B2B Connection

Today’s Community Contributor is Nate Casimiro. He is the Marketing Operations Manager at Simpleview. Nate purchases, implements and integrates various marketing technology tools that ultimately result in lead generation. He has written several in-depth reviews of marketing and travel software. Travel and tourism is big business in the United States. According to the U.S. Travel Association, direct spending by resident and international travelers averaged $3 billion a day in 2018. Yet despite this, the tourism industry is far from reaching its potential economic impact. The reason: U.S. families are not taking vacations as often as the previous generations that raised them. In fact, 55% of Americans did not use all of their vacation time allotted in 2018, and of those that did, nearly half used that time for errands or time out of work due to illness.  The Forces Behind Tourism Thankfully, nearly every major city in the United States (as well as countless smaller destinations) possess a tourism board that helps market “things to do.” If you’ve ever stopped by a visitors bureau or picked up a visitors guide pamphlet, then you’ve already interacted with one. In an effort to get you and your loved ones outside and exploring […]

Today’s Community Contributor is Eddie Driver, a Product Marketing Manager at PaySimple. Eddie is a seasoned product marketing manager that has worked at SaaS-based companies on a wide range of technology products. These include payment gateway software, survey software, and corporate performance management applications. Check out some of the detailed reviews Eddie has written on tools he has used during his career on TrustRadius. Any Product Marketing or Product Management team should always strive to know as much as they can about their users. Not only why they use your product, but how they use your product. Where do they spend most of their time? How can you use that data to promote relevant features and functionality? Pendo.io is a product analytics and messaging software that allows you to do all of that (and more).  Purchasing Pendo.io is a great step towards being able to learn more about your users and use in-product messaging to drive product adoption. However, Pendo is valuable enough that as soon as people hear it’s being implemented, the requests to get a piece of the action will start piling up quickly. Knowing this, there are a few best practices that will help your organization get […]

Marketing automation software can be called many things…a necessary evil, a means to an end, the thing that keeps you up at night because it accidentally unsubscribed your entire audience. Yet it’s still one of the few pieces of software that modern marketing teams truly can’t live without. It enables marketing teams to save an exponential amount of time by automating routine tasks and triggered workflows in addition to allowing them to track and evaluate the performance of marketing campaigns. All kidding aside, marketing automation platforms can be difficult to figure out how to use at first, and often require a substantial amount of initial setup and configuration. Making sure that you’ve found the tool that matches your current business needs best can make this process easier, and help set you up for future success.  However, the sheer number of tools available on the market (131 are listed on TrustRadius alone!) can make this process seem incredibly daunting. Which products should you look at first? And how should you narrow down the huge field of products available?  This flowchart aims to help you answer these first few key questions about where to start your product search. The flowchart will walk […]

Today’s Community Contributor is Daniel Berry, an SEO Strategist with more than 14 years of professional writing experience. Daniel regularly tries to think outside the box when it comes to SEO, copywriting, social media, lead generation, marketing automation and other areas of digital marketing. He has held a variety of marketing roles for major corporations and small marketing agencies over the past few years, and loves passing on what he learns to others. He has written several detailed reviews on TrustRadius of the tools he uses at work.  There are several things in life where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Take peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for example. Peanuts are okay, but kind of boring by themselves. Fruit is similar. But if you process both of these elements and layer them between slices of bread? It’s pure heaven. Infographics are the same way. While the parts that make up an infographic are nothing new—copy, images, creativity—treating and combining them the right way can create an engaging form of content that people won’t soon forget. According to a survey by Venngage, 40% of marketers say that original graphics like infographics are their best-performing, highest-engaging content format. Wouldn’t you […]

