At BAMF, we specialize in one main thing:
Growth hacking.
And, a lot of people have asked us what tools we use in the past.
We know there are a lot of these lists out there.
But, how about a list of apps that actually specialize in growth hacking?
Today, I want to let you in on the top 40 growth hacking tools that we use here at BAMF.
Tools that we have personally used in-house and with our clients, our personal picks to help you grow.
Email Growth Hacking Tools
1. Mixmax
We’ve used a lot of email scheduling tools in the past but Mixmax will always be one of our favorites.
Why?
Because it’s light and versatile.
Mixmax lives in your Gmail inbox and it automatically integrates with the emails that you send out.
It’s got tracking features and mail merge, but it’s biggest standout feature is the email workflows that you can create with it.
You can choose different criteria for follow-up emails to be sent, and you can even send it to stop sending out emails once a condition is met.
It’s got a good trial version and it’s pretty intuitive to use.
2. Neverbounce
Email hygiene is critical to any growth hacker’s email campaign.
It can determine your email deliverability rates, make for better campaigns, and allow you more efficient use of your marketing resources.
NeverBounce works by verifying the email addresses that you have on your list. This prevents you from sending out emails to addresses that don’t exist, are full, or won’t accept emails.
This in turn minimizes your bounce rate allowing you to maintain better credibility with ISPs.
A better reputation – though not the only factor – means that there is a higher chance that the ISP will allow your email through a particular inbox.
At BAMF, we suggest that you cleanse your mailing lists regularly to prevent bounces from happening.
3. Hunter.io
Looking for emails is another challenge that growth hackers have to face on a daily basis, but life is easier with tools such as Hunter.io.
It uses its in-house algorithm to try and trace what emails are linked to a company website. After it gives you an educated guess, it will churn out a lead score. (We still advise that you run this through an email verification app to make sure.)
We know that it also integrates with other apps so you might be able to find emails from your favorite outreach app.
Analysis Tools
4.WhatRuns
Ever wanted to know what apps, plugins, or even fonts, your competitors are using?
Well, that’s what WhatRuns does, it tells you what runs in a site so that you can take out the guesswork in your analysis.
Now you can use this information for better competitor research, analysis, and even specialized prospecting (which you can learn in the BAMF academy.)
5. Hotjar
Understanding user behavior is the foundation of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), and the best tool that you can have in your arsenal is Hotjar.
Hotjar monitors the behavior of people in your web properties from the moment they enter a landing page.
You get to see how long their cursor stayed on an object, what area they spent most of their time and even record their exact movements on the site.
It’s a heat mapping tool that’s helped a lot of growth hackers increase their conversions by understanding how people behave and taking advantage of that.
We often use it for A/B testing and monitoring, it is one of our highly recommended growth hacking tools for serious hackers.
6. Audiense
Audiense is a great tool for you to understand your audience.
It’s used by top marketing organizations to get a better feel of the things that their prospects are interested in.
What it does is show the links between prospects and the topics that they are interested in.
This allows you to properly segment your audience based on their interests and create actionable campaigns based on this information.
Social Tools
7. MeetEdgar
There are a lot of social media scheduling tools out there, but MeetEdgar stands out because of the way it helps you schedule out evergreen posts.
It auto-generates variations of your updates and pulls from a library of content that you have.
This is extremely helpful, especially if you sometimes get a case of writer’s block and don’t what to post.
After creating variations, it will then track which of them does a better job.
Here’s another cool feature.
You can put in the link of an article or post that you have, and it will automatically populate the social post with a quote.
8. ManyChat
ManyChat is a great tool for integrating chatbots, social selling, and Facebook Messenger altogether.
What it does is allow you to create an interactive Messenger chatbot that sells on your behalf whenever a prospect interacts with it.
You can use it to send follow-up messages, special offers, or build a “menu” of your products and services.
We’ve used it before to help out clients get quick wins with their outreach strategy.
9. Pay With A Tweet
The problem with paywalls is people sometimes don’t like paying using money.
That’s a fact.
But, how about if you could set up a paywall where you get paid by virality?
That’s what Pay With a Tweet is all about.
You can create a paywall where people have to Tweet about you or share your content before they can get access to premium features on your website.
The system checks everything out for you and verifies if the customer has actually shared your brand on social media.
Pretty nifty if you’re trying to build a following and if you don’t want to discourage people by using actual currency.
