8 Trending Digital Marketing Tools You Can’t Ignore in 2021

Instead of asking what digital marketing tools are most popular, perhaps the better question is, which digital marketing tools and strategies are producing real results?

The best marketers know that if you only do what everyone else is doing, you’ll have a difficult time finding those unicorn growth hacks that take your business to the next level.

And unfortunately, most marketers are content with the status quo, which is highlighted by the fact that only 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates (Econsultancy).

That’s why in this article we’ve focused on 8 trends in 2021 that aren’t just hype, and the digital marketing tools being used to achieve awesome results.

1. Omnichannel Marketing
2. Video Marketing & Live Streaming
3. SMS Text Message Marketing
4. Influencer Marketing
5. Web Page Optimization
6. Facebook Messenger Marketing
7. Automated Email Marketing
8. Facebook Messenger Ads

#1. Digital Marketing Tools for Omnichannel Marketing

What is omnichannel marketing? In short, omnichannel marketing is a cross-channel marketing strategy that allows you to deliver content across multiple marketing channels from one platform. In doing so, you provide a seamless and consistent brand experience throughout the customer journey.

Customers.ai is an omnichannel chatbot that enables companies to proactively engage with audiences on their website, Facebook Messenger, SMS text messaging, and other popular web chat applications.

Using OmniChatⓇ technology and chatbot marketing automation, Customers.ai instantly connects customers and prospects to businesses in order to generate leads, re-engage customers, and offer real-time support.

This enables you to create campaigns such as chat blasts, conversational drip campaigns, as well as website chat dialogues one time, and then execute them across multiple marketing channels.

#2. Digital Marketing Tools for Video Marketing & Live Streaming

It’s imperative to keep your audience’s attention and to attract new audiences. And one of the best ways to do that is through fresh video content.

Vidyard is a video marketing and live-streaming platform that makes it easy to create, host, and share videos. 

Marketers can use Vidyard to host videos, measure their impact, and integrate video into their email, content, and digital marketing strategies.

And Vidyard has some notable features for marketers, such as:

• Live-streaming: Broadcast your videos in real-time on just about any platform.
• Video hosting: Upload explainer videos, customer stories, and other video content.
• Interactive playback experiences: Embed your online video player anywhere and add video CTAs, forms, and more.
• Video analytics: Understand how your video content performs, identify views, and push viewer data to your MAP or CRM.
• SEO tools: Help to automatically optimize your video content.
• Video Hubs: Showcase the best of your marketing videos.
• Video personalization: Add in personalized details for each individual viewer.

Lastly, Vidyard has a good number of integrations for you to explore and add video marketing to more channels.

#3. Digital Marketing Tools for SMS Text Message Marketing

SMS/MMS marketing is rapidly growing in popularity in 2020. And that’s because it’s instant, convenient, and universal. Most importantly, it’s producing results that are hard to believe.

Take a look at the performance of SMS marketing vs other marketing channels to see for yourself.

Outdated mobile-targeting tactics are costing you conversions, clients, and revenue. Meanwhile, SMS marketing is lurking in the background, waiting for you to capitalize on it.

Using Customers.ai SMS marketing tools, digital marketers can set themselves apart from the competition by dramatically increasing open, response, and conversion rates.

Text message marketing empowers businesses to send customers both bulk and personalized text messages at scale.

And you can have your audience opt-in to text message marketing campaigns easily with Customers.ai because there are multiple opt-in tools, such as its website chat SMS opt-in widget, web page popup forms for desktop and mobile, as well as SMS keyword opt-in tools.

Some SMS marketing examples you can put into action with Customers.ai:

• Bulk text messaging
• SMS drip campaign automation
• Automated responses and proactive messaging
• Send GIFs, emojis, and images in text blasts
• Trigger workflows through Zapier and the Customers.ai API

If you’re still skeptical of SMS marketing, check out these 60 SMS marketing statistics, and you’ll quickly change your mind.

#4. Digital Marketing Tools for Influencer Marketing

While influencer marketing has received a lot of criticism in recent years, marketers that target the right influencers to push their products continue to realize superstar ROIs.

In a recent study by MediaKix, it was shown that every 89% of marketers said their ROI from influencer marketing was either comparable to or better than other marketing channels.

Traackr is one of the top influencer marketing tools available. It’s a data-driven platform that marketers can use to optimize investments, streamline campaigns, and scale programs.

Traackr provides rich insights for more than 6 million vetted influencer profiles including audience demographics, fraud detection, brand affinity, and historical performance indicators.

Use Tracker’s platform to find influencers and filter out the best for your company. It includes:

• Search bios, captions, and content on 13 social platforms
• Discover influencers in 43 countries and 19 languages
• Top-performing influencers by tiers
• 22 different audience and influencer criteria

Lastly, Traackr allows you to run impactful campaigns with customizable workflows and influencer insights for organic advocacy, events, product gifting, and paid partnerships.

