Table of Contents
- Product Launch Tools for Online Courses – Top 3 Reviews
- #1: Best Overall Product Launch Tool – HubSpot CRM Review
- Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy HubSpot CRM
- Best Overall Product Launch Tool
- #2: Best Multi-Purpose Product Launch Tool – Drift Review
- Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Drift
- Best Multi-Purpose Product Launch Tool
- #3: Best Email Marketing Product Launch Tool – Hunter Review
- Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Hunter
- Best Email Marketing Product Launch Tool
- Buyers’ Guide
- Pricing
- Ease of Use
- Platform Availability
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Is a Product Launch Tool Really Necessary?
- Should I Use the Same Tool During my Actual Product Launch as I did During My Seed Launch?
- How do You Seed Launch an Online Course?
- Final Verdict
Online course launches can become very hectic with several variables you need to keep track of and manage.
There are several tools available online that can help you with this and make product launches much more manageable.
Since seed launching can be thought of as a test runs for actual product launches, you can use these tools during seed launching to get used to them.
We’ve rounded up the best ones for you to choose from as an online course creator.
Winner
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is the perfect tool you can buy to keep track of and build relationships with potential customers. It helps you keep track of conversations and also provides you with analytics that you can use to make optimizations to your marketing strategies.
RUNNER UP
Drift
Drift is an easy-to-use tool that facilitates conversations with potential customers on a whole number of different platforms. Not only that but it can also be used to provide customer support once your product is fully launched.
ALSO GREAT
Hunter
When it comes to seed launching as well as actual product launching, email marketing is a strategy that you’ll most likely always employ. Hunter is the perfect tool for this as it does a great job of fetching emails and getting you in touch with potential customers.
Now that we’ve had a quick look at all three tools, let’s look at them in detail to determine which one would be best for you to launch (and seed launch) your online course.
Product Launch Tools for Online Courses – Top 3 Reviews
#1: Best Overall Product Launch Tool – HubSpot CRM Review
HubSpot CRM is a great marketing automation tool that helps you run email marketing campaigns as well as social media ad campaigns.
It can integrate with Gmail as well as Microsoft Outlook to help you develop effective email marketing strategies to gather an audience for seed launching your online course.
Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy HubSpot CRM
Pricing: HubSpot CRM has a free version that you can use which is adequate enough for you to run effective ad campaigns with. Paid plans range from $50 to $1200 per month but they aren’t really something you’ll need as an online course creator.
Ease of Use: HubSpot CRM features a fairly decent user interface that is designed to make marketing your product and keeping track of customer relationships manageable.
Platform Availability: As mentioned earlier, HubSpot CRM has fantastic integration features for both Gmail as well as Microsoft Outlook. Furthermore, you can use it to keep track of your website’s visitors as well (if you’ve hosted your online course on your own website).
What we liked
- Notifications and alerts for neglected customer relationships
- Great way to keep track of website visitors
- Integration with both Gmail and Outlook
- Adequate free version
- Intuitive user interface
What we didn’t like
- Limited social media management options
Best Overall Product Launch Tool
The best overall product launch tool is HubSpot CRM because it provides you with options to conduct email marketing, social media marketing and also, has tools for keeping track and nurturing customer relationships. Furthermore, it provides you with all of this for free.
#2: Best Multi-Purpose Product Launch Tool – Drift Review
We’ve already covered Drift as a customer support tool but the beauty of this product is that it’s so much more than that.
Yes, it can help you out with your seed and product launch thanks to its focus on “conversational marketing”. This refers to building customer relationships by having direct conversations with them to promote your product.
Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Drift
Pricing: Drift provides customized pricing based on the type of business you run. That being said, it may be a bit too expensive for an online course creator like yourself that’s new.
Ease of Use: You can do incredible things with Drift such as creating customized chat experiences according to specific customer relationships. That being said, you can only do things like that once you’ve really mastered its interface. That can take a while as it’s not very straightforward and easy to understand.
Platform Availability: Drift is great as it provides live chat options from your website as well as options for online course promotion via email marketing. It also has features for social media automation that you can use during seed and product launches.
