews of each system, we have a comparison with tables showing how the pricing and features compare and we also discuss the best platforms for performance and usability.

What are we looking for in marketing collaboration software?

As touched on in the intro, we’re not here to discuss generic collaboration tools like group messaging or document collaboration that any team can benefit from using. We’re focusing specifically on marketing collaboration software that provides specialist features designed for specific marketing tasks.

Here’s a summary of some of the key features we want to see from marketing collaboration software and what you should look out for if you’re comparing tools.

Marketing planning

As explained in our guide to the best marketing planning software, there’s a real lack of tools designed to help marketers with planning campaigns and strategies. Yet, this is one of the most collaborative stages of marketing projects and it can be one of the most time-consuming unless your team is consistently producing winning marketing ideas quickly.

It’s easy to find a project management system that helps teams collaborate once campaigns are running but we want to see features in marketing collaboration software that will help teams during the creative stages of campaign planning.

Specifically, we want features that help marketing teams develop ideas faster, prioritise their best ideas and dedicate budget to campaigns and strategies predicted to get the best results. We want collaboration features that make this planning process more efficient and data-driven insights that help marketing teams choose winning ideas with greater confidence and also make better optimisation decisions once campaigns are running.

Team & task management

Once the creative planning stage wraps up, marketing managers have to put together a timeline for campaigns. This maps out the workloads of team members, marketing actions and other tasks that need completing in order to achieve your goals on time.

Effective timelines map out marketing activities, ensuring every task is given enough time, resources are always available when needed and the workload of every individual is manageable.

So we’re looking for a visual timeline builder that allows marketing managers to map out campaigns, assign tasks and manage the workloads of both teams and individuals. Many of the platforms we’re looking at today have this capability but some of them offer more control over task management than others.

Likewise, one of our recommendations includes a timeline feature designed specifically for planning marketing campaigns while others are geared more towards general project management.

Marketing & team reporting

With collaboration software, you’re normally looking for team reporting and productivity insights to get the best out of your team. This is as valuable to marketing teams as any other but it’s not enough to simply track the performance of your team.

You also need marketing tracking and reporting features to measure the performance of campaigns and adapt your strategy. Ideally, you want native capabilities to track your marketing goals, KPIs and metrics with data visualisations that help you gain insights from your data. Otherwise, you should look for integrations with tools like Google Analytics or data import tools so you can pull in data from other channels, such as your social media platforms.

Team communication

Team communication is a key part of any collaboration system so this is something we have to discuss with all of the platforms featured in this article. Most of the products we’re looking at today support team communication to varying degrees but the depth of features varies greatly from one tool to the next.

Some support in-app chatting, file sharing and integrated email while others focus more on tagging and comments. A couple of the platforms we’re looking at today include their own collaborative document system that allows team members to create and edit documents in real-time – no more email back-and-forths with endless revisions.

We’ll explore these features in more detail as we review each software system and explain what you’re getting in terms of team communication.

Pricing for teams

As with all software designed for teams, you have to pay close attention to pricing when you’re looking at collaboration tools. Most SaaS companies offer multiple plans with different feature restrictions and the majority also price their platforms on a per-user basis, meaning your monthly fees multiply with every member on your team.

At a glance, some products may look like a great deal until you realise how many users you need on the account or you look at the upgrade path and see how your fees are going to increase over time. In our reviews, we take time to discuss the pricing of each platform so you know exactly what you’re going to pay and we’ve also got a pricing comparison section at the end of this article to help you see which platforms really offer the best value.

#1: TrueNorth: Create better marketing ideas as a team

Pricing: $99/month (all features, unlimited users)

In the previous section, we talked about dedicated features for planning marketing campaigns and strategies. TrueNorth is one of the only platforms on the market that provides a collaborative environment for your team to produce better marketing ideas, develop them into winning strategies and make smarter marketing decisions.

The platform takes a data-driven approach to marketing planning and management with intelligent growth projections and campaign simulation features. This allows you to test out marketing ideas before you allocate any budget to them and prioritise campaigns expected to get the best results to maximise ROI.

Predictive technology helps your team produce and develop strategies with confidence and TrueNorth’s collaborative ideation system gets you out of the planning stage faster.

Key features:

Campaign planning: Develop winning marketing ideas faster with built-in tools for each stage of the creative process. Collaborative ideation:  Collect ideas from your team outside of meetings so you’re ready to develop the strongest concepts right away.Marketing timeline: Map out your marketing timeline and assign tasks to get the best out of your team. Campaign tracking:  Stay on top of everything with a single view. All campaigns – whether running now or upcoming – across all channels. Growth projection:  Guide your team to the right decisions with data-driven predictions. Campaign simulator:  Predict the outcome of campaign ideas and select the best strategies. Campaign reporting:  Measure campaign performance vs simulations, make adjustments and resimulate to identify the changes that’ll maximise performance. Prioritise ideas:  Quickly prioritise strategies and campaign ideas using the Impact, Confidence and Ease (ICE) framework, backed up by your data-driven campaign simulations.

With its collaborative ideation system, managers can quickly request ideas from individuals and groups of team members for specific marketing goals. For example, you might create an ideation session requesting ideas on how to increase 3X your visit-to-lead conversion rate and invite all of the relevant team members into your session.

Invitees can add their ideas to the session and develop them with teammates through in-app comments.

You’re not simply putting together a static list of marketing ideas with TrueNorth, either. With the platform’s campaign simulator, you can predict the outcome of campaign ideas and automatically prioritise them, based on those expected to achieve the best performance.

More specifically, TrueNorth prioritises marketing ideas using the Impact, Confidence and Ease (ICE) framework that not only considers performance expectations but also the balance of results and difficulty of achieving them. Data-driven predictions allow you to prioritise marketing ideas quickly and focus your efforts on the best strategies.

TrueNorth also includes a marketing timeline tool for planning campaigns, managing workloads and tracking the contribution of each marketing activity.

TrueNorth is the only platform we’re looking at today that includes a dedicated timeline feature for planning marketing campaigns. A few of the systems we’ll be looking at later include project management timelines and other interfaces for planning/viewing different project types but they’re not designed and optimised specifically for running marketing campaigns.

TrueNorth is designed by marketers for marketers to remove the inefficiencies of marketing planning and management. It offers a collaborative planning system backed up by predictive technology to help you produce winning campaigns and get them out of the conceptual stage faster.

How much does TrueNorth cost?

Unlike most SaaS products, TrueNorth isn’t split across multiple plans with different prices and feature lists. You also don’t need to worry about per-user pricing, upgrade costs or any hidden fees. You can use the full version of TrueNorth for free, for 30 days, and you simply pay a flat-rate fee of $99/month once the trial period is over – and this gives you full access to all of its features for your entire team.

This means you don’t need to worry about adding or removing people from your team and your monthly fees constantly jumping around. You also don’t have to deal with feature limitations, usage restrictions or upgrade fees once you reach the limit on your current plan – because there are no plans.

This isn’t a common pricing model for SaaS products but it makes TrueNorth one of the most cost-effective options for marketing teams. As we discussed earlier, collaboration software isn’t much help to individual users so you have to consider how much you’ll be paying to cover your whole team – something you don’t have to sweat over with TrueNorth.

TrueNorth pros & consTrueNorth pros Collaborative ideation: TrueNorth’s innovative ideation system helps your team develop better marketing ideas and put them to the test.Campaign simulator: TrueNorth’s innovative campaign simulator helps you prioritise campaign ideas, choose the best creatives and optimise performance with greater precision.Simple pricing: For $99/month, you get access to all of TrueNorth’s features for your entire team – no hidden fees, user-based pricing or upgrade expenses.Usability: TrueNorth is optimised to help you launch and optimise campaigns faster without spending unnecessary time fiddling with features and settings in the software.TrueNorth consMarketing focus: If you’re primarily looking for a project management system that moonlights as marketing management software, the other options in this list may be more suitable.No free plan: As part of TrueNorth’s simple, flat-rate pricing model, there’s no free plan available (but you can try it for 30 days, for free).TrueNorth verdict

If you’re looking for a collaborative system designed specifically for marketing teams to develop and manage winning campaigns, TrueNorth is hard to beat. It’s the only platform we know of that provides dedicated tools for collaborating on marketing ideas, putting them to the test and automatically prioritising ideas – so you can get out of the planning stage and into the getting-results stage faster.

#2: ActiveCampaign: Unite your marketing and sales teams

Pricing: From $9/month

ActiveCampaign is the least collaborative platform we’re looking at today – at least, in terms of team members working together on the same task. This isn’t the kind of collaboration ActiveCampaign is designed for, though. We tend to think of collaboration software as helping team members within the same teamwork on tasks together but extra-team collaboration is just as important for marketing teams.

One of the biggest challenges for modern companies is integrating seamless marketing and sales processes across multiple teams: several marketing teams, a core sales team, customer support, etc.

ActiveCampaign unites these teams through a single system built around a customer management system (CRM) that merges your marketing and sales data. By building data across the marketing funnel and customer cycle, you can deliver targeted marketing campaigns at every stage of the buying process and nurture prospects towards the next purchase.

Key features:

Built-in CRM: Manage all of your customer data in ActiveCampaign with its built-in CRM.Email marketing: Everything you need to manage winning email marketing campaigns – email builder, templates, campaign workflows, reporting and more.Marketing automation: ActiveCampaign delivers some of the best marketing automation features around.Lead nurturing: Turn leads into paying customers by nurturing them through the buying process.Customer cycle management: Manage campaigns at every stage of the customer cycle, from lead capture to the first purchase and beyond.Predictive technology: Predict lead scores, customer value and send predictive content in your emails.Website tracking: Build hyper-relevant campaigns by tracking website activity and automatic email delivery.Personalisation: Create personalised customer experiences across multiple channels.Marketing reporting: Track campaign performance and optimise results.

With an integrated marketing and sales system, you can eradicate the divide between marketing leads and closed deals. ActiveCampaign automatically updates the status of leads so sales reps always know when they need to step in and when to hold off.

Marketing automation is a key aspect of ActiveCampaign’s platform, allowing you to automate entire marketing strategies with segmented lists, lead scoring, customer value predictions and a range of other intelligent features.

The platform’s Service Suite also incorporates your customer support team with native email and in-app support, in addition to deal assignment, customer health scoring, dedicated service reporting and plenty more.

How much does ActiveCampaign cost?

ActiveCampaign’s pricing model is more typical of SaaS companies than TrueNorth’s. As you can see below, there are four plans available with prices starting from $9/month and it’s worth noting that ActiveCampaign doesn’t quite charge on a per user basis – although team size does matter.

The Lite plan only covers you for one user while the Plus plan increases the limit to 25 users and the Professional plan increases this, once again, to a maximum of 50 users. If you have more than 50 people on your team (keep in mind, this could include your marketing, sales and customers service teams), then you’ll have to sign up for the Enterprise plan, which covers you for unlimited users.

The other thing to keep in mind with ActiveCampaign’s pricing is that the monthly fees for each plan increase, based on the number of contacts you have in the CRM. So, the pricing shown above covers you for up to 500 contacts on the Lite Plan, 1,000 contacts on the Plus plan and 2,500 contacts on the Professional and Enterprise plans.

The price increases vary across plans as your contact list grows so the best way to see how much ActiveCampaign will cost you is to use the interactive pricing page on its website.

ActiveCampaign pros & consActiveCampaign prosMarketing automation: ActiveCampaign is the best marketing automation system we’ve used and far more affordable than similar products.Built-in CRM: Manage all of your customer data in one place and use it to maximise sales.Lead nurturing: ActiveCampaign excels at nurturing leads into paying customers and customers into repeat buyers.Low entry price: ActiveCampaign’s pricing model allows small and growing businesses to buy into growth software only enterprise companies can normally afford.ActiveCampaign consComplex pricing: The downside to ActieveCampaign’s pricing model is complexity – you have to know what you’re signing up for and understand your future software fees.Learning curve: Given the depth of features available in ActiveCampaign, it’s going to take time for your team to get familiar with everything.ActiveCampaign verdict

ActiveCampaign is the only platform we’re looking at today that can integrate your marketing, sales and customer support teams through a single system. It’s not collaboration software in the traditional sense (if there is such a thing) but it can solve one of the biggest challenges modern businesses face in closing the gaps between nurturing leads, closing deals and keeping customers happy.

#3: ClickUp: Collaborate on projects, docs & marketing activities

Free plan available; pricing from $5/month

ClickUp is a collaborative project management system that aims to provide a single environment for your team to work together on tasks. This isn’t a marketing-centric platform in the same way As TrueNorth or ActiveCampaign but ClickUp offers up more marketing features than you would normally expect from a project management system – eg: sprint planning features, marketing timelines and a range of marketing project templates.

This is also the most collaborative project management system we’ve tested at Venture Harbour. The native ClickUp Docs app adds a system for your team to create, edit and collaborate on documents in a similar way as platforms like Google Docs without needing to integrate with a third-party app.

Within ClickUp, you also have a built-in chat system for team members to discuss marketing ideas and collaborate on marketing tasks. Like TrueNorth, ClickUp has its own timeline tool, which you can use to map out campaigns and it also supports a wide range of other view formats, including Gannt charts, boards, calendars, tables and plenty more – one of the major benefits of using a project management system as your marketing collaboration tool.

Key features:

Project planning: Plan campaigns and other projects with ClickUp’s collaborative system.Collaboration: Plan and manage projects at every level as a team with email, chat, comments, docs collaboration and more.ClickUp Docs: Create, manage and collaborate on documents inside ClickUp.Sprints: Plan and manage marketing sprints with the native Sprint App, available on all plans.Task management: Create and manage tasks for teams and individuals.Spaces: Organise teams and departments into Spaces where you can group projects into folders.Views: Plan and manage your campaigns across 15 different views, including lists, boards, calendars and more.Reporting: Set goals and track progress with built-in reporting.Time management: Track time, estimate tasks durations and analyse team performance.Marketing templates: Plan campaigns and marketing projects faster with ClickUp’s library of templates.Automation: Cut out repetitive tasks using 50+ actions, triggers and conditions with pre-built, customisable recipes.

ClickUp also has a few unique features built into its software that you won’t find on any of the other platforms we’re looking at today. First, it has a native tool for planning sprint runs, which is technically designed for development teams but perfectly suitable for agile marketing teams. The platform’s library of templates also includes several agile project templates to help you plan sprints faster and you can automate repetitive tasks to trim time off sprint management, too.

Another notable feature is in-app video recording, which allows team members to capture screen recordings of anything in the app and send the footage of teammates through the platform’s messaging system. You can capture the entire screen, app window or browser tab and add voice notes through your device’s microphone to send visual messages or instructions to anyone on your team.

How much does ClickUp cost?

ClickUp offers a free plan for individuals and paid plans start at $5/month per user for the Unlimited plan, which is designed for small teams. This covers you for unlimited tasks, spaces and file storage with additional views and 1,000 automation per month.

The key limitation on the Unlimited plan is that you can only manage one team but you can sign up for the $9/month per user Business plan if you want to manage multiple teams. This plan also opens up more advanced automation capabilities with multiple actions and conditions, plus additional views and increased guest limitations.

Then, you’ve got the $19/month per user Business Puss plan, which gets your team sharing, custom roles, increased automation and priority support. Finally, the Enterprise plan includes advanced security features and some additional customisation options, but you’ll have to contact ClickUp’s sales team for prices on the Enterprise plan.

You can find out more information on the company’s pricing page.

ClickUp pros & consClickUp prosCollaboration: ClickUp provides one of the most collaborative systems we’ve used without compromising productivity.Usability: Despite the depth of features worked into its platform and the extent of collaboration tools, the standard of usability ClickUp achieves is impressive.Marketing planning: While it doesn’t compete with TrueNorth when it comes to marketing planning, ClickUp offers more in this regard than the other alternatives.ClickUp consMobile apps: As good as the web app experience is, the UI design on the mobile apps isn’t as intuitive.Learning curve: The depth of features comes with an inevitable learning curve that you’re not going to get from simpler tools like Trello.ClickUp verdict

ClickUp is the most collaborative system featured in this article, even if it’s more of a project management system than a marketing platform. You’re not getting the same kind of collaboration features we saw with TrueNorth – ones designed for developing marketing ideas, planning campaigns, projecting results, etc.

Instead, you’re getting a comprehensive toolkit that can replace half a dozen apps with task management, team messaging, document collaboration and plenty more. So this isn’t a system that’s going to compete with or replace something like TrueNorth but more likely something you would use alongside it.

#4: monday.com: Collaborative workload management

Free plan available; paid plans start from £21/month*

Like ClickUp, monday.com is primarily a project management system but it puts more of an emphasis on managing workloads. Over the years, the company has ramped up its offering of marketing features, powered by its existing collaboration and automation tools.

Once again, you get built-in docs collaboration, campaign timelines and team communication features to collaborate on marketing ideas and resources inside the platform. However, monday.com offers more than ClickUp when it comes to asset management, which could be a key feature for social and content marketing teams.

The platform also has more marketing templates to work with, including content calendars, marketing strategies, a social media planner, ad campaigns and plenty more.

Key features:

Project management: Manage projects, including marketing campaigns, product launches and more.Campaign planning: Plan your marketing campaigns in one organised workspace.Task management: Manage tasks at the team and individual levels throughout your campaigns.Workloads: Manage team and individual workloads to maximise productivity without the burnout.Content calendar: From digital publications to social media, manage your publishing schedules and coordinate all content initiatives in one visual calendar.Asset management: Upload and manage files, content assets and campaign essentials.Automation: Automate repetitive work by setting customisable actions in your boards.Marketing analytics: Import campaign data and track performnce inside monday.com.Time tracking: Track and monitor the time spent on each task.Templates: Use and create project templates to get things moving faster.Collaboration: Send messages, attach files, run video chats and collaborate via digital whiteboards.

The other area where monday.com edges ahead of ClickUp is workload management. The platform includes a dedicated workload view to help team leaders maximise productivity without burning anyone out. You can also manage resources to ensure everyone has access to the tools they need to do their job at the scheduled time.

Then, the platform automatically logs task completions to track the workload of team members, based on how much they’re doing in specified times. This allows you to see how close to capacity team members are at any one time so you can assign tasks to people who have space or manage the workloads of people who are doing too much or falling behind.

How much does monday.com cost?

Like ClickUp, monday.com offers a limited free plan although it’s available for up to two users who want to collaborate on joint projects. The Basic plan starts from £7/month per user but you have to have a minimum of three users on the paid plans so your fees actually start at £21/month and increase by £7/month for each additional user for teams of more than three people.

