B2B Connection

Media and design tools encompass a wide range of categories, including everything from graphic design and layouts to audio and multimedia. Some, such CAD design, are an integral part of several industries, while other brands and content creators are flocking towards podcasts and video presentations as a form of engagement during these unprecedented times. It is important, then, to have easy-to-use software which not only comes with the support to get you up and running, but also the right set of features to help you bring your designs from concept to reality. This year, TrustRadius is awarding the best in customer support, feature set, and usability among some of the most common categories of Media and Design tools in use today. The Best of Media and Design Tools winners are:  Best Feature Set – Audio Editing Audacity, 1st Place Adobe Audition, 2nd Place Best Customer Support – Computer-Aided Design (CAD) SketchUp, 1st Place Autodesk Inventor, 2nd Place Best Feature Set – Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Autodesk Inventor, Feature Set, 1st Place SOLIDWORKS, Feature Set, 2nd Place AutoCAD, Feature Set, 3rd Place Best Customer Support – Desktop Publishing Adobe InDesign, 1st Place Best Feature Set – Desktop Publishing Adobe InDesign, 1st Place […]

The Digital Marketing Tools category for this year’s Best Of Awards covers software products that help marketing, sales, and other business professionals manage and improve their marketing strategies. Digital marketing tools offer users ways to reach their customers online, on mobile, and in person to increase the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Products in this category cover website and mobile analytics, gamification, direct client outreach automation, and branded URLs. The Best Feature Set Winners provide extensive, customizable features. The Best Customer Support Winners highlight vendors who can provide expertise to all user levels and are available to help users navigate complex processes or problems. Finally, winners of the Best Usability Award offer intuitive interfaces and high ease of use for marketing, sales, engineers, and analysts alike. This year, the Best Of Digital Marketing Tools winners are: Best Customer Support – Direct Mail Automation Sendoso, 1st Place Best Feature Set – Direct Mail Automation Sendoso, 1st Place Best Customer Support – Gamification Kahoot!, 1st Place Best Usability – Gamification Kahoot!, 1st Place Best Feature Set – Gamification Kahoot!, 1st Place Best Customer Support – Mobile Marketing EZ Texting, 1st Place Best Customer Support – Video Marketing Dubb, 1st Place Vidyard, 2nd […]

WordPress is a popular content management system that lets you build a website without writing any code.  Despite its relative ease of use, it can still be intimidating for new users.  In the video below, I go over the basics of WordPress, including what you need to launch a site, how to install a theme and plugins, and how to start producing content. Intro I use WordPress for my personal hobby blog, but I have also used it to build marketing sites and eCommerce sites.  WordPress can be intimidating for new users, so I’m going to go over the basics to get you started with the program.  I’ve added timestamps in the description of the video if you want to jump to a certain part of it.  Table of Contents When to Use WordPress Hosting Services and Domains WordPress Themes Dashboard Jetpack Posts Media Library Pages Comments Feedback Appearance Customize Menus Theme Editor Plugins Users Settings When to Use WordPress WordPress is a great tool for people who want to create a website, but either don’t know the coding necessary to create a site, or want to use a simple drag and drop interface to save time.  There are other […]

I’m Brian Mackenzie from TrustRadius, and in this post, I’ll be going over the basics of PhotoShop. PhotoShop is a popular program for creating graphics, print marketing materials, and editing photos.  It can also be intimidating for new users, with many tools and features that aren’t easy to use for beginners.  For that reason, we made this video going over the basics of PhotoShop, and how to use all the tools the program has to offer. Intro I use PhotoShop to create video graphics, channel banners, and to touch up photos and graphs for blog posts. Photoshop offers all sorts of advanced features that you can learn as you use it more, but today I’ll be showing you enough to get you started with the program. Throughout this video I’ll be going over when you should use PhotoShop, how to make a project, what each PhotoShop tool does, as well as how layers work. There are time stamps in the description if you want to jump to a specific portion of the video. ToC 1.       What is PhotoShop used for? 2.       Creating a project, and learning the interface a. Move Tool b. Marquee Tool […]

