To improve performance & productivity, SaaS businesses must focus on utilizing quality tools. To perform different tasks, run different marketing campaigns and for many sales & marketing operations, different tools are required, such as CRM tools for managing leads, as well as for marketing & sales operations, Marketing automation tools to streamline the company’s internal processes, Web analytics tools to monitor website traffic & data analysis, Heatmap tools for website visual analysis, product analytics tools for tracking how users interact with your product and different marketing tools for various marketing activities.

I am listing down all those important tools with the reasons & benefits why SaaS businesses must start using such tools:

• CRM/Marketing Automation – From managing leads & contacts to sales & marketing operations to pipeline management to marketing automation to email marketing to the landing page to form creations to integration with other platforms to insightful reporting, there are many ways CRM/MA tools help and SaaS businesses must take advantage of it. Here is the list of some of the best CRM/MA tools:
  • HubSpot
  • Zoho
  • Pipedrive
  • Freshworks
  • SendInBlue
  • MailChimp
  • Salesforce
  • SAP
  • Marketo
  • Monday.com
  • SharpSpring

• Web Analytics Tools – If you are marketing your business across different marketing channels and not monitoring what is working or what’s not, then you are just throwing your money in the air. You need to have access to insightful data about your marketing campaigns & their performance to make a better decision out of that which will help you plan your business & marketing strategy in a better way. Check out the list below:
  • Google Analytics (GA4)
  • Matomo
  • Adobe Analytics
  • Google Search Console (GSC)
  • Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT)

• Heatmap Tools – Gain visual insights about what your visitors are actually doing on the website in real-time, as well as by watching recorded videos using heatmap tools. Additionally, you can also connect your website forms to see the actual conversions and which channels contributing more or to check if there are any issues on the form itself, what causing abandonment, and what can be done to fix these issues or to check the website issues, such as scrolling, responsive, and navigation issues or to check where users are clicking more on the website & across different pages. All these metrics will help you craft your strategy well. Check out the tool list below:
  • MS Clarity
  • Hotjar
  • Luckyorange
  • Mouseflow
  • Crazy Egg

• Product Analytics tools – Such tools are designed to track how users interact with the SaaS products, as well as have web analytics features too. In other words, a product analytics tool is a combination of both web analytics & product analytics tools. Check out the list below:
  • Amplitude
  • Mixpanel
  • Kissmetrics

• Customer data platforms (CDP) – CDP acts as a common database of users’ or customers’ data, data is pulled through multiple sources or you can say through different analytics platforms to group together all in one place to have a granular data view that could help make a better business or marketing decisions. Try CDP tools, such as Segment or CleverTap for your SaaS business to understand your data better.

• Business Intelligence tools – BI tools are intended to collect and process large amounts of data, both structured and unstructured data. Data from online and offline sources are fed to such tools to generate meaningful data that help make better decisions. You can try out some of the best BI tools:
  • Tableau
  • MS Power BI
  • Yellowfin BI
  • Domo
  • Zoho Analytics
  • Qlikview
  • IBM Cognos

• Marketing Tools – There are a variety of marketing tools available to execute different online marketing activities. Check out some of the best tools for marketing listed below:
  • For SEO, I would personally recommend SEMRush or ahrefs and Screaming frog
  • For email marketing, MailChimp or SendInBlue is a good option
  • For content marketing, try Buzzsumo for research purposes
  • For social media, Buffer & Hootsuite are good for automating posts, planning content calendars & reporting
  • For paid media, SEMRush offers great reports for paid campaigns, as well as spyFu a good option too

• Productivity Tools – Slack, ClickUp, and Airtable are tools that help you manage your projects better, as well as keep you updated on tasks management and make internal communication easy.

Conclusion

To grow faster & make better decisions, SaaS businesses must utilize analytical/automation/productivity tools available for different company tasks and there is no limit. There are a variety of tools available for different purposes that SaaS businesses must take advantage of. I have listed down all the important tools in this blog so check those and find what suits best for your SaaS business.

Using CRM & marketing automation tools can help SaaS businesses automate their sales & marketing tasks, as well as run marketing campaigns, reporting & streamline company internal processes. Doing such tasks manually kills productivity, requires more manpower and there is always a possibility of human errors that can make your tasks even more difficult as it’s hard to identify those errors and it might take hours to find & pinpoint such issues.

Use these 7 free CRM/MA tools to improve your SaaS business performance:

• Zoho – Zoho is a free CRM software that allows a single user to use its platform for free up to 5000 contacts, after that, it starts charging so it’s a very good platform for MSME businesses. To track more leads (>5000), consider upgrading the plan.

Additionally, you get access to many different features, such as sending in-person emails, sales & marketing dashboards, deals, automated workflows, list creation, reporting, and integration with other platforms which are all included in the free plan.

• HubSpot – This one is my favorite as it offers very clean UI, amazing templates, insightful dashboards & multiple integrations with different SaaS platforms. It has no contact limits but yes, restricts on users. It’s good for both MSMEs & big companies.

You get access to many amazing features, such as creative email & landing page templates, chatbot setup, different ways to set up dashboards, different objects (Contacts, Deals, Sales, and Company), list creations, form creations, defining buyer personas, automated workflows, a number of different properties, and integration with 100+ SaaS platforms. Some of these features are included in the free plan while some you can access under a paid plan.

• SendInBlue – It is a multi-purpose tool that provides three very important features which are email marketing, CRM, and marketing automation. The good thing is that you can use the SendInBlue sign-up or subscription form on the website and leads will be stored directly in the CRM.

Later, you can put these leads into different lists for mass email marketing or run automated email or drip email campaigns to nurture your customers.

• MailChimp – It is almost similar to SendInBlue but comes with some different features and plans. It’s recognized as one of the best email marketing platforms but lately, it has added CRM & marketing automation features too that make it more powerful if you consider it from a marketing perspective as it allows you to track and automate leads, as well as running targeted email marketing campaigns.

• Monday.com – It has a variety of features & tools that include marketing, sales & CRM, project management, task management, workflows, and many more that is meant to improve productivity for an individual, as well as for a whole team in a company.

• Freshworks – It’s a bit similar to Zoho but yes, there are differences in UI, features, and pricing. It has different products for different tasks, such as Freshsales for the sales team, Freshsales Suite an all-in-one CRM, Freshmarketer for marketing automation, and so on.

• Pipedrive – Pipedrive is a sales CRM & pipeline management software that helps salespeople manage their sales data with ease, as well as automate their sales tasks which improves sales team productivity.

Conclusion

SaaS businesses must take advantage of CRM/MA tools to improve their business operations & their team productivity. There are many such tools, some are very expensive while others charge a minimal amount, while others are free but have some limitations. SaaS businesses that are in a very early stage should opt for free CRM/MA tools or for those whose pricing is very low. I have written this blog keeping SaaS startups in mind who can not afford pricy tools so they can use such free tools initially.