Even on the Basic plan, you get a collaborative whiteboard, marketing templates, request forms, asset management and basic project management features. Upgrade to the £9/month per user (starting at £27/month) Standard plan and you also get the timeline view, marketing analytics, task automation, Zoom integration and more.

The Pro plan starts at £42/month for the first three seats and an additional £14 per seat after that. This gets you campaign management, marketing planning features, time tracking, an Adobe Creative Cloud plugin and the full set of project views.

monday.com pros & consmonday.com prosWorkload management: monday.com prioritises task and workload management as a productivity tool.Visual simplicity: The interface is a little harsh on the eyes but its visual simplicity communicates information effectively.Collaboration: The in-app notes, messaging and notification system aids collaboration without being intrusive on individual workflows.monday.com consTime-consuming: While monday.com is excellent for task management, you spend a lot of time creating task lists, structuring projects and updating statuses.Complicated pricing: The monthly prices displayed on the website are a little misleading because you have to pay for a minimum of three users and the per-user pricing multiplies the total fee.monday.com verdict

In all honesty, there’s not much separating monday.com and ClickUp so the best advice here is to try them both out and see which one meets your needs. ClickUp is the more collaborative system and the usability is noticeably better (more on this later) although monday.com is the stronger platform for managing team workloads.

The marketing templates are a big asset for campaign planning, too, and the collaborative asset management features make monday.com a strong option for social and content marketing teams.

#5: GatherContent: The collaborative system for content marketing teams

Pricing: From $99/month

GatherContent is a collaborative platform that helps content marketing teams create, review, approve and manage content production. It provides a single hub for managing your content strategy, from strategic planning and production to publishing and promotion. Essentially, GatherContent is a collaborative project management system designed for content teams with a suite of specialist tools to help you produce quality content faster.

The system is built around a structure of projects and folders that you can use to organise content production and give everyone in your team access to the resources they need from a single platform. You can plan out your content schedule with briefs and deadlines, create assignments, assign tasks and add everything into GatherContent’s built-in content calendar.

From here, you can manage every stage of content production with statuses, identify bottlenecks and assist individuals with any challenges they’re facing. Meanwhile, team members can create content within the platform and collaborate on pieces, allowing you to establish a seamless process of production, feedback, editing, approval and publishing.

Key features:

Real-time collaboration: Produce and review your content faster when contributors work on content at the same time.Content planning: Build your content strategy, develop ideas and put together your roadmap.Content management: Simplify content production by building a repeatable content creation process.Templates: Customisable templates make it easy for people to provide any type of content in the correct format, and style.Content calendar: Visualise your team’s editorial schedule for everyone to stay on track.Content Hub: Bring your team together as you organise, plan and produce content in one platform.Style guides: Embed your content style guide in your editing environment so authors can easily follow voice and tone content rules.

GatherContent includes a library of content templates for blog posts, web content, landing pages, etc. that you can use to produce content faster. You can edit templates or create your own and save them to remove repetitive steps in your content production process, improve consistency and help new team members get up to pace quicker.

You can also create a set of guidelines for different content types and embed them where team members are producing content so they always have guidance without needing to manually find and open the documentation themselves.

GatherContent helps you create a repeatable process of content production capable of meeting the constant demands of modern content marketing.

How much does GatherContent cost?

GatherContent doesn’t offer a free plan and its cheapest plan starts at $99/month but the system isn’t priced on a per-user basis. So, if you’re signed up for the Start plan, you’ll only pay $99/month for your whole team although you’re getting a restricted version of the software, limited to managing one project and five components with basic workflow and basic permissions features.

Upgrade to the $299/month Scale plan and you can manage up to 10 projects with 15 components per project, plus the full set of workflow and permissions features. The Scale plan also includes “basic” shareable links for sharing content with people outside of your account and 12 months of revision history to view changes over the previous year.

The $799/month Transform plan covers you for up to 30 projects with unlimited components, unlimited revision history, advanced shareable links (editable), single sign-on and the ability to archive projects.

If you need to manage more than 30 projects in GatherContent, you’ll have to contact the company’s sales team to discuss pricing on a larger plan.

GatherContent pros & consGatherContent prosContent marketing: A collaborative system designed specifically for content production.Content collaboration: The most powerful collaboration environment for teams to work on content.Productivity: Cut out the inefficiencies and delays holding back your content production.GatherContent consPerformance: Slowdowns on larger tasks and occasional glitches with UI elements, text entry and other actions.Expensive for small teams: GatherContent plans are expensive for small teams but the lack of per-user pricing makes it pretty affordable for teams of 5+ members.GatherContent verdict

GatherContent is obviously a specialist tool designed for content-driven marketing strategies but this focus allows for advanced features few platforms can offer. For teams that rely heavily on content marketing and face the productivity challenges of producing a constant stream of content.

With its top-tier plan costing $799/month, this isn’t the cheapest platform around for smaller teams but the company isn’t using a per-user pricing model. This means GatherContent is comparatively affordable for teams of five or more members, being equivalent to $159.80/month per user for a team of five signed up to its most expensive plan.

Which is the best marketing collaboration software?

Now that we’ve had a good look at each marketing collaboration platform, let’s see how they stack up against each other. In this final section, we compare each of the products reviewed in today’s article on the following three categories:

PricingMarketing collaboration featuresUsability

For the pricing and features sections, we include a couple of tables so you can easily see how the monthly software fees compare and the key features you’ll be getting for your money.

The best for pricing

We discussed the pricing of each platform in the reviews section but it’s difficult to compare different platforms when you’ve got multiple plans and different feature sets to consider. In the table below, you’ll see which platforms offer a free plan, the starting price for the cheapest paid plan they offer and the starting price for the most expensive plan available.

ToolFree plan?Starting priceTop planTrueNorth–$99/mo–ActiveCampaign–$9/mo$259/moClickUpYes$5/mo*$19/mo*monday.comYes£7/mo*£14/mo*GatherContent–$99/mo$799/mo

Keep in mind that ClickUp and monday.com employ a per-user pricing model so you’ll have to multiply those monthly software fees by the number of members on your team – and monday.com requires a minimum of three users on its paid accounts.

In the case of TrueNorth, you simply pay $99/month for all of its features and unlimited team members, meaning you never need to worry about upgrade fees or changing the size of your team from one project to the next. All things considered, TrueNorth is the best-value platform listed above and GatherContent is less expensive than it first appears for teams of five or more members due to the lack of per-user pricing.

The best option for marketing collaboration features

Every platform we’ve looked at today offers a variety of marketing collaboration features and the decision really comes down to what you and your team need from a platform – or combination of platforms. Here’s a quick comparison table of the key collaboration features available on each platform:

ToolMarketing planningIdeationTask managementTeam commsDocs editingTrueNorthAdvancedAdvancedBasicBasic–ActiveCampaignBasic–AdvancedBasic–ClickUpBasic–AdvancedAdvancedmonday.comBasicBasicAdvancedBasicGatherContentAdvancedBasicBasicBasic

As you can see, there’s a lot of overlap where platforms offer similar features but they don’t all provide the same depth – for example, TrueNorth advanced collaborative ideation features while monday.com offers a more basic set of features for this and ActiveCampaign don’t really provide anything at all for this.

The best option for usability

In our final comparison, we want to spend some time talking about usability, which is particularly important for collaboration software and any tool designed to boost productivity. You don’t want a system that gets in your way or adds unnecessary UX barriers that extend the amount of time it takes to complete rudimentary tasks.

To analyse usability, we assess the following characteristics of each platform reviewed in this article:

Smooth operation: The software runs smoothly without any lags or slowdowns as you interact with elements.Navigation: Elements, tools, settings and everything else you interact with is easy to find.Minimal clicks: Simple actions require no more than 1-3 clicks to complete and more complex actions (eg: settings changes) within a reasonable number of clicks.Action completions: The quantity of meaningful actions you complete vs time spent interacting directly with the software.

Based on these factors, two of the platforms in this article stand out as the best for usability: TrueNorth and ClickUp. So let’s explore what sets these two systems apart from the others.

TrueNorth

TrueNorth is the newest platform featured in this article and it benefits from modern, refined design models. Its interfaces are clean and a simple navigation system makes it easy to find everything you need in the platform. Usability is always a tricky aspect with collaboration software because integrating features like instant messaging and notifications create digital distractions that can interfere with workflows.

To avoid these issues, TrueNorth neglects a universal chat system in favour of limited messaging features to actions that require them – for example, the collaborative ideation sessions.

TrueNorth also benefits from the marketing focus of its system, which allows it to simplify key features, such as the timeline tool. Instead of supporting multiple project types, the timeline tool in TrueNorth is purely designed for planning campaigns and this allows it to include advanced marketing features while maintaining a fast, easy tool to use.

ClickUp

While TrueNorth takes a calculated approach with its collaboration features to minimise disruption, ClickUp takes the opposite approach. This is one of the most collaborative systems around, complete with in-app chatting, a built-in documents app, integrated email, smart notifications, reminders and plenty more.

Likewise, the timeline view is the kind of general-purpose tool designed for all project types (unlike TrueNorth’s version) which requires added flexibility and, ultimately, complexity. As a project management system, this is true of most ClickUp features, which have to maintain flexibility for different project types: marketing, development, etc.

With such a depth of collaboration features and the flexibility required from a project management system, you could almost forgive ClickUp for suffering from some usability woes – at least, in terms of complex navigation or a steep learning curve. However, the platform is impressively optimised to simplify navigation and minimise the number of clicks required to complete actions.

Yes, some tools require a few more clicks to access than similar features in TrueNorth and setting things up takes more time but, considering how much is crammed into this platform, the company has done an excellent job with UX design.

Build better marketing campaigns together

Finding collaboration software that truly helps your team achieve more is difficult. It took us years to find the right combination of tools that not only provide the features we need but also implement them in a user experience that keeps friction and distractions out of our workflow.

Hopefully, we’ve helped you find the right tools for you in this article – or, at least, help you understand what you’re looking for from marketing collaboration software.

The key thing to remember is that, while project management systems generally include a lot of collaborative features, they don’t necessarily help with the creative and strategic stages of marketing planning. So, if you’re looking for collaboration software that helps your marketing team work together more effectively, you might need separate platforms for planning and management.

For example, at Venture Harbour, we use TrueNorth as our collaborative marketing planning and campaign management system alongside ActiveCampaign to unite our marketing and sales teams and power our automated email marketing strategy.

Now, it’s time to test out these tools for yourself to find the best marketing collaboration setup for your team.

The post 5 Best Marketing Collaboration Tools appeared first on Venture Harbour.

Marketing Roadmap: How to Build Yours in 9 Steps

Marketing roadmaps help you plan complex strategies by scheduling marketing activities in a set timeframe. Today’s marketing teams have to manage campaigns across multiple channels with a mix of short-term and long-term projects, each with its own goals and objectives.

A detailed roadmap organises all of your marketing activities and pulls everything together to ensure your daily workloads are building towards your long-term goals. So, in this guide, we explain everything you need to know about marketing roadmaps and how to build them effectively in nine easy steps.

What are we looking at in this article?

This article is designed to be a one-stop guide to everything you need to know about marketing roadmaps, including a step-by-step guide for building them effectively. To cover everything we need to look at, we’ve broken this up into the following sections:

What is a marketing roadmap? A quick definition to explain exactly what we’re talking about in this article.Why are they important? A summary of the key reasons marketing roadmaps are so important.What should a roadmap include? A list of the key elements to include in your roadmaps.Marketing roadmap types: A quick look at some of the most common types of roadmaps.How to build your next roadmap: A step-by-step guide for building marketing roadmaps effectively.

You can click on the blue link text above to jump ahead to any given section and you may also want to bookmark this article so you can come back to it when you sit down to create your next roadmap.

What is a marketing roadmap?

A marketing roadmap lays out the timeline and activities of a marketing strategy, campaign or project. It pulls all of your marketing efforts into a coordinated plan where every action has a start date, end date and objective with each action contributing towards the end goal.

A basic linear roadmap could simply involve a series of tasks scheduled in a spreadsheet on specific dates – something like the following:

Source: Smartsheet

However, most marketing projects involve multiple channels and require different teams or personnel to come together and work on a series of tasks that all contribute towards completing the primary goal(s).

This requires a more sophisticated type of marketing roadmap that allows you to visually schedule tasks, organise them by type, assign tasks to teams or individuals and map out your strategy from start to finish. Managing roadmaps like these on spreadsheets is pretty cumbersome but there are plenty of drag-and-drop tools that help you quickly map out schedules to your time frame, assign tasks with a couple of clicks and make changes on the fly.

In fact, Laura Sima explains how you can plan a campaign roadmap using Toggl on the company’s blog page.

Source: Toggl

This more visual approach to developing roadmaps makes it easier to manage the workloads of team members and ensure every task is given enough time to complete their objective and keep things moving towards the project goal.

You don’t need this kind of software to create marketing roadmaps – you can use Excel, Google Sheets or any other spreadsheet software and the only real downside is it takes longer to create and edit your roadmaps. It’s also more difficult to visualise workloads and move things around to create a schedule that fits everything in.

So we’re talking about issues of convenience more than necessity.

Another benefit of using project management software to build your marketing roadmaps is many of them include pre-made templates that you can use to create a variety of roadmaps faster. As with most things of this nature, the more often you’re creating marketing roadmaps, the more you’ll benefit from specialist software and this is especially true for agile marketing teams that need to plan and deploy new campaigns quickly.

If you’re interested in this kind of tool, we’ve reviewed five of the best marketing management software – all of which are capable tools for creating roadmaps.

Why are marketing roadmaps important?

Marketing roadmaps are primarily a planning tool but they’re important for a variety of reasons. The more complete your marketing strategies are, or the faster your marketing team needs to move, the more benefits you’ll gain from building marketing roadmaps on a regular basis.

This is the case for most companies these days, which need to integrate multichannel strategies with a mix of short-term, long-term and ongoing campaigns.

Marketing roadmaps organise this complexity by creating a schedule and workload that aligns your marketing activities and keeps everything moving towards completing your goals.

Goal completion: With a planned schedule and fixed workloads, every marketing action works towards completing goals.Milestones: Creating roadmaps helps you set achievable objectives Organisation: Roadmaps allow you to plan, organise and arrange all of your marketing activities into a schedule that’ll achieve your goals on time.Task management: Assigning specific marketing actions to teams and individuals.Resource management: A roadmap allows you to ensure resources are always available when needed.Time management: Strict start and end dates keep everyone on schedule.Alignment: Everyone on your team knows what they’re working on and what they’re working towards.Visibility: Team members and stakeholders can see how your marketing actions are building up to goal completions.Coordination: A good roadmap brings teams, strategies and campaigns into a single, organised strategy.Accountability: Roadmaps holds teams and individuals accountable for thier successes and failures.Reporting: An organised marketing schedule gives your reporting more contextual meaning, especially on long-term projects or strategies.

I’m not saying that’s a complete list of all the reasons to create marketing roadmaps but there’s enough there to convey why they’re so important. Marketing roadmaps organise the chaos of modern marketing and guide your team through every stage of each campaign, ensuring they can make an impact with every marketing action.

What should a marketing roadmap include?

There are many different types of marketing roadmaps (we’ll look at the most common ones in the next section) and each of these can include slightly different elements. However, every marketing roadmap should include the following core elements:

Clear goals: You should have a specific goal to complete at the end of your roadmap while multiple campaigns and projects within the roadmap itself will have their own goals.Milestones: Specific targets you need to hit throughout your roadmap to complete your primiary goal.Organised tasks: Your roadmap should organise every marketing activity planned for the complete strategy, campaign or project.Start dates: Each task should have a specific start date.Deadlines: Each date should have a fixed deadline.Durations: Every marketing action should include a duration – whether it’s hours, days, weeks or more.Assigned roles: Every team member are assigned a specific role.Assigned tasks: Every task is assigned to the correct team or individual.Assigned resources: Resources required for each marketing action is assigned to ensure availability.Task statuses: Task statuses are updated as the strategy, campaign or project runs.A schedule: Every marketing activity is scheduled out to ensure your goal is achieved on time.

Whichever type of marketing roadmap you’re creating and however you choose to build/visualise it, every roadmap should include the 11 elements listed above. By including these core essentials in every roadmap, you’re planning out the foundations of a coordinated marketing strategy and you can bring order to the most complex mix of marketing actions.

The different types of marketing roadmaps

Now that we’ve covered the essential ingredients of marketing roadmaps, we can start to discuss some of the different types of roadmaps you’ll commonly want to create. The first three types to talk about are designed for planning and managing marketing activities at three different levels: strategies, campaigns and projects.

At the top level, you have marketing strategies, which contain multiple campaigns that contain multiple projects.

Another common type of roadmap for all business types is channel-specific so you might have separate roadmaps for SEO, PPC, social media and every other channel. Finally, we’ve got a couple of roadmaps most commonly used by companies promoting digital products, such as SaaS marketing teams: product roadmaps and portfolio roadmaps.

Here’s a quick summary of the roadmaps we’re about to look at in more detail:

Strategy roadmap: The top-tier roadmaps organising all of your marketing campaigns, projects and tasks.Campaign roadmap: Specifically map out the projects and marketing activities for individual campaigns.Project roadmap: Map out the tasks and activities for individual marketing projects.Channel roadmap: Plans for individual marketing channels – eg: SEO, social, email marketing, etc.Product roadmap: Map out a marketing strategy in conjunction with product development, release and/or promotion.Portfolio roadmap: A high-level overview of marketing strategies across a portfolio of multiple products.

As we take a closer look at these roadmap types, you’ll see why it’s advisable to create most or all of them on a regular basis. For long-term strategies and campaigns, you’ll spend more time managing and updating existing roadmaps but shorter marketing runs (eg: sprints) will require you to create detailed roadmaps regularly and quickly.

Strategy roadmap

A strategy roadmap is the top-level plan for all of your marketing activities within a complete, multichannel strategy. Most commonly, companies will create a strategy roadmap for each year although many companies revise their roadmaps quarterly, which is a good idea if performance naturally fluctuates or results are heavily affected by external marketing events – eg: weather patterns, economic trends, etc.

This strategy roadmap example by ProductPlan combines the schedules of all channels into a single roadmap.

Your strategic roadmap should include the schedules for all campaigns and projects but you don’t have to plan the full year’s worth of marketing activity ahead of time. More likely, you’ll be planning ahead for quarters although agile marketing teams will often add campaign schedules on a monthly or weekly basis.

So, if you’re creating a strategy roadmap for the year ahead, you may set out to plan all of the marketing activities for Q1 and start planning for Q2 a month in advance, based on how results are going – whatever works for you.