Today’s guest post is from Scott Baradell, Founder and CEO of Idea Grove. For more than 15 years, Scott has been a thought leader on the future of public relations. He created one of the original PR blogs, Media Orchard, which at one time had a larger audience than PRWeek. His focus in recent years has been on growing his agency by helping his technology clients grow. In 2020, Scott began writing Trust Signals: The New PR, outlining a new framework for the practice of public relations, to be published by LionCrest in 2021. Put simply, “trust signals” are evidence points, from media coverage and online reviews to website “trust badges,” that make people believe in your brand. Scott has an Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) from the PRSA and speaks on PR and marketing topics at industry events nationwide.  To borrow a phrase from George W. Bush’s now-famous critique of President Trump’s inaugural address: people are believing some “weird s–t” these days. Such as the following:  Starting on the social media site Reddit and spreading like wildfire across the internet, thousands of people shared content last month accusing the furniture retailer Wayfair of trafficking children. These charges were not based on police investigations, journalistic […]

Not so long ago, the majority of contact center products were primarily on-premise installations (like most other types of business software). But nowadays, cloud-based software has taken center stage and all the major vendors in the market have online offerings. However, a handful of large players in the market still have on-premise versions available too.  For example, Avaya has both an on-premise deployment of their IX Contact Center and a cloud-based ‘Contact Center as a Service’ (CCaaS) platform. Cisco* also offers cloud-based on-premise contact center deployment options. There are also still several companies hanging onto on-premise deployments or considering adopting one. This post will walk through the 7 biggest benefits of transitioning to cloud-based contact center software to help you convince any on-prem stalwarts that cloud is the way to go.  These benefits include:  Reduced costs Faster implementation Increased scalability  Greater Security  Ease of Remote Working Improved Customer Experiences Increased in agent productivity  Why Switch to a Cloud-based Contact Center Solution? #1 Reduced Costs One big benefit of deploying a cloud-based contact center is cost savings. On-premise products typically have large, upfront licensing fees, as well as additional maintenance and upgrade costs. Lack of these fees helps make cloud-based contact […]

It is easy to get lost in the abundance of information that comes with identifying and understanding the most important contact center software features. Some features may appear very similar to others, while others may appear highly complex and unclear.  Dozens of features make up a strong contact-center solution. It is important to cover all of your bases before choosing the best tool for your company; so that is why we have provided the top 15 most essential features for your contact center’s success. This post will help guide you in your call-center software selection process or help to shed light on fundamental features for new managers or agents to familiarize themselves with.    Necessary Contact Center Software Capabilities #1 Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is the most crucial tool when trying to maximize your call center operations. ACD works with Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems to allow you to easily route inbound calls to agents or the appropriate recipient. It operates as the primary terminal for many call center features, such as skills-based routing, language-based routing, call monitoring and more.  #2 Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Interactive Voice Response (IVR) interacts with inbound […]

When was the last time you took a break from customer journeys to invest in your professional journey as a marketer? If you feel like your journey has been stunted because of the metrics, content curation and campaigns that have consumed your schedule, it’s time to make time for a marketing event this year.  Marketing events are an excellent opportunity to learn about the latest trends, technology and big ideas across industries. You will be inspired by award-winning speakers and have the chance to connect with thousands of professionals on similar tracks like you.  Whether you are interested in purchasing new technology, learning advanced skills for the tools you already use, or getting inspiration to improve your touchpoints with customers on their complex journeys, there are plenty of leaders who want to share their success stories with you. Here are 7 must-attend marketing events in 2020 that are the right fit for mid-to-senior level marketing professionals who want to improve their marketing automation strategy. These marketing events are listed in order of date. 1. Adobe Summit Date: March 29- April 2 Location: Las Vegas, NV Price: $2095, Full Conference Pass Adobe Summit is designed for the enterprise marketer who is […]

