Here's a curated list of my favorite technology, tools, and services for SaaS marketing.
Carrd is the least expensive coming in at $19/year for the paid version. It's definitely the fastest way to get something up and in market. Easy, intuitive, plenty of integrations, and well-designed.
Launchaco comes in at $50/year for the paid version. Launchaco has great templates and great design to get something up fast.
Webflow starts at $12/month in their paid plans. Webflow is the perfect blend between the ease of use of Squarespace and the flexibility of a custom-coded Wordpress site. Webflow has an incredibly robust visual editor but is still an exceptionally functional CMS.
WordPress themes usually run between $60-$180 for a one-time purchase and Bluehost starts at $3.95/month. WordPress has great themes, the most integrations, and great flexibility for development later on. WordPress also has great blogging capabilities built in.
Squarespace starts at $18/month (billed annually) for their Business plan, which gets you the best bang for your buck in my opinion since they throw in a free domain for the first year along with a free G Suite account the first year as well. Squarespace is very intuitive with plenty of integrations. Squarespace is the best DIY option as well as having great hosting, website builder, and blogging capabilities all in one. The Brine template is a great template to get going.
If your website doesn't have blogging capabilities (Carrd and Launchaco), or even if it does, Medium is a great way to start a blog. Start a publication, pay $80 once to have it under your subdomain and then you're on your way.
Starting at $19/month (billed annually), Ghost is a great platform for adding on a blogging CMS to your existing website.
Google Analytics is the most popular option, as well as being free, makes it an obvious default choice.
Mixpanel offers some great capabilities instead of or also alongside Google Analytics. If your SaaS is a web app, I'd recommend you use Google Analytics for your marketing site and Mixpanel for your app site.
Segment is an amazing solution to help ensure data consistency between all your tools. Segment is a single platform that collects, stores, and routes your customer data to hundreds of tools with the flick of a switch. Segment takes care of the messy analytics installation process for you, so you can spend more time using your data and less time tracking it down. Segment starts for free and tiers up very affordably.
Hotjar is a suite of analytics tools that will help you gather "qualitative data" (that's the stuff that isn't numbers). We're talking heatmaps, funnel tracking, user polls, surveys and more. Hotjar is a MUST for your marketing sites and starts very affordably.
Heap is the best alternative to Google Analytics when you can afford it. Heap is especially good with conversion funnels, event tracking, and doing it all without having to be technical.
Hull is the beast of the group, being an enterprise-level combination of Segment and Heap Analytics. Hull is one unified customer database to transform, enrich, segment data in all your tools in real-time. Hull starts at $950/month.
Namecheap is my go-to for purchasing and managing domains. It's affordable and easy to use. But above all else, their customer service is what I count on.
If you use Squarespace to build a website, buy your domain through Squarespace as well to make things as easy possible for you to manage it.
Google Optimize is Google's solution for A/B testing and personalization. The true progress here is how Google Optimize pairs with Google Analytics, and how easily we can tie our experiments to KPIs in Google Analytics.
Optimizely is a website testing solution to optimize your pages. Optimizely doesn't disclose it's pricing, but it doesn't start cheap.
Plainflow is one of the simplest ways for SaaS companies to integrate services and create behavioural based customer journeys. Think of it as a mix between Zapier and and customer journey mapping tool.
Zapier is an automation tool to move data between apps. Super affordable and easy to use, Zapier is an essential app to get data to the right places.
Carrd is a super simple, super affordable landing page builder and favorite among Indie Hackers. Carrd pages can connect with your domain, is responsive on all formats, and enables users to create pages super fast.
If you're already using Squarespace, Squarespace is also great for building standalone landing pages.
Mailchimp is the best beginner email marketing platform. Send emails, manage subscribers, offer SUPERB tracking, set up autoresponders, create beautiful email templates, target subscribers, and split test our campaigns. Mailchimp starts for free and scales up along with the size of your list. Mailchimp is not optimal if you want to have a lot of lead magnets, as it's list based and you'd have to set up a separate list for every piece of content you want to gate.
Drip combines the ease of use and light weight of Mailchimp with the power and sophistication of a product like Infusionsoft. Drip has an amazing workflow visualization tool as well as great event tracking features. Leadpages acquired Drip in 2016 so the two tools integrate flawlessly and really work well together.
Convertkit is an equally great alternative to Drip, combining great sophistication with an easy UI. Convertkit allows you to build landing pages as well. There are no A/B testing capabilities, but that isn't a dealbreaker. The truth is, Convertkit is equally as good as Drip, just a matter of preference and integrations.
ActiveCampaign is very similar to Drip and ConvertKit with the added capabilities of a CRM as well. ActiveCampaign doesn't have a landing page builder, but it's well integrated with many tools and is still very easy to use.
HubSpot offers a free CRM that integrates well with many tools and generally is a good solution for any startup just starting out. One of the gripes with HubSpot is the disconnect between Contacts and Companies. In HubSpot, they classify people and companies as different records and they generally don't sync very well together. There are some advantages however, as this allows you to clearly define company leads and individual people leads.
