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10 of the best sales and marketing app stacks to inspire you in 2021

10 of the best sales and marketing app stacks to inspire you in 2021Photo by Thomas Lefebvre

Originally Posted On: https://www.piesync.com/blog/best-sales-and-marketing-tech-stacks/

 

There’s one thing that every sales and marketing team is constantly building and adjusting. While some aspects stay in place for years, others are added, connected and replaced: it’s their app stack.

An app stack is the collection of software tools used to run a business or achieve a common objective. It can also be called a tech stack or software stack.

Originally, this term was mostly used in a development context – referring to the frameworks and platforms used for front-end and back-end development – but nowadays you’ll also hear companies talking about their sales, marketing and support stacks.

A sales and marketing stack can include SaaS apps such as your CRM, email marketing tool, data and analytics platforms, social media scheduling apps, collaboration tools and productivity apps.

Keep reading for some of the best sales and marketing tech stacks that show off the best combinations of apps up close. We’ll share the tools that tech brands like Trello and HubSpot are using to run their business, alongside some smaller and more niche brands in other industries.

Top apps for marketing and sales app stacks in 2021

Individual apps are powerful, but well-curated and synchronized app stacks for sales and marketing teams can be magical.

To recommend the best SaaS apps for 2021, we’ve sifted through apps from our most popular PieSync connections, top performers on review sites, and the tools we and other companies love using. Here are some of our top picks.

 

  • Slack – Collaboration software that centralizes all of your team’s conversations in one place.
  • G Suite – Collaboration and productivity apps for business.
  • Trello – A popular project management tool for businesses and individuals that’s extremely user-friendly.
  • Intercom – One of the best-loved choices for live chat, help desk and engagement software.
  • HubSpot – A free CRM with powerful paid Sales, Marketing and Support Hubs you can layer on top.
  • SalesLoft – A sales engagement platform to help you build stronger relationships, improve customer insights and generate more revenue.
  • DocuSign – An easy and fast solution to get your documents signed.
  • WordPress – The most popular website builder in the world, powering 37.8% of the Internet as of August 2020.
  • ActiveCampaign – A popular marketing automation software with fantastic user satisfaction ratings.
  • Ahrefs – An SEO platform to grow your search traffic, research your competitors and monitor your niche.
  • Mailchimp – The best email marketing software according to user satisfaction on G2 Crowd.
  • Contentful – A CMS to store and edit content in one hub with flexibility to create compelling experiences.
  • PieSync – An iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) that connects everything in your stack with two-way syncs between over 230 apps.

 

Ten of the best SaaS stacks for 2021

What about actual examples of SaaS stacks created by top-performing sales and marketing teams?

Read on to feed your tech inspiration by checking which tools giants like Airbnb and Spotify are using, as well as some companies closer to your own industry.

1. Airbnb’s app stack

According to StackShare – one of the best resources for finding out what your brand idols are using – Airbnb uses these apps:

  • Slack – The communication app that brings all conversations together in one place
  • G Suite – Collaboration and productivity apps for business
  • InVision – Prototyping and collaboration for design teams
  • Asana – The project management tool for teams to track their work
  • Campaign Monitor – The email marketing app known for beautiful email newsletters
  • Superset – Data exploration and visualization platform by Airbnb
  • React Sketch.app – Renders React components to Sketch
2. Facebook’s app stack

StackShare shares just two business tools that Facebook have in their tech stack, but they’re strong choices.

  • Confluence – A multi-purpose product from Atlassian to fulfill needs for project planning, meeting notes, product requirements, marketing plans and blog posts
  • Campaign Monitor – The popular email marketing app
3. Airstream’s marketing app stack

US travel trailer company Airstream’s stack won a “Stackie” in the 2019 MarTech Stackie Awards, and we can see why. In this beautifully designed infographic, they visualize time spent interacting with each tool by the size of the trees, and tools are divided into sections such as planning, creativity and engagement.