What’s more important is that, when you create your strategy roadmap, you set a specific goal to achieve upon completion. So, again, if you’re creating a roadmap for the next year, you might set the goal of increasing revenue by +30% by the end of Q4. Next, you can use this goal to set milestones for each quarter so you might set preliminary targets of increasing revenue by 7.5% (from the previous year’s total) in each quarter and you can always adapt these targets based on the performance of the previous quarter.

Campaign roadmap

At the campaign level, you can set more specific goals and short-term targets to achieve the goal of your annual strategy. Some campaigns may run for the full year while others run for several months or weeks, working towards your primary goal for the end of the year.

If we stick with the annual goal of increasing revenue by +30%, you might set the following campaign goals as milestones:

Increase customer retention by 4% by the end of Q4 (1% each quarter)Increase positive reviews by 10% by end of Q2Lift conversion rates by 2.5% by end of Q2Increase onboarding completions by 5% by end of Q2Lift traffic by 12% by end of Q1

So, we’ve got five campaign goals above with specific targets and deadline dates. The first campaign goal is an ongoing campaign of improving customer retention across the whole year with quarterly targets that can be reviewed based on performance. Then, you’ve got three targets for the end of Q2 and these deadlines are set because you need to hit these targets in order to achieve your revenue goal for the end of the year – after all, you need time to benefit from the 2.5+% increase in conversions.

Finally, we’ve got a 12% increase in traffic set for the end of Q1, which will increase the volume of leads you have to work with through quarters 2-4.

Each campaign should have its own roadmap, planning out all of the marketing actions involved and assigning tasks to each team member. Creating roadmaps for each campaign is a great way to clarify the goal and focus on completing it without getting distracted by other aspects of your marketing strategy.

These roadmaps are also important references for marketing teams, providing a clear schedule for the campaign their working on the tasks they need to complete each day.

Project roadmap

Campaigns are built up from multiple projects, which refers to any marketing activity that has a process – for example, creating a blog post, setting up a new ad group or running an A/B test. So, let’s say you’re running a content marketing campaign to increase traffic in Q1 and you’ve come up with a plan to create 24 blog posts, 12 newsletters and four downloadable resources.

In this case, it makes sense to create three project roadmaps to suit the different processes involved in creating blog posts, newsletters and downloadable content.

For example, your project roadmap for creating 24 blog posts by the end of Q1 may involve the following:

Research: Keyword research, analysis of existing content, competitor analysis and other research methods.Topics: Based on research, developing a list of key topics around keywords and potential title ideas.Titles: A collaborative session where team members come up with title ideas and select the best contenders.Content calendar: The schedule for publishing each chosen title on specific dates and assigning each blog post to team members.Production: Each team member creates their assigned blog posts a week ahead of publishing date.Editorial: Each post is proofread, optimised and checked ready for publishing.Analysis: Posts are tracked to measure performance, based on the goal of increasing traffic.Revision: Underperforming posts are updated/optimised and the content strategy is revised at the end of each month, based on performance (eg: removing certain topics that aren’t gaining traction.

You could even break the steps above into separate project roadmaps – one for the planning stage outlined in the first four steps and another for the production of each individual blog post. At this point, creating processes for every post could create unnecessary work if the process for creating posts is always the same or very similar.

However, if different types of blog posts involve different marketing actions – such as custom images, video clips, interviews, etc. – then you may need to schedule these actions out to ensure each task is assigned to the right person and the required funds, time and resources are all available.

Channel roadmap

The first three roadmap types we’ve looked at cover the three tiers of a multichannel marketing workload: the strategy level, campaign level and project level. However, it’s also useful to plan and view workloads of individual channels. This allows departmental teams (SEO, PPC, social, etc.) to view their schedules independently from anything else and it can also help with managing the availability of personnel and resources.

Planning out channel-specific actions is also important for demonstrating the work that goes into the relevant activities so you can set schedules more accurately and budget accordingly – good for teams and stakeholders.

The key is to create your strategy, camping and project roadmaps first so you can pull in the information from their schedules to create your channel-specific roadmaps. This way, you’ve already got the tasks, start dates, deadlines and all the other information that you need – all of which is working towards completing your goals.

Basically, think of the channel roadmap as a filtered view of your other roadmaps that filters out all of the marketing tasks relevant to other channels. Ideally, you’ll have a roadmap software tool that makes it easy to filter out this information and view channel-specific roadmaps.

Product roadmap

Product roadmaps are typical for SaaS companies and other businesses selling digital goods. Every product requires a marketing roadmap covering the following stages of the product lifecycle:

PlanningDesign & developmentLaunchGrowthMaturityDecline

Obviously, the roadmap for marketing teams differs from the roadmap for designers and developers throughout these six stages but there are important overlaps. For example, if we’re talking about a software product, market research should inform the features included, the design conventions and differentiations vs existing software products (if they exist).

During the launch and growth stages of the product lifecycle, marketing efforts focus on promoting the product itself and maximising purchases while the emphasis shifts towards optimisation in the maturity stage and maximising longevity through customer retention, new features and perhaps more drastic strategies, such as a rebranding effort.

At this level, the product roadmap spans several years (or so you hope) and, potentially, even longer. And, much like the top-level strategy roadmap we discussed earlier, you’ll also want to create roadmaps with this for specific marketing campaigns and projects.

Portfolio roadmap

While a product roadmap is focused around a single product, portfolio roadmaps set out a plan for a portfolio of multiple products. For example, a company like HubSpot sells five different software products so it needs to plan out a coordinated marketing strategy that prioritises and promotes each product accordingly.

An example of a project roadmap built using Roadmunk.

Again, this is typical of SaaS companies but the same is true for any business that produces and markets a small range of its own products.

How to create your next marketing roadmap in 9 steps

Now that we’ve covered all of the background information we need to talk about in regards to marketing roadmaps, we’re finally ready to look at our step-by-step guide for creating your next roadmap.

We’ve broken this down into the following nine steps:

Decide what you’re planning: Are you planning next year’s marketing strategy, a campaign roadmpa or something else?Set your goals: Start with the goal you wish to achieve at the end of your plan and, then, any intermediary goals (eg: Q1, Q2, etc.).Set your milestones: Break your goals down into milestones and objectives that’ll keep you on track for goal completion.Ideation: Get your team to come up with strategy and campaign ideas to achieve the goals and objectives you’ve set.Develop & prioritise: Develop your best ideas and prioritise marketing activities in order of expected impact vs input.Map out your marketing activities: Visually map out your marketing activities with start and end dates while setting hard deadlines for objectives anf goal completions.Assign tasks & resources: Set out the workload of teams and individuals along the timeline in your roadmap.Revise your roadmap: Ensure your roadmap is realistic and that your goals are achievable upon deadlines with the personal, resources and schedule you’ve created.Stick to the roadmap: Your roadmap includes hard deadlines, specific targets and detailed timelines – so stick to it!

By following the nine steps above, you’ll ensure every marketing roadmap includes all of the key elements required.

Step #1: Decide what you’re planning

The first step for creating a new roadmap is to specify exactly what you’re planning. Earlier, we looked at some of the most common types of roadmaps marketing teams create and here’s a revised list with some other examples:

Strategy roadmapCampaign roadmapProject roadmapSEO roadmapContent marketing roadmapEmail marketing roadmapProduct development roadmapPortfolio roadmapCRO campaign roadmapCustomer retention roadmapWebsite redesign roadmap

You can create roadmaps for pretty much any marketing activity that involves multiple steps and/or personnel. At the top level, you’re creating a strategy roadmap for all of your marketing efforts (probably for the next quarter or year) but every campaign, project, channel and project requires a roadmap of its own.

Any time you sit down and plan out a process for some kind of marketing activity, the first thing you should do is set out a roadmap. This sounds like a lot of work when we’re looking at a list of examples but a good roadmap will improve the results of all your marketing activities and each one you create provides a template to follow for similar marketing processes in the future.

Step #2: Set your goals

Once you know exactly what you’re planning in your next roadmap, you can start to set your goals. You’re not just plucking ideas out of the air or coming up with arbitrary targets, though. Your goals should be informed by targets set from above, whether this means the business goal of the company or the primary goal of your marketing strategy.

Earlier, when we looked at the top-level strategy roadmap, we discussed an annual marketing goal of increasing revenue by +30% by the end of Q4. We then explained how you might provisionally set quarterly goals of +7.5% revenue increases for each quarter, which would be revised throughout the year, based on the performance of the previous quarter.

Then, we talked about campaign roadmaps with a series of potential campaign goals – all of which were derived from the primary marketing goal of increasing revenue by +30%:

Increase customer retention by 4% by the end of Q4 (1% each quarter)Increase positive reviews by 10% by end of Q2Lift conversion rates by 2.5% by end of Q2Increase onbaording completions by 5% by end of Q2Lift traffic by 12% by end of Q1

These are the campaign goals you identify as the objectives you need to achieve in order to meet your primary strategy goal by the end of the year.

This is the approach you should take to setting goals at each level of your marketing planning. It’s important that you don’t get distracted by setting roadmap goals that could pull you away from your primary marketing goals and potentially waste resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

The good news is, creating roadmaps for every level of your marketing activities is a great way to constantly confirm that you’re keeping your eyes on the long-term goal, even when you have to plan for short-term success, too.

If you need more help with setting marketing goals, in general, take a look at our ultimate guide to marketing strategy, which has a full section on setting goals properly.

Step #3: Set your milestones

Once you’ve set the primary goal(s) for your next roadmap, it’s time to set the milestones you need to hit at key deadlines along the way. We already touched on this in the previous section with the goal of increasing revenue by +30% by the end of Q4 and, then, setting preliminary milestones of increasing revenue by +7.5% in each quarter.

By setting milestones at key dates, you set targets that build towards goal completions. Crucially, you can use milestones to track performance and check whether you’re on course to complete your goals at key intervals. So, if we stick with the example of increasing revenue by +30% and having quarterly milestones of +7.5%, you can track performance in Q1 against the milestone of +7.5% and take reasonable action early instead of waiting until the end of Q3 to realise you’re not going to hit your +30% target.

Obviously, you have to expect early performance in Q1 to be sluggish but you can set the provisional target of increasing revenue by ~3% at the halfway mark of the first quarter. Even if you’re short of hitting this target, you still have plenty of time to lift performance and get close to that 7.5% milestone for Q1, which would be a big achievement for the first quarter if revenue isn’t normally higher than usual in Q1.

You can also reassess your milestones as the strategy, campaign or project progresses. So, let’s say you hit your +7.5% milestone for Q1, then you might determine that you can achieve an even higher revenue increase by the end of Q4 and revise your strategy goal. Likewise, if you fall reasonably short of any milestone, you know that you need to pick performance up in the next period to get back on track for achieving your primary goal.

Step #4: Put your marketing ideas together

With the goals and milestones set out for your next roadmap, you’re ready to plan out the marketing actions that will hit your targets at every step. This is a collaborative process and you want to start inviting team members to contribute ideas that you can compile and refine. For most marketing teams, this process starts in group ideation meetings but we’ve found this process a little inefficient here at Venture Harbour.

The better approach for us has been to digitally invite team members to submit ideas individually by sending them the goals, milestones and timeframes of the roadmap and giving them time to come up with suggestions. This allows them to sit down by themselves, have a good think about how they can contribute to the next project and refine their suggestions before submitting them.

This removes any pressure to come up with ideas on the spot or feel the need to suggest the first thing that comes to mind, rather than having a real think about how to achieve the marketing goal in question.

We use TrueNorth to send out requests to a list of team members who can, then, work independently or collaborate together on ideas within the software to send back a collection of suggestions. This gives the team leader or campaign manager a list of ideas to work with in the roadmap and start looking at potential schedules, based on the available budget, personnel and resources.

This approach means you can walk into the first creative meeting with a list of ideas to discuss and explore as a team. The meeting host can provide feedback on the suggestions, explaining why some of them have potential and why others may not be suitable for this particular project. As a team, you can refine your list of marketing ideas into a smaller collection of marketing actions that have real potential, which you can develop further and improve before finalising the roadmap.

Step #5: Develop & prioritise

Once you have a refined list of your best marketing ideas, you want a system in place for developing them further and laying out the specifics of how each marketing action will run. The first thing we do with campaign ideas is run them through TrueNorth’s campaign simulator to check whether they’ll achieve our goals and milestones.

This data-driven approach to testing marketing ideas removes guesswork and intuition from our strategic planning, allowing us to choose the ideas calculated to generate the best results. We can also use the same projections to prioritise our marketing ideas based on simulation results and other factors, including expense and difficulty.

Crucially, we’ve automated as much of the ideation process as possible and enhanced our ability to prioritise our best marketing ideas with forecasting.

Step #6: Map out your marketing activities

With a prioritised list of marketing ideas, you can now map out your marketing activities in your roadmap. This is where you need to set specific start dates, durations and end dates with an understanding of the personnel and resources required to complete each marketing action.

This is where your roadmap tool really has to meet your needs, especially when you’re creating more complex roadmaps with potentially dozens, hundreds or even more marketing actions to organise.

You may encounter scheduling problems as you map out your marketing activities and this is a common problem at this stage of the planning process. For example, you’ll often find the total duration of all your marketing actions adds up to more time than you have available for the entire project or certain actions need moving around to accommodate others.

You’ll also need to scrutinise your schedule to ensure there’s enough time remaining for other activities that need carrying out beyond the specifics of your strategy, campaign or project. For example, if team members have to attend meetings, fill out reports or send over more marketing ideas for another roadmap, ensure everyone has enough time to manage their workload – inside and outside of the roadmap.

Step #7: Assign tasks & resources

Building upon the point of workload management, the final task of building your marketing roadmap is to assign tasks to the right individuals and make sure the required resources are available. Your roadmap is designed to fail if you’re scheduling more work than you have the personnel to manage in your timeframe.

Also, you want to make sure the workloads of everyone on your team is enough for them to manage personally, along with everything else they’re expected to do outside of the roadmap. Burnout is a big issue for individuals but equally as damaging for the team and your prospects of achieving marketing goals.

You should also pay attention to the resources required to complete each marketing activity and ensure they’re available when needed. For example, if you have software tools with a limited number of user seats, you don’t want schedule conflicts that leave team members fighting over the same tools.

Step #8: Revise your roadmap

Before you sign off your roadmap, take the chance to revise everything in your schedule and make sure your plans are capable of achieving your goal(s) on time. Reassess your campaign goals, milestones and other targets to ensure the crucial numbers add up to success at the end of your timeline.

If you had to change any of the time frames to fit everything into your schedule, run your campaign simulations again to check the outcomes still leave you on track to hit your targets.

Take one last look at the workloads of teams and individual team members to make sure they have enough time to complete each marketing action.

You’ll also want to finalise budget allocation and ensure your schedule doesn’t take you over the total budget for your next project. In fact, you may want to reserve some budget for any instances where performance falls short of projections and you have to optimise your way back on target (this may require time as well as money).

Step #9: Stick to the roadmap (mostly)

If you’re taking the time to plan out marketing roadmaps in detail, make sure you stick to them once the timeline is running. Follow the schedule precisely and only intervene when deadlines or targets are missed, taking action to get progress back on track as quickly as possible so you can follow the remainder of the roadmap.

Keep in mind that your primary goal is what really matters and allow some flexibility in terms of performance, as long as you remain on track for completing your goal. For example, if one campaign is falling short of projections but another one is making up the ground, simply try to determine why performance is out of line with expectations and learn from the situation.

You don’t necessarily need to dedicate time and money to optimising one campaign when you could simply allocate more budget to the top performers and instantly lift ROI.

Plan your way to success with marketing roadmaps

In this article, we’ve looked at why marketing roadmaps are such an important planning tool and how you can create to put all of your resources to the best possible use. As the complexity of multichannel marketing continues to grow, effective planning organises the chaos and clears up any potential confusion for everyone on your team.

If you have anything to add to the advice provided in this article or suggestions on how to create marketing plans more effectively, leave us your thoughts in the comment section.

The post Marketing Roadmap: How to Build Yours in 9 Steps appeared first on Venture Harbour.

How to Run Daily Standups for Marketing Teams

Daily standups are quick-fire meetings designed to keep teams focused and raise issues that could prevent them from achieving their goals. Sometimes also referred to as daily scrums, standup meetings are a key component of the agile methodology, helping teams hit targets faster, collaborate more effectively and react to rapidly-changing scenarios.

In this article, we explain everything you need to know about daily standups: what they are, how they benefit marketing teams and what you need in place to run them for yourself. Then, we show you how to run your first daily standup and integrate them into your marketing management process.

What are we looking at in this article?

This article acts as a one-stop guide for all things related to daily standup meetings. To cover everything you need before running your first standup, we’ve broken this article up into the following sections:

What is a daily standup? A quick explanation of daily standups for marketing teams.Daily standups in agile marketing: The origins of daily standups and the role they play in agile marketing.The benefits of daily standups: Why all marketing teams can benefit from daily standups.The anatomy of daily standups: The key components you need to run effective daily standups.How to run a daily standup: A step-by-step guide on how to run your first standup.Best practices: Tips to make your daily standups more productive.

You can click on the blue link text to jump ahead to any of the sections above and we’re getting started with a brief explanation of daily standups so we’re all clear on what’s being discussed in this article.

What is a daily standup?

A daily standup is a short team meeting held at the start of each day, generally lasting no more than 10-15 minutes. During this short meeting, each team member quickly answers the following three questions:

What did you accomplish yesterday?What will you accomplish today?What’s preventing you from accomplishing your goals (or making it harder)?

This format comes directly from the agile methodology known as Scrum marketing, which is based don’t the idea that teams are most effective when working on a series of short, concentrated work sessions. In Scrum marketing, these sessions are known as sprints, generally lasting anywhere between 5-21 days with key tasks assigned to each day.

if you’re not familiar with the Scrum methodology of agile marketing or the sprint framework for project management, take a look at these two guides we’ve previously published:

How to Implement Agile MarketingHow to Plan a Marketing Sprint

Other agile marketing methodologies that also use adapted versions of the daily standup meetings but the format may vary slightly from the Scrum methodology. We’ll go into these differences in more detail in the next section but, for now, keep in mind that the daily standup originates from the Scrum methodology.

Daily standups in agile marketing

Daily standups originate from the Scrum agile methodology, which was first created by software developments teams during the 1980s and, later, adapted by marketers for the modern, complex demands of digital marketing.

The purpose of agile marketing is to make teams more productive so they can achieve ambitious goals in shorter time frames. Another key aim is to develop marketing processes that make your team more responsive (ie: agile) when it comes to responding to changes or disruptions – eg: fixing an underperforming campaign or reacting to new demands from your target audience.

