Showing posts with label CRM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CRM. Show all posts

Friday, November 4, 2022

14 Online Apps & Services for Freelancers




Many online apps and services can help make you more productive if you’re a freelancer. This article will discuss 14 of these tools, including three writing tools, four website-building tools, three creative tools, and four productivity tools.

Writing Tools
Grammarly

Grammarly

Grammarly is a grammar-checking tool that helps improve writing skills. Before I learned about the app, I struggled to write clearly and concisely, but Grammarly has helped me greatly. My sentences used to be too long and complicated, but now I feel better about my writing skills. I use Grammarly for everything from blog posts and emails to website copy. It’s the best tool around for polishing up your writing!

Grammarly is constantly active, no matter what application I am using. As I write, it will suggest changes to improve spelling, style, and tone. Sometimes, it will rewrite sentences to make them neater and simpler.

I am confident in the quality of my work, free of typos, misspellings, and bad grammar.

Grammarly has indeed been a lifesaver for me and my writing.

Jasper AI

Jasper

Before I publish anything, I use Grammarly to check my writing for errors. However, when actually creating content, Jasper AI is where I turn to spark my creativity.

Jasper AI is the perfect tool to help me quickly and easily develop original, engaging content. With Jasper‘s help, I can come up with dozens of ideas for blogs, product descriptions, and web copy.

This can all be done in a fraction of the time it would normally take, and because Jasper integrates directly with social media platforms, I can publish content on these platforms without any hassle.

Sqribble

Sqribble eBook Creator

Artificial intelligence is increasingly automating tasks that have here-to-fore been time-consuming. Sqribble eBook Creator is a leader in using AI to automate the process of eBook creation. With just a few clicks, you can create amazing eBooks that will educate, inform and entertain your readers. And best of all, you don’t need any design, technical or writing skills to start!

Sqribble provides over 50 alluring eBook templates belonging to 15 distinct niche categories. So, no matter what book you want to write – whether it’s a cookbook, a self-help guide, or an eBook on your pastime – we have your back.

With customizable templates, you can make your eBook unique by adding photos, videos, and text. And if you need help along the way, a support team is always available.

Website Tools
Nicepage

Nicepage

Nicepage is a website design app capable of turning out sites in WordPress, Joomla, and HTML.

Nicepage is my choice for web design. It is the tool I use for my website and to build sites for other businesses.

With Nicepage, you can create stunning websites without writing a single line of code! Just use its easy drag-and-drop website builder software to implement your ideas. Install its desktop app and get started designing your website. There are over 10,000 designer-made templates to choose from, so you can find the perfect one for your business. And if you want to customize anything, it’s easy to do with no coding required. Websites created in Nicepage are mobile-friendly, so they’ll look great on any device.

If you want a website that runs on WordPress or Joomla, design the general layout in the Nicepage desktop application. Afterward, export it as a template file and install it onto either WordPress or Joomla. A Nicepage Plugin will be included with the installation to enable you to continue the design and do editing from within the CMS.

Although I recommend Elementor, I prefer Nicepage because it is more flexible and gives me more freedom. With Nicepage, my creative ideas aren’t restricted by its capabilities. This saves me a lot of time not having to find a way to make my ideas work — they do.

Elementor

Elementor

With Elementor, you can create a stunning website without any coding! With its easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, you can create beautiful pages in no time. And with 100+ full website Kits and endless possibilities, you can let your creativity shine. Plus, Elementor‘s world-class hosting and robust security features will give you the peace of mind you need to focus on creating the website of your dreams. 

Elementor attempts to do it all with its own built-in features that eliminate the need for other plugins and thus do away with plugin clutter. And with 90+ widgets and countless built-in capabilities, you can create any website you can imagine. 

You won’t go wrong with Elementor as your choice for website creation.

Pretty Links

Pretty Links

Pretty Links isn’t just for those looking to make money from their content with affiliate links. It has plenty of other benefits, too. Pretty Link’s main purpose is link shortening, but it also tracks clicks for each link created within the program.

