5 Tools to Organise Your Remote Marketing Team
Working from home can prove challenging for many teams, especially when you were heavily reliant on face time with one another. As more and more teams adjust to working from home. Here are a few tools that can help you as a manager to manage your remote team:
1. Project Management Software
Don’t let the initial setup time hold you back. If you work with several members within your organisation, coordinating all your projects and campaigns via Slack, Email and Phone Calls can be quite time-consuming. Setting up a project management software will help you organise your team’s workload and also improve accountability. Especially if some members within your organisation are finding it hard to get into a routine. It can also help with a more transparent approval process and commenting on active projects, without emails going back and forth.
Recommended Project Management Tools
Asana: https://asana.com/
Teamwork: https://www.teamwork.com/
Top Tip: When I worked as Head of Marketing, we would organise projects into ongoing projects and big one-off projects, e.g.
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Social Media Calendar,
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Email Campaigns,
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Brand A Marketing,
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Brand B Marketing,
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COVID19 Comms Plan
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Internal Comms
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Charity Campaign with BHF
2. A Chat & Video Conferencing Tool
Now, you may think Zoom is the ultimate choice, but our personal favourite is Google Hangouts or Slack, for Chat and Video Calls. Slack is great if your team want to stay connected, but it can also affect productivity when team members keep it open all day. Try enforcing a no-slack hour once every morning and once every evening. This way, everyone won’t feel overly connected. Especially, the introverts within your team may feel tired from all the communication heading their way. We recommend that you plan no more than 2hours of video calls per day.
3. Spark
Chances are you are inundated with emails, and you feel like you must get back to people now. Here is Spark, email software that will make your life so much easier. Create templates for emails you send regularly. Spark also lets you snooze emails to remind you to get back to the person, at your convenience. E.g., If you have several requests on comms to send to clients, but you are working on the comms plan on Thursday at 11 am, Spark will let you snooze the emails until Thursday 11 am. So they are in front of you when you need them. Achieve Inbox Zero the smart way. Moreover, you can assign tasks to your team members from your email into Asana.
Get Spark: https://sparkmailapp.com/
Top Tip: If you send someone an email with a request to do something, end it with Thanks in Advance, to stop yourself going back and forth with emails.
4. Serene
If you are the type of person who has Slack, SproutSocial, Linkedin, all four emails and much more open all day. Chances are productivity is doomed. So use an app such as Serene to block out all distractions. Allowing yourself 30 mins to work on one dedicated task will also turbocharge your productivity,
5. Time Tracking Tools such as Toggl
Time tracking is a bone of contention for many. But if you feel like your days are merging into one another. Time tracking can immensely help with productivity. Use time tracking to ensure you only work 7hrs per day and record tasks and associate time to tasks/projects. You can also award your team with a 4 hour Friday if they fill out timesheets. It will also help you understand where your time is going. E.g., if you are spending 14 hours a week, in video meetings, you will know, and you can take steps to change it.
We hope you enjoyed our top tips, if you are still struggling with working from home, our team are on hand, reach out to us for a virtual coffee meeting. No cheeky upsells, Promise!
