As we experience a seismic shift towards remote working, businesses across many different industries look to technology to support team efficiency as we work together from a distance.
Marketing teams and agencies must find new ways to manage digital projects, social media marketing, and integrated campaigns efficiently by streamlining the workflows of their team and using collaborative tools that make projects easier as part of a disparate team.
What is Team Collaboration
Team collaboration means communication that drives better teamwork, reaching a mutual goal or completing a set project. Encompassing communication and project management, team collaboration requires equal participation, innovative thinking, brainstorming, and teamwork in line with your corporate culture.
Where historically, team collaborations may have taken place incidentally in the office hallway or watercooler, now, for the most part, team communication has had to relocate to a virtual environment. While remote team collaboration requires a little more planning and practice, the results of a better collaboration strategy, as well as better flexibility and freedom for their remote teams, could see marketing teams reap the rewards for the longer-term success of their campaigns.
The Importance of Team Collaboration in Marketing
With new digital marketing channels popping up all the time and a huge range of freemium and specialist tools drawing you in, cutting through the noise and keeping abreast of trends is challenging.
With a keen focus on results, branding and conversion rates, marketing departments can struggle with inefficiency within their team. As creative team members might shy away from rigid systems and processes, it’s important to implement a structure that allows room for teams to continue to innovate and think outside the box.
The Benefits of Collaboration Tools for Marketing Teams
Many businesses acknowledge the benefits of streamlining workflows using collaborative tools combined with intelligent automations to optimise processes and improve efficiency. Digital solutions enable marketers to work faster and smarter.
Here are just a few of the ways marketing teams could benefit from using online collaborative tools:
- Collaboration tools can help to facilitate more efficient remote work.
- They enable project managers to stay in the loop and oversee campaigns remotely.
- Digital tools allow teams to work creatively with features specifically designed for brainstorming and innovation.
- They can improve productivity and efficiency across the board.
- File sharing and storage becomes much easier in one single platform.
What are the Best Online Collaborative Tools for Marketing?
The best collaboration tools for Marketing teams should integrate with other essential marketing solutions. The best solutions will also bring together key communications functions, task management and file sharing all in one place.
Here are some of the key collaboration tools that have become popular with Marketing teams:
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RingCentral
RingCentral’s collaborative solution is designed with teamwork front of mind. Users are able to create teams for internal and external groups, set dedicated messaging threads for specific projects and send agendas or share files for better context before meetings. With call recording features as well as in-built file storage, users can archive meetings and never lose track of notes or files.
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Trello
Trello is a project and team management tool that uses the Kanban method to help teams organise and manage their workflows. With easily visible progress tracking on individual projects and shared boards, cards and lists, teams can set and prioritise tasks efficiently as they work through to-do lists.
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Basecamp
Basecamp offers a simple but effective workflow management solution for marketing teams. With features including to-do lists (where users can assign tasks to specific colleagues and set deadlines), calendars and file-sharing, as well as a handy mobile app, teams can keep on track of all tasks, projects and due dates neatly in one place.
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Evernote
Evernote is a useful tool for marketing teams. Enabling recording, note-taking, and information sharing in real-time, the collaboration software enables colleagues to choose from a variety of off-the-shelf templates, creating meeting notes, making checklists and tracking campaigns. What’s more, all of this can be synced with other members of the team, so you all stay on track.
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Wrike
Wrike is a work management solution designed to help teams organise workloads across team members. Enabling colleagues to collaborate on creative files and documents and improve accessibility and visibility across your team, the tool focuses on helping creative teams to drive project progress and performance.
How to Choose the Best Team Collaboration Tool?
With so many collaboration software tools on the market, making the right choice can be daunting. Your core collaboration software needs to address your team’s problems. Whether you need to cut down the amount of time your team spends on emails, or you want to find a quality video conferencing tool, you’ll want to ensure your investment hits the mark to mitigate these key challenges.
Here are a few things to consider before you put together a shortlist selection of possible tools:
√ Does it support multiple features?
The best collaboration software will come with a multitude of features, all designed for better teamwork. Be sure to select the tools that create a holistic, collaborative ecosystem for your teams by offering many different features such as video, chat functions, file sharing, whiteboarding and more.
√ Is it built for easy adoption?
Implementing new technology must alleviate your team’s workload, not add to it. Be sure to read reviews and research the ease of use of each potential platform, as there is no point in investing in a tool that is notoriously complex.
√ Does it integrate with your other key tools?
It might be helpful to shop around for software that easily integrates with any other important platforms or solutions your team uses. Be sure that your new platform will integrate with other collaborative solutions such as your Google suite or Microsoft tools, as well as any other marketing automation tools, your CRM, or cloud storage tools such as Dropbox.
Why is RingCentral the best tool for Marketing Teams?
Many businesses looking for a more efficient, effective way to collaborate remotely are turning to RingCentral for its range of intuitive, flexible features and cloud-based infrastructure. With the open API platform, users have the ability to make it their own bespoke virtual workplace, meaning it’s an ideal choice for creative teams who need to integrate and automate their processes.
Here are a few of the reasons why RingCentral could be the best choice for you and your fellow marketers.
1. Easy-to-use
Our flexible collaboration platform is easy to set up, easy to use and also has a handy mobile app, meaning you and your teams can get acquainted with the system and be up and running in minutes.