While this obvious perk is especially enticing to affiliate marketers, anyone wanting to see how many people are clicking on certain parts of their website can benefit from Pretty Links‘ click-tracking feature. Use Pretty Links as a link shortener for every link on your website, and you will easily track what parts of your website people are viewing or interacting with.

Plus, Pretty Links makes it a breeze to put links on your site. Just add a keyword or phrase when you create the link using Pretty Links. Then, Pretty Links will automatically insert that link any time the keyword appears. And if you ever need to change a link, you will not have to go through your site to change every link usage. Simply update it in one spot – Pretty Link – and it’ll be good to go sitewide!

Pond5

Pond5

Pond5 is a great resource for finding professional content at an affordable price. It has everything you need for your project, with millions of royalty-free photos, videos, audio clips, and more. And their license allows you to use their content without worry.

The main reason I use Pond5 is that a subscription isn’t required to access the media library- you can pay for each item separately. Most of the photos I purchased cost less than $5.00. If you would rather have a subscription, though, they are available at different price points depending on the content you want to access. You can also buy Credit Packs, which offer a 20% discount off the total purchase price.

Creative Tools
Snagit

Snagit

Techsmith’s Snagit is a screen capture software that lets you quickly and easily share what’s on your screen with others, so you don’t have to waste time with back-and-forth emails or messy file attachments. Just share a link to your Snagit capture, and they can view it in their browser.

With Snagit, you can not only take screenshots and mark them up, but you can also record a video of your screen. This is especially useful if you want to show someone how to do something or navigate a process step-by-step. Plus, once you’re done recording, Snagit will automatically turn it into a shareable video that’s easy for anyone to understand.

Snagit is my favorite tool to use when I need help with website design or illustrations for blog posts. The video screen capture feature also comes in handy whenever I need to show someone how a particular software works.

Camtasia

Camtasia

Camtasia is another app created by Techsmith. With Camtasia, you can quickly and easily create professional-looking videos without prior video editing experience. Camtasia is quick to learn and easy to use, so you’ll be up and running in no time. It is the ideal tool for creating high-quality videos that engage your audience and help them learn more than text alone. Camtasia is perfect for creating video tutorials, how-to videos, software demo videos, meeting recordings, training videos, and lessons.

Canva Pro

Canva

Canva Pro is an excellent choice to up your design game. This design software makes design simple, convenient, and reliable. With time-saving tools that make anyone look like a professional designer, you can create anything you need in no time.

Need to add some curved text, photo effects, or image enhancer? How about adding frames to photos or even text to videos? It’s all covered. And if you want to take your content to the next level, the online video recorder and converter let you record, edit, trim, and splice videos — all in one place. Plus, you can easily convert them to MP4 format for easy sharing.

When it comes to design, I’m a novice. But with Canva‘s array of templates and tools help my ideas take shape by imitating the professionals. Not only does Canva have great samples that spark creativity, but their design tools are user-friendly. Whenever I need graphics for product promotion or to design a logo, business card, or flyer, I go to Canva.

Productivity Tools
Keeper Security

Keeper

Keeper Security offers a top-notch solution to protect your passwords and personal information from cybercriminals. With Keeper you will be Joining millions of people who use Keeper to protect their online identities. You’ll never again have to remember or worry about a password.

Powered by cutting-edge technology, Keeper offers unparalleled protection against ransomware attacks by generating high-strength, random passwords for each website, application, and service you use. In addition, BreachWatch® monitors the dark web 24/7 and alerts you if your credentials are detected in a public data breach so that you can take action immediately.

I have depended on Keeper for several years. Not only does it enable me to retrieve a saved password quickly, but it will also manage the process of registering a new user account and storing the necessary username and password for later use. It is not only for passwords, though. You can also use it to store credit card accounts, driver’s license numbers, and health insurance credentials.

