B2B Connection

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for All-in-One Marketing 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: HubSpot HubSpot provides a complete inbound marketing platform that when bundled with the free HubSpot CRM presents a total integrated solution, with pricing not out of reach for SMBs. Beyond its familiar marketing automation features, HubSpot’s all-in-one platform provides ad management, live chat and web forms, email campaign management, as well as site analytics and A/B testing. HubSpot also offers companies a range of extra features such as a conversational bot builder, video hosting, smart content for a personalized viewer experience, and advanced analytics. One thing that distinguishes HubSpot is that it provides a marketing automation solution affordable for small businesses, but doesn’t compromise on feature breadth or complexity. A large majority (71%) of HubSpot users on TrustRadius are from small businesses. HubSpot reviewers enjoy the free […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Event 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: CrowdCompass CrowdCompass, a Cvent company, provides mobile apps to drive in-event attendee engagement and collect event attendee information. It features tools to help conference sponsors and exhibitors gather leads, keep an updated schedule in the hand of every guest, and engage guests with a live activity feed, Q & A, and polls and surveys.   This product is used by marketers and event organizers across industries and at companies of all sizes. A large proportion of CrowdCompass users across TrustRadius are from midsize companies (46%). Reviewers appreciate CrowdCompass for its user engagement (e.g. surveys and polls) and sales tools (e.g. lead capture), as well as personalized messaging capabilities and agenda communication functionality. “CrowdCompass is wonderful for medium to large events with a variety of sessions, speakers, and breakout […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Event Registration 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: Cvent Event Management Cvent offers their comprehensive event management platform to those organizing conferences of various kinds, as well as equipment rental, shuttle services, hotel booking, and other services associated with managing events. Cvent’s registration handling is a part of its services, praised for its intuitiveness and ease of use for a variety of purposes by event organizers across industries. Its registration features include a branded event website with online registration, on-site registration with badging, secure payment processing, as well as room block management, seating arrangement handling, pre-event engagement, and rich analytics for bookings success and revenue tracking. On TrustRadius, a large portion (40%) of Cvent users come from midsize companies. Reviewers praise Cvent’s robust feature set for hosting multiple large and small events, conferences, or for […]

Tom and Jerry. Teenagers and their parents. Jan and Marsha Brady. Of all the love-hate relationships out there, the one between marketers and their marketing automation platform is a classic—at least in the world of software. While building and managing campaigns through these (often complex) platforms can be difficult and time consuming, these tools are also the bedrock of most marketing campaign activity. In a recent TrustRadius survey, 70% of marketers said that Marketing Automation software was very essential to achieving their marketing goals. Most marketers would probably have a panic attack at the thought of trying to orchestrate a campaign without their marketing software. So it’s important to make sure your company invests in a Marketing Automation platform that is the best fit for your business. However, finding the right one isn’t always easy, especially when there are over 120 products to choose from. Some important questions to ask that can help narrow down your list of products are: What type of marketing-channel access do different platforms provide? Which platforms are the best fit for your contact database, or list size? Which products are within your price range? Does the product allow you to achieve the degree of personalization […]

**On June 3, 2019, the New York Times announced that the U.S. Government will be increasing scrutiny of the big four tech companies. At this stage, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission will be looking into potential antitrust violations committed by Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Originally published on May 15, 2019, our survey revealed that trust in all four of these companies is already low. Though antitrust and consumer trust are quite different, it is interesting to see the government diving into formal oversight at a time when trust for these companies is much lower than the baseline for all companies. We will be on the lookout for how government scrutiny will further impact trust in Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.** Big tech has played a starring role in the trust crisis. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have all made headlines for breaches of trust, ranging from data leaks to fake news, fake reviews, planned obsolescence, tax breaks, employee protests, poor working conditions, and leadership scandals. Commonly called the “big four” tech companies, they are constantly under scrutiny, even as their products and services shape our economy and our daily lives, at work and at home. So […]

