Recommended Tech Resources
With today’s technology, it amazes us how easy it is to run your business online these days. We can’t imagine referring to spreadsheets and shuffling paper every time someone books a meeting with us. All of these manual steps can be automated with less time wasted on all the admin work.
Clients often ask us which automation and online tech platforms we use in our business. As experts in online technology and website automations, we have tried using many platforms! While some play nice with each other, some can cause havoc and can cost a fortune to run if you’re not using all of their product features!
So it’s always best to choose online platforms that are proven to work and especially the ones that fit around your business needs. If you’re unsure how to pick a software, you can always reach out to us here.
To make your choice easier, we have compiled a list of all the software that we use here at Bumper Leads with a brief description of what they can be used for.
Recommended Tech Resources
With today’s technology, it amazes us how easy it is to run your business online these days. We can’t imagine referring to spreadsheets and shuffling paper every time someone books a meeting with us. All of these manual steps can be automated with less time wasted on all the admin work.
Clients often ask us which automation and online tech platforms we use in our business. As experts in online technology and website automations, we have tried using many platforms! While some play nice with each other, some can cause havoc and can cost a fortune to run if you’re not using all of their product features!
So it’s always best to choose online platforms that are proven to work and especially the ones that fit around your business needs. If you’re unsure how to pick a software, you can always reach out to us here.
To make your choice easier, we have compiled a list of all the software that we use here at Bumper Leads with a brief description of what they can be used for.
CRM
We think small businesses need to be agile in order to adapt to ever-changing business environments. Yet, when it comes to picking the right email marketing platform or a CRM solution, you can sometimes feel locked into their own features with no choice to adjust these features to fit your needs. And when you do want to change, it normally means you have to upgrade to solutions that can cost you thousands if you have a large contact database or sales team size. This is why we like working with ActiveCampaign CRM for small business clients. It’s very easy to use and super customizable.
ActiveCampaign CRM is good but it’s not as robust as the well known Salesforce CRM for example. We use ActiveCampaign CRM in-house which plays nice with GSuite which is our preferred Workspace tool. With ActiveCampaign CRM Chrome Browser Addon, you could do everything you need without leaving GSuite. For example, you could add/update contact details, add a sales lead to a contact pipeline, add a contact to an automation, assign a task, add notes, send and track emails.
The Sales Reports you get are visually pleasing and while it doesn’t satisfy all the Sales professionals needs, we do like the fact that we can merge both sales and marketing together so that we can track how each lead is converted into a customer. You can easily do this if you’re on their Professional plan or above.
Head on over here sign up for a 2 week FREE trial so you can assess their prices and product features to fit around your business needs.
If you’re a coach or a consultant, Ontraport is almost a no brainer for your online business. It helps you automate your client communications, captures leads, create landing pages, accept and process payment for your services; and much more. It is an all-in-one solution CRM, so if you’re looking for less software logins, then Ontraport could replace most of your software.
What we love about Ontraport is their superior customer service, so any support issues are dealt with quickly. And sometimes you might even hear from the Founder of Ontraport! Not many large software companies get their CEO’s involved in client support calls!
We also love the ability to customise objects – this is more for techies out there. This is known as a 1-to-Many database relationship. But for the normal people out there, this is the best analogy we have – If you are a vet practitioner who wants to keep a separate record of your human customers as well as animals tied to the human customer, then this is easily achievable with Ontraport. You can also automate between these records – how awesome is that!
You can sign up for a 14-day free trial here.
A great solution for small businesses that like the robust Enterprise features of Salesforce CRM, but don’t have the budget to deploy these solutions. Salesforce Essentials is designed for small businesses that have a large sales team. It comes with great reporting and analytics.
The best of all is Salesforce now has native integration with ActiveCampaign – so now your marketing team can push leads into Salesforce CRM easily so that your sales teams can follow up.
Because of this unique relationship, Salesforce is offering 25% off their monthly fees to ActiveCampaign users. Click here to sign up for the 14-day free trial to lock in your savings.
Scheduling
This scheduling platform is like no other online calendar system in the marketplace. It’s as flexible as you’d like it to be. Personally, this scheduling tool helped us save over 10 hours per week in admin tasks.
Imagine if you have to book 10 appointments that require virtual conference links such as Zoom and then you also want to send a reminder to your attendees a day before the actual meeting – how long do you think it will take you to do this?
In our early days of starting Bumper Leads, Acuity together with ActiveCampaign CRM helped Jovana serve 30 clients per month on her own. While some agencies might struggle to manage 5 clients, it is a no brainer on how you can save time and make more money using smart marketing growth systems.
Acuity can manage multiple calendars, has robust integration with Zoom so that you can automatically insert unique Zoom conference links for each meeting and it can also help you charge for your services. So if you’re a consultant and a coach, you can quickly get started on attracting and onboarding your clients. Heck, you could even host Group events that offer limited participant numbers!
They have a Free Plan that helps manage 1 calendar easily, or if you prefer to be automated you can sign up on their emerging plans which is $14 per month.
Project Management Workflow
Our internal project workflow management system is Monday.com
It has taken us a long time to find a perfect workflow system as we have outgrown Trello and Asana. We think Monday.com makes it easy to create project plans, change views from Table to Kanban or Calendar, or to automate between each item.
What converted us onto Monday.com was the customizable dashboards and the ability to project reports onto a big screen. So if you have an office that needs to track KPI’s visually for the whole team to see, then this is what you’ll need. For anyone who struggles with technology, I think Monday.com is very easy to grasp. It comes preloaded with templates for Sales teams, Marketing teams and Operation teams.