I use Keeper’s Chrome extension to quickly locate the URL of any website I frequent from Keeper’s database. Once the desired website launches, Keeper is on standby to automatically enter my username and password so I can easily log in.

Todoist

Todoist

As my task manager and to-do list app, Todist is my choice to keep me more focused, organized, and calm. With Todoist, you can add tasks like “read work emails every day at 10 am” in seconds using natural language recognition and recurring dates. Plus, your to-do lists are automatically sorted into Today, Upcoming, and custom Filter views to help you focus on your most important things.

Todoist allows you to break big tasks into smaller ones, share projects with your team, and add reminders. You can also use Todoist’s apps, extensions, and widgets on any device or platform, so you’re never far from your to-do list.

Todoist seamlessly integrates with your voice assistant, calendar, and over 30 other tools to make productivity effortless, whether at home or on the go. Todoist also has the added bonus of promoting a sense of calm by letting users know that they won’t forget any new tasks that come to mind–enter them into Todoist!

Hubspot

Hubspot CRM

CRM stands for “customer relations management,” but at Hubspot, it means much more than managing your contacts. With the easy-to-use HubSpot CRM, you’ll never have to manually update reports or wonder how your team tracks toward quotas. Get a real-time view of your entire sales pipeline on a visual dashboard.

Access detailed reports on sales activity, productivity, and individual performance. Then use those insights to track team performance and spot opportunities for growth. Enjoy unlimited users, data, and up to 1,000,000 contacts with no time limit or expiration date — whether you’re a team of 1 or 1,000.

Using Hubspot‘s WordPress plugin, people who sign up to join our email list are automatically added to our Hubspot list. Their activity on our website is tracked so we can track preferences and habits.

ezyCollect

ezyCollect

ezyCollect has cutting-edge technology to help you get paid faster and protect your business from unpaid invoices. What’s even better, their system is fully automated so that you can save time and effort. You’ll feel like you have an extra person on your team! And with their humanized automation, you can connect with customers more personally.

Within the first 12 months of using ezyCollect, businesses typically see a 43% reduction in outstanding overdue bills. That’s huge! And with their easy-to-use payment portal, customers can view and download invoices, pay one or more invoices on the spot, part-pay, or pay later while they get paid upfront. This makes it super easy for them to pay their invoices and means you don’t have to chase them up for payment.


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Friday, September 2, 2022

The Benefits of Hubspot CRM for Small Businesses




You Can Easily Manage All Customer Relationships from One Place.

With HubSpot CRM, you can easily manage all your customer relationships from one place. This means you can keep up with what’s going on with each contact, whether it’s a lead, a prospect, or a current client. You can even send automated emails to your contacts based on their actions within the system.

Do You Have A CRM System?

Is a CRM System (Customer Relations Management) a component of your small business? If not, should it be? If it is, how is it contributing to the growth of your business? I would love to hear how CRM is benefiting your business. Please use the comment box below to share. Or, you can contribute through our contact form. I acknowledge that there may be businesses that will not benefit from CRM significant enough to be worth the setup time and learning curve. But I also contend that in many instances, an assumption that CRM will not benefit may be unfounded.

Should You Have A CRM System?

To explore the benefit of a CRM app, Let’s use my business as an example. I am an affiliate marketer. SEO is a big deal to me and my business. I’m continually looking for ways to improve it to bring more traffic to my site. Given my efforts to improve SEO and my obsession with analytics, putting all my eggs in that basket is tempting. If I can grow my traffic to enough visitors, I will attain the financial return I’m after, so it would seem. If this is my entire strategy, I’m playing a numbers game. I’m betting that a certain percentage of those who come to my content will make a purchase. The more I increase the traffic; the higher my income will be. While this can be true, I’m overlooking many contributing factors that could increase the percentage of my return, better known as ROI.

I’m overlooking an important factor in why people come to my site. I need them to click on an affiliate link and make a purchase. But is that why they came to my site? No. It is unlikely that anyone will come to my website to buy something.