According to a survey performed by Adobe, consumers spend an average of 5 hours a day checking both work and personal email. Respondents to the survey also said that they would rather receive marketing via email than by direct mail or other channels. If you have a list of contacts and quality content, email marketing can seem as simple as clicking ‘send’. If you want to generate more click-throughs, however, here are some tips that can increase engagement. 1. Get Personal There is more to personalization than using someone’s name in an email subject line. Target their interests by considering where they live, who they work for, and their buying history.  A great way to get details about a customer is to ask the right questions in your signup form. Be sure to get their name, address, company, and any other information you may wish to use to generate custom recommendations. People are typically more interested in buying products they’ve already shown an interest in than products featured at random.  Another personal touch that can make customers feel important is signing the email with a real signature and name. A signature and friendly language make an email seem as if […]

Email is a crucial channel for modern business communication. The software you use to power your email strategy makes all the difference— not only in what kinds of communication, personalization, and reporting you can set up, but also how easily you can do it. If you’re researching, evaluating, and/or implementing a new email platform, make sure you have a handle on your organization’s needs. The templates in this post will give you a head start on formulating your requirements and your questions for vendors. Whether you want an email marketing tool, or a fully-fledged marketing automation system, the TrustRadius community’s insights will help you find the right email service provider (ESP) for you. Email Platform Requirements Template Here is a sample list of requirements for an organization with 1,001-5,000 employees in the Information Services industry, which is an affiliate of a company with over 10,000 employees in the Financial Services industry. It was created by a real buyer in the TrustRadius community. Their marketing department was evaluating ESPs for their own use, as well as for use by other divisions of the parent company.  The list includes all of their must-haves and a few nice-to-haves for a new email marketing […]

Hubspot’s ‘human’ voice, vast collection of educational materials and networking events have solidified its place as the authority on inbound marketing — and also as one of the most popular marketing automation platforms in the field.  Hubspot has many draws: its forever free CRM, its integrated sales, marketing and service hubs, and its wide network of support.  But Hubspot might not be the right fit for everyone.  We will give you a break down of Hubspot — what this tool is, who it is most appropriate for, and what users have to say about this platform. Then, we will give you the same information on 5 of its top competitors.  These top 5 competitors were chosen based on comparison traffic on TrustRadius. When buyers explore Hubspot, they most frequently compare it to these 5 tools. Let’s jump in. Hubspot: Getting to Know a Marketing Automation Favorite Hubspot offers software solutions for sales teams, marketers and service reps. While Hubspot offers sales and service software, it is most widely reviewed for its marketing automation solution. Hubspot’s marketing automation software has received 1479 reviews and ratings on TrustRadius (overall score of 8.4), which gives us key insights on what users really think about […]

I recently sat down to have a conversation with Jane Menyo and Tiffany Beddow, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing and Director of Customer Marketing at ON24 (a leading webinar software). We discussed what makes for the best webinar software, and what webinar trends are on the horizon for 2020. Despite the emergence of Unified-Communications-as-a-Service Platforms (UCaaS) which aim to consolidate every online communications tool into one, a majority of buyers actually enjoy having separate tools for web conferencing, webinar, and even VoIP. There are several reasons why buyers want to invest in a webinar-focused tool for their online events. Let’s dig in. Webinar Benefits Jane and Tiffany shared that one of the biggest benefits of webinar software is its demand generation capabilities. Using webinars for demand generation entails creating informative and engaging sessions that drive leads and accelerate them through their buyer’s journey. Leading webinar tools on the market will provide you with attendee analysis and reporting to analyze the performance of your webinar and its surrounding outreach campaigns. Remember that webinar software is ideal for larger group meetings or online events with wide audiences of up to hundreds or thousands of participants. Owing to this, webinars are typically much […]

