In the days of old, being a good marketer mainly meant having a knack to understand the minds and desires of people in your targeted audiences. While this may not seem much different than today, the tools and resources that marketers in days past had were much more limited; it was often done on paper and usually based heavily on gut feelings. Today, however, we have access to a plethora of analytical data and tools that can make marketing via the internet much easier and more effective. Below, we’ll discuss three types of tools that you should have in your marketing arsenal if you want to be successful with your advertising dollars.

Automated Software

Setting up each one of your marketing campaigns can be a costly affair in terms of time. Likewise, automation software can also take considerable effort to initialize its operation, but the amount of time saved over a period of weeks or months will be invaluable. One great way you can use automated software to make your life easier is to create marketing campaigns that are based off of data collected from pinging users, such as search history and other forms of user behaviour. The number of items you can target really are endless, and many people target their own websites in search of metrics that are popular among their visitors. You may want to create campaigns around the data collected when individuals sign up for your mailing list, or grab a free download. All of this is possible (and quick) once you have some form of automated marketing software running and analysing.

Website Appearance Tools

If you want to know what ads will look like on your own website or what features you should have in every part of your website, then there are several tools available that can help. Website optimizers will allow users to input virtually any type of variable into them, see what they look like on their own websites, and ultimately determine likely performance. Some of the more popular features that people test with this type of tool include the copy of headlines on their landing pages, colour and element combinations for their paid campaign landing pages, and the A/B testing of which features should be included on landing pages (video versus text, images versus slideshows, etc.).

Email Testing and Previews

Sending out the perfect marketing email takes time and dedication, but it also takes the right tools to ensure proper conveyance of your message. Several email preview tools exist that have taken data gathered from pinging users’ actions with thousands of different types of emails, and they provide plenty of functionality to those who use them. You’ll be able to copy over any and every email before sending, and the tool will check for common errors (broken links, unformatted text or inconsistent code, verification that links are being tracked by your analytic program, etc.). There are also several other goodies included in this type of program, such as tools that will ensure proper length of subject lines and subject optimization in order to guarantee the maximum number of opens.