If you're looking for a super lightweight CRM that works well with your google email account, Streak is a great solution. Streak starts for free and tiers up to $50/month for more advanced features and other integrations.
If you're going to be a very high-touch, sales led model, Close.io is a great solution if you're willing to pony up the money for a premium service. Close.io is especially great for inside sales teams, who focus on prospecting and developing leads.
Pipedrive is also great for high-touch sales models that require many touchpoint and a system for staying productive. Pipedrive combines sales efforts with kanban style productivity to easily organize your leads. Pipedrive starts much more affordably than Close.io at $15/user/month and tiers up.
Salesforce, the SaaS that started the revolution. To be honest, I hate the Salesforce products. They're old, clunky, and confusing. The value in Salesforce is purely in the integrations. There are an unparalleled number of direct integrations that are much more fluid than others.
While pricy, Clearbit offers amazing prospecting, lead enrichment, and anonymous revealing products to help get the data you need on all your website visitors and leads. Reveal allows you to turn anonymous visitors into leads, Enrichment adds additional data to every contact, and Prospector allows you to discover qualified accounts.
Slack is a no-brainer for team communication and collaboration. Seamless integrations (especially with G Suite products), super easy to use, and a great way to organize conversation. Slack starts for free and tiers up very affordably.
Dropbox is a great way to backup important files, have a single place for evergreen content, and create a wiki to draw from. Dropbox is a great alternative to Google Drive because Google Drive can get cluttered and overloaded with random google docs, pictures, and email attachments. You need Dropbox so that you can keep a single place for all your important documents to draw from.
Google Docs is the best way to collaborate in documents. The Google Docs suite includes Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Google docs update in real-time and have all the functionality you need to get stuff done.
Airtable is an amazing way to build interactive tables. Airtable is a great step up from Google Sheets if you feel you need to do more than what Google Sheets allows you to do.
Screenflow is a great way to create screen-capture videos and recorded demos. Capture the highest quality screen recordings, adjust and revise your video using the easy-to-use editing interface, and create all sorts of videos for marketing.
Trello is insanely easy to use and has a ton of integrations with products you probably already use. Kanban style productivity boards are the best way to organize what you need to get done. I've personally used Trello for content planning, event planning, and personal productivity tracking.
Notion is my absolutely favorite tool, hands down. Think of it as a combination of Trello, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Sheets. It's the "all-in-one workspace." It's a project management, wiki, database, and calendar all in one.
Demio is by far the easiest webinar marketing software on the market today. Demio is browser-based, which is a much more fluid experience for your potential customers and customers. Demio allows you to do one-time webinars, automated webinars, and even onboarding webinars.
Livestorm is also another great webinar software out that that is still as easy to use as Demio, while having more features and functionality like some of the older platforms. Livestorm is browser-based and has been growing rapidly.
For social media marketing, you really only need to do one thing easily: schedule posts in advance. Buffer makes this seamless. Buffer is extremely easy to use, gets the job done, and is affordable.
MeetEdgar is a social media automation tool that allows users to recycle, repost, and automatically feed new content into scheduled blocks during the week. MeetEdgar is extremely easy to use and affordable with their one tier pricing plan.
Ops Calendar is an amazing product built especially for marketers. Map out and execute your content plan, automatically schedule social media posts, and plan out product launches.
CoSchedule is an amazing combination of project management, content organization, social media scheduling, and social media automation. CoSchedule is essentially a heavy-duty version of Ops Calendar.
Buzzsumo is the best and only tool you need for content research, competitive content research, influencer research, and alerts. It's starts very affordably and is a must have for content creators.
CoSchedule's headline analyzer is a free headline analyzer that will score your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value.
Anchor is by far the easiest way to start podcasting. You can start recording on your phone and computer at the touch of a button, easily add music and effects, call in guests, and more — for free! You can even create an RSS feed URL through Anchor and use it to submit to all the other podcasting apps like Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Stitcher, Breaker, etc.
Transistor is a company co-founded by one of my role models, Justin Jackson, and they are creating a turn-key solution to starting and managing an amazing podcast for your business.
Zencastr is the best way to record remote interviews. Zencastr allows you to simply send a link to your guest and they open it up and you can record high-fidelity audio. Recording remote interviews can be a huge pain and hassle, and Zencastr makes it seamless.
Drift literally coined the term conversational marketing, and is the best sales and marketing platform on the market right now. Drift comes out with a new product every month, is super lightweight and easy to use, and is transforming the way business is done online. Their chat widget is free, and you can easily upgrade for amazing bot features, email sequences, and "playbooks" for targeted messages.
Intercom is one of my favorite pieces of technology because of its connection between sales, marketing, and customer success. Intercom is a MUST have for your SaaS app, and is equally as valuable for marketing on your website.
Grammarly is a great chrome extension that highlights grammar and spelling mistakes and gives you recommendations for how to improve on any website. Oh, and it's free. If you're doing marketing, you need Grammarly. You'll be surprised how many mistakes it catches.
