Our Software Review Methodology

We’re a collective of experienced Marketing Executives, and we share what we know through our articles, podcasts, newsletters, courses, and community.

When it comes to software, our aim is to provide useful, up-to-date reviews and information that help decision-makers compare and contrast their options. Choosing a new software tool that best matches your needs is not an easy task, not to mention narrowing down the 1000s of options into a shortlist.

Our software reviews are designed to make this process easier by eliminating the endless research process and providing a single source of truth on all the software that marketing professionals might use day-to-day.

What Makes Us Qualified?

Our parent company, Black & White Zebra, has been operating multiple esteemed professional publications for over a decade, including The Digital Project Manager, People Managing People, and others. In that time, we’ve worked closely with hundreds of professionals, researched over 2,000 software tools for different disciplines and use cases, and written over 1,000 comprehensive and unbiased software reviews. Though The CMO is still young, we know what we’re doing—and just getting started.

How we test software and what criteria we look for:

We know that each company’s software needs are unique and depend on a variety of factors, all of which are taken into account in our stringent set of review criteria, outlined below. When considering which tools to include in our lists, our process might include any of the following:

Speaking with the software company directly to better understand features and functionality
Reviewing demos and free trials
Testing key features (which differ by software type; key features for each software type can be found directly on that page)
Noting key features that might be missing or not up to snuff
Weighing what other users have to say (not including testimonials directly from the software company)

Here are the main criteria that we use to compare and contrast each software tool we look at:

Usability: How intuitive the software is, and what resources are available to learn the tool
Standout features: The quality and quantity of available features for a given plan, and their usefulness for the average market use case
Reporting & analytics: The ability to store and analyze data through dashboards, reports, and visualizations
Integrations: Whether the tool integrates with the rest of your existing tech stack, such as calendars, a CMS, databases, and communication tools
Support: The level of support and resources offered for onboarding, training, engagement, and continued post-implementation success
Price: Whether the price of the tool aligns with the value it offers