We are email marketing agency. If you try to identify which category we are in, it is either marketing agency, or digital marketing agency. In this article, I will tell you about tools we use in our business for marketing and sales.
Before explaining the purpose behind each tool we use, I would like to provide you with their list below.
- Pipedrive
- ActiveCampaign
- Thrive themes quiz builder
- Thrivecart
- Zendesk Chat
- Yandex Metrica
- Calendly
Furthermore, below is in depth description of each tool and its purpose.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a CRM (Customer-relationship management). I personally used many different CRMs in the past, such as Zoho, SmartSheets, Simple Spreadsheet and others. However, when I tested pipedrive, I fell in love with it. Why? It is “iphone simple”.
How do we use pipedrive? We have multiple pipelines. In pipedrive, pipelines are the sale funnels. Here is the snapshot of our most common pipedrive which we use every day.
This is just one pipeline. In this pipeline we have six stages:
- Lead in
- In contact
- Meeting
- Proposal
- Negotiation
- Follow Up
The general goal of this pipeline – is to close a deal. The sub-purpose for this and any other pipeline – is to move a deal from one stage to another (left to right). For example, if I chat on Zendesk chat or via email with a prospect, my next goal is to get on a call with him/her, the end result of which should be them hiring me to write a proposal for them. After I submit the proposal, there are three possible outcomes:
– They want to negotiate the price.
– They end up hiring us.
– They become cold prospect.
If you open any specific deal, you can see how long they have been focusing on each stage.
Pipedrive has simple reporting feature, which gives you a report, based on how you performed at a specific period of time.
Based on this report, you can see how much effort you put in, and how much money you made. This way, if you want to double what you make, you know how much work you need to do.
ActiveCampaign
We use ActiveCampaign as our marketing automation tool, as well our email marketing.
Most of our leads we manually add to Pipedrive, same as characteristics of each lead, as well as its status – like Prospect, Client and past client. See below.
This information is passed on to ActiveCampaign as well, which in turn triggers different kinds of automations. For examples, if an existing clients becomes a past client, it triggers automation which is called emNYC | 99 | Review and Referral Request . There are three emails in this automation. In first email, we ask for a review, in the second – we ask for referral, and in third – we offer them a continuation service.
We have many other similar automation in ActiveCampaign, especially, if somebody opted in via our website. We have different kinds of funnel.
In addition, we have Welcome automation, where we do not sell but nurture our lead.
ActiveCampaign does the heavy lifting when it comes to marketing. Even more, we get some conversion via ActiveCampaign. Typically, we convert customers via phone/skype conversation or in person meeting, but sometimes, it happens via automatic emails we send.
Thrive Themes Quiz Builder
We use Thrive Themes Quiz Builder as the main automatic funnel. First, we capture visitors’ email. Second, we collect information based on their answers in quiz builder. And third, we offer customized solution based on their answers.
At the back end, I created a logic with 10 different landing pages, and 10 different videos. Based on the people’s responses, they land on one of those 10 different landing pages, every single one of which has a specifically designed personalized video.
By the way, for video hosting in this case, I use paid Vimeo account vs free one or youtube. I have more control with the video player. I just do not want people to be able to redirect to different platforms, like they can do with youtube videos.
If a visitors go through this funnel and do not buy, they go to ActiveCampaign, where the system follows up with them automatically.
Thrivecart
We use Thrivecart for cart checkout. It integrates nicely with services like Stripe and PayPal. Also, it integrates nicely with ActiveCampaign for marketing purposes. We use Thrivecart because it is simple and easy to set up. Aslo, it is one time fee and no subscription needed. In addition, we can use it for many businesses and not just one.
Zendesk Chat
After we added Support service to our site, we added chat option as well, so people could ask us any kind of questions at any time. In the first day after we did it, I got two new clients, which came to $6,000 revenue for both client. I was surprisingly shocked how well it worked. Now, we have this chat window on 24/7, and it is linked to my phone, in case I am not in front of the computer, so I could respond immediately.
As one of my clients said: “I wrote inside of this chat window and expected the automatic response from a robot, and I was not expecting to hear from anybody live”. It is great experience, and I love that we provide it. In today’s world, it is easy to automate a lot of things, but something like direct communication with the client – should not be automated.
Yandex Metrica
We use Yandex Metrica to see how well our site performs in terms of positioning buttons, links and etc. Yandex Metrica tracks all your visitors behavior, and provides you with easy to understand heat maps, scroll maps, and even replays of unique customer visits.
Based on Yandex Metrica reports, we sometimes revise our menu options, to improve the customer experience. For example, if nobody clicks on one menu option, it is unuseful to keep it.
As you can see from the image above, nobody clicked on Tools and Contact Us. The Contact Us option is new, so it does not have enough data, but Tools we might remove, since nobody used it.
Calendly
This is the simple but the most powerful tool, which helps us schedule appointments with prospective clients. After we send either cold or warm messages to our prospects, close to 40% never respond to us. However, they schedule appointment directly through the app, which is a shocking number, but it is true. We love Calendly for its features and simplicity.
Those are the tools that we use for marketing and sales in our agency. How about you? What tools do you use? I would like to learn more, please provide your recommendations below.