Hemingway is a website where you can easily input your copy and get actionable insight into how to make it easier to understand and readable.
Viral Loops is the best way to run viral and referral campaigns. Viral Loops has templated campaigns based on incredibly successful campaigns by real companies that you can use to plug and play for your own business.
Splash is an end-to-end event marketing technology that gets you a beautiful landing page, easily manage RSVPs and tickets, and actionable analytics.
Hunter does one thing and it does it extraordinarily well: find someone's email. It starts for free, and is completely worth it.
Lemlist is the first automated outreach email platform with personalized images. It allows you to send unique cold emails in order to build warmer relationships with prospects. It's affordable and will help you to stand out from the competition. Simple as that.
SEMrush is the best SEO/SEM tool for marketers to use of all sizes. It has an easy to use and modern interface, has the most updated and largest library of keywords, has great competitive insight, and gives real time reports unlike many others.
Ahrefs is a toolset for SEO and marketing that covers backlink checking, competitor analysis, keyword research and more. I've used most SEO tools and Ahrefs is by far the easiest to use and most insightful. I'm on Ahrefs at least once a day, and it's my go-to tool for content strategy.
Finding relevant journalists for your content or your product launches is the hardest part of PR. Easily search keywords to find the best journalists to reach out to.
HARO provides journalists with a robust database of sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage. On the flip side, you can be a source that sends you opportunities for PR coverage and content co-ops.
Quuu is one of those products that is so incredibly effective, yet not well known. Have real people share your blogs, videos, podcasts and infographics on social media. Get hundreds of shares, mentions and clicks to your content.
Turn your biggest fans into your best marketers. Rewardful is a simple way for SaaS companies to setup affiliate and referral programs with Stripe. Just connect your account and let us track referrals, discounts, and commissions for you!
First Promoter is an easy way to manage affiliates and referrals. Launch your own affiliate and referral program in minutes. Quick integration with Stripe, Recurly, Braintree, Chargebee or with our API.
Ambassador is essentially First Promoter on steroids. It's a large-scale solution for when you have hundreds of affiliates and referral programs.
Zest isn't actually in the influencer category, but it has the same power of influencers and a component of referrals. Zest is a chrome extension that curates the best marketing content by allowing users to suggest content.
FOMO is a CRO tool that appears periodically to notify viewers of conversion activity on the page they're viewing. Users will see how many people are viewing the page, who just signed up, and many other cool features. FOMO is a must have for everyone.
Snip.ly allows you to add a call to action to every link you share. If you do guest blogging, appear in tech blogs, or are mentioned online, you can add a call to action to the page when you share the link to take more people back to your website and convert.
Bonjoro helps you convert and retain more customers through personal video by connecting to your CRM and easily allowing you to send a personalized video to every person who signs up for your product. Bonjoro is one of my favorite new tools and is a must-have for every product.
Mobilize is an all-in-one community management platform that allows you easily create and manage an online community. Mobilize provides a much better experience than Slack groups and has amazing features Slack can't rival.
Mighty Networks is also a great solution for community management if you want to make your community a paid membership. Get started for free and create a great community to get going.
Databox is a BI platform built to help you understand what's going on with your business. KPIs from cloud services, spreadsheets, database in one place. No more chaotic google sheets. Create comprehensive (beautiful) reports easily.
Baremetrics is a financial growth toolbox that helps subscription founders and marketers of all kinds to better understand their business and how to grow.
Retarget on every ads platform all the people who clicked on your link. PixelMe adds your retargeting pixel on every link you share. It's a mega-easy way to get started with retargeting and has affordable plans as well.
AdRoll is the growth platform that makes your display, social, and email advertising work together to drive more revenue, with less effort from you. It's not for the faint of budget, but it's the best out there.
Terminus is a B2B account based marketing platform that enables marketing and sales teams to run ABM at scale. If you're working with ad platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to drive growth for your B2B SaaS, Terminus is the best ABM platform out there.
Growsumo helps you manage your partner program to build channel sales. This is especially helpful for more high-touch sales models that may be reselling software through agencies or technology partners.
AppSumo is a daily deals website for digital products and software. It's a great way to launch, gain initial traction, or create a pool of customers for future affiliates.
Design Pickle provides unlimited graphic design services for $370/month.
Manypixels provides unlimited graphic design for startups for $259/month.
Outgrow allows you to easily create interactive content, great for side projects or lead generation. Create calculators, quizzes, recommendations, polls, and assessments.
Briefcase is a site by AppSumo that curates a subscription bundle of premium software to help grow your business. Access dozens of tools for just $49/month.
Upwork is the easiest (but maybe not the most quality) place to find freelancers to help you out with your business. I wouldn't hire freelancers from Upwork for serious projects or anything long-term, but there's nothing better than spending a couple bucks on work that saves you hours of tediousness.
Hubstaff hosts a global marketplace to find quality freelancers. Unlike Upwork, it doesn't have mass adoption, so there's a much better pool of talent.