8 Must-Have Marketing Agency Software Tools to Maximize Efficiency

Running a marketing agency is about managing multiple clients, campaigns, freelancers and team members while constantly adapting to the market changes. Without proper systems in place, an agency will always be operating in a state of emergency, struggling to keep up with the demands of the business.

Marketing agency software tools can alleviate stress and streamline agency operations by automating routine tasks and providing a centralized platform for project management, collaboration, resource management, and communication. 

In this article, we bring you the seven must-have digital marketing agency software solutions. These are powerful tools that integrate seamlessly into your existing workflow and streamline your operations.

1. Improvado

Great for: Automated client reports, dashboards, and KPI pacing

Improvado is an AI-powered marketing analytics and intelligence solution. What does this mean for your agency?

Improvado automates the entire marketing analytics process, from data aggregation and harmonization to dashboard creation and performance analysis.

Key features beneficial to marketing agencies include:

• Support for 500+ data sources: Improvado helps agencies centralize all marketing data in one place. The platform comes with over 500 pre-built data connectors, including tools like Google Analytics, ad networks, SEO tools, CRMs, content marketing platforms, and more.
• Marketing Data Governance: Improvado provides a robust compliance solution for campaigns, brands, and data during pre-launch, active, and post-campaign stages. It monitors campaign components and alerts users to any issues, anomalies, or metric drops.
• High data capacity: The platform efficiently processes vast amounts of data, accommodating the data management needs of numerous clients and campaigns. As your agency grows, Improvado scales accordingly.
• Data visualization: Users can either employ Google Data Studio templates from Improvado or integrate data into their preferred BI or visualization tool, seamlessly fitting into the existing MarTech stack without extra investment.
• Workspaces: Agencies can manage multiple clients within a single Improvado account, using separate workspaces tailored to specific accounts, clients, or data sources, with controlled data access.

Improvado also features an AI Agent, a search-driven analytics tool linked to your marketing database. This agent allows users to interact directly with data through simple natural language queries, providing near-real-time insights on all marketing efforts.

The AI Agent is equipped to handle ad-hoc requests, conduct budget pacing, create simple data visualizations, and assist in querying data.

The agent continually monitors and analyzes your data, sending out period-over-period reports. Simply specify the analysis period—weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly—and define its structure to guide the AI Agent in generating customized reports tailored to your agency needs.

Pros

• It's the only marketing agency software you need to analyze performance across all clients and campaigns.
• Without any manual data crunching, agencies can save 80 to 100 hours/week, freeing up time for marketing strategies development and optimization.
• Data can be analyzed in detail, with both keyword and creative views available.
• Improvado offers dedicated customer support, numerous customization options, SLAs, professional services, and expertise in marketing.
• The pricing model is flexible, based on the actual data extraction volume and features used, ensuring clients only pay for what they need.

Cons

• You will need to allocate some time for the initial setup. The learning curve ranges from two weeks to two months, depending on the features you decide to master. 

2. Monday

Great for: Project management and team collaboration

Monday is a work management platform designed to help marketing agencies streamline their operations and boost team collaboration. 

Monday allows for the creation of custom workflows to efficiently handle large volumes of tasks and track project progress to ensure timely completion. The platform offers various views, such as time tracking as a timeline, Gantt chart, and Kanban, to help map out dependencies and milestones.

Monday’s team collaboration features include:

• A centralized workspace for enhanced visibility;
• Project-specific communication and information sharing across teams, including integration with Slack and other platforms;
• Real-time integration with tools like Figma, Semrush, and Canva;
• Automated workflows through integration with marketing tools like Mailchimp and Hubspot. 

Monday also makes it easy for marketing agencies to collaborate with clients by creating shared boards where clients can view progress, leave feedback, and approve deliverables. This transparency helps build trust and enhance customer relationships.

Pros

• Monday offers simple, clear, and intuitive controls for few or many users.
• It allows custom dashboards to be built, so you can view your workflow the way you want.
• With Monday, an agency tracks progress at a glance with crystal-clear visuals.

Cons

• Larger agencies (especially at the enterprise level) will need a more complex offering.

3. Bonsai

Great for: Agency project, client and finance management in one

‍‍Bonsai is a full-featured agency management platform designed to streamline workflows and boost profitability. It covers everything you need to run a successful marketing agency. Agencies can manage clients, projects, teams, and finances in one place, ensuring projects are delivered on time and on budget.

