Account management takes an incredible amount of organization. If you don’t keep track of notes, ideas, projects for each client, things can get out of hand quickly. While this is true for all account managers, it can be doubly true for digital marketing account managers. Marketing trends are constantly changing and you have to keep track of things like the latest Google update, in addition to keeping an eye on all of the goings-on with your clients.
With all of the moving parts in your workday, it can be difficult for digital marketing account managers to find a set of tools that can streamline their day-to-day work as well as manage their client's expectations. Once you find the right set of tools for work, difficult tasks can be a lot easier and leaves you more time with your clients and strategy. The purpose of the following apps are as follows:
- Simplify tasks in your day-to-day management
- Allow more time for important projects like strategy and improvement assessments
- Filling holes that could be missed in email or calls
These are apps that I use every day and are meant to be used in tandem with each other. This does not mean that one cannot be used by themselves, but try to tie them together and see if can make your life easier. These might not work for you based on your workload but it could jog your memory of where you can save some time, and apply it elsewhere in your workday.
Helpful Apps for Digital Marketing Account Managers
Evernote
Evernote is the best way to manage taking notes both on calls as well as email conversations. Many people create client folders in their email for all communications related to a topic or the account itself, but Evernote takes it to a new level. Evernote creates folders per topic and account, but it also allows you to do the following:
- Ideas: Ever have an idea come up during a call or dropped into an email? Create a folder for all ideas that are bounced back and forth. It’s always good to keep a track record of what has come up in conversation.
- To-Do Lists: Maybe it’s just me, but every meeting leads to a list of things that need to be completed. Evernote allows you to create a visual checklist of actionable items to follow; it’s always rewarding to check things off as they get completed.
- Take Pictures: Don’t worry about missing an issue as you can take a screenshot or save an image from an email into Evernote.
Calendly
Calendly is the best way to reduce the back and forth of scheduling a call or a meeting. Calendly allows you to send a link to your calendar and lets people book based on the times available. The features included in Calendly include:
- Create meeting types with times: Want to schedule a quick chat? How about a proposal review? Meeting types can be set to a specific time and can be scheduled in based on the times in your calendar. If only 30 minutes are available, only a 30-minute meeting will be allowed
- Meeting Parameters: The ability to set buffer time between meetings is a lifesaver for time management. Don’t want back to back meetings? Set up rules that meetings cannot be booked 15 mins before and after another meeting.
- Reminders: You can set reminders for both yourself and your client that the meeting is happening. Reminders will also automatically send out screen share links if it’s set up.
Boomerang
Boomerang for Gmail allows you schedule, auto respond and autofill your emails in a just a few clicks. Gmail recently built this feature into their Gmail website, but it is much more basic than what Boomerang offers for email. The best boomerang features offered are:
- Pre-schedule emails: In the email, you can set up the date and time that the email will go out. This is great if you want to work ahead with requests and timelines. You can even send emails to yourself as a reminder to get things done!
- Follow up reminders: Emails can be sent back to your inbox based on the settings you set up. If the email has not been responded to in 3 days, it will go to the top of your inbox to follow up.
- Reminders: Need a reminder to follow up or do something? Set a reminder in the email to follow up. I find it incredibly useful for cases that are time sensitive; I would consistently set up reminders to for the email to bounce back to me every hour to call or follow up.
- Email writing assistance: Boomerang goes through your email and evaluates its chances of being responded to. It goes through the tone of the email and the number of questions that are placed in the email. It’s not perfect, but it can be helpful when typing out those dense emails that might be difficult to read.
Draw.io
Draw.io is a web-based flowchart manager which is incredibly easy to use and access. Often time during meetings, I will use quick flowcharts to show the steps of a project or cause and effects of a change. Draw.io comes with a bunch of pre-built diagrams that you can use to start which makes it easy to make complex drawings easily. It’s linked to your Google account so everything can be saved to your drive or easily exported as a .jpg or PDF.
This app works very well in combination with Evernote for taking and exporting for meeting notes. Since it is so easy to create and export flowcharts, I would add the drawings into the client's folders for future reference. I am a visual learner when it comes to content, so this works well when looking back at meetings in Evernote.
Trello
Ahh, what can I say about Trello that hasn't been said already! Trello is the best way to visually manage tasks from day-to-day tasks, weekly breakdowns of work, and work in collaboration with other departments. Trello allows for many third-party apps to work in collaboration with each other like Gmail, Salesforce and Evernote. Below are the main features that I use for my digital marketing account management role:
- Assign tasks to other departments: I would create tasks within my board and move cards to other peoples queues with a full breakdown of the task and a date for completion.
- Chain of communication: Within each ticket, I can see a full breakdown of the back and forth on the ticket and completion percentage. This is much better than email since it can be shared at anytime
- Third-party app integration: The Gmail to Trello app has saved me so much time assigning tasks. With the Chrome extension, I’m able to move an email from a client directly to the right queue in a couple of clicks. With this set up, I never miss a task!
Slack
Slack is the best way to manage communication within a company and potentially, with clients. I use Slack on a daily basis to talk to my fellow colleagues and keep a track record of conversations and ideas. Conversation can be easily searched and looked at, and the ability to collaborate on channels keeps the conversation going between groups flowing. Similar to Trello, Slack allows for many third-party integrations using conversation shortcuts. I can seamlessly transition a note left in Slack to a ticket in Trello just by adding “/trello” in front of a message. It’s small shortcuts like this that add up and save me minutes to hours in a week
Much of this blog is taken from my perspective as a digital marketing account manager and how it saved me time and allows for improvement. Clients will always benefit from more time being spent on additional tasks; you wouldn’t believe how far an extra 30 mins will go in a week. You can spend that time focusing on improving their strategy, or coming up with new ideas for an upcoming campaign. Using these apps in tandem with each other has increased my productivity and accuracy when completing tasks — and I hope they can do the same for you!
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