In most cases, they came for information. It is possible that while they are reading, they will see an ad for a product they were considering purchasing or that has an incredible price. So on impulse, they click on the link to check out the product and may make a purchase. That scenario has considerably decreased the percentage of a visitor making a purchase. So if I relied on a broad statistic that says that a certain percentage of those who visit a site make a purchase, I might discover that the percentage is much lower for my scenario.

(We independently select these products — if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission.)

What If I Could Change the Scenario?

So what if I could change that scenario? What if, for instance, I began to acquire an email list of those who read my blogs? And then, I used a CRM system to store and manage that list. And what if I keep track of the habits and behaviors of those on the list? Blogs they read and activity on the website? Now I have a means of building relationships with people who know what I offer. They are no longer strangers who happened by my website but followers or at least repeat users of my services. For these people, the scenario has changed. When they come to my website now, they are already open to taking advantage of what I offer. I have increased the ROI for those on my list. And the more I can grow that list, the greater my return will be.

Let me give a personal example of how this might work. A few months ago, I came across a reference to a blog written by Lisa Sicard, posted on her website, inspiretothrive.com. After reading her blog and exploring her website, I decided I was interested in her ideas and services and wanted her as a resource. So I subscribed to her email list. Now I receive her weekly newsletter with references to her blogs and other resources. When she recommends a product or an action that might help, I check it out because I consider her a competent resource. By signing up for her email list, I transitioned from a visitor to a follower, and when I read her blogs or go to her website, I am already receptive to what she might recommend.

Convinced that I need to pursue growing an email list, I will need help. I need a CRM system to help manage this effort.

HubSpot CRM

As a user of HubSpot CRM, I want to walk you through some of its features to acquaint you with ways the CRM can benefit your business. From the list of CRM systems below, you will notice that PCMag editors Gadjo Sevilla & Neil McAllister, in their article, “The Best CRM Software for 2022,” rated HubSpot as the “Best for Easy to Use CRM for SMBs.” They also gave it a 3.5 Good rating, which is not the highest rating provided for CRM choices for small businesses. So HubSpot may not be your pick. My purpose is to reveal some features, pointing out how they might benefit your business.

First, one of the reasons I chose HubSpot was the free features with no time limit on the free access. There are a few limitations on some of these free features, such as having HubSpot branding or no form or email automation. The free account allows 1,000 contacts and 2,000 emails per month. The startup business has the free tools it needs to grow and can phase into additional features as it is ready for them and more capable of paying.

As I move on to highlight some of the features in HubSpot, I want to emphasize that this is not a review of HubSpot. I do not intend to cover all segments of its features. This blog only introduces CRM software and how it can benefit your business. I will use HubSpot and its marketing features to outline a CRM marketing plan using an email list.

Introduction To A CRM System

Once I have set up my HubSpot free account, I have the choice of registering for tools in five different categories: Marketing, Sales, Service, Operations, and CMS. All are free. While I could sign up for tools in more than one of these hubs, I have only chosen Marketing.

I begin by importing a pre-existing contact list to get started with my marketing tools. I also have the option of manually creating new contacts. The importing process is simple. I exported a contact list I already had with another email service to a CSV file. I then imported the file into my HubSpot account. The free HubSpot account will allow me to store up to 1 million contacts in as many as five active lists and 1,000 static lists. The limit on emails sent each month is 2,000.

With contacts stored in my account, I will also connect my website to HubSpot through the HubSpot WordPress plugin. Through this connection, I can track the contacts’ activity on my website by email, phone calls, and chat. The HubSpot plugin connection allows me to establish a chat feature on my website for interaction with website visitors. From my dashboard, I can turn the chat feature on or off depending on my availability to respond. With these tools engaged and the ability to track user activity, I can begin to interact with my contacts based on their interests. In other words, I can build relationships with them. Once I start sending targeted emails and newsletters, I will have additional information to help develop those relationships.