TrustRadius Top Rated **This post was updated on April 30, 2019 to reflect recent changes in the Social Media Management industry.** Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Social Media Management 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 suite-style social media management tool that enables users to publish content across multiple social platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and LinkedIn) and track user engagement. It includes features such as social listening searches, ad comments monitoring, scheduled and queue posting, a chrome extension, label count, ability to assign and approve posts, a Facebook ROI calculator, a mobile application, and a ‘social CRM’ that records users’ social interactions. The majority of AgoraPulse users (63%) on TrustRadius are from small businesses. According to reviewers, content planning & scheduling and level of Twitter and Facebook coverage are three of AgoraPulse’s strengths. “This is […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Video 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. Video Platforms Video platforms enable users to upload, store, manage, and publish video content. These solutions can also be called video players, video hosting platforms, and video clouds. One prominent use cases for video platforms is leveraging content for marketing purposes, such as lead generation, advertising, increasing brand awareness, and ultimately increasing conversion rates. Video platforms can also be used for sales enablement through creating and sharing sales videos such as product demos, help/training videos, or streaming online webinars. Most video platforms include these features; video creation and editing tools, video upload, video player editing tools, video sharing, subtitles, engagement analytics, metadata options, and data security capabilities. Some vendors offer additional capabilities such as customized CTA creation, mobile device compatibility, and APIs that allow users to design specific video […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Predictive Analytics. 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. Predictive Analytics Predictive analytics is the use of data, algorithms and machine learning to predict the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data. While predictive analytics platforms can be very complex products and require advanced skill sets in order to use them effectively, in the hands of skilled data analysts and data scientists, predictive analytics can be an extremely powerful tool. It can, for example, calculate customer lifetime value for a given customer; estimate sales projections for the next quarter, or predict what product an online shopper is likely to purchase next. Predictive Analytics tools are strongly related to Business Intelligence, and they are sometimes considered as part of the BI universe. The distinction between BI and predictive analytics is that BI is usually considered descriptive, i.e. looking […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) 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. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Software Enterprise data centers generate enormous amounts of plaintext log data from applications, firewalls, virus filters, and other system. Although these logs often contain critically important security information, the sheer volume of data makes it infeasible for human analysts to process them. SIEM software solves this problem by aggregating, correlating, and analyzing the data from these log files. It then identifies important events and potential network security threats. By providing quick access to relevant log information, SIEM software enables security analysts to better respond to attacks, prevent future attacks, and comply with data security regulations. Common features of SIEM software include data collation, correlation, and normalization; integration with identity and access management tools; customizable dashboards and data views; […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Contact Center 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. Contact Center Software Contact center software helps companies manage high-volume incoming and outgoing customer communication. Customer support teams and call centers use contact center software to quickly and efficiently direct customers needing assistance to agents who can help them. This software commonly includes features such as call routing, caller validation, interactive voice response (IVR), call scripting, call recording, quality monitoring, KPI tracking, and report generation. Some products also support multi-channel communication and aggregation of data from voice, email, SMS, social media, and live chat communications into a single customer record. Before purchasing contact center software, buyers should consider their primary communications channels. As text messaging and social media communication rise in popularity, it becomes more and more important for call centers to support a variety of channels – […]

Social media provides a powerful way for companies to spread their brand’s voice and stories. But with this potential comes extra challenge. Social media is no longer used for solely posting marketing content — it is used as a major way to engage customers along their entire customer journey. Marketing, sales, and support teams all use social media as a platform to communicate with customers at scale. With multiple silos of a company using several social media channels, keeping a consistent voice and customer approach can become logistically tricky. This is where social media management platforms come in. Enterprise-grade social media management solutions allow teams across entire organizations to engage with customers seamlessly. Perhaps your team needs support managing your social agenda, but you don’t know where to start. A good place to start your research is to examine which solutions other professionals frequently search for and look into. Hootsuite is one of the most searched for social media solutions on TrustRadius. But it is not alone. We are going to take a look at the most frequent comparisons to Hootsuite. These are the main products other buyers who are interested in Hootsuite are also evaluating–so you may want to […]

Brand and product promotion is a big part of what drives business. What better way to do that than through email marketing? In today’s digital world, the drive to promote your products and services must gravitate to the available technology to stay ahead of the game. Thus, marketers across the nation are gearing up to rocket their efforts in email marketing campaigns with increased budgets. Email marketers are expected to spend an estimated $350 million this year, up by $80 million from 2015. Yet, with consumer attitudes towards email marketing plummeting, brands need to be careful with campaigns if they want to see ROI on their increased investment. Understanding what drives consumers attitudes may save your email marketing campaigns from falling into the SPAM pit of despair. Here are the top email marketing complaints from U.S. consumers – and what you can do about them with the right software tools. High frequency emailing is a turnoff–overly eager marketers get ignored While persistence has its bonuses, sending overly frequent marketing emails can be a counterproductive for your product, service, or even your brand. Sometimes frequency is a good thing, leading to increased click-through rates, but that isn’t always true. Marketing Charts […]