Need help writing a marketing automation software requirements document? We’re here to help! This free marketing automation platform scorecard template can help you compare products so you can make the right decision for your marketing team. Check out this list of 26 key marketing automation requirements, brought to you by buyers who have been through the process before. It will show you the most important areas to consider, and help you determine your minimum requirements. Common Marketing Automation Requirements for Businesses Feature Set Landing pages Emails Automation Lead Scoring Dynamic Web Content SEO/PPC Integration Social Integration Segmentation/Lists Nurture Campaigns Ease of Use Landing Page (LP) Editor Email Editor Set-up and config Single-source log-in Access to Templates Support Global Paid vs. Free / Quality Agency Support Implementation Training Paid vs. Free Breadth Depth Price Price  Terms Adoption Number of Companies using this product User Experience Quality of Account Management Marketing Automation Platform Scorecard Template We also have a free template for evaluating vendors based on your selection criteria. It was compiled by Daniel Englebreston, an experienced marketing technologist. He’s an expert contributor to the TrustRadius community. Thanks, Daniel! Use the scorecard to compare the products on your shortlist head-to-head. That way […]

We are excited to announce the Top Rated Appointment Scheduling Software for 2019! Top Rated awards showcase today’s top-of-the-line products in Appointment Scheduling based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. These awards make the voice of the market the primary decider into the industry’s best products. Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are never influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Acuity Scheduling Acuity Scheduling is an online appointment scheduling product that allows businesses or individuals to automate the scheduling process. Create meetings with multiple attendees in multiple time zones with ease with a scheduling product. Acuity offers integration with a plethora of applications, including accounting and invoicing clients, email marketing products, analytics, CRM, video conferencing, invoicing, and more. Most (90%) of Acuity users on TrustRadius are employed by small businesses. Users like Acuity because it integrates well with many calendar applications and because it gives the user a lot of options to help manage overbooking.  “Acuity Scheduling is used to schedule many types of appointments at my company. Thanks to its two-way API sync with Google Calendar and real-time updating, we […]