Marketing automation platforms—the swiss army knives of marketing—supposedly let you do it all.  They allow you to send out beautiful emails, coordinate social media campaigns, track customer behavior across all marketing channels, play nice with your CRM and give you all the reporting you need.   Yet marketers often have a love-hate relationship with their marketing automation software. We hear complaints like:  “To be able to use its features to the fullest, it requires experienced developers and can be difficult for new users to learn.”  “[There are] no tutorials for new users.” “Reporting on a few key metrics of campaigns could have been more intuitive and straightforward.” These pain points are very real for marketers.  We discuss what those marketing automation software fails are and what you can do to avoid them. 1.  Organizations lack trained professionals to effectively use the tool Marketing automation tools are robust, but they aren’t always user-friendly. Marketers often complain that their tool is difficult to use out-of-the-box, that there aren’t enough training resources, and that onboarding and implementation can be a very slow process.  “The platform requires high maintenance. So you’d need to make sure to have an agency partner or in-house developers to help […]

While most email service providers support contact list management and group aliases, they still aren’t the best at meeting the needs of organizations that need to send out mass emails. Enter email marketing software.  Email marketing is designed to help a company manage consumer interactions⁠—you guessed it, via email. The intention of effective email marketing will create loyalty, boost brand recognition, and drive sales. Key features of email marketing software are subscriber and list management, contact segmentation, email marketing templates, a WYSIWYG interface, and spam testing.  Email marketing should not be confused with marketing automation software, which automates marketing capabilities across multiple channels such as social media, SMS, websites, and email. If your business is primarily focused on email marketing, you may not need to invest in a complex marketing automation platform. However, many marketing automation platforms can also function as email marketing solutions.  If you are just getting started in your search for an email marketing platform that is right for your team, you’ve probably identified Mailchimp as one of the most talked-about solutions. On TrustRadius, Mailchimp is one of the most frequently searched for email marketing tools. While Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing products, there are of course other providers to […]

Email is a vital force in your marketing strategy, but not your only line of communication with customers.  As your social media, SMS messages, and chat boxes become more prominent in your marketing strategy, you need the right tools to handle all the available communication channels.     That’s why we have seen the lines between email marketing and marketing automation software solutions begin to blur. A few years ago, the breakdown of marketing automation vs email marketing would have been simple:  Email marketing software is designed to send “batch and blast” emails with some segmentation, drip campaign, automation and analysis capabilities. Marketing automation software offers automated marketing capabilities across all your marketing channels — social media, SMS, websites, AND email. Multi-channel interactions with leads are all created and tracked within one platform, allowing for greater personalization and intelligent campaigns. But when we see traditional email marketing vendors like MailChimp offering all-in-one marketing platforms that unite campaigns across multiple channels, it makes you wonder:  Are these two types of software becoming one? Is there still a place for standalone email marketing software? The growing overlap between email marketing and marketing automation software solutions can make your research process more complicated.  We want […]

Marketers have a ton of digital tools at their disposal. But when those tools don’t automatically work with each other, it can feel like you are taking steps sideways for every step forward.  “From our own proprietary CRM, to our B2C email database to our B2B marketing automation platform, to event marketing software, our tech stack is fairly fragmented,” explains one TrustRadius user, a Director of Marketing. This fragmentation can create large gaps in customer information and communication when left unaddressed.  That’s where iPaaS software comes in. iPaaS solutions enable marketers to get all their separate tools — no matter the environment — to work together seamlessly. iPaaS products like Zapier and IFTTT let you set sequences for triggers in one application and resulting actions in a different application. “Zapier is a great product if you have a fragmented tech stack like ours. Most marketing teams have multiple software tools that get customer information. Zapier is a great tool for connecting those without using developer resources,” further explains the same user.  Along with Zapier, many TrustRadius users explore how IFTTT can reduce divisions in their stack. These two products support marketers to automate their workflows, streamline their data, and receive […]