It offers collaborative project management tools like task allocation, team collaboration and time tracking, client management functions such as contracts, a client portal, and CRM, as well as in-depth, real-time reporting for project profitability, progress tracking and team utilization. Additionally, Bonsai includes financial tools like automated client billing, expense tracking, and budgeting.

Serving as a centralized hub for marketing agency operations, Bonsai helps agencies manage their entire businesses in one place without switching between several tools, saving them time and money. As a result, agencies can make data-driven decisions from one easy-to-use dashboard, meet deadlines, and keep clients satisfied while staying profitable.

‍Pros‍

• Bonsai offers an all-in-one approach towards agency management, combining client, project and financial management tools in one place.
  
• Bonsai is extremely intuitive and easy to use, reducing the learning curve for your team.
  
• With Bonsai, you can easily scale your agency with custom automated workflows based on your specific needs.
  

Cons‍

• Enterprise level agencies will need a more complex offering.
  

4. Sprout Social

Great for: Social media management

Sprout Social is a social media management platform, offering a comprehensive suite of tools designed to help agencies manage, monitor, and optimize their clients' social media presence across multiple platforms efficiently.

Key functionality relevant to marketing agencies:

• Social Media Scheduling and Publishing: Sprout Social’s scheduling tools enable agencies to plan and publish social media posts across all major networks, including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, from a single dashboard. The platform also offers features like optimal timing suggestions, which help maximize engagement.
• Social listening: Sprout Social allow agencies to monitor brand mentions, track competitors, and stay on top of industry trends.
• Custom Workflow Approvals: For agencies working with clients who require strict oversight, Sprout Social offers customizable workflow approvals. This feature allows teams to set up approval processes for social media posts, ensuring that content is reviewed and approved by the right stakeholders before going live.
• Integration with Marketing Tools: Sprout Social integrates seamlessly with a variety of CRM and marketing tools, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Google Analytics. These integrations enable agencies to connect social media efforts with broader marketing strategies, providing a more holistic view of campaign performance.

If your agency juggles multiple social media feeds from many clients, you need a marketing agency software like this. 

Pros

• Sprout Social has a user-friendly interface.
• The inbox feature makes it easy to see, monitor and respond to all comments across accounts. That way, you can quickly respond to comments and monitor audience engagement. 
• Sprout Social is highly customizable, and the Sprout team can find creative workarounds for the unique needs of your agency.

Cons

• Sprout Social lacks integrations with emerging platforms.
• Some difficulty in posting stories and reels on Instagram and Facebook was reported by users.

5. Zapier

Great for: Software integration and automation

Zapier is a versatile marketing automation platform that is particularly valuable for large-scale marketing agencies managing multiple clients and a wide array of agency tools.

Zapier connects different marketing agency software solutions and automates workflows, allowing agencies to streamline operations, reduce manual tasks, and focus more on strategic activities.

Key features relevant to marketing agencies:

• API integrations: Zapier connects with over 3,000 apps, including popular email marketing, platforms like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Slack, ensuring all systems work together efficiently.
• Automated workflows: Zapier’s core feature is its ability to create automated workflows, known as "Zaps." Agencies can set up Zaps to automate repetitive tasks, such as adding new leads from a form submission to a CRM, sending notifications for new social media mentions, or updating project management boards. 
• Conditional logic: Zapier’s Paths feature allows agencies to build conditional workflows that adapt based on specific criteria. For example, if a lead’s industry is "Healthcare," the workflow can route them to a specific team or trigger a tailored email sequence. 
• Shared Workspaces: Zapier offers shared workspaces where teams can collaborate on building and managing Zaps. 
• Client Management: Zapier simplifies the client onboarding process by automating tasks such as setting up new client accounts, populating CRM systems with client data, and triggering welcome emails.

Zapier is an essential marketing agency software for brands looking to streamline their operations through automation. With its extensive app integrations, customizable workflows, collaboration tools, and scalable solutions, Zapier enables agencies to reduce manual tasks, improve efficiency, and focus more on delivering strategic value to their clients.

Pros

• Zapier automates repetitive tasks, eliminates the need for manual data entry, and ultimately reduces the potential for human errors. 
• The platform offers a great variety of default workflow templates and automation integrations. 

Cons

• A new user may struggle to set up integrations without prior experience.
• Some workflow automation, advanced features, and integrations require a paid plan or a higher cost plan. The bill may become high very quickly if your agency runs a large number of integrations.    

6. Apollo

Great for: Sales pipeline management

Marketing agency software solutions often focus primarily on creative or operational departments, but you can’t leave out your sales team. As with any business, an adequate sales management platform is crucial to generating revenue. 