The daily standup plays a key role in agile marketing, especially the Scrum methodology, by keeping teams motivated and focused on their goals – both collectively and individually.

Given the short time frame and day-to-day structure of sprint runs in the Scrum methodology, marketing teams can’t afford distractions. They also can’t have preventable issues slowing down progress when they need to sign off another key stage of the sprint by the end of the day and achieve their sprint goals within a matter of days or weeks.

Daily standups allow project managers to hear team members discuss their progress, next objective and any issues that could prevent them from taking the next key step. They also help team members themselves clarify their intentions at the start of each day and hit the ground running.

Daily standups in Scrum projects

The classic daily standup is an integral part of the scrum methodology and sprint framework. This is where the three-question structure originates from and the focus is on two things: daily progress (yesterday and today) and dealing with any potential issues getting in the way of it.

Here’s a quick summary of the role daily standups play in the Scrum methodology, as explained in our guide to agile marketing:

“The Daily Scrum or Daily Standup occurs at the beginning of each day during the sprint and lasts just 10 minutes or less. During these meetings, each Agile team member quickly recaps what they accomplished yesterday, what they’ll accomplish today and any roadblocks they’re facing.”

How to Implement Agile Marketing by Venture Harbour CEO Marcus Taylor

And here’s a quick reminder of the three questions team members need to answer during a daily standup or daily scrum:

What did I accomplish yesterday? What will I achieve today? What obstacles did/will impede my progress?

By answering these three questions, the team/project manager can check individuals are still focused on their goals. They also keep team members accountable for task completion and motivated to hit the next target, which they’ll need to report on in the next day’s standup.

Each team member also has the chance to raise any issues that are making it difficult for them to achieve their goals, which the project manager can assess and decide whether immediate action can be taken or certain mitigations are available.

Daily standups in Kanban projects

The Kanban methodology is more fluid than the Scrum approach to agile marketing. It focuses less on structure and more on continuously improving processes by reducing the time it takes to achieve goals and removing barriers to progress.

Here’s our summary of the Kanban methodology from our guide to agile marketing:

“Whereas Scrum uses an iterative cycle of short sprints to prioritise and complete stories, Kanban is continuously in execution. Kanban involves creating a central storyboard with swimlanes for stories in different stages; typically, requested, in progress and completed. New stories are added to the storyboard continuously, and the entire storyboard is in a constant state of review.”

How to Implement Agile Marketing by Venture Harbour CEO Marcus Taylor

In many ways, the Scrum and Kanban methodologies both aim to improve the same aspects of marketing processes but they go about it in very different ways and the two methodologies are often better suited to different types of projects.

The Scrum methodology is generally more effective for projects with a fixed deadline and cut-off date, such as a marketing campaign, product release, update or a special promotion. Meanwhile, the Kanban methodology is better aligned with ongoing projects that have no end date and require constant optimisation – eg: customer retention strategy, technical support system, etc.

With less emphasis on daily structure in the Kanban methodology, the Scrum daily standup structure isn’t always the best fit as it focuses too much on the work of individuals. Kanban is more interested in processes than tasks so a Kanban standup is more likely to ask the following questions:

What are our workflow/process problems?What’s getting in our way?What can we improve?

During a Kanban standup, the team will gather around a presentation board or whiteboard showing the Kanban workflow. This allows the team to move from left to right, addressing all of the items in the storyboard so nothing is missed.

One by one, the team discusses the items flagged up and identifies all of the workflow/process issues that are slowing down or preventing progress. For each issue raised, the team will determine what’s getting in the way of progress and how they can improve or remove issues, such as bottlenecks, inefficiencies, software problems, etc.

Daily standups in Scrumban projects

The Scrum vs Kanban comparison can suggest marketing teams need to choose between the two but there’s nothing wrong with running both methodologies side-by-side for different project types.

There’s also a third methodology worth talking about here, commonly referred to as Scrumban or Modified Scrum, which aims to combine the best of the two methodologies.

Here’s our summary of the Scrumban methodology from our guide to agile marketing:

“Scrumban, also known as Modified Scrum, is a hybrid of both Scrum and Kanban that borrows elements of each to suit the needs of today’s marketing teams. It heavily leverages the Scrum framework with short sprints of focused work but also includes Kanban’s visual storyboard and status swimlanes while still respecting Waterfall’s sequential structure.”

How to Implement Agile Marketing by Venture Harbour CEO Marcus Taylor

As the Scrumban methodology revolves heavily around the sprint framework, the majority of daily standup meetings will follow the traditional Scrum structure of addressing individual tasks:

What did I accomplish yesterday? What will I achieve today? What obstacles did/will impede my progress?

However, you may also run periodic Kanban standups with a structure more similar to the one we looked at in the previous section to address workflow and process challenges outside of your sprint runs.

The benefits of daily standups

Now that we’ve taken a look at the different daily standup meetings you might run, depending on the agile methodology you’re using, let’s discuss the benefits of these meetings.

Here’s a quick preview of the key benefits:

Clarify sprint goals: Each daily standup gives you the chance to clarify the sprint goal once again.Clarify daily goals: Ensure everyone is aware of the day’s goal before they get to work.Motivation: Motivate your team at the start of the day so they’re ready to make a fast impact.Encourage achievements: By discussing individual achievements, you motivate team members to keep hitting targets every day.Promote accountability: An equal emphasis on success and failure promotes a healthy culture of accountability.Raise issues: Raise challenges and overcome them as a team.

The primary aim of daily standups is to keep team members focused and motivated for the day ahead, every day of the week. However, they’re also a powerful tool for addressing issues in your marketing processes and strengthening team dynamics in a meaningful way.

Clarify sprint goals at the start of each day

When you work closely on something, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Or, in the case of an agile marketing project, team members can lose sight of team goals when they’re absorbed in their own work. Likewise, for projects that run for a long time, the duration of tasks can make it difficult to stay focused on the goal to achieve at the end of the project.

Daily standup meetings allow team managers to confirm the sprint/project goal every day so there’s no confusion as people get back to the project.

Get everyone focused on the day’s goal

In the Scrum and Scrumban frameworks, every day has its own goal, which is generally an objective of the sprint goal. So team members have to be constantly aware of the sprint goal and the goal of the day to ensure they’re hitting targets on each day of the sprint.

Team managers can use daily standups to drill the sprint goal into people’s minds and brief them on the goal for the day.

Motivate your team at the start of each day

Holding standup meetings at the start of each day is an opportunity to motivate team members so they’re passionate about getting results from the moment they sit down. Obviously, every team is unique and the same is true of every individual on any given team and motivating an entire group isn’t always easy – especially on a Monday morning!

However, the focus on previous achievements, particularly in the Scrum methodology, is always a good approach to getting people pumped up for more success.

Encourage daily achievements

By running standup meetings every day, you develop a natural urgency in your team to achieve something meaningful on every day of the sprint. Team members want to head into tomorrow’s standup with a good answer to the What did you accomplish yesterday? question and this places a healthy amount of pressure upon individuals to keep hitting targets.

Promote accountability

A key characteristic of daily standups is promoting accountability of successes and failures alike. Everyone deserves a bit of shine and acknowledgement for the good work they do and the standup allows everyone to explain what their best moment of the previous day was.

They also give team managers the opportunity to acknowledge these achievements in front of the whole team.

At the other end of the spectrum, it’s just as important to acknowledge failures so you can learn from them and improve. The trick is creating an environment where individuals feel comfortable with acknowledging their own failures and taking pride in being held accountable for them without any shame or negativity from the team.

To achieve this, you have to emphasise the lessons learned from failures and the solutions by presenting them as opportunities to improve. Once again, team managers should make sure they also acknowledge successes in equal measures so the credit for good work is equal to the accountability for anything that doesn’t go to plan.

Raise issues faster

Daily standup meetings give everyone the chance to raise issues and challenges they’re facing, either by themselves or as a team. Hopefully, serious issues are flagged up and dealt with as appropriate but standup meetings can raise a depth of smaller issues marketing managers may never see by themselves or in the performance data they have access to.

In some cases, these may be ongoing issues but daily standups also help teams flag up new issues faster.

Daily standups help teams identify issues and deal with them as quickly as possible, minimising the negative impact they have on your marketing processes.

The anatomy of daily standups

Daily standups are relatively straightforward, structurally, compared to other types of marketing meetings and you can find out more about these different meetings in our guide to running effective marketing meetings.

The basic structure of a daily standup is the same three questions we’ve repeated throughout this article.

What did I accomplish yesterday?What will I achieve today?What obstacles did/will impede my progress?

The only exception is when you’re running a Kanban standup, where you’ll want to adapt these questions to discuss processes over individual workloads.

Aside from the three-question format, there are some other key characteristics every standup meeting should have.

Quick, 15-minute meetings

The daily standup should be the shortest marketing meetings you hold, running for no longer than 10-15 minutes at the start of the day. Everyone gets a couple of minutes to speak and anything that requires more discussion should be dealt with outside of the standup. This shouldn’t be a problem when discussing yesterday’s accomplishments and today’s objectives but it’s easy to run over time when it comes to discussing obstacles and roadblocks.

This is where the marketing manager has to regulate the conversation to keep the meeting running on time but also demonstrate to everyone that their issues will get the appropriate attention outside of the standup, assuming it can’t be done within the meeting itself.

Small, agile teams

You can’t hold a daily standup meeting within 15 minutes if you’ve got a team of 25 people who all need to say their piece. Keep in mind that the standup format originates from the Scrum methodology and this is defined by small, agile teams.

If you’re running your project using the Scrum or Scrumban methodologies, you should have a small team of no more than 5-7 people with clearly defined roles within each sprint run. With seven people on your team, that leaves roughly two minutes per team member with very little room for the team manager to speak or any group discussion at all.

This gives you an idea of how concise a daily standup should be.

Everybody talks

Another important characteristic of the daily standup is that everybody speaks. Gather your team together in a circle (or in a group chat) and work around the group, one by one, until everyone has answered the three questions on your meeting agenda.

The great convenience of daily standup meetings is that they’re so repetitive everyone knows exactly what they need to say after a couple of runs and you can work through the group without any delays or hesitation between speakers.

Everybody sets a goal for the day

One of the key functions of the daily standup meeting is that it forces everyone to set a goal for the day – not only in their own minds but in front of the whole team. By announcing their goal for the day in front of everyone, team members are more motivated to achieve it, knowing they’ll have to report back again tomorrow and confirm whether they did, in fact, achieve what they set out to do on the previous day.

As with all exercises in setting goals, team members should be specific, ambitious and realistic.

Everybody is accountable

Accountability can be a scary prospect for individual team members but, by holding daily standup meetings, everyone deals with regular, smaller doses of accountability and the fear factor soon disappears. Team managers should also demonstrate that accountability is a two-way thing, meaning that people own their successes as well as their failures.

The team manager has to show that accountability isn’t about blaming individuals but identifying the cause of issues (these could be processes, tools, unforeseen challenges and a range of other things, as well as individual actions) and overcoming them.

Everyone is aware of potential obstacles

Arguably, the most important function of the daily standup is identifying potential obstacles and raising them quickly. Let’s say you were only holding meetings at the start of each week, rather than the beginning of each day. It would take up to a week for certain issues to get raised and the list of problems would be larger, encouraging people to only mention the most pressing issues that need the most attention.

With the daily standup, team members can raise every obstacle they encounter, no matter how small they may be.

The marketing manager can, then, decide whether these issues require attention outside of the standup, whether an immediate fix is viable or if the team may have to push for the time being. However, nothing is overlooked, simply because it was never raised in the first place.

Everyone gets the chance to request something they need

If you’re running the Scrum methodology, time is always pressing and it’s common for team members to need a little help with completing objectives on time. They may simply need help with a task that’s taking longer than expected or they might need access to a tool they don’t have a user account for. Whatever it is, you don’t have time in the sprint format for team members being held back by not having everything they need.

The daily standup gives everyone the chance to request something they need at the start of each day.

Everyone knows what to do next

By setting out their individual goal at the start of the day, team members know exactly what they need to do when they get started. There’s no thinking back to yesterday, trying to remember what they were doing or checking through their schedule, trying to find what’s next on their to-do list.

All of this is covered in the daily standup and every team member speaks – so there’s no doubt about what anyone’s doing when they sit down.

Your team is aligned

While the team does the vast majority of the speaking in a daily standup, this meeting gives the team manager a chance to listen and ensure that everyone is aligned on the broader goals of the project. If any individuals are wandering off-track, the team manager can give them a gentle nudge in the right direction or intervene outside of the standup if necessary.

The standup format also encourages team members to listen to each other and hear what others are working on every day. This practice also reinforces the group direction and helps individuals to keep their focus on the project goals.

How to run a daily standup

Now that we’ve explained the benefits and characteristics of daily standups, the rest of this article is dedicated to explaining how you can run your own standup meetings. In this section, we cover the key steps you need to follow for planning and running effective standups every day.

Here are the steps we’re looking at in this section:

Standup agenda: Create your meeting agenda so everyone knows what’s expected from them.Start the day with a standup: Hold your daily standups at the beginning of each day to maximise impact.Stand up: Get your team on their feet to energise the conversation (only for in-person meetings).Go round the circle: Get everyone to speak by moving around the circle as it naturally forms.Stick to the agenda: Ensure the meeting covers everything in the agenda (and nothing else) in 10-15 minutes.Follow-up issues: Tag issues that can’t be addressed in the meeting for further attention outside of the standup.Take notes: Take notes for every standup so you have a written account of the points raised.

Those are the key steps to follow for effective daily standups and, once you run through a few of these, you’ll wish every marketing meetings was this easy to manage.

Step #1: Create your daily standup agenda

As with every type of marketing meeting, the first set is to create an agenda that specifies everything to cover in the meeting. We cover this topic in detail in our guide to marketing meetings agendas and you want to start by creating an agenda template that you can edit before every meeting and send out to team members so they have time to prepare.

The good news with daily standups is the structure is both short and formulaic. Your team will get to grips with these meetings very quickly and all they’ll need to prepare is a few minutes to think about the three questions and prep some answers.

Once again, let’s remind ourselves of the three questions that need answering in your standups:

What did I accomplish yesterday? What will I achieve today? What obstacles did/will impede my progress?

You can use a programme like Fellow to create your agenda template so everyone has access to an editable version. You can then get team members to add their points for each three questions ahead of the meeting so you have a fixed agenda including all of the points being raised in the meeting before you begin.

Getting people to fill out the agenda before the meeting ensures everyone knows what they’re going to say. This is important for keeping your standups productive and keeping them down to 10-15 minutes.

You don’t want people walking into the meeting with blank minds so they have to stand there and think of something on the spot while other people are talking.

Step #2: Hold your standup at the beginning of each day

Ideally, you want to hold your daily standup meetings at the start of each day to get everyone on the same page and focused on their goals before they get started. This is particularly important for Scrum standups because the focus is on addressing yesterday’s achievements and today’s goals, which loses some of its impact if you’re not holding these meetings at the start of each day.

For Kanban standups, where your attention focuses more on processes than individual workloads, you don’t lose as much by holding meetings later in the day – something worth keeping in mind.

Holding daily standups at the start of the day shouldn’t be a problem if your team works together in an office or physical workspace. However, this can be more challenging if your team works remotely or on flexible hours, especially if you’ve got team members working across different time zones.

In this case, you’ll have to find a time that works for everyone and has the strongest impact on goal setting, motivation and individual focus.

Step #3: Get your team on their feet

Standups are called standups for a good reason. Team members should be on their feet and active during the meeting, not slouched over a desk waiting for their coffee to kick in. Again, this only really works if your team is physically meeting in a shared workspace, not so much for virtual standup meetings.

Let’s assume you’re holding your standup in the office, for the sake of simplicity. Gather your team and get them to stand in a circle, facing each other. Nothing militant. It doesn’t need to be a perfect circle and nobody gets called out if their feet aren’t touching and their backs aren’t perfectly straight.

Daily standups are about as informal as marketing meetings get but you want people to be on their feet, active and ready to start the day.

Apparently, some teams even start their standup meetings with physical activity – such as star jumps – to, quite literally, get the blood pumping before they start talking.

I’m not going to condone such behaviour.

Step #4: Go round the circle, one by one

Assuming your standup is held in a shared workspace and your team is gathered in a circle, go around the group in order, one by one, getting everyone to speak. This removes any suggestion of hierarchy, favouritism or some people’s workloads being more important than others.

If you’re holding your meetings remotely, you can do something similar by asking people to speak in the order they appear on the list of attendees in the group chat. Many apps list attendees in order of who joins the chat first and this is a great way to work around the group as it can change from one meeting to the next.

This way, project managers aren’t picking the order of who speaks, which can introduce biases, suggest orders of importance and, potentially, miss someone out altogether. You also avoid any pauses between speakers (time wasting) or catching anyone off guard by suddenly electing them to speak.

Step #5: Stick to the agenda

This one is true of every marketing meeting but especially important for daily standups because these are generally the shortest meetings you hold and there’s no time for venturing off-topic. This means marketing managers need to stay on top of the meetings to keep everyone focused on the three questions on the agenda.

If anyone goes off on a tangent or spends too long talking about a specific issue, the manager needs to step in and get the meeting back on-topic and on schedule.

This may take some getting used to because it’s not always easy to formulate ideas or find the right words to express them in a few minutes, especially in front of the whole team. This is why it’s so important to have people spend a few minutes preparing for the meeting by filling out the agenda template with notes before the meeting begins.

Generally, the first two questions on the agenda are pretty straightforward but communicating issues, challenges and roadblocks in a minute isn’t always easy. So, encourage team members to add notes on these issues as they emerge (for the next day’s standup) so they can formulate their ideas in plenty of time.

Again, your team will get used to this format quickly and standups will become second nature before you know it.

Step #6: Tag issues that need further discussion

As mentioned in step #5, the third question in the standup agenda is often the most time-consuming one to answer: What obstacles did/will impede my progress? In some cases, the issues raised by people may be easy to fix without any further discussion. For example, someone might request certain user permissions on a software tool and the account manager can make the necessary changes once the standup finishes.

However, some issues require further discussion to identify causes, the scale of the problem and potential solutions.

The standup is no place for these discussions but the team manager should flag such issues up for further discussion outside of the standup. This includes anything that takes more than a couple of minutes to discuss with no obvious resolution.

Keep in mind that the standup is designed to raise issues, not solve them.

Step #7: Take a written record of the standup meeting

As with all marketing meetings, you want a written record of everything discussed during each daily standup. The first reason for this brings us back to accountability and the goals individuals set being held on record. This helps team managers assess the success rate of people completing the goals and objectives they set out at the start of each day.

