Cheat sheet: Five marketing, automation, and growth tools worth using

Over the past 13 years, having been involved in marketing and growth for technology companies as well as my own startups, I have seen tremendous change in both the marketing disciplines’ impact on business as well as the availability of tools to fast-track company growth. 

The role of marketers has changed significantly with the huge shift from traditional marketing to digital marketing. COVID has affected company strategies everywhere and for marketers it has meant seeking new and improved ways of transporting their message to their target audience, often with a reduced headcount or budget.

One of the first places to start was assessing the technologies and tools used to drive growth, marketing, automation and ultimately, revenue.

In 2019, Leftronic reported that there were 7000 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies in the marketing field alone, which poses the question; which ones are going to help us deliver results?

I reached out to other marketing professionals in tech across Australia to see what their #1 go-to is and how these tools are helping them deliver results.

So here are five of the best and why they use them, including my own go-to.

1. Smartly.io

Type: Social Ad Manager.

Used by: Canva global paid social, display and programmatic growth lead  Lumpur Kuo.

“My number #1 platform is Smartly.io. We use it to automate paid social advertising (Facebook, Snapchat, etc) campaigns, and to run campaign optimisation and creative production at scale across multiple languages and markets,” Kuo says.

“It has enabled us to grow the number of markets and languages supported by 4x and increased creative production output by 2x.”

2. Marketo Engage

Type: Marketing Automation.

Used by: Adobe senior growth operation manager APAC Alexandre Pauly.

Pauly says, “Our marketing teams in Australia and across APAC use Marketo Engage extensively. The platform can connect with many other products and enhance our marketing tech stack in the most reliable way.

“In particular, lead scoring and lead lifecycle are key functionalities that we leverage to close the instinctive gap between marketing and sales, and to put only the most interested, and interesting leads in front of our sales teams.”

[Editor’s note: Adobe acquired Marketo in 2018 for US$4.75 billion]

3. WordPress + Envato

Type: Content Management System (CMS).

Used by: Myself; K2fly global marketing manager, growth and automation, Ronan Bray.

Having spent a fortune on web developers both in my entrepreneurial pursuits and full-time roles, I always wanted to be able to build a website myself. Thanks to WordPress (and Envato in combination) I have now built more than 30 of them.   

I love WordPress for the flexibility and control it provides so that you can design, build, and manage content without a developer. Now, when I have an idea for something new there is no longer that cost or delay; I can do it myself immediately. Given WordPress now powers around 40% of the web, it means that nearly all the tools I use for growth, amplification and lead generation have a seamless integration which has played a huge role in the results I have been able to achieve. The combination of all this has helped me grow our web traffic by 300% and generate in excess of 950 B2B leads this year alone with minimal spend. 

4. Segment

Type: Customer data platform.

Used by: BugHerd head of growth Hennika Kestila.

Kestila says, “As marketers, we know the pain of implementing tracking pixels on our sites from various marketing platforms and project management tools. Getting developers involved can be time consuming and frustrating. Not to mention the difficulty in getting a single view of the customer interactions with your company across marketing websites, product usage, emails, conversions and so forth.

“Segment brings all of that together and works almost like an extension cable or powerboard. You plug Segment in once and then connect your marketing tools to it. With Segment you define the events and customer actions you wish to track. Segment then connects this data to all your marketing tools giving you a consistent view of these actions across your applications — Google Analytics, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, Intercom, email management systems and anything else you are using and tracking conversions in. Segment also makes it simple to add something new to your technology stack without hassling a developer. As long-term users of Segment at BugHerd, this has helped eliminate hours of manual work and makes our marketing tech stack simpler to manage.”

5. Klaviyo

Type: Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Used by: Kate Collinson Digital Consulting founder, eCommerce consultant and growth marketer Kate Collinson.

Collinson says, “As an eCommerce consultant and growth marketer working with Shopify and Shopify Plus eCommerce stores to grow their revenue online, the tool I cannot live without (aside from Shopify) is Klaviyo. eCommerce is more competitive than ever, and customers visit online stores from a variety of different channels and devices.

“This makes capturing and nurturing a lead along the customer journey vital. Klaviyo is a CRM and email tool specifically designed for eCommerce with a focus on automation and customer behaviour. I use it not only to convert leads to customers through automation, but as our single source of truth for customer data. Through unifying our Shopify data with our email engagement metrics and other tools such as Facebook and lead generation tools, Klaviyo becomes the engine house of much of our owned and paid marketing strategy.”

My marketing stack

The marketing tech stack built by Ronan Bray. Source: supplied.