#5. Digital Marketing Tools for Web Page Optimization

Up until now, web page optimization tools has mostly been for companies with large budgets that drive high-levels of traffic to their site.

And although you still should have at least 10K site visitors per month before doing any real A/B testing, there are affordable and easy to use tools that have proven useful to a wider range of companies.

One such tool is Proof, which is focused more on customizing the user experience based on who the visitor to your website is.

Proof (aka UseProof) is a web page optimization tool that has some really interesting tools for improving user experience and increasing click-through and conversion rates. The best thing about Proof is that it’s built for marketers, and very simple to use.

Proof has two products: Experiences, and Pulse.

With the Experiences product, you can adapt your site’s text, images, and CTAs for each visitor without writing a single line of code. Experiences allow you to personalize for audience segments based on events, traits, and behavior. 

And with the Pulse product by Proof, you’ll get notifications of real people taking action on your website. Pulse allows you to see the total number of actions taken on your site, which is great for high-traffic pages such as content opt-ins, webinar registrations, and free-trial sign-ups.  

Proof is a great tool to quickly build multiple experiences based on who the visitor on your site is and where they came from. 

#6. Digital Marketing Tools for Facebook Messenger Marketing

1.5 billion people actively use Facebook Messenger, yet less than 1% of businesses are engaging with their audience on this channel.

That’s a direct line to your audience that’s not saturated. Additionally, we know that people prefer messaging over any other communication channel, so what are you waiting for?

Even better, Messenger is trending because it’s compatible with another proven marketing strategy – chatbots.

Customers.ai Facebook Messenger chatbots allow you to proactively engage with your audience via automation such as:

• Chat blasting – just like email, but for chat
• One-time notifications – invite users to get updates and promotional messages
• Drip campaigns – sequenced messages across Facebook, SMS, and web chat
• Facebook post autoresponders – capture leads and subscribers from organic Facebook posts

Best of all, all the Messenger contacts you capture from your Facebook marketing tactics can then be added to your other Customers.ai marketing channels.

That way, if they visit your website, you’ll be able to view that data, send automated and targeted messages based on your previous interaction, and opt them into other campaigns such as SMS text messaging. And you can do this all from one chat inbox, on one platform.

Learn how create a Facebook Messenger funnel that drives conversion here.

#7. Digital Marketing Tools for Automated Email Marketing Campaigns

There’s a huge debate over what the best cold email marketing tool is. We’ve tried them all (seriously, we have), and we’ve had by far the best results with Woodpecker.co.

Woodpecker is the best tool for B2B companies who contact prospects with automated personalized email drip campaigns. The platform is specifically designed for cold emails and follow-ups that you can send directly from Gmail and other major email clients.

The biggest problem with cold emails is that you can quickly get blacklisted or end up in spam folders. Woodpecker is the most secure software for automated campaigns to mass email lists. 

Furthermore, Woodpecker is a great marketing agency tool for sending mass emails because it’s super easy for agencies to switch between client accounts and track results.

#8. Digital Marketing Tools for Facebook Messenger Ads

Facebook Messenger ads are a non-saturated opportunity that savvy digital marketers are taking advantage of. 

And that’s because Facebook Messenger ads are not the same as regular Facebook ads. In fact, Messenger ads perform better than normal Facebook ads.

Customers.ai is a multi-channel chatbot platform, and one of the many tools on the platform is built specifically for Facebook Messenger ads. 

A couple of types of Facebook Messenger ads exist. There’s an ad viewed on any Facebook property that directs traffic to Messenger. And then there’s sponsored content that’s native in Messenger.

Most marketers don’t know that a Facebook Messenger ad experience can start on many of the platforms across the Facebook family of apps, including:

• Facebook newsfeed
• Instagram feed
• Facebook and Instagram Story feeds
• Facebook Marketplace
• Audience Network
• And of course, Facebook Messenger

And Facebook Messenger ads differ from your average Facebook ad because they always lead to a conversational experience between your business the prospect.

So, why should you use Facebook Messenger ads? Here are the top 4 reasons:

• Messenger ads outperform other ads by 2X-10X
• More features available for personalization
• 24/7 automated lead qualification and follow-ups with chatbots
• Instant lead and data capture

Digital Marketing Tools: Important next steps

• Looking for more digital marketing tools? Check out our list of the best free marketing software, and the best digital marketing tools for marketing agencies.
• Get started with SMS marketing campaigns by building a free Customers.ai OmniChat™ chatbot. Get Customers.ai for free today.
• Talk and learn about chatbots with other enthusiasts. Join Customers.ai Island, a Facebook group of over 35k marketers and entrepreneurs that are ready to support you.
• Advance your marketing performance with Chatbot University, a free chatbot tutorial and training area for chat marketers.

See all the tools in Customers.ai’s multi-channel chatbot platform by getting started with Customers.ai for free.