Project Management Software For Marketers

• Updated on: 2017-09-28
• Read original article here

A quick Wrike review, is this the best project management tool for marketers and creative teams?

Marketing and creative teams are usually part of more than one silo at work, and many of their jobs spill over into sales, manufacturing and UX departments just to name a few.

They spend much of their time juggling numerous campaigns and projects, and they have to keep up with all external requests and meeting arrangements.

Understandably, this can all be incredibly hard to keep track of and according to Wrike’s State of Agile Marketing report, only one quarter of marketers are “very satisfied” with their project management skills and the way that their teams are flowing.

Teams are often understaffed, with little resources, tight deadlines and a seemingly endless flow of feedback from clients – many of the biggest marketing departments have turned to project management software that can keep up with their fast paced environment.

The last couple of years has seen a huge release of agile project management software on the market, however big companies like Hootsuite and Paypal have their marketing departments using Wrike, and once you see its project management features, this doesn’t come as any surprise.

In my Wrike review, I cover the features that allow marketing teams, sales and design and development to collaborate and work without miscommunications in any company.

One of the hardest things for marketing teams to keep track of is the variety of external requests that they get from other departments or clients. They normally come in the form of an email, a note on the desk or a verbal query, all of which can be very easy to forget.

Wrike has a feature that is designed to help marketing teams file, and keep up with external requests whether they come from email, slack or verbal communication.

The request form is simply filled out by the people looking for a bit of your time, and it can be edited to include all the details that you want for your requests. You will have more control over the process, your co-workers will be able to see your schedule and you will get all the details of the request up front.

When it comes to marketing teams, even with project management software, it can be hard to communicate and collaborate within your own small team, and this is particularly true when it comes to content and design teams.

Trying to get an idea signed off on can be a frustrating experience with a lot of back and forth using doodles, lines edits, comments and Skype meetings making up most of the communication struggle.

It’s very frustrating having to move between online project management tools, adobe creative suites and instant messaging just to get one or two things sorted for an eBook or infographic.

Wrike has a new integration with Adobe Creative Cloud that lets all involved members comment on the files, mock-ups and wire-frames without having to ever leave their system. Any feedback, edits or comments are immediately taken from Wrike and sent to Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and other Adobe Apps.

Creatives can also deliver their work to the rest of the team in Wrike without having to exit their work space.

Keep in mind though that this is only available for their Enterprise version.

This isn’t necessarily the newest feature, but it is one that could make a world of difference to the project management of your marketing campaigns and it should undoubtedly be part of one of your Wrike marketing best practices.

Most people will use an external calendar app for managing a project online and this can become complicated as it doesn’t sync all your tasks, however in Wrike you can use a combination of a shared dashboard, timeline maker, custom workflows and folders that gives everyone in the company a better idea on how the creative or project process works.

You can create custom workflows that show the project process, then create a shared dashboard that gives everyone else access.

Then you can create new tasks that can be tracked, shared and scheduled. All of this gives you much greater control over the workflow processes in your team than other online scheduling software.

Wrike is one of the best choices in project management software when it comes to coordinating across teams, developing campaign assets and managing events, campaigns and launches.

It’s special set of features and integration’s are particularly effective for marketing and creative teams and it certainly makes the balancing act of the often understaffed departments a whole lot easier.

If you enjoyed my Wrike review, you can learn more about their other features by looking at their website.