One thing is clear – we live in an era of productivity. Businesses worldwide are implementing productivity tools to automate repetitive tasks and make their workforce as efficient as possible.
There have been various studies showing how different tools can help you save time and improve marketing efficiency. From helping you automate administrative tasks to streamlining different workflows, time saving tools are a valuable asset for your team.
To give you a good look into the best time saving tools for different aspects of your business, I’m going to walk you through my top ten solutions. Plus, I’ll show you the specific ways each of them helps your team save time.
So let’s take a look!
1. Asana – best project management solution
Asana is a powerful task management tool that makes assigning tasks and streamlining projects a breeze. By implementing this powerful platform, everyone on your team can easily track their daily responsibilities so they always know what to focus on next.
Asana turns projects into a series of tasks with different due dates and assignees. This helps you make sure each project is finished before the deadline.
How Asana helps you save time
- Assign yourself or your teammates tasks in just a few clicks
- Easily collaborate with teammates on different tasks and projects
- Make sure everyone meets deadlines by setting due dates for each task
- Get automated reminders and notifications to keep your projects on track
- Set up different milestones and streamline your workflows for faster and more efficient business growth
Which teams benefit from Asana the most
- Brands and agencies collaborating on lots of different projects in parallel
- Remote teams who need a virtual space to centralize all their projects and tasks
- Hybrid teams who need a consistent way to track projects in and out of the office
- Freelancers who need one place to track all their clients, tasks, and due dates
2. Google Workspace – best productivity suite for saving time
Google Workspace is a suite of tools that can be helpful to almost any team out there. It can be a valuable asset for documentation and file storage. Or it can help you collaboratively develop different file formats, including documents, slides, or spreadsheets.
All the tools in the Workspace are also seamlessly integrated, which makes switching from one platform to another super easy. For example, everything that arrives to your Gmail inbox can be stored in your Google Drive or opened in Google Docs and Sheets. These apps help you increase productivity and save time spent on repetitive tasks.
How Google Workspace helps you save time
- Use tools like Google Docs, Gmail, Google Sheets, or Google Drive to enhance productivity across your team
- Collaborate with teammates on different file formats, including documents, spreadsheets, forms, or slides
- Make all data accessible across the team with different access permissions and limitations ( your teammates can be viewers, editors, or reviewers of each file)
- Introduce centralized communication with tools like Google Chat (instant messaging platform), Google Meet (virtual meeting platform), or through Gmail
Which teams benefit from Google Workspace the most
- Remote teams that need a centralized place for file storage
- Different departments including marketing, sales, CS, product development, finance, growth, operations. All these teams can use Google Workspace tools to collaboratively develop different file types.
- Freelancers that need to organize their work for each client
3. Filestage – best for review and approval
Every team that creates assets for external use inevitably faces productivity issues. Tracking everyone’s feedback and consolidating it, then chasing teammates to get final approval – it can become an exhausting effort!
Luckily, a dedicated review and approval platform like Filestage can help you centralize feedback and make sure you get everyone’s approval in time for the deadline. And with a clear overview to show who approved what, you can be confident that nothing gets published until it’s been signed off by the right people.
How Filestage helps you save time
- Speed up your review and approval process by setting up a centralized workflow tailored to your team’s needs
- Introduce a more organized feedback process by separating feedback from different stakeholders into different reviewer groups
- Assign due dates to each review round and make sure you get all approvals in time
- Receive feedback and approval on different file types, including images, documents, live web sites, or videos
- Easily track whose approvals you’ve got and who you’re still waiting for
Which teams benefit from Filestage the most
- Marketing teams in regulated industries that need a centralized approval platform for all marketing assets
- Design teams looking to bring all stakeholders together in one place for feedback and approval
- Remote teams looking to speed up approval processes for all creative assets
Spped up your review rounds for good
Share content, get feedback, and manage approvals with Filestage.
4. Slack – best team communication tool
The more the world switches to remote and asynchronous collaboration, the more teams need communication platforms for daily catch ups. With Slack, your teammates can shoot a message to anyone at the organization and quickly get answers.
Plus, everyone can stay on top of the latest changes in a project by creating separate channels for project-specific communication.
How Slack helps you save time
- Engage in real-time messaging to stay in touch with your teammates and resolve minor issues without wasting time on formal processes
- Integrate your Slack profile with a range of productivity tools to stay on top of your projects without switching platforms
- Sort communication into channels for a more organized approach to project communication
- Search through old conversations to quickly find important information
Which teams benefit from Slack the most
- Remote teams looking to connect more with colleagues
5. Mailchimp – best email scheduling tool
One of the time saving tools that every marketing team needs is an email scheduling tool like Mailchimp. Sending targeted email campaigns, newsletters, or product updates to customers would be almost impossible without a specialized tool.
Mailchimp automates the majority of tasks, increases the accuracy and efficiency of your campaigns, and reduces manual effort. Your days of BCC-ing a long list of contacts and sending bulk emails are officially over.
