We’ve collected a tried and true bevy of Internet tools that we use as a small business and thought we should share them.
Wish there were more hours in the day? Ever wonder how people around you are getting everything done? Ever tried to multi-task a bunch of people, projects, and tasks and think to yourself, “there has got to be a better way to do this”? Us, too!
Since we can’t wave a wand and put more hours in the day, we’ve been cultivating a toolbox of the best resources the web has to offer. So, in the spirit of kicking more butt and then getting to kick back more, here are a few tools that we use to get the most out of our days at Email Broadcast.
AppSumo – With a slogan like “we promote great products to help you kick ass at work,” what’s not to love? The Sumos at AppSumo deliver curated products designed to save you time and increase your creativity & knowledge. Some of their most popular offerings include email sales scripts for small businesses, copywriting guides, and video how-to’s. Plus, they do it for prices that range from free to 80-90% off. Give them a try – we’re convinced they’ll convert you to a Sumo-ling, too!
Basecamp – By far, the tool we use most here at Email Broadcast. We could go on and on about Basecamp, but we’ll try to just keep it to our most favorite features:
Recurring Projects – are you in web design, marketing, event planning, or have repeating projects that entail the same processes? Create a recurring project template once, and customize it to every individual project ’till you take the early retirement you’ve earned!
To-do Lists: with date-specific, assignable tasks, you can see what remains to be done on every project, who’s responsible, and when.
Events: set up calendars for teams or projects and customize events and reminders.
Documents: upload documents or create text files in Basecamp to keep everything organized and together with other project items and give access to the team.
Teams: you can choose who to invite to projects, internally or externally. Outside contacts don’t need to have BaseCamp to collaborate on projects, and you can control what they see. Handy!
GetHuman – GetHuman is for those days when you can’t wait on hold. Search their database of over 8,000 companies (banks, utilities, cell phone providers, cable services, airlines, and many more), enter your phone number, and click a button. GetHuman will wait on hold for you and transfer the call to your phone when it gets answered. Now you can spend your time productively: looking at cat pictures on the internet!
GoogleDocs – The internet giant has a suite of products, including: Document, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Form, and Drawing, plus a host of apps that can be connected to enhance your creations & productivity. Add to that email, a calendar, sharable documents, and 15G of storage –all for free–and you might just ditch that other Office Suite.
Highrise – You’re going to have to act fast if you want to take advantage of this awesome CRM system. Developed by 37Signals, Highrise is THE place to track everything from contact information, leads, and email threads with customers, vendors, and potential clients.
However, with 37Signals’ recent decision to focus exclusively on their Basecamp product, the fate of Highrise is unclear. At the very least, it will continue to be maintained for anyone who gets in before they stop sales to new customers, and we think it’s worth it!
PicMonkey – Their tagline is “photo editing made of win” and we agree! They also offer tutorials on photo magic from basic touch-up to making your friends look like vampires to creating save-the-dates for you marrying types.
We use PicMonkey for everything from thank you notes to quick-fixes when our graphic designer is busy.
Use their basic service or upgrade to Royale for a mere $5/mo or $33 per year.
QB – That’s QuickBooks to the uninitiated! We use their online software to keep track of the financial side of things. We’ve found their phone support to be excellent –knowledgeable and personable– although sometimes their wait times are long enough to get a considerable amount of multitasking done. One key feature you may like is the ability to let your clients pay by credit card securely on line. Yeah, it has a cost but so does waiting around to get paid.
We also use their payroll services. They figure out taxes, workers’ comp, etc…, and even send 1099s at the end of the year, leaving us free to do what we do best, which isn’t taxes!
Unbounce – Unbounce will empower you to create landing pages, split tests, and all sorts of awesomeness of that nature, without having to know a line of code! Pretty cool, right?
We’ve gotten great results and lots of insight from building and testing different Unbounce pages and find their service invaluable to getting the most out of our web traffic.
Email Broadcast – How do you leverage the Internet’s #1 marketing tool, email marketing, without having to learn an entirely new medium yourself? Let Email Broadcast take over. They handle strategy, list building, responsive graphic design, website integration, copy writing, sales automation and more. They’ll even come up with 100 content ideas and tell you how often you should launch, when to launch, how to integrate with social media and more. They are also never above a little self promotion! 🙂
These are our honest-to-goodness recommendations: no affiliate links, just unvarnished win to help you be more awesome! We’re always looking for great tools, so let us know in the comments if we’ve shown you anything new, or if you have any can’t-live-withouts we should know about!