LinkedIn Tools
LinkedIn is cracking down on some automation, we at BAMF do not condone any form of scraping or any violation of the LinkedIn guidelines. The information provided here is for educational purposes only.
Houston Golden
10. Expandi
Expandi is the number one choice for LinkedIn automation because it just works!
It’s cloud-based so you have a layer of safety for LinkedIn automation and it’s got all the features you’ll ever need to jumpstart any LinkedIn campaign.
From the start, you can create campaigns that are hyper-personalized and come with follow-up messages. You can then feed these leads into your CRM to integrate with your whole sales strategy.
For tracking, they’ve got detailed reports so that you can find out if you’re efficient with your marketing resources.
We also like their smart inbox which helps keep your communications clean.
Find out how you can manage your LinkedIn inbox properly with our detailed guide!
11. GrowthLead
GrowthLead is another alternative to Expandi, it’s got prospecting and automation features that you can integrate in your LinkedIn lead generation campaign.
It’s got a good messaging tool where you can customize messages, and its AI integration can help you with your follow-up messages.
It’s feature-rich and you can set your campaign to go on auto-pilot.
12. lempod
If you haven’t heard of LinkedIn pods, then you’re missing out.
Pods are groups of people with similar tastes in LinkedIn content that get together to promote a particular post.
lempod offers a LinkedIn pod service that allows you to upload a link to your post and gets people in a group to engage with it.
The resulting engagement from a group can increase the likelihood that your LinkedIn post might potentially go viral.
If you remember correctly, virality on LinkedIn is measured by the initial round of engagement that a post gets.
13. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
This app needs no introduction.
If you’re a growth hacker that’s focusing on converting via LinkedIn, then you need the Sales Navigator app.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator doesn’t just allow you more searches than a vanilla LinkedIn account, but it also allows you to make hyper-targeted searches.
At BAMF, we always push for better prospecting practices such as creating ideal customer profiles, refining your searches, and segmenting.
With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can get better searches with filters for demographics, income, and geography.
This means targeted results combined with personalized messaging make for efficient outreach.
It’s an essential tool that you can use with a lot of third-party apps to increase its power.
Picture Tools
14. Lightshot
There are many powerful screen capture tools out there.
But, how about a simple one that just works.
That’s what we enjoy about Lightshot.
You can take a screencap of anything on your screen, put in simple annotations, and save the picture or send it to a colleague with a link.
Sometimes simple tools make for the best growth hacking tools.
15. TinyPNG
TinyPNG hasn’t changed from its inception years ago.
It reduces the size of your .png or .jpg files while preserving the quality.
Pretty handy when you’re trying to save space or doing bulk uploads.
Automation Tools
16. Zapier
No growth hacking list will ever be complete with Zapier.
You know why?
Because it just works!
And, it has almost no problems across platforms.
For the uninitiated, Zapier allows you to connect different applications together to automate them to have a workflow occur within multiple apps once a certain trigger is hit.
Say for example you get an email in one inbox, you can automatically set for an action to happen on Google Sheets, and even a message to be sent to Slack.
Automation removes a lot of the busy work and menial tasks during the day and frees up your mind to focus on the things that matter the most.
17. Phantombuster
Phantombuster is a powerful automation suite that we’ve used time and time again.
It packages small automations for Facebook, LinkedIn, and other popular platforms, in easy-to-use systems called Phantoms.
A Phantom can grab email addresses, cancel connection requests, and even work with other applications – just like Zapier.
But, they’re more powerful because they use intuitive scripts that mimic natural human movements to get the job done.
Phantombuster is designed with ease of use in mind, all you have to do is to install their extension, pick a workflow you want down, pick from the easy-to-understand settings, and run your campaign.
Website Growth Hacking Tools
18. Intercom
Your goal is to engage with your prospect.
And, one of the best ways to do that is through chatbots built into your website itself.
Intercom achieves that with the different programmable bots that you can use on a web property.
These bots can hold conversations, provide basic customer support, and even conduct product guides for your prospects. And, they do have a live chat feature as well.
Chatbots and live support are not going away anytime soon.
It’s becoming a necessity not only for support questions but also for quick conversions.
Why?
People like to ask questions, but more importantly, they like their questions answered.
19. Sumo
Email list building helps you build out prospect lists that can eventually turn into sales for your organization.
Sumo allows growth hackers to implement email collection plugins on their sites using list builders and popups with ease.
They have welcome popups, parallax popups (the ones that appear in the middle of a website, click triggers, and methods to make sure that bounces are averted when a user hovers over the address bar.