The same records also act as the first documentation of new issues raised by team members during the standup meeting. These issues should be exported to the relevant channels for dealing with outside of the standup meeting but records should always show where and when each issue was first raised.

Your standup meeting notes also help you analyse the effectiveness of your standups. Are they finishing one time, is everyone offering value when they speak, are individuals setting the right types of goals, are the standups motivating team members, etc?

Best practices for running effective daily standups

In this final section, we’re looking at some best practices you can follow to run effective daily standups every day. These will help you run productive meetings that enhance the workflow of your entire team without running over time.

Stick to the formula

The daily standup formula is specific for a reason and you don’t have time for deviation. Ensure team members stick to the three-question format and answer each one promptly. All they need to say is what they achieved yesterday, what they’re going to achieve today and quickly explain any issues that have or might prevent them from hitting targets – anything else has no place in the daily standup.

It may take some time for team members to get into the habit of rapid-fire responses and the team manager needs to coach them until standups become second nature. The good news is, the simple formula of standup meetings and the fact you’re running them every day means that your team will get to grips with them pretty quickly.

Be consistent

To ensure every meeting ends within 15 minutes and covers everything necessary, you have to be consistent with the way you run your standup meetings. Set the same ground rules for everyone and enforce them to make sure you can end each meeting on time. Be strict on time and intervene where people are taking too long to get their point across or venture off-topic.

Consistency is important because you don’t have time to accept any holdups and it’s difficult to enforce rules unless you’re consistent across every meeting and everyone attending them.

Consistency will also help your team get used to the Standup format sooner and help new team members integrate themselves into your agile environment as you welcome new talent to your team.

Encourage specificity

When people are setting goals for the day, you need them to set specific, measurable targets. In some cases, individual goals are easy to track – for example, creating a new landing page design by 1 pm. However, other goals are more complex, such as adjusting campaign settings or dealing with a specific customer service issue.

Let’s say one of your PPC campaigns isn’t hitting projections over the first few days and you’re not getting the traffic you need to build traction. The person managing this campaign may be tasked with optimising bids to get performance on track but their goal isn’t to simply play around with bidding settings. Instead, you want to hear them say they’re going to increase daily traffic by 10,000+ visitors, which will result in 500+ additional daily conversions based on the current conversation rate of the landing page.

Likewise, you want team members to be specific when they’re raising issues or roadblocks during the sprint meeting.

If there’s an issue with a software tool someone’s using, you don’t want to hear that it’s not working. You want to know the exact problem this team member is facing – what task they can’t complete, what’s happening when they try to, what error message are they getting (if any) and when they first noticed the issue.

All of this information will help you diagnose the cause of the issue and fix it as quickly as possible.

Manage 1-to-1 conversations

While it’s fine to have some conversation between multiple team members during a standup meeting, you want to keep things moving. For example, someone may raise an issue that a teammate is able to help them with after the standup ends or they may have a suggestion the speaker can try out once the meeting ends.

You don’t want to stop two individuals having a brief 1-to-1 exchange if it’s going to quickly solve an issue or offer some kind of value to the entire group but you have to manage these conversations carefully. You don’t need to avoid full-blown discussions between people in a standup meeting so be ready to cut these off and allow team members to continue the conversation outside of the standup.

Address every issue raised (outside of the standup)

Earlier, we talked about taking notes on every standup meeting so there’s written documentation for future reference. The most important role this plays is documenting the issues raised by team members during the standup so the team manager can take a look at these issues outside of the meeting and address them, one by one.

The first step is to prioritise these issues in terms of importance and, then, you can consider potential solutions. With a rough idea of how to deal with each issue, you can assess the difficulty of solving them and the time, resources and other requirements they will require.

From here, you can draw up an action plan to deal with each issue raised, knowing nothing is overlooked.

Choose the right meeting tools

Software can make or break marketing meetings and it’s important to choose tools that don’t get in the way. Above all, you need reliable tools so you know you’re not going to run into problems as soon as you start your standup. You also want software that makes tasks easier while getting out of your way so you’re not constantly fiddling with settings and user interfaces.

This is particularly important if you’re holding your standup meetings virtually or inviting certain people virtually. Running virtual meetings also opens up a lot of room for technical issues, rating from audio problems, connectivity issues, latency, user error and plenty more.

As a general rule, your best bet is to keep things as simple as possible to reduce the number of potential issues. You’ll also want to test that every tool is capable of performing reliably in a live setting and make sure everyone who needs to use them is comfortable with doing so.

There are plenty of software tools designed to help you run marketing meetings but you have to make sure the technology doesn’t get in the way or cause more problems than it solves.

Start each day the right way

Effective daily standup meetings prime your team to get results every day and raise any issue that could prevent you from achieving your goals. By encouraging everyone to speak about their achievements, daily goals and challenges openly in a group, you can increase motivation at the start of every day.

Daily standups also give team managers the opportunity to check everyone is working towards the team goals and identify the challenges that might prevent them from being achieved.

The challenge with daily standups is squeezing them into 10-15 minutes and covering everything you need to get the full value out of them. Hopefully, everything we’ve covered in this guide will help you tame the daily standup and start each day the right way.

The post How to Run Daily Standups for Marketing Teams appeared first on Venture Harbour.

How to Run a Marketing Retrospective

Marketing retrospectives give your team the opportunity to improve marketing processes by analysing the good and bad of your campaigns. Agile marketing teams should run a retrospective meeting at the end of every sprint run but this is an important practice, even if you’re not engaged in agile marketing or you run a hybrid system of agile and other methodologies.

In this article, we explain why marketing retrospectives are so important, what you need to run them and how to prepare your first retrospective meeting.

What are marketing retrospectives?

A marketing retrospective is a specific type of meeting that you hold at the end of a campaign (you can find out more about the other types in our guide to running effective marketing meetings). In agile marketing, you run a retrospective at the end of every sprint campaign to review the marketing processes and activities.

The general format of a retrospective is to answer three questions:

What went well?What went poorly?What can we improve?

Retrospectives are held with your marketing team (no shareholders or board members) to analyse the specifics of your marketing processes and actions – both as a team and individually.

By discussing the three talking points above, the goal is to generate three key insights from your marketing retrospectives meetings:

What to keep doing for similar campaigns, strategies and marketing actions.What to stop doing or optimise to improve results in similar scenarios.What to do differently in your marketing processes for future campaigns.

Here at Venture Harbour, we run retrospectives at the end of every campaign and we also often run them weekly or bi-weekly for long-term and ongoing campaigns.

Why are marketing retrospectives important?

Marketing retrospectives put everyone on the same page in terms of what works, what doesn’t and what you need to improve. Above all, your aim is to improve marketing results by fine-tuning processes but retrospectives also play a key role in maintaining team harmony.

Improve your marketing processes

The primary goal of running retrospective meetings is to take an honest look at your marketing processes and identify opportunities to improve them. At the end of every meeting, you want a list of actionable steps you can implement to improve future results.

Actionable is the key word here and, if you’re not producing these tangible next steps by the need of every retrospective, you need to rethink your approach to these meetings.

Keep everyone on the same page

Marketing retrospectives analyse the effectiveness of your marketing processes and campaign performance. First, you’re looking at results to see what works and what doesn’t. This part is easy because the numbers don’t lie but your final aim in your meetings is to understand the why behind the numbers.

Why did A work? Why didn’t B work?

This is crucial for keeping all of your team members on board with your marketing processes, believing in your methods and following the instructions they’re given. By taking a data-driven approach to retrospectives, everyone can see why these systems are in place and there’s little room for debate.

Acknowledge & celebrate successes

By discussing what worked on a recent campaign, you’re essentially talking about the things you should carry on doing in similar, future campaigns. This is the keep doing what works philosophy but this part of your retrospectives also plays a key role in boosting team morale.

You’re not simply saying X, Y and Z worked so let’s keep doing them, you’re also acknowledging and celebrating the successes of your marketing team. This is an opportunity to say “well done” to the team and individuals for everything that went well on the most recent campaign, which is integral for keeping team members happy and motivated – especially when the majority of your meeting is dedicated to talking about what didn’t go so well.

Create a results-driven mindset

Retrospectives led by reporting and data help you create and maintain a results-driven mindset in your team. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter how great a campaign idea feels at the time of launch if the results fall short of expectations and this is the mentality you want in your team.

Without this mindset, your marketing decisions are always vulnerable to compromise from the most popular ideas, accepted best practices or the path of least resistance – least amount of risk, easiest to implement, etc.

This stifles creativity and makes it difficult to analyse your own marketing processes with impartiality, which is precisely why you need to trust the data. By developing this mindset in your team, you can also promote an environment of innovation where a wider scope of ideas are accepted because you’re scrutinising the results – not the ideas themselves.

Give everyone a chance to raise concerns

Another key role of retrospective meetings is they give everybody a chance to raise any concerns or issues they experienced in the most recent campaign. While the data should guide the conversation throughout the majority of your meetings, it’s important to have space where individuals can put forward their own experiences. You want your team members to know they have a voice and you could learn a thing or two that your data simply can’t diagnose.

It might be a specific software tool that’s slowing people down or lacking a crucial feature. It could be that certain marketing processes are inefficient and force team members to waste time on unnecessary admin tasks. Or you might discover more pressing issues like your remote working system is making it difficult for team members to collaborate at the key moments.

Just make sure the concerns raised are relevant to the campaign you’re discussing.

What do you need to run a marketing retrospectives meeting?

To run marketing retrospectives effectively and come out of every meeting with actionable improvements, you’re going to need a few things in place first.

A meeting agenda

Before every meeting you hold (not only retrospectives), you should create an agenda outlining the key points of discussion and send this out to everyone invited so they have enough time to prepare for the meeting. You want every part of the conversation to have value and every team member to come along with something useful to add.

You can find out out how to create a meeting agenda and use our free template in our guide to marketing meeting agendas.

Campaign results

As we’ve touched on several times already, data is the key ingredient to every retrospective. The entire purpose of this meeting is to review campaign results and get valuable takeaways from this data so make sure you’ve got all of the reports you need in place before you schedule the next retrospective.

Objectives report

While it’s obvious to review the completion of campaign goals in a retrospective meeting, it might not be so obvious that you should also analyse the completion of objectives throughout the campaign. Before we go any further, let’s quickly summarise the difference between marketing goals and marketing objectives, as explained in our Marketing Strategy: The Ultimate Guide:

A marketing goal is a broad, long-term result you want to achieve, such as increasing revenue, reducing customer churn, increasing engagement by 40%, etc.A marketing objective defines the specific, measurable actions marketers must complete to achieve specific goals. For example, if your goal is to reduce customer churn, one objective might be to increase email open rates by 30+%.

Essentially, objectives are the milestones you need to reach along the way to completing marketing goals and falling short on these can make it difficult to achieve larger goals.

In many ways, analysing the objectives of your campaign is more important than assessing campaign goals because they often provide more context and detail about the successes, failures and challenges you had along the way.

A log of campaign issues

Speaking of challenges, you also want a complete log of issues raised during the campaign so you can discuss them in your retrospective meeting. You don’t necessarily need to discuss every issue but you will want to spend time discussing problems that still haven’t been resolved, issues that were particularly difficult to overcome or anything that could add value to future campaigns.

You’ll also want to leave space for team members to raise any other issues that haven’t been flagged up or already discussed – as well as any solution ideas that could be valuable.

Solutions report

As well as a log of campaign issues, you should also have a report of the solutions put in place at every stage of the campaign. Generally, you’ve got three categories of solutions: those that solved the intended problem, those that didn’t and, finally, the ones that haven’t yet resolved the issue.

In true retrospective spirit, analysing these solutions will help you identify the fixes that work and could work again in the future – or, better yet, how to avoid the same problems altogether. Likewise, you can try to identify why certain fixes didn’t work and determine whether the approach itself was wrong or whether there were other factors at play.

The more you analyse campaign issues and solutions, the better your team becomes at avoiding similar problems in the future and solving similar issues faster.

High & low points

This is where you discuss the highs and lows of the campaigns and it’s worth approaching this at three different levels:

Campaign highs & lows: The successes and failures of the campaign itself.Team highs & lows: The best and worst moments for your team, collectively.Individual highs & lows: The achievements and lessons of each team member.

The reason for this three-tiered approach is that you want to distinguish between campaign performance and team performance while crediting individuals for their achievements while maintaining that results-driven mentality.

The marketing manager or meeting host can lead this discussion by starting with the successes and failures of the campaign to keep these goals at the centre of the discussion. Then, you can lead into the team highs and lows in relation to campaign goals and discuss these as a group. Credit the team for their successes and explore the not-so-great moments to learn from them (this is a retrospective so your aim is to determine what to keep doing, what to stop doing and what to change).

When it comes to individuals, let them speak about their own highs and lows. Ask them to explain what they think their biggest achievements were during the campaign and what they learned from anything that didn’t quite go to plan.

Note, the wording above, too, in terms of only using the word “failure” for the campaign itself. For the team, we’re talking about the best and worst moments while acknowledging the achievements of individuals and talking about “lessons,” not failures.

The aim is to credit teams and individuals for their accomplishments and emphasise the benefit of learning from things that didn’t work – not blaming anyone.

Takeaways

We’ve touched on this couple of times already but you need to go into every retrospective with the expectation of ending the meeting with actionable takeaways. At this point, it’s a good idea to remind ourselves of the key objectives of a retrospective meeting:

What to keep doing for similar campaigns, strategies and marketing actions.What to stop doing or optimise to improve results in similar scenarios.What to do differently in your marketing processes for future campaigns.

At the end of each meeting, you want a list of tasks or next steps to take, especially on the final point of what you’re going to do differently. This could involve implementing changes to marketing processes, making slight changes to individual workflows or taking an entirely different strategic approach to similar campaigns in the future.

How to run your first marketing retrospectives

In this section, we take you through the key steps to follow for running your first marketing retrospectives. We’ve got an 11-step process of all the key things you want to cover in your first retrospective meeting, which also acts as a process you can follow and adapt for future meetings.

Here’s a preview of the steps we’re covering:

Create your agendaInvite the right team membersAnalyse campaign goals, objectives & milestonesDiscuss campaign issuesAnalyse the solutions appliedDetermine how to avoid the same failures, low points & issuesAnalyse your marketing processesAnalyse your toolkitEvaluate goal ambitionAsk attendees to raise any other issuesEnd with an action plan

Essentially, all of the steps in this process are geared towards achieving the final, eleventh step of producing an action plan from every marketing retrospectives.

Step #1: Create your agenda

We’ve talked about agendas several times already in this article and this is always the first step of running any marketing meeting. Again, you’ll find everything you need to know in our guide to meeting agendas, which explains how you can create an agenda for each meeting by including the following elements (a template is included):

Meeting name/typeMeeting goalMetrics & KPIs reviewPerformance analysisAchievementsChallengesGoals & objectives reviewBudget reviewIdeas & issuesTakeawaysNext steps

You’ll notice several of these elements overlap with the steps we’re discussing in this 11-step process for running your first retrospectives. This is no coincidence because your agenda acts as the guide for your meetings, ensuring these steps are followed and all of the key points are covered in your meeting.

The two most important elements on your agenda are the second and the last: the meeting goal and the next steps (ie: the action plan). Every meeting you hold should have a clear goal and, in the case of retrospectives, this is identifying ways to improve the effectiveness of your marketing processes.

You may have more specific goals for certain retrospectives, such as identifying why a specific solution failed to solve the problem in question but it all comes back to learning lessons that improve your marketing processes – and it’s your next steps/action plan that will achieve this.

Step #2: Invite the right team members

You should always aim to invite the relevant people to marketing meetings and avoid having anyone in the room who doesn’t need to be there. For retrospective meetings, you’ll normally invite the whole marketing team (at least, everyone who was involved in the campaign) but you may also invite other individuals for specific parts of the meeting – for example, programmers if there was a marketing issue related to a feature rollout, product update or any other development activity.

Step #3: Analyse campaign goals, objectives & milestones

We’ve touched on most of this during several parts of today’s article and determined the difference between goals, objectives and milestones. Essentially, your aim here is to achieve three things in this part of your retrospectives:

Acknowledge & celebrate achievements of the campaign, team and individuals.Determine why any goals, objectves or milestones were missed and learn from these reasons for future campaigns.Review marketing processes to do more of what works and fix what doesn’t.

While it’s important to acknowledge achievements, the bulk of your retrospective should focus on identifying why any goals, objectives or milestones were missed and how to avoid this from happening in future campaigns.

Step #4: Discuss issues encountered during the campaign

At this point, you want to discuss the issues encountered throughout the campaign in two broad categories: the issues you managed to resolve and the ones you didn’t. In the next section, we’ll talk about analysing the solutions you applied to each of these problems but, for now, the priority is to determine whether any of these issues were unavoidable.

For this, you need to understand the root cause of each issue so you can decide whether you have the means of preventing them from happening again. If you don’t already have the preventative means, you can discuss ideas to test for future campaigns that might avoid the same issue or mitigate its impact.

For example, if campaign progress was held back by a dip in traffic in early Q1, you might discuss ideas to boost traffic from other sources for the same period in future campaigns.

Step #5: Analyse the solutions applied to the above issues

While there are two broad categories of campaign issues to discuss, there are three categories of solutions, as we explained earlier.

Solved the intended problemFailed to solve the problemHaven’t yet solved the problem (but might)

Solutions that solve the intended problem are successes in their own right so you should take the time to acknowledge and celebrate these. More importantly, these are the successes you can often learn the most from because they overcame unexpected challenges.

With solutions that failed to solve the target issue, you have to try and determine why no resolution was achieved: was the approach itself wrong, do you lack the required processes to make this solution work or were there other factors that made the solution ineffective in this specific case?

Ongoing solutions or any that generated inconclusive outcomes are worth analysing, too, within the context that they could still solve the issue or may have better success in different circumstances – the challenge is pinpointing what these specific conditions would be.

Step #6: Determine how to avoid the same failures, low points & issues

Once you’ve analysed the failures, low points and campaign issues (while also acknowledging successes), you have to determine how these negative outcomes can be avoided in future outcomes. The answers lie in your data and the bulk of your retrospectives should involve analysing the numbers to find these answers. Avoid opinion and speculation at all costs.

If you can’t find answers in your reports, determine why this data doesn’t exist and whether this means your analytics processes need reviewing. Then, you can discuss ideas to test that may prevent or solve the same negative outcomes in future campaigns. This test and learn approach means that, even when you’re coming up with ideas to improve marketing processes, you’re always allowing the data to prove the effectiveness of changes, not intuition.