How Mailchimp helps you save time
- Schedule automatic email marketing campaigns, retargeting campaigns, or abandoned cart emails to save time and manual effort
- Segment your audience and make sure they always receive relevant messages from your team
- Set up A/B tests for emails that automatically test two variants on a small segment before sending the winner to the rest of your audience
- Instead of manually crafting emails, use predesigned templates and save tones of time everytime you send a promotional email
Which teams benefit from Mailchimp the most
- Marketing teams that need a mailing solution for newsletters, product updates, and other customer and prospect communications
- Customer support teams to establish regular customer communication
6. Zoom – best video conferencing tool
We’ve come a long way since the days of traveling between towns, cities, and sometimes even countries for meetings. And that’s all due to video conferencing tools like Zoom.
No wonder this particular tool gained so much fame during the COVID-19 pandemic. For so many brands and agencies, it was key to keeping things moving.
With Zoom, you can work with global talent, exchange ideas with people from other sides of the world, and save so much time commuting to in-person meetings.
How Zoom helps you save time
- Connect with remote colleagues in virtual meetings, breakout rooms, or larger conference calls
- Regardless of your location, make sure to brainstorm ideas in real time with your colleagues or clients in virtual meetings
- Use screen share capabilities to engage in a smoother collaboration with your team
- For those who couldn’t make it to the meeting, make a recording and make sure everyone is always on top of the latest changes
Which teams benefit from Zoom the most
- Sales teams that need to build relationships with prospects
- Training and development teams looking to organize organization-wide training sessions
- Hiring teams to get to know the candidates better
- Customer research teams that need to hold customer interviews
- Customer support teams that need to maintain good relationships with customers
7. Trello – best social media management tool
For anyone who organizes all their work in a spreadsheet the implementation of a simple tool like Trello can already be groundbreaking. Trello is an intuitive card based time management tool that simplifies your project organization.
Teams mostly use it to set up and manage their social media calendar because of its visual interface, making it easier to track all future activities on each platform. This is improving organization and saving time for everyone involved in the project.
How Trello helps you save time
- Use cards to visualize your project workflow and streamline your projects from start to finish
- Track your tasks, prioritize work, and collaborate effectively by creating a to-do list for each social media project
- Save mental energy with better visual organization of all your social media posts on different platforms
- Automate repetitive work like assigning tasks to team members, due date reminders, or moving cards from one stage to another to speed up your social media process
Which teams benefit from Trello the most
- Marketing teams looking to organize marketing tasks
- Social media teams looking to streamline their social media efforts
- Influencers who need a tool for organizing their social calendar
- Freelance social media managers who need a tool for juggling social media posts for different clients
8. Canva – best time saving tool for design
When it comes to design, Canva is definitely a valuable time saving tool. Anyone who isn’t a design expert knows how much time and education goes into learning the craft and navigating all the complex design tools. But with Canva’s intuitive tools and templates, you’ll soon be feeling like an expert.
In Canva, you can take inspiration from others by choosing from a huge library of predesigned elements. This makes it easy to create professional-looking designs in a flash.
How Canva helps you save time
- Use templates to get inspired and speed up your design process
- Create beautiful, unique designs based on pre-made elements and templates
- Share your designs with colleagues and collaborate on them with ease
- Quickly repurpose designs for different formats and platforms
Which teams benefit from Canva the most
- Marketing teams that need a fast and simple design solution
- Anyone looking to create a beautifully designed powerpoint presentation, LinkedIn post, or an invitation to an event
9. Hubspot – best time saving tool for marketing efforts
Hubspot has many time saving features designed for different departments and purposes. Everyone from marketing, to customer success, to sales teams can find something valuable that helps them organize their efforts and save valuable time.
What’s special about Hubspot is that it helps you save time personalizing your communication. This means that you can set up emails that will address all your recipients by their first name, mention one of important attributes that you predefined, or adjust email sendouts to different time zones.
How Hubspot helps you save time
- Create a unified marketing, sales, and customer support platform
- Schedule posts and emails in advance and let the tool do all the posting for you
- Personalize your email communication without any manual effort
- Set up automated sequences and maximize the potential of your campaigns without lifting a finger
Which teams benefit from Hubspot the most
- Sales teams looking to personalize and centralize their sales communication
- Marketing teams that want to save time with automated promotional emails
- Customer success teams who want to speed up personalization in customer communications
10. Dropbox – best file sharing tool to increase efficiency
Before Dropbox, we used to send out images and videos through email. We’d send a dozen emails for a handful of images and wait for ages for everything to upload and to be successfully sent. It was a waste of time.
File sharing tools like Dropbox allow you to do this in seconds and save a bunch of time along the way. Not only can you quickly share large files with a link, but you can also store and organize those files, which is always a plus.
How Dropbox helps you save time
- Share large files over a link in seconds
- Easily collaborate with stakeholders
- Store and organize files in one place so everyone in your team can find what they need
- Securely backup and recover files and save time finding old documents
- Protect sensitive data with encryption and never worry about losing valuable information again
Which teams benefit from Dropbox the most
- Project management teams that need to share large files with clients
- Creative teams that need to share files with other stakeholders
- Remote teams that need a centralized platform for file sharing
Final thoughts
As you can see, there’s a massive range of time saving tools out there! Hopefully, this list gives you a good overview of their purposes and how they could benefit your team.
If you’re looking to save valuable time on reviewing and approving content, make sure to try Filestage for free today →