We like Sumo because it’s pretty easy for beginners to use.
It’s one of those tools that you can use without having any prior experience in coding.
They have a pretty powerful free version, but you have to pay to access their A/B testing software and all.
20. Fomo
Fomo uses the “fear of missing out” to generate social proof for your organization’s website.
You can choose from a number of permutations of a message to be displayed to someone on your site, whenever another person interacts with it.
For example, you could choose to alert a visitor on the site whenever someone is subscribing or adding to the cart in real-time.
This app creates a sense of urgency and makes for a great addition to any website.
21. VWO
A/B testing is something that you should be doing on a daily basis.
It helps you create more efficient campaigns and ensures that all the elements of your web property serve a purpose and convert.
It allows you to A/B test any part of your website from titles to graphics in a simple to use interface.
Once you get the results of your test, you can create better campaigns that convert.
22. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a powerful suite that can take the growth hacking on your website to the next level.
It features a full array of tools that can help you understand your customer’s journey on your website.
But, that’s not what we like the most about it.
One reason it stands out is its message delivery system.
You can create highly-specific workflows that can help remarket and retarget customers who have already transacted with you.
This creates more customized messaging that resonates well with your clients resulting in repeat sales and better customer satisfaction.
This is one of the tools that take your email marketing to the next level.
23. Mopinion
Getting customer feedback helps you make better services and here’s where Mopinion comes in handy.
You can easily integrate quick feedback surveys into an app, website, or even an email.
It comes with various customization features that make each survey engaging and easy to work with!
SEO tools
24. AHREFs
A lot of growth hackers like AHREFs because it’s an all-in-one SEO tool. However, beyond being a top-tier all-in-one SEO tool, it has a powerful backlink tool that can help you keep track of your incoming links.
This helps growth hackers figure out what sort of anchors they should be focusing on, if they’re getting enough links, or if they’re losing any along the way.
Now links might just be part of the 250 different factors that are used to rank a site, but it’s considered one of the most significant ones.
They also have a content explorer if you want to look for topics, a keyword research tool, and site health checks to make sure that you’re ready to rank.
25. Ubersuggest
We’ve used a lot of keyword research tools in the past, but Ubersuggest seems to offer the most features apart from their solid keyword research functionality.
Let’s start with their keyword research tool.
You can easily build seed lists of keywords and organize them via PPC value and the volume of searches. They even build out suggested keywords and autocompletes that you can explore.
This helps you find keywords with buyer or user intent.
However, that’s not all that Ubersuggest does.
They also have a pretty competitive SEO suites which help you get detailed reports on the status of your website.
26. Keyword Surfer
While we’re on the topic of keyword research tools, why not have a keyword research tool baked right in your search bar?
Keyword Surfer displays the value of your search, along with search volume, and it even has keyword suggestions that appear on the right-hand side of a Google SERP.
You’ll never have to pull up if your main keyword research tool if you want to check out search volume on the fly, since it’ll come up as you type it.
Note: Keyword Surfer should only be used as a quick reference, we will still advise that you use your keyword analysis tool to extract better numbers.
27. Screaming Frog
This isn’t a tool for beginners, but it’s one of the best in its class.
Screaming Frog is one of the best tools that you have in your disposal when it comes to figuring out if you’re having technical SEO problems.
You can even use it to check all your on-page optimizations and download it in bulk!
Content Hacking Tools
28. BuzzSumo
Growth hackers have to write a lot of content, and BuzzSumo can help with checking out what articles and topics are getting the most love socially.
It’s a great tool for doing research and analyzing where a trend is going. You can search via backlink, web, and YouTube.
They’ve got a simple to use search function, and you can export your search results if you want to hammer out the data via spreadsheets.
29. Google Trends
Google Trends is another excellent tool for checking out what topics are trending and one reason we like it so much is that it gets information from Google itself.
It’s got advanced filtering options and you can grab data based on time ranges and geographical locales.
You can even use it to compare searches and check for search interest.
30. Grammarly
If you’re writing any form of copy, an email, or even a quick status post, Grammarly is an indispensable tool.
It lives on the text fields in your browser and it can easily tell you if you’ve made any grammar or styling mistakes.
What we like the most about it is how much it’s improved over the past few years.
You can even change out the way it checks what you write based on the purpose of the copy that you’re doing.
Note: Grammarly was used while writing this epic guide to growth hacking tools.
31. Hemmingway
Here’s a free tool that not a lot of people use so much.