Step #7: Analyse the effectiveness of your marketing processes

By this point, you’ve finished analysing the campaign in question and it’s time to step back and take another look at your marketing processes. You want to identify whether any aspect of these processes contributed to negative outcomes or made positive outcomes more difficult to achieve.

For example, a common issue many marketing teams have is that it takes too long to get new campaign ideas or resources launched. In other words, the processes of planning, ideation and implementation are too inefficient for the team to put marketing actions into effect quickly enough. This makes it difficult to respond to campaign issues – even if the idea itself is solid – because performance drops too far by the time you implement fixes and/or there’s not enough time to get things back on track.

Step #8: Analyse your marketing toolkit

Technically, this counts as an integral part of your marketing processes but even the best processes can fall short simply because the wrong tools are being used – so it’s worth taking a look at this separately. Also, the best people to discuss this with are the team members who are using these tools every day and have the working experience to judge whether they’re up to the task.

Step #9: Evaluate goal ambition

At the end of a campaign, you should have a good idea of how ambitious/achievable the goals were, especially once you’ve analysed everything in your retrospectives. Certain processes and strategies may have overachieved while some objectives could have been very difficult to reach – in some cases you may fall way short of expectation or overachieve by a wide margin.

With this information, you can now say whether the goal set for the campaign was ambitious enough. Obviously, if goals are too easy to achieve, this suggests you’re not aiming high enough while you may need to adjust your expectations if you’re constantly failing to achieve results.

As with most things in marketing, there’s a fine balance to strike between ambition and results.

If you feel your team can achieve bigger things, this is an important message to deliver to shareholders and executives who may be willing to make more funds available.

Step #10: Ask attendees to raise any other issues

You should always make space in retrospective meetings for team members to raise any issues or ideas that haven’t already been discussed. When you’re creating your meeting brief, you should include all of the key points that will be covered in the meeting and send these out to attendees early so they have time to prepare for the meeting. If you have time, it can be worth getting feedback from attendees before the meeting so you can add any points they raise before hand – again, this allows everyone to prepare.

Even after doing all that, allow time for attendees to raise any points that didn’t make it into the discussion or came to mind during the meeting while others were talking.

Step #11: End with an action plan

The goal of every retrospective meeting is to end with an action plan of next steps to follow and you want to specify time frames for these. At the very least, you should consider the five following types of next steps to specify by the end of every retrospective:

Immediate tasks: Tasks individuals and teams need to complete as soon as the meeting is over.Short-term tasks: The items that should be completed on the day of the meeting or a fixed short-term deadline.Mid-term tasks: These should be completed by the end of the week or a specified deadline.Long-term tasks: Tasks that probably extend beyond the current campaign, which should be added to the backlog.Nice-to-dos: Tasks that would be beneficial to undertake if the opportunity presents itself.

You want to assign these tasks at the team level and individual level so everyone knows what they’re supposed to do next and in similar, future campaigns.

Improve your marketing processes with retrospectives

The overall goal of retrospective meetings is to clarify the causes of successes and failures so you can keep doing what works and improve what doesn’t. By running regular retrospectives, you analyse individual campaigns but you also assess your marketing processes to identify weaknesses, complications, productivity killers and other systematic issues getting in the way of your marketing performance.

Hopefully, this article will give you everything you need to run your first marketing retrospectives or make your meetings more effective if they’re not producing meaningful insights or actionable next steps. As always, let us know in the comments below if you think we missed anything or you have any other suggestions for running retrospective meetings that improve marketing results.

The post How to Run a Marketing Retrospective appeared first on Venture Harbour.

Marketing Forecasting: 10 Steps to Get it Right

In today’s data-driven world, insights should guide every marketing decision – no guesswork; no assumptions. Of course, you can’t predict the future, but you can model it to forecast the outcome of marketing campaigns based on historical data, existing performance and emerging trends.

In this article, we show you how to use marketing forecasting to calculate the outcome of strategies – so you can approve campaigns with the highest chance of success, manage performance to consistently achieve objectives and adapt your marketing spend to maximise return on investment (ROI).

What are we looking at in this article?

In this article, we explain the 10 key steps of marketing forecasting so you can get accurate outcomes from simulations on a consistent basis. This will allow you to predict the outcome of campaign ideas and prioritise creatives that’ll achieve your goals most effectively.

Here are the steps we’ll be looking at in this article:

Defining goals: How to define marketing goals for reliable forecasts.KPIs & metrics: Choosing the right data points to measure success.Budgets: Setting and allocating budgets.Campaign ideas: Creating campaign ideas for each marketing goal.Expenses: Accounting for all of your marketing expenses.Forecasts: Choose the best campaign ideas by forecasting results.Campaign approval: Approve and run the campaigns that perform best in forecasting.Milestones: Keep campaigns on track with milestones.Reforecasting: Run regular forecasts on live campaigns to adapt expectations.Adaptation: Adjust budgets, targets and resources to maximise ROI.

By following these steps, you’ll implement forecasting throughout the strategic planning, prioritisation and optimisation of campaigns so that your budget is always allocated to strike the best balance between high performance and cost-effectiveness.

Before we get into the 10 steps, we’re going to quickly answer the following two questions:

What is marketing forecasting and why is it important?What tools do I need for marketing forecasting?

This way, you’ve got everything you need to start following the steps laid out in this article to implement an effective marketing forecasting process into your organisation.

What is marketing forecasting & why is it important?

Marketing forecasting is a data-driven approach to predicting the outcome of marketing activities. If I type the question “what is marketing forecasting into Google, I get the following answer in a featured snippet:

“A marketing forecast is an analysis that projects the future trends, characteristics and numbers in your target market. It provides anticipated numbers that a company expects based upon market research.”

The purpose of marketing forecasting is to remove the guesswork from business decisions, allowing you to predict future outcomes. You can forecast a wide range of scenarios, depending on the data you’re working with – for example, you could predict future campaign performance, the growth rate of your business or the impact of external trends.

Marketing forecasting typically uses both first-party and third-party data to calculate outcomes:

First-party data: This is the data you collect from your own website, customers and channels.Third-party data: External data you access from other sources – eg: government statistics, Google Trends, etc.

For example, a company might access third-party data from The Met Office to understand how weather patterns affect the purchase habits of their target audience. They can then use this data to inform seasonal campaigns or even short-term marketing decisions, such as increasing spend on campaigns based on the weekend’s weather forecast.

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to keep things simple and focus on the use of first-party data to predict one type of outcome: the performance of campaign ideas. This means we’ll be working with the data you should already have access to and control over – namely the performance of your existing campaigns.

So you’ll be taking matrics like conversion rates, visits, impressions and using these to predict the outcome of similar campaign ideas while getting a clear picture of which objectives you need to hit to achieve your goals.

What tools do I need for marketing forecasting?

To follow the steps, you’ll need the following three tools to capture the necessary data, run your forecasts and optimise campaigns to improve performance:

Marketing analytics: Capture all of the data you need to forecast, measure performance and optimise campaigns.Forecasting software: Simulate campaigns to forecast results and choose the most effective campaign ideas.CRO software: Optimise campaigns, test variations and deploy changes.

In addition to these, you’ll also need the tools required to manage campaigns and create all the resources they require – things like email marketing software, a landing page builder, etc. We’re not going to get into any of that in this article, so we’re only interested in the three tools you need to run marketing forecasts successfully on a regular basis.

Marketing analytics

To run forecasts, you have to feed the right data into your simulator and this is where your marketing analytics software takes the lead. If you’re simply tracking the performance of your website, Google Analytics is more than capable enough to collect the necessary data for predicting campaign performance.

If you also need to include data from your software product, then you might want to look at other options. While you can set up Google Analytics for collecting insights from products, it involves quite a lot of work when there are dedicated analytics systems available for product optimisation, such as Mixpanel.

If not sure which analytics system is best for your needs, we take a look at the best options currently available in our comparison for CRO and analytics software tools for SaaS companies.

Forecasting software

With analytics software, you’re spoilt for choice but marketing forecasting tools are in much shorter supply. There are some platforms currently available on the market but they’re mostly included in enterprise analytics systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many scalable options designed for startups and new companies that offer affordable entry prices and grow with your business.

TrueNorth is the exception, a marketing management platform that acts as the control centre for all of your planning, deployment and optimisation. TrueNorth includes a marketing forecasting system that predicts the performance of campaign ideas before you start investing any resources into creatives that fall short of your goals. This means you can test run campaign ideas, ensure they’re ready to achieve your goals and prioritise the campaigns that perform best.

TrueNorth allows you to test campaign ideas to see what works before you put any resources on the line. The platform helps you set achievable marketing goals and test multiple campaign ideas to see which creatives give you the best return for your marketing spend. For example, you can set a goal of increasing marketing qualified leads (MQLs) by 115% by the start of April 2022 and simulate campaign ideas to achieve this. TrueNorth shows you which objectives you’ll need to complete along the way (visits, conversions, leads, etc.) to achieve this goal with performance breakdowns for every month.

This shows you the monthly targets you need to hit to achieve bigger goals and you can also set milestones where you need to achieve better results than the simulator forecasts, based on your current performance. This means you can identify areas where your campaigns are going to fall short of your needs and test new campaign ideas or optimise your existing ones to make up the difference.

CRO software

The final tool you’re going to need to follow the steps in this article is conversion rate optimisation (CRO) software for optimising campaigns and deploying changes. We’re not going to go into too much detail about optimisation in this article but conversion optimisation is crucial for ongoing forecasting, which allows you to constantly reassess performance and make adjustments to achieve more ambitious goals and maximise ROI.

There are plenty of CRO platforms on the market for every budget and VWO makes a regular appearance in our recommendation articles.

With VWO, you have separate products for optimising websites and software products so you can use either or both, depending on your needs. In our experience, VWO provides the best balance of quality, depth of features and value/affordability. It sits on that line between enterprise-grade software and products designed for growing businesses, which is reflected in the pricing and the intuitive experience.

Again, you’ll find plenty of other recommendations in our comparison of the top CRO software for SaaS companies – so take a good look at those if you don’t already have a quality CRO platform on your side.

#1: Define your marketing goals properly

Effective forecasting starts with setting specific, measurable marketing goals. We’ve covered this topic in several posts before and our CEO Marcus Taylor sums up the importance of defining marketing goals properly as well as anyone:

“If you’re not crystal clear on what your business goal is – stop. Trying to do marketing without a clear goal is like starting a race without knowing where the finish line is.“

A Marketing Plan for Agile Marketers; Venture Harbour CEO, Marcus Taylor.

Forecasting helps you find the most efficient route to the finishing but you still need to determine where that line is by setting clear marketing goals. Before we get into the how of marketing goals, let’s quickly clear up some of the confusion about the terminology of goals vs objectives (this is important with forecasting and marketing in general).

As we explain in our ultimate guide to marketing strategy, goals and objectives are often used interchangeably by marketers but they play two very different (and important) roles.

Marketing goals vs marketing objectives

Before we go any further, here’s a quick couple of quick explanations of marketing goals and marketing objectives:

A marketing goal is a broad, long-term result you want to achieve, such as increasing revenue, reducing customer churn, increasing engagement by 40%, etc.A marketing objective defines the specific, measurable actions marketers must complete to achieve specific goals. For example, if your goal is to reduce customer churn, one objective might be to increase email open rates by 30+%.

If we stick with the analogy of racing, then your marketing goal is the target you set for the finish line – your goal for the entire race. Maybe you want to complete the race in a certain time, improve your speed by 3.5% or improve a specific aspect of the race, such as speeding up the start phase. This is comparable to a company setting campaign goals for hitting certain revenue targets, increasing conversion rates or generating more leads.

Marketing objectives are more like the targets you set for individual laps that will keep you on track for achieving the goal of the race. You might set time targets for each lap, allow for a slower time in the penultimate lap and push for a final sprint in the final one – whatever it takes to give you the best chance of achieving your goal for the race.

Likewise, a company might set revenue targets for every month or quarter, allow for an autumn slump and then go all-in for the Christmas rush.

If the marketing goal is to increase conversion rates, you might set objectives to maintain or increase traffic volumes, generate more leads, increase the percentage of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and improve the closing ratio of your sales team.

How to set marketing goals

In our ultimate guide to marketing strategy, we also explain how to set marketing goals properly. There are plenty of frameworks you can follow for setting marketing goals but the key essentials are that they should always be specific, measurable and achievable.

Specific goals should always be time-bound, too, and you’ve probably come across the acronym for SMART goals:

SpecificMeasurableAchievableRelevantTime-bound

As I’ve said in the past, I find relevance to be a little vague and open to interpretation but there’s no room for debate over marketing goals being specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound.

Let’s say we define the goal of increasing conversion rates by 150%, on average, across all marketing channels by the end of Q4 2022.

Here’s how that stacks up against the SMART framework:

Specific: Increase avg. conversion rates by 150% across all channels, from 1.4% to 3.5%.Measurable: The sum of avg. conversion rates across all channels divided by the total number of channels.Achievable: The target of 150% has been set based on current conversion rates, available resources and forecasting.Relevant: Conversion lift increases total revenue for 2022 and even more so for following years.Time-bound: Target must be achieved by end of Q4 2022.

If your marketing goals fail to satisfy any of these criteria, then you’re going to have problems with forecasting and marketing analytics in general. Your goals inform everything you do, starting from the strategic planning of campaign ideas, to measuring performance, forecasting results and attributing success/failure throughout ongoing optimisation.

#2: Select the right KPIs & metrics

Your forecasting system is only as good as the data you feed into it and this relies on you choosing the right KPIs and metrics to measure campaign performance and track goal completions. Much like goals and objectives, you’ll find the terms KPI and metric are often used interchangeably but, once again, they’re two different things with specific and important distinctions.

So let’s start by clarifying this point.

Marketing KPIs vs marketing metrics

As we explain in our list of essential metrics and KPIs for SaaS marketers, everyone working with data should understand the difference between metrics and KPIs.

Here’s a quick summary of the two:

KPIs: Data points that measure the success or failure of your primary business and marketing goals.Metrics: Data points that provide more context behind the reason for failure or success.

To expand upon this, every key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric but not every metric is a KPI so we’re talking about a specific type of metric – and all the clues you need are in the name. Metrics are any data point relevant to your analysis but KPIs are the most important measurements of performance and these are directly aligned with your marketing goals.

So, if your campaign goal is to increase marketing qualified leads (MQLs), then MQLs is the KPI that determines success or failure.

Everything else is merely a metric that provides more context behind the success or failure of your campaign, allowing you to gain deeper insights into campaign performance so you can see what’s working, what isn’t and improve results.

In most cases, your campaign goal will align exactly with your primary KPI although it’s quite common to have multiple KPIs for one goal. For example, if your goal is to hit a certain revenue target, then revenue is the obvious KPI but you’ll also want to look at other key performance indicators, such as profit, to ensure that you’re not simply overspending to generate more income.

If you need more information on marketing KPIs and metrics – especially the more general marketing data points, as opposed to SaaS-specific ones – take a look at this guide to marketing metrics from our CEO, Marcus Taylor.

#3: Set & allocate your budget

Setting budgets is a crucial part of marketing planning and it’s also essential for accurate forecasting. Budget allocation is a key variable in forecasting campaigns, optimising performance and predicting outcomes as you tweak budget allocation to find the best ROI across the board.

As Marcus explains in his ultimate marketing plan, there are two common ways marketers determine how much to spend on campaigns:

Benchmark budgets: Where businesses set aside a fixed percentage of revenue (e.g.: 7-15%) as their marketing budget.Goal-based budgets: Where your marketing goals determine a workable strategy for achieving them and assign the necessary budget to make it happen.

While the first approach is more traditional and many marketers still use it, the second approach of setting goal-based budgets is far more effective in today’s world of data-driven insights. Why blindly throw an arbitrary figure at marketing campaigns when you can take a more calculated approach to setting budgets – one that’s designed to get results?

“The problem is that it’s not based on achieving an objective. Spending 12% of revenue on marketing every month may seem reasonable, but it may only be enough to keep up with your competitors if they’re also doing the same. It may even lead to losing market share, especially if your competitors are using the following approach.”

Marcus Taylor, Venture Harbour CEO

Certainly, when it comes to marketing forecasting, you have to set goal-based budgets so we’re only interested in this approach for the purposes of this article.

In his marketing plan, Marcus offers the following example of goal-based budgeting:

Let’s say the business wants to grow by $500,000 revenue in 12 months.

If each customer brings in $2,000, then you need 250 new customers. This means, your breakeven marketing budget would be $500k (acquire 250 customers @ $2k each). 

If you aim for a gross profit target of 50%, then your marketing budget is $250k and you have a target acquisition cost of $1,000. From here you can work out how many leads, demos, or clicks you’ll need to acquire one customer giving you a target cost per lead, cost per click etc.

With a budget of $250k and a target acquisition cost of $1,000, you can start coming up with campaign ideas that will achieve your growth target within those means (ie: achieve your objectives) and this sets us up perfectly for step #4.

#4: Create your campaign ideas

With your goals defined and budgets set, you’re ready to start putting campaign ideas together that you’ll run through the simulator to forecast results. Your marketing goals should always guide campaign ideation while budget informs how much financial investment you can allocate to each campaign – the question is, can you get the results you need from the campaign ideas and budget you have available?

Luckily, marketing forecasting can help you answer this question for each campaign idea.

First, though, we need to come up with ideas and this always starts with the marketing goal. So let’s say you want to increase conversion rates on a specific landing page that’s already getting decent results but you suspect could perform even better.

Your SMART goal might look something like this:

Specific: Increase conversion rates from 3.1% to 5+%Measurable: Conversion rates (KPI) while also tracking traffic volume, bounce rate, loading times, etc.Achievable: Your analytics suggests improving loading times, reducing bounce rates, increasing CTA views and improving the relevance/quality of traffic makes a 2.9+% increase achievable.Relevant: A conversion lift from this landing page will generate an additional $90,000 in annual revenue (+61%).Time-bound: Achieve 5+% conversion rate by end of 2022

So you know exactly what you need to achieve and your analytics already reveals plenty of room for improvement, which guides your campaign ideas. From here, you can start setting objectives, such as:

Reduce loading times: Optimise the landing page to reduce loading times to 2.5 seconds or under.Reduce bounce rate: Maintain or increase traffic volume while reducing bounce rate on the landing page in question.Increase CTR impressions: Increase the percentage of landing page visitors who see the calls-to-action for your primary conversion goal.Test landing page copy: A/B test landing page copy variations to find the most effective message.Increase traffic quality: Increase the purchase intent of website visitors while maintaining or increasing traffic volume.