Their apps and respective categories include:

  • HubSpot – Planning, creative, engagement, sales, analytics
  • Semrush – Planning
  • Google Drive – Planning
  • Basecamp – Planning
  • Frame.io – Planning
  • WordPress – Creative, engagement
  • Zendesk – Engagement
  • SproutSocial – Engagement
  • HotJar – Analytics
  • Canva – Creative
4. Spotify’s app stack

Curious about how top music streaming service Spotify runs its business? Here’s a glimpse at their tech stack:

  • G Suite – Collaboration and productivity apps for business
  • AdRoll – Retargeting platform
  • Qualaroo – Design and target surveys in minutes
  • Desk.com for Salesforce – The all-in-one system for responsive customer support
  • Blossom – Project tracking for distributed companies
5. Follow Up Boss’s app stack

Follow Up Boss is one of the top tools connected via PieSync for real estate professionals, so we were curious to see some of the apps they’re using to power their own business. Here’s what we found:

  • G Suite – Collaboration and productivity apps for business
  • WordPress – The world’s leading website builder and content management system
  • Intercom – The popular tool to support and communicate with customers
6. Zillow’s app stack

Zillow, the real estate and rental marketplace, also shared their tech stack:

  • Jira – The software development tool to plan, track and release great software
  • Confluence – Atlassian’s tool for project planning, meeting notes, product requirements, marketing plans and blog posts
  • Zendesk – The popular cloud-based customer service software solution
  • Salesforce Sales Cloud – The world’s #1 CRM sales app by market share
7. Esri’s app stack

Another owner of a great marketing stack is Esri, a leading suppliers of geographic information system (GIS) software. They also won a MarTech Stackie for this stunning infographic:

Esri martech stack

Esri’s marketing tech stack features these tools for their respective SaaS categories:

  • WordPress – Blog hosting
  • Trendkite – Digital public relations software
  • Informatica – Enterprise cloud data management
  • Workfront – Project management
  • Pardot – Marketing automation
  • Moz – Search engine optimization
  • Demandbase – Data enrichment
8. New Yorker’s app stack

How does one of the world’s top publications keep their business performing at a high level? Here’s the New Yorker’s stack:

  • WordPress – The world’s leading website builder and content management system
  • Asana – A user-friendly project management SaaS app for teams to track their work
  • HipChat (now discontinued but with a migration path to Slack)
9. HubSpot’s app stack

It’s intriguing to see what one of the world’s top marketing and sales software providers uses to power its own business. Here are a few of HubSpot’s go-to apps:

  • Slack – Bring all your communication together in one place
  • Jira – The software development tool to plan, track and release great software
  • Confluence – Atlassian’s tool for project planning, meeting notes, product requirements, marketing plans and blog posts
  • InVision – Prototyping and collaboration for design teams
  • Okta – Enterprise-grade identity management for all your apps, users and devices
10. Trello’s app stack

We love the range of tools included in Trello’s software stack. HubSpotSalesforce and Help Scout are most powerful when in sync, enabling you to keep each tool up-to-date, avoid duplicate contacts and build a more comprehensive view of each contact.

  • G Suite – Collaboration and productivity apps for business
  • Trello – A leading and easy-to-use project management tool
  • HubSpot – The free CMS with paid add-ons for sales, marketing and service, by the team who coined the inbound marketing philosophy
  • Salesforce Sales Cloud – The popular sales CRM sales
  • Help Scout – A help desk for teams that insist on a delightful customer experience
  • Customer.io – For targeted emails, push notifications and SMS to lower churn
Chose the apps that best fit your business

To build the most powerful sales and marketing tech stack for your own business, take the time to choose tools that make your life easier and equip you with the features you need to access greater results.

Remember: tech should save you time and effort, not add to it, so you don’t need to struggle with a system that gives you extra headaches. We recommend using communities like G2 and Crozdesk to find the right apps to power your business.

Build the strongest app stack by syncing your apps

Wondering how to keep all of these sales and marketing apps integrated and avoid data overwhelm?

For the biggest boost to your performance, make sure your tech stack is kept in sync. With PieSync, you can set up two-way syncs between hundreds of apps to guarantee your teams are always looking at the latest customer data in every tool.

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