What we liked
- Customized chat options for different types of customers
- Extensive options for email marketing
- Chatbot available for communicating with customers
- Detailed metrics for website optimization
- Integration and scheduling for social media posts and ads
- Customer support features available
What we didn’t like
- A bit difficult to get the hang of initially
- Pricey
Best Multi-Purpose Product Launch Tool
The best multi-purpose product launch tool is Drift because it’s not only designed to manage customer relationships during your product launch but also, afterward. You can use it to market your product, analyze metrics for better website optimization and even use it to provide customer support once you’ve found a loyal customer base for your online course.
#3: Best Email Marketing Product Launch Tool – Hunter Review
Aptly named, this software allows you to “hunt” for user emails so that you can populate a list for your email marketing and outreach campaigns.
It also has a verifier that verifies whether or not a certain email is currently active or not.
Once you’ve used Hunter to populate a viable list for your email marketing campaign, you can use its Outreach feature to actually develop that marketing campaign all within Hunter.
Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Hunter
Pricing: Hunter’s free version provides you with 25 searches and 50 verifications per month. If you want more than that, you can go for the starter plan which caters to 1000 requests per month and costs $50 per month.
Ease of Use: Hunter features a very simple user interface that is extremely easy to get the hang of. You’ll be able to pick it up easily and start to gain value out of it within the first session.
Platform Availability: Hunter is mainly an email-based tool that helps you to find emails and develop email marketing campaigns for your online course.
What we liked
- Automated email hunting during browsing
- Tool for email verification available
- Effective and fast
- Easy to use
- Cheap
What we didn’t like
- Only focuses on emails and no other platform
Best Email Marketing Product Launch Tool
The best email marketing product launch tool is Hunter (also known as Hunter.io) thanks to its effective email hunting features as well as its verifier tool. In addition to its ability to populate email lists for marketing campaigns, it has a tool to develop those marketing campaigns as well.
Buyers’ Guide
Product launch tools can be very difficult to choose from since there are a large number of tools available that cater to different types of marketing strategies and tactics.
In order to find the best tool to promote online courses, there are some factors that you’ll have to keep in mind. Some of these factors are:
There are many things to take note of and act upon after you seed launch your product so that you can use it to its fullest potential. Take a look at our guide to make sure you’re not missing anything.
Pricing
As an online course creator that has not yet started to gain revenue through their online course sales, you will most likely not have a lot of money to work with.
Chances are that you may already need to pay for other tools and subscriptions to create your online course.
Thus, you have to be conservative with the amount of money you pay for your product launch tool, especially if you want to use it for seed launching at the current time.
We recommend that you go for a tool that costs below $50 per month.
Ease of Use
This is the case with pretty much every tool you buy to create and sell online courses but we have to reiterate that it has to be easy to use.
This means you should be able to pick it up and immediately be able to figure out what every menu is for and what each button does.
You don’t want to spend time learning the product launch tool as this is precious time that could be spent on marketing campaigns for your online course.
Platform Availability
Think about which platforms you want to target to seed launch your online course (and also, to market your online course once you actually launch it).
If you intend to use a combination of email marketing and social media marketing, make sure to go for a tool that is good at creating ad campaigns on both platforms.
If you want to mainly focus on emails, then go for a tool that specifically caters to that platform.
The process of creating, selling, and managing online courses can be very intimidating, especially when you know nothing and have to start from scratch. We have the perfect guide for you to help you through the process.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is a Product Launch Tool Really Necessary?
You can try to seed launch and product launch your online course without the use of a specific tool if you want.
However, it will get extremely hectic very quickly once customers start to roll in. Furthermore, if you don’t do a good job of customer management, you’ll lose them as soon as you gain them.
Should I Use the Same Tool During my Actual Product Launch as I did During My Seed Launch?
Yes.
A seed launch can help you understand how the product launch tool works and you can use it much more effectively once it’s time to launch your online course properly.
How do You Seed Launch an Online Course?
Seed launching an online course involves contacting a group of potential customers, friends, and/or colleagues and asking them to go through your online course.
This can help you gain feedback for your online course so you can refine it and also, generate buzz for your brand as well as your product.
Final Verdict
With that, we’re at the end of our post for product launch tools for online courses.
You can use these for product launches as well as seed launches and after careful deliberation, we’ve concluded that HubSpot CRM is definitely the best one we’ve reviewed so far.
It’s easy to use, features integration with a number of different platforms and its free version is more than enough for online course creators.
Let us know in the comments which tool you use to launch your online courses.