The internet is a treasure chest of tools and resources to help you be the badass marketer you were born to be. Here are our top 10 faves.
What did we do before the internet? I ask myself this at least 3 times a day.
As a marketer, you know all too well that the landscape is always changing. Fortunately, the internet is a treasure chest of tools and resources to help you.
Our hope in sharing this list of best tools for digital marketers is that you too might find a gem that helps you save money, time or both (🙌).
While this list is far from comprehensive it’s comprised of some of our favorite and most frequented tools across content marketing and email marketing. All of these marketing tools have free versions (always be hustlin’!) but we’ll note which ones are worth forking over the dough for. We’ve also excluded some of the obvious ones like Google Analytics and Facebook Business Manager because those are givens and well... not as much fun.
Sharing is caring so if there is a cool marketing tool you are super in love with, holler at us!
The Best Tools for Email Marketers 1. BeePro
Who it’s for: Email Marketers who want more freedom in designing emails but don’t know or don't want to know much about coding.
Why it’s great: This is hands-down the best drag-&-drop email builder for designing emails. The free version might have everything you need but for us, the $15 a month is worth it. You can add fonts, collaborate with co-workers and clients, and if starting from scratch is daunting, they are always adding to their template library. Plus, it integrates with most major Email Service Providers (ESPs). Cost: Free - up to $50/month
2. Send Check It - Subject Line Tester
Who it's for: Email Marketers who want to take the guess work out of crafting the perfect email subject lines. Why it’s great: It doesn’t matter how beautiful and optimized your email is if no one opens it because your subject line was kinda meh. With Send Check It’s subject line tester, you simply plug in the subject lines you are considering and it gives you a score on multiple elements like scanability, sentiment, and reading grade level. What’s more is that it gives you suggestions for improving your score like adding personalization or an emoji. Cost: Free
3. Litmus
Who this is for: Email Marketers responsible for delivering emails to subscribers. Why it’s great: Litmus provides a suite of email design and email marketing tools that help you build, design, test, and analyze your emails. We don’t send a single email without putting it through the Litmus ringer. You can see how it looks in just about every email platform and get a guided checklist of all the critical elements that go into email deliverability before you click 'send.' They also do a ton of case studies and annual reports on email trends, tips and tricks from experts. So if nothing else, sign-up for their emails.
Cost: $99 and up; they have a free trial so definitely at least take advantage of that. Some ESPs like Mailchimp and Bronto come with a Litmus feature so be sure to check with your ESP before you purchase.
The Best Tools for Content Marketers 4. BlogAbout by Impact
Who this is for: Marketers who have a list of keywords but need some help coming up with blog ideas and titles.
Why it’s great: This tool won’t totally knock your socks off but if you’re banging your head against a wall trying to think of new and exciting ways to pitch a saas product (just us?!) this tool is pretty nifty. You simply plug in your keyword and it will churn through a whole bunch of proven blog title structures to jog your creativity.
Cost: Free
5. Can I Rank?
Who is this for: Marketers on a budget who need an SEO action plan, not just data and vague ideas.
Why it’s great: This is a really unique tool that gives you specific SEO and content action recommendations that are specifically tailored to YOU and your market. You simply plug in your company or client’s URL, keywords, 5 of your competitors and boom - you get a huge list of recommendations with detailed DIY instructions put in order of how impactful they will be in your SEO efforts. Not all of the recommendations are on point but for AI software, it’s pretty dang good. The free version allows you to asses one URL, so if it’s just you, yourself and I then.... jackpot baby!
Cost: Free - $299
6. Canva
Who this is for: Marketers who either can’t afford Photoshop, find Photoshop to be overly and unnecessarily complicated, or don’t have a deep team of graphic designers helping you out.
Why it’s great: I’ve taken multiple photoshop classes and I still hate that damn tool. Canva is soooo simple and has a huge library of templates for every medium to help you get started. You can create flawless Instagram stories , spruce up your resume, and even create whitepapers in a fraction of the time. For $10, we personally think Canva is totally worth it, especially if you have multiple brands you're working with and/or need specific fonts uploaded.
Cost: Free - $10 a month
7. Xtensio
Who is this for: Marketers who are on a budget, want to save time, and need to create professional looking customer personas.
Why it’s great: You can search “Customer Persona Templates” into Google and have a field day with the amount of free templates available. But a lot of these are either PowerPoint presentations or Excel based and a lot of them you have to pay for. We came across Xtensio and we were able to pump out 3 beautiful customer personas in no time. You have to have a paid plan to export your creation but you can get crafty and find a work around. (screen shot, cough, cough).
Bonus: This Hubpsot article is really helpful in terms of what questions you’ll need to get answered to actually create your persona.
Cost: Free - $25/month
8. Later
Who this is for: Marketers in charge of running beautiful Instagram accounts.
Why it’s great: For visual peeps, this tool is leaps and bounds above other social media platform providers. And for grammers whose ideal send time is 5 am (been there) their scheduling tool saves you from premature wrinkles. The content library keeps you organized, whether you’re working solo or in a team. For some extra mulla ($19/month), you can access their linkinbio tool. We talk about that a bit more here.
Cost: Free - up to $49/month
9. Ubersuggest
Who is this for: Marketers on a budget looking to do some basic keyword research.
Why it’s great: Ubersuggest is a super handy tool that allows you to gain insight into strategies that are working for your competitors to see how you can build on them and execute them even better. Just type in a domain or keyword to get started and the tool will generate:
A list of top SEO pages to help you discover which pages are ranking for popular organic keyword phrases
Hundreds of keyword suggestions (with SERP data)
Content ideas with the most social shares and backlinks
Backlink data to help you create a robust backlink profile
Needless to say, there’s a lot of good info here to help you improve your SEO strategy!
Cost: Free
Who is this for: Marketers on a budget looking to dive into some basic SEO research.
Why it’s great: A free community membership gives you (limited) access into the wonderful world of Moz. If you’re just looking to do some basic SEO research, this is a great place to get started. The community membership provides access to 10 queries/month with the Link Explorer tool, generating data to help with your domain’s link building research. For example, you’ll be able to see inbound links, top pages that are being linked to, discovered and lost links as well as a comparison to your competitor link profiles. You’ll also get access to 10 queries/month with their Keyword Explorer, a great tool to help discover and prioritize which keywords to target. Each query generates up to 1000 keywords so you should have plenty of data to get started. Finally, you’ll gain access to MozBar, a free SEO toolbar with link data to help you analyze important page metrics as you surf the web.
Cost: Free - $599+. If you like what you see, you can try a free 30-day trial for Moz Pro with even more capabilities.
There you have it folks - 10 awesome digital marketing tools to add to your marketing tool belt. You got this!
About the Author: Founder. Dreamer. Master of None. It's been 9 years since Jules has been paying off her Masters Degree in Social Work—zero of which have involved doing actual Social Work. Instead, she's built a career decoding the puzzle that is the internet and digital marketing. Experienced. Humble. Often burned by auto-correct. Jules created Rolling Hills Media so she could write her own rules and to help brands do the same.