With these five objectives, the first three are easy to measure with single KPIs so it makes sense to start with these before you get onto the more subjective challenges of increasing traffic quality and improving landing page copy. This is important because testing landing page copy while you’re reducing loading times will make it impossible to know whether the copy is having an impact or if it’s all to do with faster page speed.

In this case, you should also anticipate that reducing loading times will have a direct impact on bounce rates and CTR impressions – so this is the logical objective to start with. And, the great thing about loading times is there’s no ambiguity. It’s all about reducing server requests, optimising file sizes, ensuring your server speeds are fast enough, etc.

As you optimise page speed, keep a constant eye on conversion rates to view the impact and also monitor bounce rates, CTR impressions and the other metrics you’ve identified.

Hopefully, you should see a reduction in bounce rates and an increase in CTR impression as a result of faster loading times. But, now, you might want to come up with campaign ideas to optimise these metrics further. This is where you start to see a lot of overlap due to the close relation of these metrics and some of the optimisation techniques required.

For example, to increase CTR impressions, you might come up with the following ideas:

Reduce bounce rateIncrease time-on-pageMove first CTA above the foldMove second CTA higher up the pageCondense landing page copy – make it more concise, to the point and reduce vertical scrollingIncrease emphasis on benefits in copy (encourage scrolling)Test hero copy to encourage page scroll

Keep in mind that moving CTAs above the fold will max impressions at 100% so you don’t gain anything by measuring this – use conversion rates to measure the impact of this if you choose to place your first CTA in the hero section and measure impressions of your second CTA.

The most ambitious objective we touched on above is increasing the quality of traffic. For these ambitious objectives, marketing forecasting is especially important because you’re coming up with campaign ideas that have a more indirect impact on metrics and KPIs. For example, you’re creating new ad campaigns to generate traffic to your landing pages, new content marketing campaigns to promote your page in organic search and outreach opportunities to generate traffic from relevant third-party sites.

#5: Know your expenses (all of them)

To get accurate marketing forecasts, you must account for all expenses relevant to each campaign. The mistake a lot of companies and marketers make is overlooking expenses and underestimating the true cost of achieving the results they forecast. You have to include every expense, including wages, fees and the cost of producing resources – any cost that has an impact on achieving your goals within the specified time frame.

It’s no good coming up with an epic content marketing campaign if you don’t have the funds to create the epic content required.

Take a look at our guide to marketing budgets for a breakdown of how to set budgets, step-by-step. HubSpot also has a solid guide on managing marketing budgets that reinforces the importance of considering all of the costs involved with creating, running and optimising a campaign, including the following:

Software: When it comes to digital and even print media, you may need software to create your marketing campaigns, or handle your daily processes.Freelancers: If you have a temporary campaign or want to test out a new marketing strategy, you might want to hire a short term freelancer before bringing on a full-timer.New personnel: When you do hire full-time employees, you’ll want to budget costs including their computer, technology, benefits, and onboarding-related needs.Advertising: Budget how much money you’ll spend on paid opportunities such as physical ads, native ads, sponsored content, search engine ads, and social media promotions.Content creation: When you create content such as videos, photos, or even blog posts, you’ll need to put paid time into it. Budget how much money will go into creating this content so you can adjust accordingly based on its return on investment.

In the same article, HubSpot’s VP of Marketing Meghan Keaney Anderson raises another good point on some of the expenses many companies overlook:

“When people allocate budget for product marketing, they tend to think in terms of product launches and promotional activities. That’s certainly an important part of it, but another area of focus to remember is setting aside resources to conduct research and message testing long before the product ever goes to market.”

Make sure you include all of the relevant costs in any marketing forecast to ensure you have the funds and resources available to hit the projected targets – otherwise, you’ll fall short of expectations.

#6: Forecast your campaign ideas

With your goals, budgets and campaign ideas defined, you’re ready to simulate each campaign to forecast the results. If you’re using TrueNorth, you can easily add a new campaign by clicking the Add Campaign button on the top-right of the main navigation and specify your goals, budget, metrics and timeline.

Next, you can run the TrueNorth simulator to forecast the results of each campaign and compare performance.

This allows you to compare the results of campaign ideas and gain an overview of which strategies should achieve your goal in the most effective manner. You can see which campaigns are likely to fall short of targets, which ones are on course to achieve results and which campaign ideas are worth refining to improve projections.

For example, you might see certain campaigns are expected to gain early traction but taper off before achieving any sustainable results. Likewise, you might see other campaigns are forecast to start off slow with negative ROI for the first few months but build momentum over the following months that justifies the initial expense.

In TrueNorth’s campaign simulator, you can also edit the parameters of your forecast to change the projected results.

So, if one of your campaigns doesn’t quite hit your goal in your set time frame, you can check how much you would need to increase the budget to hit your target. You can also see which objectives you would need to revise, such as increasing traffic or conversion rates to achieve your goal in the time frame without increasing the budget. This gives you the flexibility to play around with campaign settings and objectives to understand what you need to do to achieve your marketing goals – and decide whether these requirements are feasible.

#7: Approve winning campaign ideas

Once your campaigns are simulated, you can approve winning briefs and prioritise them based on their results and deliverability. In TrueNorth, campaign results are scored out of 100, making it easy to prioritise campaigns and these scores are calculated from the projected impact, confidence and ease of achieving the campaign goal.

The idea is to strike the ideal balance between campaign effectiveness and the ease of achieving results so you can maximise the return on investment (ROI) and other resources available. You can also use this to prioritise campaigns based on achieving bigger results in a shorter time frame – ie: your high-impact campaign ideas.

So you’re approving winning campaign briefs and prioritising them to focus your efforts on the marketing actions that have the strongest positive impact. At the opposite end of the spectrum, ideas that score particularly low (say 30 or under) are best forgotten, unless you think there’s real potential to improve results with drastic changes.

However, you’ll also find many campaign ideas fall just short of acceptable results (55-65) and it might be worth coming back to these at a later point to see if some tweaks can bump these strategies into winners.

#8: Stay on track with milestones

Another key benefit of forecasting is that you can break down expected performance, month by month, to see which targets you need to hit along the path to goal completion. In the image below, you can see one of our forecasts in TrueNorth and the platform also allows us to set “milestones” for each month. We can use these to adapt aspects of our campaign as we go and update the simulation to re-forecast and check all of the numbers add up.

This helps us to hit smaller targets every month and stay on track with our primary goals while remaining agile enough to respond to external factors. With milestones, we’re also able to see where performance deviates from predictions sooner and respond to changes faster. If we’re falling short of the simulation, we can shuffle resources and come up with a plan that will still achieve our goal in time. Likewise, if we’re over-performing during the first few months of a campaign, we can adjust our forecast to set higher targets and measure ongoing performance to see how it compares to both predictions.

Progressively, as we run more campaigns and gather more data, our forecasts become increasingly accurate so we’re able to set targets with greater confidence.

#9: Forecast & re-forecast regularly

As we’ve mentioned several times in this article, marketing forecasting is something you run on an ongoing basis. The first campaign simulation gives you an indication of whether a strategy is worth pursuing and helps you prioritise campaigns performatively. However, you want to re-forecast periodically (say, every three months) inputting historical data to recalculate results throughout the remainder of the campaign.

Once you input this data and update the simulation, you’ll often find results are higher or lower than the initial forecast – and this allows you to respond early. For example, you might want to redirect budget to overperforming campaigns to maximise ROI and, if necessary, analyse underperforming campaigns to improve results.

By running regular forecasts, you can stay on top of campaign performance and adapt to unexpected results faster. So you can take full advantage of your best campaigns sooner and deal with any performance challenges with plenty of time to get results back on track.

#10: Adapt budgets & targets to maximise ROI

Once your campaigns are running for 4-6+ months, you’ll start to see how effectively your budget is working for you across each strategy and channel. At this point, you want to start analysing performance to decide where spend needs reallocating to maximise ROI.

As Jonathan Gordon writes for McKinsey, “with budgets under increasing pressure, marketers must allocate every dollar with precision and purpose.”

“What companies need is an analytical, forward-looking approach that allocates marketing dollars to customer segments as well as products or geographies that have the highest growth potential rather than to those that have traditionally performed well.”

You don’t want to start messing with budgets too early – make sure you give campaigns enough time to gain traction and provide an accurate picture of performance. That said, once you’re confident certain campaigns are performing particularly well/poorly, you should redistribute your budget to spend more on the top-performers and pull spending on the underachievers.

You don’t have to abandon campaign ideas that fall short of expectations, but you’ll certainly want to reduce spend while testing/optimising to improve results.

Forecast your way to higher marketing ROI

With marketing forecasting, you can test campaign ideas before putting any budget on the line. By following the steps we’ve outlined in this article, you’ll see which campaign ideas are worth running with, know which campaign ideas to prioritise and put performance benchmarks in place to ensure your marketing objectives and goals are on track, every step of the way.

This goal-oriented, data-driven approach to marketing forecasting allows you to set and allocate budgets with confidence, knowing you’re able to optimise campaigns on the fly and readjust spend to invest more in your top-performing campaigns. Instead of running strategies in the dark, you gain the foresight to see what’s coming ahead and identify opportunities/challenges faster. This means you’re ready to respond to developments faster, whether this means optimising campaigns to bring performance back up to par or increasing budgets for profitable campaigns.

The post Marketing Forecasting: 10 Steps to Get it Right appeared first on Venture Harbour.

17 Free-to-Paid Upselling Strategies For SaaS Companies

For SaaS companies, the first major conversion goal is signing users up to a free version of a product: free trials, free plans, free tools, etc. This means you pump all of those marketing funds and resources into a conversion goal that generates zero revenue and, then, you have to nurture free users into paying customers before you get any return on your investment.

In this article, we’re looking at free-to-paid upselling strategies that’ll help you turn more free users into paying customers – a combination of lead nurturing strategies, product optimisation and incentivisation techniques that encourage free SaaS users to upgrade to paid plans.

What are we looking at in this article?

Most SaaS companies run one of three product lead generation strategies designed to capture non-paying users: free trials, free plans or free products (freemium, free tools, etc.). Each of these strategies requires a different approach to upselling free users so we’re dividing this article into three key sections:

Free trials: Convert free trial users into paying customers.Free plans: Upsell free plan users into paying subscribers.Free products: Upselling strategies for freemium products, free products and free tools.

In each section, we run through upselling techniques that you can implement into the free version of your software, your lead nurturing campaigns and your customer support strategy to maximise the number of free users who upgrade to paid versions of your product.

For each strategy, we look at real-world examples from some of the biggest SaaS companies in the industry and explain how they’re used to upsell free users into paying customers.

Upselling strategies for free trials

In this first section, we’re focusing on SaaS companies that use free trials to capture leads and showcase their product. In this case, users get to try out the platform for a fixed period of time, which means you have to convince them to make the upgrade quickly.

Here are the upselling strategies we’re looking at in this section:

Onboarding optimisation: Make sure free trial signups are getting through the onboarding process and using your software.Early value: Ensure free trial users complete valuable actions as quickly as possible.Max. value: Help free trial users get the most value from your software before the trial ends.Value demonstration: Show users how much value they’re getting and will continue to get if they subscribe.Urgency: Build a sense of urgency throughout the free trial period.Post-trial follow-ups: Chase up users who cancel or don’t subscribe at the end of their trial.

Given the short-term basis of free trials, these strategies prioritise the software experience and maximising value perception as quickly as possible.

#1: Optimise your onboarding process to maximise adoption

The onboarding process is important for every SaaS experience so this applies whether you’re running a free trial or not. That said, with free trials, you don’t have the time to chase up users who fail to complete the onboarding process and convince them that whatever issue they ran into doesn’t reflect the quality of your software product – so you really have to maximise your onboarding completion rate.

We discuss the onboarding completion rate metric in our guide to the essential metrics and KPIs for SaaS marketers – a great resource for measuring the effectiveness of the strategies we’re looking at today in this article.

When it comes to SaaS onboarding, you have to choose a compromise between minimising friction and maximising the quality of free users. On the one hand, you can create the easiest onboarding process possible with the aim of capturing as many free trial users as you can.

This is the approach Slack takes with its ultra-easy sign-up system that simply asks for your email address to get started.

Then, you’re sent a confirmation code to the email address provided and all you need to do is type the six characters and you’re good to go.

Once you’re logged in, Slack guides you through the software to help you get to grips with the platform and start getting value from the software during the first interaction – something we’ll discuss in more detail later.

You can add these messages to your own product with onboarding optimisation software, such as Appcues (plenty of other options available), to maximise onboarding completions and engagement during the first session with your software.

Not all SaaS companies take the same friction-free approach as Slack when it comes to onboarding, though. Sometimes, you need to add some strategic friction to ensure you’re capturing the right kind of leads with your free trial. For example, you might decide that you only want people from companies of a certain size signing up for your product and decide it’s worth confirming this information in your signup form (or any other specified criteria).

Another decision you’ll have to make is whether to request payment information at the start of your free trial or whether you’re running a no-obligation trial that requires no credit card information.

Again, you’ll generally capture more free leads by running a trial that requires no payment details but you may generate more revenue from first payments by requiring credit card details upon signup (keep in mind this has implications on cancellations, renewals, retention and recurring revenue).

Here, you can see Unbounce implements a three-step signup process for its 14-day free trial, requiring users to provide their account details and their billing information before the final email confirmation stage. The company specifies that the first payment is automatically taken upon the completion of the trial and automatic renewals will occur monthly on the same date.

Once users have signed up for the free trial, Unbounce also guides them through an onboarding process that helps them get familiar with the software, using in-app messages and walkthroughs.

Whichever approach you take to onboarding, there are always going to be some users who fall through the gaps and you’ll also experience a percentage of users who complete the onboarding process but never log in for a second session. You’ll also see usage declines among many free trial users who show enthusiasm during the first few sessions but show less interest during the latter stages of the trial and you should expect a high volume of churn during the free trial period – especially if you’ve requested payment details like Unbounce.

Email marketing plays a key role in the onboarding process, too, and you can automate campaigns to maximise engagement and reduce churn during this crucial period. For example, when a new user signs up to TrueNorth, they receive automatic follow-up emails to help them complete important tasks they may have missed or had trouble with – such as adding their funnel data into the platform:

This is a key step for new TrueNorth users to complete – one that’s crucial for them to get the most out of the product – and these email campaigns increase engagement during the first few sessions, but they also help new users get more value from the product – ie: more reason to pay for it.

#2: Minimise time to value

Time to value is another metric we discuss in our guide to SaaS metrics and KPIs and here’s a quick summary of what we have to say:

“Time to value tracks the time between users signing up for your software product and completing the first action that results in meaningful value for them. In other words, this metric quantifies how long it takes for new users to get value from your product.”

50 Essential Metrics & KPIs for SaaS Marketers, Venture Harbour

The sooner users get value from your product (and the greater this value is), the more likely they are to upgrade or stay subscribed once their trial comes to an end. Onboarding plays a key role in this and you can use in-app messaging and tutorials to help new users get value from your product during the first session.

However, this is something you also need to approach from a product development perspective – ie: how can you design your product to deliver meaningful value as quickly as possible? Here are some points to consider when analysing your software:

Can the user complete a meaningful action during the first session?Can the user complete meaningful actions during every session?Are meaningful actions easy enough to complete?Are features and tools easy enough to find?Do micro-interactions/feedback communicate actions and their value?Does the product provide value while users are inactive?Does reporting show the value of the software?

For example, during the Unbounce free trial users can create their first landing page using the interactive page builder that guides them through the basics. Even if they don’t complete their first landing page, they can save their first effort, create reusable elements or build their own template for future use. So the user can complete meaningful actions during the first session but they require quite a lot of input, so Unbounce has to work hard on encouraging free trial users to build their first landing page as quickly as possible.

Interestingly, the company recently launched its new Smart Builder, which helps new users create their first landing page in no time, using the platform’s Conversion Intelligence technology.

With this tool, new users can create their first landing page within a few clicks and start generating traffic from day one – without any design or copywriting skills required. Sure, these auto-generated landing pages aren’t going to win any design or copy awards but they’re also better than someone with no design or copywriting expertise will come up with on their own.

Crucially, the tool delivers almost-instant value where many users will have spent hours, days or weeks creating their first landing page.

#3: Help users get the most out of their free trial

While optimising time to value helps free trial users experience the benefits of your software as quickly as possible, you need to sustain and build upon this value perception throughout the trial period. Again, in-app messaging is one of the best tools you can use to help new users get familiar with your product and introduce new features and tools to them.

We mentioned Appcues earlier and there are plenty of other options, including Userpilot and Pendo (below) that help you deliver in-app messages to maximise value throughout the free trial and beyond.

Email marketing is crucial for this, too, and you can send automated campaigns to free trial users to help them continue getting value from your product. Earlier, we looked at an example of TrueNorth sending emails to help users get to grips with features/tasks and here’s another example from Autopilot that guides users through the steps of more complex tasks:

These emails deliver targeted content, based on the actions free trial users take (or don’t), encouraging them to complete the tasks you know will help them get the best value from your product and increase the likelihood of converting as a paid user.

To back up all of your product and email strategies, you should have a comprehensive online documentation and support system on your website to help users learn and solve any problems they run into. ActiveCampaign has a “university” of guides, tutorials and support content in the form of articles, videos, documentation and a forum to engage with other users and get advice from moderators.

Having a library of support material helps users get more from your product and also lightens the load on your customer support team by helping users address issues themselves. You can also promote support content in your email marketing campaigns and implement a chatbot on your website (and in your software) to point users towards relevant support material, in real-time, if they run into any problems.

#4: Show free trial users how much value they’re getting

With free trial users getting value from your product, make sure they can see these benefits in certain terms. Include reporting features that show the progress users make in numbers and how this value increases with ongoing use. You can also drive engagement through reports showing achievements, task completions and performance stats to show that your product provides measurable value.

Increasingly, SaaS companies are borrowing gamification design concepts from video games to provide users with badges, rewards and unlockable features in return for task completions, high-usage or goal achievements.

Grammarly is an excellent example of this and it also sends weekly progress reports to users via email so they don’t even have to log into the software and view the reports for themselves. Users are constantly reminded of how the app benefits them, how much they’re improving and what they’re going to gain by sticking with the software and upgrading to the Premium version.

Todoist sends email reports, too, although users are more involved with the software product than Grammarly (which works in the background) so it doesn’t need to send weekly reports as constant reminders. Instead, it can send monthly and annual reports, showing what users have achieved and where they can improve results even further in the next year ahead.

