13 Tools That We Can't Live Without
I realised recently that I use A LOT of tools and apps each and every day as I go about my work at scrunch HQ. When I mentioned my thought to the team, everyone agreed that there are so many brilliant tools out there to help marketing professionals, engineers and people working in the digital space to be awesome in their day-to-day tasks.
Spurred on by my curiosity, I started to make a list of our favourite tools to let you in on some of our secrets. From email marketing content creation and social media management to
organization, productivity and digital security, there are a bunch of great tools we use each and every day (which is ironic I know, since we are building a tool that will make YOUR life easier!).
13 tools we simply can’t live without
1. Flowdock
As our team is spread across Australia and the USA, we need something that fosters communication in real-time without our workflow being compromised. That’s where Flowdock comes in. Flowdock is essentially a platform for group chat and conversation, but on a quadruple shot of caffeine. Flowdock is user-friendly, has the ability to share files seamlessly, pushes notifications to your desktop or phone, you can be on multiple flows (groups) at once, and conversations are easily searchable. An investment in communication is a good investment indeed.
2. Lastpass
Lastpass makes it super easy to remember your passwords, because it remembers them for you. All you have to do is remember your Lastpass password (make it super secure) and then all of your passwords are saved into your vault for safe keeping. The best thing about Lastpass though, is that you can share passwords with your colleagues and other users, you can generate unique passwords (you know the ones that look like 9y2_boGe69*gf@bI), you can organise your passwords into folders (work, online shopping, banking), all devices sync automatically and everything is 100% secure with leading encryption algorithms and two-factor authentication.
3. Scrunch
Of course, we think scrunch is a pretty big deal and a tool you NEED (right now, check it out). scrunch is an influencer marketing platform built on data that connects the dots between brands and their influencer marketing campaigns. scrunch supports marketing professionals throughout the entire influencer marketing process, from discovery and outreach to managing collaborations, tracking brand mentions, reporting on results and measuring ROI. We think scrunch is pretty awesome, and we know you will too!
4. Hootsuite
As the Head of Marketing and Customer Acquisition at scrunch, I couldn’t live a day without my dear friend Hootsuite. From scheduling Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn updates at all hours of the day and night and diving into engagement and analytics, to remembering to post on Instagram at prime times, Hootsuite is a lifesaver. My number one tip for using Hootsuite, is to stay organised with a social media content calendar and constantly build a library of social media content , so you can batch schedule all of your content in advance.
5. MailChimp
MailChimp is probably one of the most popular tools when it comes to email marketing and communications between you and your customers and subscribers. We use it for our weekly newsletter (sign up in the top right corner of this page!) and it’s great because you can save a customised template, track open rates and other advanced analytics, you can import new contact lists and it is very user-friendly.
6. Intercom
Intercom lets you communicate with your customers in many ways, including via email, at scale on your website, inside web and mobile apps and on a one-on-one capacity. At scrunch, we use intercom for customer service and live chat, as it is connected to the pop-up chat window on our website where customers, potential new customers and people wanting more information about scrunch go to start chatting directly with someone from our team.
7. Xero
I’m sure you’ve heard of Xero, the accounting and online bookkeeping software that is helping small, medium and large businesses manage their admin easily and effortlessly, without compromising professionalism. Some of Xero’s most popular features include sending invoices and quotes, bank reconciliation, inventory, staff wages, purchase orders, expense claims and more. Even Forbes thinks it’s a pretty great tool after identifying Xero as the World’s Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015.
8. Evernote
Our Co-Founder and CEO Danielle Lewis can’t go a day without Evernote; in fact, I’m fairly certain it’s open all day, everyday on her laptop. Whether it’s notes from a meeting or presentation, a to-do list for the week or a checklist of tasks to accomplish, everything is in Evernote because it syncs with all of your devices and you can group notes into a notebook so you will never loose an important sticky-note ever again.
9. Trello
Stay organised, prioritise your tasks and manage multiple projects at once with Trello. Create a new board for each department in your business, each staff member in the officer or split jobs up into categories if that works best for you. Then, once your boards are set up, you can add cards in each board, and then items into each card. Sounds confusing, but don’t worry, it’s totally not! I use it to allocate tasks, jot down notes, keep up with what my colleagues are working on, see what future tasks I have to complete, file inspiration and attach documents for future tasks. It’s an interactive to-do list, and the feeling of archiving each item is pure satisfaction.
10. Google Docs
Google docs, sheets and presentations are perhaps the greatest thing for collaborative work. They’re super easy to use, your work is saved automatically, multiple people can be editing at once and they’re connected to your Gmail, so you always have access to them no matter what device you’re on. Bravo Google, you’ve done it again!
11. Axosoft
Axosoft is a project management tool that our engineers use daily to develop the software that is scrunch. It was founded by a frustrated software project manager in 2002 and is now used by more than 11,000 teams around the world, so you know you’re in good hands with Axosoft.
12. Datadog
Datadog is another tool used by our team of developers and engineers for cloud-scale monitoring to track a dynamic infrastructure of servers, metrics, clouds, and apps. One particular feature is turn-key integrations that seamlessly aggregate metrics and events across the full devops stack including SaaS and Cloud providers, automation tools, source control and bug tracking and more.
13. Github
Finally, our tech team uses Github to foster collaborations, code review and code management when it comes to building the scrunch software. If you are interested in learning more about the tools and apps our engineers use, stay tuned for a blog post over on the Tech Blog soon (we hear it’s over 20 tools each day!).
So there you have it, the 13 tools our team couldn’t live without at scrunch HQ. Have you used any of the above, or do you have a favourite of your own that you think we should check out? Leave a comment below and we’ll take a peek.
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