We also integrate Monday.com with our GSuite, so that we can track files and have conversations about specific tasks.
They have a 14-day FREE trial – click here to try it out for your business, we think you’re going to love it
Say it with video
An absolute game changer for our business! We replaced writing email communication using Loom Videos. Loom Videos help us communicate complex marketing automation tactics with ease. Our clients get to see what is being created on their account. We are big believers in empowering our clients to love the system we create, so we often use Loom for training our clients so they can feel empowered to create automations themselves!
With Loom videos, you can record and screengrab both video and audio, or you have an option just to do audio only. As you’re recording, the video is added to Loom virtual servers, which then automatically generates a shareable link.
You also have the option to download your video so you can upload it elsewhere; or you can embed your recording onto your website using your unique javascript code for the video you just created.
The Pro version allows you to have a dedicated Company Loom dashboard, which we have here at Bumper Leads, and use as our internal source of training material for our staff. And another cool feature they recently added is the ability to upload videos onto Loom so that you can host it there (replaces the need to use YouTube hosting which is normally loaded with ads).
Form Builders
Our choice for segmenting leads online is Convertbox. You can easily create an exit pop-up or a form that has many variables to help you qualify leads – and each lead would be added into your chosen platform. You can launch personalised offers and segmentation funnels to the right visitors at the right time with the easiest most powerful on-site engagement platform.
You can also drive more sales with built in Countdown timers which are helpful if you’re running campaigns, or webinars.
It’s the most intelligent lead capture we found for a reasonable price. At the time of writing, they have a lifetime offer – so there are no monthly fees.
Click here to sign up.
A dynamic form builder that can do math and be your project management tool as well! We like where JotForm is heading – they are the most innovative form platforms we came across.
We like how you can build out a quiz and a thank-you page that can display the score of the quiz – and you don’t have to be super techy to create this.
We also love how a user can upload documents onto a form as they are filling it out – especially useful if you have a mobile workforce who take photos and need to upload images on the go.
Even if you don’t sign up for JotForm platform, it’s worth subscribing to their email list. They share some amazing content for small businesses looking to set up their business online in no time.
They also offer a FREE online PDF editor to help you convert online form entries into PDF documents.
Checkout Platform
Our business couldn’t be the same without Thrivecart. This is our point of sale system or checkout platform. It allows us to offer flexible payment options regardless of which merchant the client prefers to use – it could be ApplePay, Paypal, Stripe or GooglePay. We can customise an offer to either have a Pay in Full amount, or pay over a certain number of months. It automatically sends out an invoice to the customer upon purchase. And if their credit card is due to expire, it sends them a reminder and allows them to update their credit card details without you ever getting involved.
You’ll be able to boost your revenue with high converting cart pages, one-click sales funnels, affiliate campaigns and track your entire business with ease.
For branding purposes, you can customise and embed a checkout on your Website, so that customers feel like they are purchasing via a trusted platform.
Thrivecart can also self-host a checkout page if you don’t have a website. This is very helpful if you’ve got an idea for a product and you want to test it out – saves you time building pages until you have a proven concept.
The other helpful feature is that it has native integration with ActiveCampaign CRM, which means that when a customer buys, they are automatically added to a welcome sequence directly inside ActiveCampaign.
Other similar platforms are Samcart or ClickFunnels, but we think Thrivecart is the easiest and powerful checkout platform on the market. And at the time of writing, you can purchase their lifetime offer via our special link here.
Campaign Toolkit
The leading toolkit for marketing automation users – so if you’re using Infusionsoft, Ontraport or ActiveCampaign, this tool will enable you to uplevel your targeting and segmentation.
Some of the cool features are that you can track the behaviours of your video participants, and then send them targeted messages based on how far along they are in the video. You can add countdown timers inside your emails or introduce an “Add to Calendar’ feature inside your automated emails.
It goes beyond what Zapier is capable of doing and helps you close deals faster. It’s like a steroid for your CRM.
You can try for free for 1 month – click here.
Other Services
If you’re new to marketing, Basic Bananas are our trusted marketing training organisation that helps small business owners create a strategic marketing plan as well as train you on how to execute it. No more wasted time or money on campaigns that don’t work. Learn key trends in marketing that you can apply in your business. This is great for DIY business owners who want to learn more about how to market their products and services while keeping their marketing in-house.
You can check out their Virtual Summit here.
Coupon code to reduce the ticket price to $10 The code to share is: excited
You’re starting an online business and you need all the legal documents to go with it?
We like Stacey’s solution – it includes everything an online business would need in order to protect themselves online. From privacy policies to client relationship agreements, Stacey’s plug-and-play solution is ideal for all businesses, regardless of where you are in the world.
Check out Plug N Play Legal solution here.
We love to travel! Marketing automation helps us have more time to do the things that we enjoy doing, and Airbnb makes this super easy.
Corey and Jovana completed 12 months around the world, staying in swanky accommodations that didn’t cost a lot of money to rent. By staying in someone else’s apartment, you feel like you’re home. And when you travel outside of the busy seasons, you could even save 50% off your accommodation costs – Airbnb is still cheaper than most hotels around the world.
We would be lost without Airbnb! Here are some of the destinations we visited: Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Chicago, New York, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, New Zealand and countless more!
Highly recommend Airbnb for your next international adventure.