Reports and analytics are a great way of showing value in pure numbers but you can show the value of actions in more subtle ways, too. I briefly mentioned micro-interactions earlier and you can use these to visually convey value through interactions, illustrating that user actions have achieved the desired result.

In this demo video from Taskade, you can see how user interactions are visualised with micro-interactions, constantly communicating that actions are contributing to progress and getting more value from the product.

You don’t want to go over the top with micro-interactions, to the point where they overwhelm or get in the way of the experience of using your software, but providing subtle feedback can help users understand that they’re getting value from your product with every action they complete, even when they’re not looking at reports.

#5: Build a sense of urgency as the free trial ends

A key benefit of running free trials is that you can build a sense of urgency in users as the end of their trial period comes to an end. If you’ve helped users get as much value as possible out of your platform during this period, they’re going to struggle with the idea of giving this up more than the monthly subscription fee you’re asking for.

As the end of the trial approaches, you can ramp up the urgency even further by reminding them that they need to act now if they want to keep using your platform (unless you’re automating payments and renewals).

If you’re automating the first payment (ie: users need to cancel if they don’t want to subscribe), then you don’t need to remind them so heavily that the free trial is coming to an end but you should still ramp up the incentive to stay signed up.

Some SaaS companies that automatically take the first payment only notify users at the start of their free trial and – let’s face it, some users will forget to cancel – but many remind customers that the trial is coming to an end and explain the next steps – whether it’s a payment, free plan or otherwise.

Sometimes, transparency is the best course of action and you have to consider that customers who unintentionally pay for your software are likely to churn at the first opportunity anyway. Your priority is always to increase the perceived value of your product in the mind of users so they make the active choice to upgrade, subscribe or carry on as a paid user.

The length of your trial period plays a key role in creating a sense of urgency and, like most things in SaaS marketing, you have to find a balance here. You need to determine how long free trial users need to get enough value from your product to convince them that it’s worth the long-term investment. The compromise is that you want to offer the shortest free trial possible to tighten the sense of urgency to use your product and reduce the time period where users might lose interest in your product or the sense of urgency you’ve created.

The most common trial periods last seven days, 14 days and 30 days.

Source: Databox

It doesn’t matter which trial period is most common or popular, though. All that matters is finding the right trial period for your target customers – one that’s long enough for them to see the value of your product while short enough to push urgency to intolerable levels at the end of the trial.

#6: Chase up free trial users who cancel or don’t subscribe

No matter how effective your upselling strategies are, a lot of free trial users simply aren’t going to convert into paying customers. This is all part of the SaaS marketing challenge and you don’t have to give up just because free trial users either don’t upgrade or cancel before the first payment is taken.

Instead, you should run follow-up campaigns once the trial period is over, giving them reason to subscribe to a paid plan.

You can automate these campaigns to run once the trial ends and you may get results from sending the same campaign to all ex-trailers. However, you’ll often get the best results by creating multiple automated campaigns and targeting them to different segmented audiences with more relevant messages.

For example, users who only logged in a couple of times and never really used your software are unlikely to respond to follow-up campaigns for paid upgrades but they might be tempted back for another free trial. Meanwhile, heavy users who achieved plenty during their free trial may be more responsive to calls for signing up to a paid plan or some extra incentive, such as offering them the first month free if they sign up for a year’s subscription.

You can continue to deliver upselling campaigns to users long after the trial period ends, too. For example, you can inform users of new features, affordable plans or other updates that make your product more appealing to them. You can see this from Dropbox, which informs its previous subscribers of updates that make the platform more capable at the same price point.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to bombard free trial users with emails after the trial ends because they’re more likely to unsubscribe if they’re receiving messages that offer no value to them. This is another reason why delivering relevant emails to users, rather than sending generic messages to everyone, gives you a better shot at recapturing the interest of free trial users who churned.

Upselling strategies for free plans

In this section, we turn our attention to upselling strategies for SaaS companies using free plans as a lead generation strategy, instead of (or in addition to) free trials.

Here are the strategies we’re looking at:

Feature limits: Encourage upgrades by limiting access to high-value features.Usage limits: Encourage upgrades by restricting usage on your free plan.Limit customer service: Reserve the best customer service for paid plans.In-app upgrade prompts: Prompt users to upgrade when they try to complete certain actions.Feature promotion: Tease free users by promoting paid features and updates.Power users: Identify the free users most likely to upgrade and prioritise these in your upselling campaigns.Free temporary upgrades: Give users a taste of what it’s like to be a paying cust.

While the strategies in the previous section focused on maximising the value for users during the trial period, this time we’re taking the opposite approach by limiting value through various restrictions. Essentially, free trials have the intrinsic restriction of time while free plans have to create upgrade incentives through other means: namely, by showing what can be achieved with the software but falling just short of the needs paying customers have.

#7: Limit features on your free plan

The most obvious way to encourage upgrades from a free plan is to limit features and this is often the least disruptive for the end user, as it’s expected that free versions of a paid product would have certain features missing. Features often make compelling upgrade incentives, too, because users are getting something new rather than simply being able to do more of the same.

WIth strategic feature limitations, you can create upgrade paths for products that grow with users as their needs become more advanced – something that’s especially effective for B2B SaaS products.

In the screenshot below, you can see a section of SendinBlue‘s pricing page with the free version on the left and progressively more expensive plans in each column to the right.

SendinBlue’s free plan is actually one of the most generous and you have to scroll quite far down the feature comparison page to see so many missing from the free plan. However, the company chooses the features that stand out for users willing to pay for email marketing software, such as A/B testing, a landing page builder and other incentives.

These are features you would have to pay good money for with other software solutions, so the combination of SendinBlue’s email marketing software, with no send limit and these features, makes it a compelling option for businesses. And, you can see part of the upgrade path with the quantity of emails users can send and landing pages they can create.

You can see something similar from EngageBay, which also happens to offer a generous free CRM and marketing automation platform, with limited features. In this case, the company includes a landing page builder on its free plan but limits the features of the builder itself, including the number of landing pages users can build.

Feature limitations can be effective but there are several challenges with this approach. First of all, it can be difficult to determine which limitations are most effective at encouraging upgrades from each plan and you’ll have to do a lot of testing if you really want to maximise upgrades. Another issue is that some users simply won’t sign up in the first place because certain features they want aren’t available on your free plan – especially if any of your competitors are offering these features for free. So you have to keep a constant eye on the market, your competitors and user behaviour to determine the most effective limitations.

This can be particularly challenging if you have feature-rich software and several plans that need to incentivise upgrades from the previous one.

#8: Limit usage on your free plan

Limiting software usage has become one of the most common ways to separate plans in the age of SaaS and this can be an effective way to encourage upgrades from a free plan, too. For example, Zapier offers a free plan that allows users to automate 100 tasks per month. There are feature upgrades on each plan, too, but the key differentiation Zapier places at the top of the comparison page is the number of tasks users can automate.

You’ll also find a lot of SaaS companies price their plans on a per-user basis, meaning customers have to pay more for every user account required on the system. So your free plan might cover one user (or a small number of users) with customers having to upgrade to cover larger teams – another effective strategy for B2B software.

Some usage limitations are unique to certain types of software. For example, if you’re ever in the market for a CRM or email marketing software, you’ll often find plans are priced on the number of contacts you store on your system or the number of emails you can send.

If you take a look at the page for MailerLite, the free plan covers users for up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails with pricing reaching as high as $1,915/month for up to 600,000 subscribers and 7.2 million emails with custom pricing available for users with higher demands.

Again, there are some feature differences between the free plan and paid plans but not a great deal and MalierLite’s pricing is largely determined by usage.

The great thing about usage limitation is that users who truly need to upgrade will reach their limits and have little choice other than upgrading. This relies on need rather than the more emotional leverage of feature-driven upgrades but you can combine the two if you want to exploit both triggers. Usage limits also allow you to open more features up for your free plan, which means users can get a more accurate picture of what paid plans have to offer.

#9: Limit customer service on your free plan

Another common way to encourage upgrades from free plans is to offer the bare minimum in customer support. Again, this is justifiable on the basis that you’re not making any money from free subscribers but there’s an even better justification: paying customers deserve the better support options – especially those paying for your most expensive plans.

Essentially, your free plan acts as an indefinite free trial for new users to get familiar with your software and also provides an option for non-professional users who are never going to buy into a paid product. Your paid plans are for more serious users and the pricier plans are designed for professional, business and enterprise use so it makes sense that the latter enjoy premium customer support.

This works as an upgrade incentive, too, because serious users who need flawless performance require rapid responses to any issues they encounter. This is particularly effective for business software where users rely on your product to make money or get through the working day. These customers lose money when they experience issues with your product so they’re willing to pay a little more for the added insurance of having premium support, even if they don’t need the other features on offer.

#10: Use in-app prompts to encourage upgrades

We’ve talked about in-app messaging several times already in this article so I’ll keep this one short. The only point I want to make here is that you can use these in-app interactions to prompt upgrades when users try to access a premium feature or reach a usage limit.

This isn’t reserved for B2B software, either. Here, you can see a prompt inside Spotify when a free user “discovers” a premium offer, such as skipping too many tracks, trying to create a playlist or download a track.

Spotify doesn’t make these features inaccessible in its app; it allows users to navigate the software in the same way as paid users and hits them with these upgrade prompts when they try to do something reserved for premium plans.

HubSpot also does this with its free software options, prompting users to sign up when they try to access a feature reserved for paid plans.

The danger with this strategy is that you can frustrate users if they’re constantly trying to access features and getting hit with upgrade prompts. As I’ve said several times in this article, you have to find a balance between encouraging signups and not hurting the experience of using your product that free users might give up altogether.

#11: Promote paid features to free users

You can tempt free users to upgrade by promoting paid features in email marketing campaigns – both existing features and new ones as they roll out. With existing premium features, you’ll have to show the value they add with stats, case studies and other demonstrations that show free users they’ll benefit from gaining access to these features.

Try leveraging the fear of missing out by highlighting how your other customers benefit from the features in question.

For new features, you can simply inform free users with announcement emails introducing new features as they roll out – as you can see in this example from Mailchimp:

You can also promote premium features inside your software with in-app announcements and prompts with messages like: “Hey! Did you know you could [feature description] on our Basic plan?”.

Another strategy worth exploring is giving free users temporary access to premium features. This gives them time to get familiar with the feature and start getting value from it, only to face the prospect of losing it unless they upgrade to a paid plan. It hurts to lose something we’ve come to enjoy and this leads nicely into our next strategy for encouraging free-to-paid upgrades.

#12: Identify your power users (who are most likely to upgrade)

As I mentioned earlier, sending generic messages to all users can get results but you’re always going to achieve more by delivering targeted messages to users, addressing their needs with greater relevance. The point of this targeting is to maximise the likelihood of recipients responding to your message and upgrading to a paid plan.

Taking this concept further, you can exploit the access you have to user session data to identify usage patterns that indicate how likely free users are to upgrade. With a software analytics platform like Mixpanel, you can identify power users who are getting the most out of your free plan and also have the most to gain by upgrading.

You can prioritise these users in your upselling campaigns and tailor your messages to acknowledge how much they’re achieving with the free plan of your software while showcasing what they’ll have to gain from the upgrade. You can delve deeper into this data, too, to see which users are going in heavy with specific features and may benefit from certain pro features, which you can use to inform the feature promotion campaigns we discussed earlier.

Mixpanel is a great analytics system for software companies and you’ll find plenty of other great tools in our top recommendations for SaaS CRO and analytics tools.

#13: Offer users a free (temporary) upgrade

One of the most effective strategies for upgrading free users to paid plans is to give them a free upgrade – for a short period of time. Let’s say you give free users a free month on your Pro plan, giving them a whole month to use pro features, get used to the premium experience and enjoy the benefits of a more powerful software tool. When this month comes to an end, free users have to go back to the bare minimum service and miss out on all of the added value they’ve gotten used to.

The bar of expectation has been forced higher and the plan these users are signed up to no longer meets their expectations.

The only way to satisfy these needs and recover the extra value they’ve been enjoying for the past month is to upgrade to the Pro plan. You’ll find people are quite resistant to losing something they’ve gotten used to having and feel a sense of ownership over, which is why this strategy is so effective.

This strategy pairs perfectly with a pricing strategy that uses a free plan to generate leads and then hits free users who don’t upgrade within, say, the first six months with a free upgrade to push them over the edge. Alternatively, you could target power users (as covered in the previous section) or users who show usage patterns that suggest they could be tempted to upgrade if they’re given the extra emotional push.

Upselling strategies for freemium products, free tools, etc.

In this final section, we’re looking at upselling strategies for freemium products, free software and free tools. For these types of products, the vast majority of your users are paying nothing at all and you have to convert enough of these people into paying customers to turn a profit.

Some of the biggest names in SaaS run freemium software or use free products for lead generation and we’ve got four strategies to discuss:

Free tools: Use free tools as a lead generation strategy for upselling/cross-selling to paid products.Monetise usage: Provide free software but monetise usage to generate revenue.Monetise resources: Provide free software but monetise resources.Ad-free upgrade: Run ads in the free version of your software and offer a paid upgrade to remove ads.

The psychology of upselling free users on these types of products is very different from free trials and free plans where there’s typically more expectancy that users are trying out software they’ll end up paying for. With freemium products and free tools, most users probably expect to use the software for free indefinitely so you often have to invest a lot in lead generation to build enough of a user base to hit the volume of paid users required to make a profit.

Then, you have to actually give these users enough reason to make the jump from free to paid software.

#14: Use free tools as an upselling/cross-selling strategy

HubSpot‘s most popular product is its 100% free-for-life CRM platform that acts as a lead generation strategy for getting businesses signed up so the company can promote its paid products. So, in this case, the free product acts as a gateway into the HubSpot network of paid software and the genius behind the company’s marketing strategy is that its paid products enhance the capabilities of its CRM.

While most of HubSpot’s competitors charge for their CRM and include email marketing, automation and other features as an all-in-one package, HubSpot offers up a quality CRM that costs absolutely nothing. It also offers free plans for its marketing, sales and customer support products (with heavy feature and usage limitations) but the upgrade incentives come thick and fast once business owners realise they need more advanced features.

HubSpot is targeting large businesses with its paid products but its free CRM attracts users of all businesses sizes and, being one of the biggest names in marketing software, almost every other platform on the market integrates with HubSpot. So, even if companies want to use the free CRM and integrate with cheaper alternatives to HubSpot’s paid products, they’re still signed up to the HubSpot experience.

As these businesses grow, their needs become more advanced and budgets increase, which means they could be more likely to sign up for HubSpot’s paid products to get a fully integrated, all-in-one solution. This allows HubSpot to play the long game with lead nurturing, upselling and cross-selling campaigns – and it’s in a good position as a market leader charging enterprise-level fees for its paid products.

#15: Monetise usage of your free product

If your free product is the product (unlike HubSpot), then you have to explore other ways to monetise your offering, either through paid plans or other means. One effective way to do this can be through monetising usage and we touched on this earlier while talking about usage limitations as an upselling strategy on free plans.

However, you have to be more careful with limiting usage on a product that’s meant to be free for most users and Google Drive is a perfect example of this. Google entered the market offering a free, cloud hosted alternative to Microsoft Office that charged businesses and consumers alike.

Google offers paid business versions of Drive but the basic version is open to everyone for free. Even still, Google monetises the free version of its software by giving users 15GB of free storage and charging for additional storage once users inevitably exceed the limit.

Google has enhanced this monetisation strategy by handing out two years’ worth of free storage to users who buy Chromebook laptops and other Google devices. I remember testing out the first Pixelbook and getting 100GB of free storage for two years, which I quickly used and exceeded. Before the two years were even up, it was too much hassle to move my files elsewhere and I was paying for additional storage, purely for the sake of convenience.

I’m confident that, even if I hadn’t exceeded the 100GB of free storage by the time the two-year offer ended, I would have paid to keep whatever space I was using rather than move everything over to another solution that I would have to pay for anyway.

As we’ve established through several examples in this article, it’s difficult to give something up once you’re used to having it – especially if it’s something that feels tangible, measurable or quantifiable.

#16: Monetise the use of resources in your free product

Similar to the concept of monetising usage, another approach you’ll find many SaaS companies take with freemium or free tools is charging for certain resources. For example, Canva offers a capable graphic design tool aimed at people who don’t want to deal with the complexities of professional design software.

Canva’s free software gives open access to almost all of the tool’s functionality while the paid version offers a small set of advanced features that allow users to resize designs and save PNGs with transparent backgrounds – among other things. For basic needs, not having these features may be mildly inconvenient but invaluable to more demanding users, such as social media marketers who want to create professional-looking graphics quickly.

Aside from offering a paid upgrade option, Canva monetises the free version of its software through images, videos and other resources that are only available through a Pro membership. Previously, free users could pay for these resources individually, even without a Pro account, but the company seems to have changed this strategy slightly.

Canva still allows free users to access thousands of images, videos and other resources for free but many of the higher-quality resources are reserved for paying users. So, even if free users aren’t concerned with the paid features reserved for the Pro plan, they might be compelled by getting access to the paid resources available through the platform.

#17: Run ads on your free software (with ad-free upgrades)

One of the most common strategies for monetising freemium software is to run ads on the free version and then charge for a paid, ad-free upgrade. This is the key strategy employed by Spotify and it’s more effective with consumer-aimed SaaS products, especially content apps where ads fit seamlessly into the experience.

Spotify doesn’t only rely on ad-free streaming as the selling point of its Premium plan, though. It also offers several Premium features that enhance the experience of using the app, including unlimited search, unlimited track skips, the ability to create playlists and download tracks for playing offline.

The ad-free experience is a key part of the Premium upgrade but it’s enhanced by other capabilities that turn the app into an open search platform for music and podcasts – a personal library for saving your favourite music and receiving personalised recommendations, driven by Spotify’s AI recommendation engine.

Turn more free users into paying customers

In this article, we’ve looked at some of the most common upselling strategies used by SaaS companies to turn free users into paying customers. As we’ve established, you have to take different approaches to upselling free trial users, free plan subscribers and freemium users who all have different needs and intentions when they sign up. Another key takeaway from the strategies that we’ve looked at today is that you have to design your products in a way that encourages upgrades – you can’t simply rely on email marketing campaigns asking users to upgrade.

Each of the examples we’ve looked at in this article considers the mindset of free users and how you can establish the balance between delivering enough value to keep users engaged with your free offering while also holding enough back to incentivise the paid upgrades.

As always, we’d love to hear any feedback you have on the strategies we’ve discussed in this article – especially if you think anything else should be added to this list.

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