70% of marketers say marketing automation software is critical to their success. So what is it, anyway?  Marketing automation occurs when marketers pass the burden of monotonous tasks to software logic to complete. Ideally, your team would define this process once, perform maintenance checkups, track the provided analytics, and take action on those insights. What is marketing automation and why is it used? An automated system allows experienced marketing teams to deliver new customers without increasing employee requisites. Having a lean team is important to achieve company goals and function within budgetary constraints, especially in a startup mindset. Common automation themes include outbound and inbound lead generation, campaign management, workflows, email sequences, reporting, and analytics. Some tools are set up for success in different channels like SMS, email, and social media, or are even native to applications.  A solid marketing automation solution will handle your tasks elegantly, but also provide insights around your campaigns. For example, email automation covers several useful KPIs. It includes things like Open Rate, Click-Through Rate, Unsubscribe Rate, Response Rate, and Bounce Rate.  What are the most important marketing automation features? Automated marketing began with the “email”. By sending emails to your customers and prospects based […]

Amy Paterson is a Marketing professional with over 14 years’ experience planning events, designing ads, website maintenance, building content for web/social/newsletter campaigns, creating and editing marketing materials, and acting as liaison to the sales team of 15 account executives nationwide. She is a graduate of Shippensburg University with a BBA in Marketing. Additionally, Amy is certified in the Adobe Suite, taking classes for Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. Check out some of the software reviews she’s written here. In my experience, direct mail campaigns can prove to be extremely effective and don’t have to be overwhelmingly complicated. We are all inundated with mass amounts of emails every day, so now more than ever conventional mail may be considered a “breath of fresh air” to receive. Although it is more expensive than digital, you may see the ROI is more effective at getting a response. I’ve broken down my success in 5 important points, so here’s how to create a successful direct mail campaign. The Target Narrow in on your audience. Who is your buyer? Understand their pain stake, or why they would benefit from purchasing your product or service. The Mailing List Do you already have a list in-house of existing […]

Today’s Community Contributor is Himanshu Periwal, Vice President of Growth for travel and bookings website ixigo.com. Himanshu has a Bachelor’s of Engineering along with an MBA, and has experience in product marketing and management consulting. He has contributed  ratings and reviews of various marketing products on TrustRadius.  First off, why call it Growth, and not Marketing? In a traditional sense, Marketing is how your business defines and positions your product in order to attract customers. It covers the 4Ps of business: Product, Price, Placement and Promotion. In contrast, Growth has an equal focus on these aspects of marketing along with product-tech led by experimentation. Thus, it empowers marketing to scale and optimize through product and technology capabilities. What is the AARRR ‘Pirate Metrics’ framework?  The AARRR, or Pirate metrics, framework was defined by entrepreneur Dave McClure. An acronym for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral, this methodology allows you to analyze and optimize every step of your customer funnel. This simple framework helps to streamline marketing and product efforts across each of these stages, ensuring your team doesn’t miss out on small yet important marketing requirements. This framework is typically used by marketing, product, engineering teams in the company to split […]

Today’s Community Contributor is Daniel Epstein, a Senior Clinical Quality Analyst at UnitedHealth Group. Daniel has worked in the Healthcare industry for over a decade, and also has extensive experience as a producer and videographer. He has written multiple detailed reviews for collaboration, video editing, and document management products – including MS SharePoint. Starting off as a call center representative in 2007, Daniel worked his way up to site supervisor, learning what works (and doesn’t) for a nationwide network of agents. Experiencing a call center in both rolls, Daniel utilized the capabilities of Sharepoint to allow his teams to work more efficiently. In this article Daniel shares advice on how to use MS SharePoint to help maximize call center employee productivity. Call centers are a necessary evil in our modern world. With even small and medium sized companies doing more business nationally and internationally thanks to advances in technology, walking into a building and asking for assistance isn’t realistic anymore. Mix that with the increasing speed of modern life, and you get customers who expect an immediate solution to their problem when they call in for help. Accepting call centers as a reality, companies are constantly looking for ways to […]