We are excited to announce the Top Rated Enterprise Content Management Software for 2019! Top Rated awards showcase today’s top-of-the-line products in Enterprise Content Management Software based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. These awards make the voice of the market the primary decider into the industry’s best products. Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are never influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: M-Files M-Files is an ECM solution that manages data by connecting to, not replacing, existing systems in use by the company. It uses metadata to organize data based on what the data is, not where it is stored. It uses AI to help automatically categorize and organize this data. M-Files still allows for document workflows and task tracking. Choose a cloud based, local install, or hybrid solution for your company. A little more than half (52%) of M-Files users on TrustRadius are from mid-sized companies. Reviewers appreciate M-Files for its mobile application and its search capabilities. “M-Files is being using by the whole organization to store, retrieve, revise and approve documentation. The system uses metadata properties allowing users […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Groove Groove is a multi-faceted sales engagement platform used for account-based sales, providing sales acceleration through CRM and email or calendar integrations, and campaign automation through its “Groove Flow” process engine.  Groove also offers sales enablement through it’s email tracking and sales analytics. Just for ABM, Groove provides account-level analytics and account-based campaign prioritization. Beyond CRM and calendar integration, Groove notably integrates with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, allowing sales reps to connect to important contacts or integrate InMail at various stages of their campaigns. On TrustRadius, the majority of Groove users are from  mid-size companies (67%). Reviewers on TrustRadius love Groove’s workflow consolidation and streamlining for reaching out to large numbers of contacts, its sales acceleration features such as calendar and CRM sync with email (inbound and […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Heatmap and Session Recording Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Hotjar Hotjar is a heatmap and session recording tool that enables marketers to see and understand their website’s conversion funnel. It allows marketers to replay user activity, tag recordings and take notes, as well as suppress user actions that are not meaningful. Hotjar also features a survey tool, which allows UX designers to reach out and quickly gather feedback from site users about their behavior. Hotjar offers pricing for individuals and agencies, and includes a special plan for startup companies.  It is used by marketers and UX designers across companies of all sizes. A majority of  Hotjar users on TrustRadius work in small business and marketing agencies (53%). These users appreciate the interpretability of Hotjar’s recordings and heatmaps, and how it can be used to […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Marketing Analytics Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: HubSpot  HubSpot is a marketing automation platform that is well suited for use by SMBs and growing businesses. It includes features like A/B testing capabilities, ability to generate customized campaign reports, and tracking of metrics such as email open rates and click through rates. HubSpot offers a one-stop automation platform for multiple marketing channels – email, social media, and video. Other features include email marketing, the capacity for hundreds of marketing automation flows, ad management, chatbots, attribution reporting, and SEO tools.  Users of HubSpot on TrustRadius primarily work for small (51%) and midsize (25%) businesses. HubSpot reviewers are impressed with HubSpot’s traffic tracking, marketing automation, analytics capabilities, Gmail integration, and its integrated platform, which helps streamline workflow. “We use HubSpot for our own organization’s marketing and our […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Social Media Customer Service Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Bold360  Bold360 is a customer service solution that enables users to provide personalized customer interactions at scale and helps managers assess agent performance . Bold360’s AI-powered chatbot can engage prospects and customers in conversations customized to their own experience and connect these conversations across channels. These channels include live chat, email, Facebook Messenger, website self-service, SMS, Twitter, and video chat. Features such as the current queue status, canned messages, open chats, and new message alert pop-ups help agents manage their workload, and filter and respond to messages with ease.  One key feature of Bold360 is its real-time messaging, and quick responses. In turn, this also enables simple, cross-departmental communication.  Bold 360 users on TrustRadius primarily hail from enterprises (74%). Reviewers on TrustRadius praise Bold360 for […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Cross-Channel Campaign Management Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Oracle Responsys Oracle Responsys, part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud, is a cross-channel campaign management software. It encompasses email marketing execution, mobile messaging and marketing, as well as ecommerce marketing (e.g. abandoned cart recovery, retargeting, etc.) via its integratibility with the Oracle Commerce Cloud. Oracle Responsys features rich analytics to meet the task of performing attribution analyses of various elements across segments, channels, and display device. The core of Oracle Responsys is its campaign orchestration, allowing marketers to design the customer experience in the visual  automation workflow designer.  On TrustRadius, the majority of Oracle Responsys users are from midsize (57%) companies. Reviewers appreciate Oracle Responsys’ core email design capabilities, ability to send push notifications, and overall  ease-of-use and intuitiveness. “ [Oracle Responsys] allows us to orchestrate […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Webinar Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: BlueJeans BlueJeans is a web conferencing and video calling platform that supplies a complete webinar solution. BlueJeans’ plans provide a low cost option for users hosting 50 person meetings, but scale to support events with up to 15,000 remote viewers. Webinars conducted via BlueJeans Events can be viewed in device agnostic HD video and include user interactivity tools like polling, surveys, and  moderated chat.  Beyond the live experience, BlueJeans provides cloud storage and sharing of events, a calendar integration, and social sharing capabilities.  