2. Integrated
With off-the-shelf integrations with key marketing platforms such as Marketo and Mailchimp, CRM systems such as Salesforce and project management tools like Asana, Trello or Basecamp, marketing teams can build a unique virtual hub for highly efficient collaborations.
3. Secure & Scalable
With seven layers of security, our comprehensive collaboration platform keeps your business conversations secure at every layer of your organisation. What’s more, our cloud-based software is designed to allow you to scale up, growing with you and your marketing team.
4. Designed for Teamwork
Keeping everyone aligned is challenging, especially with teams working across different locations and time zones. RingCentral’s core features are built with productive teamwork in mind, allowing users to set dedicated chat threads for projects, topics and teams. Whether you need to share gantt charts, discuss the editorial calendar or drag and drop brief files, RingCentral offers the perfect virtual ecosystem for teamwork.
5. Improve Productivity
Eliminating the need to switch endlessly between disparate platforms and tools, RingCentral is built for better efficiency. With phone features, audio conferencing, video meetings, messaging, file sharing and screen sharing all baked-in to one easy-to-use, unified platform, teamwork becomes more streamlined and your team members more productive.
6. More than just Team Messaging for Marketers
While team messaging is a key component for teams looking to communicate asynchronously, there are a lot more features that boost productivity and drive progress on every marketing project. Here are just some of RingCentral’s key features your teams could benefit from:
√ Team Messaging
Whether you need to have ongoing one-to-one chats with your co-workers or prefer group messaging across the wider project team, you can add specific threads to your favourites list for easy communication with your fellow collaborators.
√ Task Management
Our in-built task management enables team members to create, allocate and monitor tasks, all from within the single unified platform. With the ability to add notes and deadlines, it’s easy to keep your team aligned on every project.
√ File Sharing
Having the ability to easily send and receive strategy
documents helps your teams to keep the workflow smoother. No need for inbox trawling, and you’ll find all the files you need archived within the app.
√ Screen Sharing
Screen sharing during your team video calls allows you to present your marketing strategy, mind maps, showcase work on google docs, display SEO reports or gather digital marketing ideas from your team in a more visual way, helping you to ensure you’re all on the same page.
√ Mobility
With an easy-to-use mobile app compatible with iOS and Android mobile devices, your teams can connect, communicate, access files and work efficiently together from wherever they are in the world.
Discover more RingCentral features →
6. Cost-effective
Adopting a unified communications platform like RingCentral means you can consolidate all of your communications fees into one single provider with a manageable payment plan.
With a free version available to allow you to test out the comprehensive range of features, we also offer a number of pricing plans, allowing you to choose what package would meet your business needs and budget.
| Essentials | Standard | Premium | Ultimate |
| ₤7.99 /user/month |
₤14.99
/user/month |
₤19.99
/user/month |
₤24.99 /user/month * |
Explore RingCentral Solutions
RingCentral offers your teams the key functionality they need to collaborate remotely. Whether you’re on the hunt for an instant messaging tool, a video conferencing or webinars solution or you want to migrate your phone system to the cloud, explore RingCentral’s intelligent solutions to help empower and connect your teams.
Video Conferencing
RingCentral Video allows teams of any size to meet face-to-face, in real-time. With high-quality audio, and crisp, clear video, colleagues can drive better, authentic connections from wherever they are in the world.
Find out more about this solution→
Cloud Phone Systems
With our cloud-based phone system, you set your business up for success for the long term. Enable more seamless connectivity between every member of your team, improve the agility of your staff, and set your business up for growth.
Find out more about this solution→
The Integrations every Marketer needs:
Whether you’re a lean marketing team looking to streamline your processes, or a more mature department with ample resources, integrating your collaboration solution with your other day-to-day tools could significantly improve efficiency and productivity across your team.
RingCentral’s extensive range of off-the-shelf integrations includes some of the most popular everyday business solutions and some of the more niche tools specifically for marketing teams.
Here are just a few of the integrations you might need to help your marketing teams drive better productivity.
Google Drive
Google Drive has become an integral everyday solution for storing, creating and sharing files. Integrating Google Drive for RingCentral enables your team to drag and drop files straight into your conversation thread.
Calendars
Whether your team is a Microsoft or Google Calendars user, RingCentral offers integrations with your core calendar tool, designed to aid organisation, planning and communication at the click of a button. Calendar integrations mean staff can seamlessly work through their scheduled tasks and meetings all from within the single-platform workspace.
Mailchimp
With MailChimp integration, marketing teams can easily create, send and track newsletters, with notifications posted into the team messaging conversation of your choice. You’ll be notified of new subscribers, unsubscribes, and the sent status of your email campaigns.
Zapier
Marketo for RingCentral enables users to get instant updates on smart campaigns all while working in the team messaging app. This enables your teams to focus on efficient collaborations as they put their lead generation projects on auto-pilot.
Marketo
Popular for its Kanban framework software, which features visual boards, lists and cards, Trello is designed to make your workflows leaner and more accessible. The Trello for RingCentral app integration allows users to plan, organise, manage workflows and receive updates on Trello activity from within their team messaging app. Receiving automatic notifications whenever there is new activity on a Trello board allows teams and managers to monitor project progress all from one single view.
A Trello for RingCentral integration means marketing teams benefit from updates on project activity and tasks as they work within their team messaging app. Syncing your collaborations with Trello means you can tag colleagues, receive updates on new activity and consolidate your workplace ecosystem in one single collaborative hub.
Originally published Jun 24, 2021, updated Sep 22, 2021
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