Capturing New Leads

Now that I have access to a free marketing account and a list of contacts added to it, I am ready to begin adding new leads to my CRM. I will use the following tools to achieve that goal:

  • Landing Page Builder – I can create a landing page for a new promotion. For greater integration, I will use the HubSpot service to host it for free rather than including it along with my website. I could design a complete website with the CMS tools on HubSpot if I choose. I already have a website, so I will use only the landing page tools to channel results from my new promotion.
  • Forms – This tool will add a form to my landing page to capture new leads.
  • Ads – Using the ad tools, I can integrate with Facebook ads, creating and tracking an advertisement for my new promotion. Ad campaign activity will go into the contact records.
  • Marketing Email – Now, I am ready to send a marketing email or newsletter to target the various interests of both my new and existing leads. Tools for this are in my free marketing account.

Why Not Use Only An Email Marketing Service?

You may wonder why you need a CRM system if you already use an email marketing service such as MailChimp or Constant Contact. One of the strengths of HubSpot and other CRM systems are their integrations. HubSpot, for example, has integration with MailChimp, enabling you to continue using your account there while importing the activity of your email blasts to your CRM in HubSpot. When I am ready to send a marketing email or newsletter, if I choose, I can integrate with MailChimp or another service to send the newsletter. My CRM system will receive the contact activity from that mailing to provide insights on my contacts. This information will help me segment my contacts and inform me of their needs and interests.

It is not necessary, though, to use MailChimp because HubSpot has all that is necessary for the task of mailing. Whether using an integration or working within HubSpot, your move to a CRM system will transition you from merely using analytics to having a comprehensive view of your contacts.

Video Overview

For another perspective on using a CRM system for marketing, this video will give an overview of inbound marketing at HubSpot.

Taking The Plunge

Whether you’re ready to dip your toe in the CRM pool or take the plunge, here are some resources to help.

HubSpot

HubSpot is my choice and the system I have used to demonstrate the advantages of using a CRM system. If you want to check it out further, here is a link you can use for that purpose – HubSpot. The extensive array of free resources will help you get up and running before having any financial outlay. To be clear, as an affiliate, I may benefit if you choose HubSpot.

Hubspot

Choosing A CRM System

There are many options when choosing a CRM system. HubSpot is not the only option and may not be your best choice. As you browse through the list below, a good starting point is to match a system to the size and needs of your business. You will find systems designed for larger and smaller companies, along with other options.

This list is available from PCMag editors Gadjo Sevilla & Neil McAllister, in their article, “The Best CRM Software for 2022,” which reviewed 13 of the best CRM software. Here is their summary:

  • Zoho CRM  4.5 Outstanding | Best for Zoho Platform Customers
  • HubSpot CRM  3.5 Good | Best for Easy to Use CRM for SMBs
  • Freshsales CRM  4.0 Excellent | Best for Basic CRM
  • Zendesk Sell  4.0 Excellent | Best for Integration With Zendesk Products
  • Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional  4.5 Outstanding | Best Overall
  • Less Annoying CRM  4.0 Excellent | Best for Startups
  • Sales Creatio  4.0 Excellent | Best for Large Sales Teams
  • Apptivo CRM  4.5 Outstanding | Best for Small Business CRM
  • Insightly CRM  4.0 Excellent | Best for Growth-Stage Businesses
  • Pipedrive CRM  3.5 Good | Best for Deal-Oriented Sales Teams
  • Act! CRM  3.0 Average | Best for Longtime Act! Users
  • Salesflare  2.5 Fair | Best for Very Small Teams
  • SugarCRM Sugar Sell  4.0 Excellent | Best for High Customization

Conclusion

HubSpot CRM is a good choice for small businesses that want an easy-to-use system with many free features. But there are many CRM systems available, and the best one for your business will depend on the size of your company and your specific needs. Use the resources above to help choose the best CRM system for your business.

If you are already using a CRM, you might want to make a recommendation describing the benefits of your system that you like best. Please do so in the comments box below or through our contact form.



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