On TrustRadius, the majority of BlueJeans reviewers come from either small businesses  (35%)  or enterprises (30%). Users praise BlueJeans’ sound and video quality for all situations, the easy-to-use session sign-on experience, and its versatility for use in both small conferences and huddles as well as […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Social Media Monitoring Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Agorapulse Agorapulse is a social media management tool designed to support a business’s ability to manage Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube activity. Users can post content to these channels, provide community engagement, and download reports from a single dashboard.  Agorapulse also provides users with monitoring-specific features such as keyword searches, competitor analysis, and real-time tracking.  Over 90% of Agorapulse’s users on TrustRadius come from small and mid-size businesses, with many reviewers praising the high quality of Agorapulse’s customer service. Reviewers also appreciate the URL tracker, the publishing calendar, and the ability to upload many pieces of content at once. “Agorapulse provides our Marketing Department a terrific platform to schedule all our social media content. Its intuitive interface allows us to create and preview a post […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Mobile Analytics Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Google Analytics   Google Analytics is a popular web analytics tool and has both free and paid versions available. This product offers users tools to help them understand where their web traffic is coming from, view site visitor activity, and analyze key engagement metrics. It includes features such as the ability to view site visitor location, time on page, landing page, and more.  While Google offers both a free standard version of and paid 360 version of Google Analytics, the free version still includes powerful user engagement metrics and analysis features. As a Google product, it seamlessly integrates with other Google products and services.  Together, reviewers from small and midsize businesses make up the majority (67%) of Google Analytics users on TrustRadius. Users on TrustRadius appreciate the fact […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Social Media Marketing Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Agorapulse Agorapulse is a social media management suite that includes many social marketing features: Message and activity aggregation dashboard that allows marketers to comment, post and reply to messages publicly or privately, an AI assistant to suppress noise, and a collaboration inbox that enables  a team of marketers to respond quickly and effectively to customer complaints across social channels. Agorapulse’s analytics allow marketers to identify high performing content and posts, and what type of topics or replies encourage the most shares, replies, likes. The platform also provides a marketing calendar for posting and sharing content, a social posting approval workflow, and themes that social content can be organized into and analyzed to see which theme boosts audience engagement the most.  On TrustRadius, a large majority of […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Video Marketing Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Renderforest Renderforest is a cloud-based video making platform used by brand and content marketers to create professional videos for sales purposes or corporate presentations. Renderforest provides HD quality video, and its video tools can be used to create animations, cartoons, advertisements, real estate walkthroughs, and other kinds of interactive videos.  Renderforest also includes a logo creator, landing page or video content website, and a library of stock imagery and music to use in promotional videos.  On TrustRadius, a majority of users are from small businesses (79%). Reviewers on TrustRadius  love Renderforest for its simplicity, easy to use animation maker,  convenience of its templates,, and the speed with which they can build attractive logos. “We have found Renderforest to be very quick and effective in creating Logo Reveals […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Landing Page Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Unbounce Unbounce is an application used to build pop-ups, “sticky bars,” banners, and landing pages. It connects marketing campaigns to tested and optimized landing pages that are separate from the company website and are designed to maximize conversion. For building landing pages Unbounce provides a drag-and-drop editor, video embedding, and Unbounce’s own “lightbox” functionality – a user-triggered element which allows forms or media to be placed in the landing page, without making it seem cluttered.  Across TrustRadius, Unbounce is reviewed primarily by users working in a marketing role (61%). Roughly half of Unbounce reviewers come from small companies (52%). Reviewers praise Unbounce’s landing page templates, easy-to-use code-free editing tools, and its advanced A/B testing and conversion tracking capabilities. “Unbounce is used by our marketing department to quickly […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Blogging Platforms. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: WordPress  WordPress is a publishing platform popular among individuals and companies of all sizes for hosting blogs or getting websites off the ground quickly. It is open source and features ready-to-use themes, a mobile app for publishing on the go, and many plugins supplying a wide variety of features at little to no cost. Although programming knowledge is not required to use WordPress, experience with it enables users to further customize website design though code manipulation. WordPress also allows several blogs to be hosted in one installation, and enables users to host, control, and moderate their own blogging communities through a single dashboard. It also has features like SEO plugins, and can automate website management and online marketing, bringing visitors from search engines and social networks to users’ […]

Today, we awarded 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges to a number of outstanding marketing tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. While many software categories have multiple products that earned a 2019 Top Rated badge (find them all on our blog here), this year eight marketing software categories have only one Top Rated winner. These products stand above the rest in each of their respective categories. Without further ado, here are the eight marketing categories and their stand-out products:  Content Marketing Software – PathFactory  Marketing Resource Management Software – Adobe Campaign Mobile Marketing – EZ Texting Public Relations (PR) Tools – TrendKite Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Tools – Google Ads Social Media Advertising Software – Facebook for Business Social Media Analytics Tools – Sprout Social Tag Management Solutions – Google Tag Manager Here’s a closer look at these outstanding marketing tools:  PathFactory (formerly LookBookHQ) PathFactory is an analytics-centric B2B content […]