Google Analytics is hands-down the most utilized website analytics platform available today. This granddaddy of web analytics solutions accounts for 60% of the market share. When companies need to know how their site is performing, Google Analytics is one of the first places they turn to. Despite this, many marketers do not use this solution at full capacity. By integrating Google Analytics (GA) with marketing software, marketers can gather more advanced insights to drive brand management and engagement. This allows professionals to better understand their customers, create better goals, and effectively drive growth. How to boost brand engagement with digital marketing and analysis Marketers know the importance of brand engagement. Brand engagement sounds like a great idea but lacks a clear, technical definition. Without a clear definition, marketers can get lost in pursuing a goal they don’t fully understand or agree upon. Brand engagement has to do with consumer connection with a brand – emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally. Some refer to this concept as a purely emotional connection and commitment one has with a brand, whereas others believe this concept has more to do with what actions a consumer takes in regard to a company. Still, others believe that it […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 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. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search engine optimization (SEO) tools help users grow organic traffic on their website, social profiles, or mobile application by increasing the site’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). A few ways SEO teams can boost the ranking of specific webpages or mobile apps is to (1) feature original, relevant, and interesting content, (2) adjust site architecture to make it more intuitive and easy for search engine crawlers to find, and (3) increase external links (or backlinks) to their site. SEO tools help users track and measure SEO performance with features such as keyword analysis, backlink management, technical site audits, site ranking tracking, and traffic analytics and reports. Some products offer the ability to measure additional metrics such as share of voice […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Survey & Forms Building 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. Survey & Forms Building Tools Survey & forms building tools help users design and distribute surveys, collect responses, and analyze online survey results. Some products may focus more on survey design and include a range of survey question types and logic, while other tools may focus more on reporting and offer advanced statistical results analysis. These tools have a wide application and are used across industries for things like customer satisfaction surveys, employee feedback surveys, and market / academic research. Common survey & forms building tools features include various survey formats (e.g. online, print, or phone), survey templates and layouts, response collection, question types to choose from (e.g. multiple choice, single select, sliding scale, matrix questions, open-text), question logic options (e.g. conditional, branching, random), and results […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Marketing Automation 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. Marketing Automation Software The ultimate goal of every marketing team is to find high-quality leads, nurture them with personalized and relevant content, and pass them along to the sales team to be turned into happy (and hopefully repeat) customers. Marketing automation software helps marketers achieve this by automating and scaling the more repetitive tasks that would otherwise take hours of manual labor. Products include features such as implementing marketing campaign sequences across a variety of channels (e.g. email, social, mobile, landing pages, etc), landing page customization, lead list segmentation, lead nurturing and scoring, and analyzing marketing campaign performance to see what works and what doesn’t. Many marketing automation products integrate with third-party tools and platforms (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Salesforce, etc). There are many things to consider when purchasing […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for A/B Testing 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. A/B Testing Tools A/B testing tools enable users to optimize their website, webpages, or mobile applications in order to positively impact desired outcomes such as increased conversion rates and decreased page bounce rate. They allow businesses to divide site traffic across different websites or web page versions to test which variant performs best. Basic A/B testing tools will be able to implement A/B and Split URL tests, calculate conversion rates, and provide the statistical likelihood of one site version outperforming other variations. Some products may also include other analysis tools such as heatmaps and scrollmaps, site surveys, and visitor recordings. While some A/B testing tools require knowledge of HTML or CSS in order to create tests, many of these tools have a WYSIWYG interface that enable users without […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Web 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. Web Analytics Tools Web analytics tools enable businesses to track user activity and engagement on their website, and in some cases on social platforms and mobile applications as well. These tools track metrics such as number of active users, number of pageviews over a specified time period, conversion rates, number of onsite link clicks, how far users travel down the page, and average time on page. Some tools may specialize in one area of web analytics such as heatmaps and scroll maps, visitor recordings, A/B and split URL testing , and audience segmentation and personalization. There are also larger web analytics platforms that provide marketing, SEO, product, and sales teams with an overall view of user activity and engagement metrics. All of these tools aim to help businesses […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Content Management Systems. 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. Content Mangement Systems (CMS) Content Management Systems (CMS) allow users to create, publish, and manage digital content, typically on a website. However, more advanced CMS and/or Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) enable users to manage content across digital channels. Some popular CMS use cases are on content-heavy websites such as blogs, news sites, eCommerce sites, corporate sites, and intranets. While different types of CMS may have different areas they focus on, most include these capabilities; a WYSIWYG editor, content creation tools, content indexing, document format management, content versioning and archiving, and content publishing with templates or a wizard. More advanced CMSs may include other features such as the ability to create personalization rules based on site visitor activity or demographics that control which users see specific content. Here are […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Email 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. Email Marketing Software Email marketing software helps businesses stay connected to their customer base, reach out to prospects, and, ultimately, drive sales. These products increase efficiency by enabling marketers to send out large batches of emails at once (e.g. promotional emails or newsletters), also referred to as ‘blast emails’, instead of requiring an individual to manually send each email. Email marketing tools also allow marketers to create segmented email lists, keep track of email subscribers, send out triggered emails, and set up email marketing campaigns sequences. Some products also include personalization capabilities that allow marketers to customize messages based on subscriber demographics or behavior. Other common email marketing software features include a drag and drop or HTML email editor, email templates, email A/B testing, email drip campaigns, CRM […]