Apollo is a comprehensive sales and engagement platform that is particularly beneficial for marketing agencies focused on lead generation, prospecting, and client outreach. It combines powerful data management, automation, and engagement tools, enabling agencies to streamline their sales pipelines, enhance customer relationships, and drive growth.

Key features relevant to marketing agencies: 

• Prospecting Database: Apollo provides access to an extensive database of over 220 million contacts and 30 million companies. For marketing agencies that need to build targeted lead lists for clients, this feature is invaluable. 
• Sales Engagement Automation: Apollo enables agencies to automate outreach through email sequences, calls, and tasks. Agencies can set up multi-channel campaigns that nurture leads over time, ensuring consistent and personalized communication at scale. 
• Email Marketing Analytics: Apollo provides detailed analytics on email opens, clicks, and responses, allowing agencies to track the performance of their outreach campaigns.
• Integrations: Apollo integrates with popular CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho, allowing agencies to sync lead generation and client data effortlessly. This integration ensures that all lead information is up-to-date across platforms.

Pros

• Apollo empowers your sales team to focus on the most high-value prospects and gives you tools to establish contact with them, ultimately generating more revenue for your agency.
• It simplifies the process of sales intelligence, saving your marketing agency time and resources.

Cons

• Although Apollo has one of the biggest databases on the market, some industries and niche markets are not well-represented.
• For some agencies, Apollo lacks integrations with existing systems.

7. Scoro

Great for: Project management and team collaboration

Scoro is an all-in-one business and project management software, offering a comprehensive suite of tools that help agencies streamline operations, improve team collaboration, and ensure that projects are delivered on time and within budget.

Key features relevant to marketing agencies: 

• Project Management: Agencies can set up project timelines, assign tasks, and monitor progress in real-time.
• Time Tracking and Billing: Scoro helps agencies time tracking on each task or project, automatically generating invoices based on billable hours, and ensuring accurate billing. 
• Resource Management: Scoro’s resource management tools help agencies allocate and schedule resources across projects, ensuring that teams are not overbooked and that resources are used efficiently. 
• Financial Management: Scoro’s financial management tools allow agencies to manage budgets, track expenses, and conduct financial forecasting. Agencies can set project budgets, monitor actual versus planned costs, and ensure that projects stay profitable.

Overall, Scoro provides marketing agencies with an all-encompassing platform that combines project management, time tracking, CRM, financial management, and team collaboration tools. 

Pros

• The Scoro interface is intuitive and simplistic, offering an easy learning curve. 
• Scoro simplifies project tracking from the quote stage to the billing phase.
• Scoro is highly customizable and can be tweaked to meet the unique needs of your marketing agency.

Cons

• Scoro has a time-consuming setup and syncing process, requiring some time to be invested into the initial setup.

8. Brand24

Great for: Reputation management

You need capable reputation management software if your agency provides clients with respective management services. 

Brand24 is a powerful social media monitoring and analytics tool focused on brand reputation management, social listening, and real-time audience engagement. 

Key features relevant to marketing agencies: 

• Social Media Monitoring: Brand24 allows marketing agencies to monitor social media platforms, blogs, news sites, forums, and other online channels in real-time. Agencies can track mentions of their clients' brands, products, or keywords, ensuring they never miss an important conversation.
• Sentiment Analysis: This feature helps agencies gauge public perception by categorizing mentions as positive, negative, or neutral. This allows agencies to quickly identify potential PR crises or capitalize on positive buzz
• Influencer Identification: Brand24 helps agencies identify key influencers who are discussing their clients' brands or relevant industry topics. By pinpointing these influential voices, agencies can engage with them, build relationships, and amplify their clients' messages. 

Pros

• Brand24 provides a narrow focus and filtering features to identify what’s truly important.
• The company allows highly customizable white-label reports, which is always a big plus for marketing agencies.  
• Brand24 reports give insights into the effectiveness of the marketing campaign efforts.

Cons

• Clients report occasional issues with search results and challenges with managing spam results and irrelevant mentions. 

Building a Powerful Marketing Agency Software Stack

Building a powerful stack involves selecting and integrating agency management software tools tailored to your agency’s workflows, client needs, and growth goals.

The aim is to establish a cohesive ecosystem where data seamlessly flows between tools, minimizing manual tasks and allowing your team to focus on delivering creative, data-driven results. A well-crafted software stack boosts your agency's efficiency, scalability, and performance.

This guide offers a solid foundation for either building a new stack or optimizing your existing one for peak efficiency.

FAQ