Hemmingway is kind of like Grammarly, but it focuses more on the style of the copy you’re using.
I find it helpful when I’m writing copy and I need a “second opinion” that’s not dependent on Grammarly.
It’s also got a spellchecker built into it.
Here’s another reason why I recommend it.
If you’re short on funds and you need something more advanced than Grammarly’s free version, Hemmingway is the way to go.
Design Tools
32. Canva
You’re not going to have a design team with you all the time, and for those times where you don’t, Canva is going to save you.
It’s a drag-and-drop design tool that comes with templates for almost everything that you’ll ever need to design online and to top things off, it’s so easy to use.
I’ve had professional designers come up to me and tell me that they’d start their mockups using Canva and move to Photoshop or Illustrator afterward.
If you’re in a pinch, all you have to do is find a template, switch out the elements and download the file.
That’s it.
33. Instapage
Creating landing pages that convert doesn’t have to be difficult and that’s the service that Instapage offers.
Just like Canva, it uses blocks and layouts that you can switch out to build a landing page.
You even have options to fix up designs globally so you know you’re always up-to-date with your designs throughout your website.
34. Qwilr
Qwilr is like Canva but designed exclusively for materials that your client may need.
These include quotes, sales proposals, and updates, that you can whip in a flash.
This tool comes in handy if you need to provide a client with a quick update, but are short on time.
However, that’s not all it does.
It also has built-in analytics where you can track if your materials have been opened and viewed.
This helps give you real-time feedback if your material is converting as intended.
And, that’s not all.
They also offer integrations with some CRM applications.
35. Tailor Brands
Tailor Brands is more of an outlier on our list, but it has a very unique service.
You can use it to create professional logos in less than a minute.
I’m not kidding.
It took me less than 20 seconds to create this logo, and it came with mockups for my placement on different products.
Now as much as we would love to reiterate that you get a professional designer so that you can custom designs for something as personal as your logo.
It does a great job for growth hackers who are experimenting with designs or need something quick for a presentation.
36. Five Second Test
The UsabilityHub is an organization that helps companies and designers make the most out of their conversions.
They’re also the makers of the Five Second Test where you can upload your design in front of testers for five seconds, and they will be asked what they remember.
This makes for a fast focus group for you to understand if your design or website does its job at converting.
A fresh pair of eyes is always helpful when you’re trying to figure out if your designs can convert.
Other Growth Hacking Tools
37. AppSumo
A lot of growth hackers like trying out new tools, but the problem is they often cost a ton of money and there are just too many choices.
AppSumo is a service from the guys over at Sumo that aims to give out apps at a discount via their subscription service.
It’s a great way to sample a bunch of apps without having to pay full price. They have a new collection every month.
38. Rebrandly
Nobody likes ugly URLs.
But, beyond custom branded URLs and shortening them, don’t you wish you had a little more power?
This is why Rebrandly stands out, not only do you have the power to customize your URLs, but you can also track link opens and interactions.
Adding this layer of tracking to a URL is great because it allows you to see if people are actually interacting with the links that you put out.
Remember, what we always say.
“You can’t growth hack if you don’t track.”
39. Fireflies
Getting a quick transcription done as soon as a meeting or webinar is done is a pretty tall order.
Enter Fireflies.
The app is able to record audio during meetings, and simultaneously transcribe them and mail them to you after the meeting is over.
All you have to do is invite the AI to the meeting on your calendar, have it join the meeting, and once the meeting is done you get a transcript mailed over to you.
Easy.
However, don’t get me wrong.
Nothing beats a professional human transcriptionist when it comes to the accuracy or if the audio-to-text job is critical, but Fireflies does a pretty solid job handling your every day meeting transcriptions and other tasks.
I recommend it.
40. Blockspring
If you’re looking to populate and enrich your lead generation lists or reports, then you’ve got to take a look at Blockspring.
We like this app because our current business landscape demands personalized messages and approaches to lead generation. The more information you know about a prospect, the better your messaging will resonate with them.
You can grab LinkedIn profiles or even employee emails with their easy integrations.
Takeaways
This list isn’t complete.
We’re still testing out new ones every month, and checking if they can really help you grow.
But, here’s what I’ll do.
I’ll make sure to update this list as new apps and tools get rolled out.
There’s a lot of tools with a lot of potential out there, and here at BAMF, we want to make sure that you have everything at your disposal to grow.
So, are you ready to try out one of these tools and start growing?
