Source: Unified Inbox website.
Unified Inbox, a company specializing in unified communications as a service, recently launched its first product: Outbox Pro, a cloud-based platform.
Outbox Pro simplifies and accelerates the process of creating and distributing posts across various social media platforms. This web browser extension, currently compatible with Chrome, empowers users to generate, share, review, modify, approve, schedule, publish, and monitor both original and curated online content. Multiple authors can collaborate on this content, which can be shared across Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Projections indicate that social media expenditures will constitute 21.4% of marketing budgets by 2019. Consequently, as businesses seek a greater return on their social media investments, enhancing the quality and efficiency of their content marketing processes becomes paramount. Outbox Pro introduces an innovative workflow designed to enable in-house and agency-based marketing, communications, and PR teams to:
• Oversee multiple “Authors” from a central location, assigning and managing roles with specific permissions.
• Establish secure access to live social media accounts without sharing passwords.
• Develop original and curated web content tailored for each social network.
• Designate an “admin” to review and approve social media content.
• Receive and review content approval requests via email from any mobile device.
• Modify declined posts and resubmit them for approval.
“Organizations are no longer debating ‘Should we engage in social media?’ Instead, they’re asking, ‘What tools will optimize our efforts?’” remarked Toby Ruckert, Founder and CEO of Unified Inbox. “Companies can now elevate their social media ROI by gaining comprehensive visibility and control over their real-time and scheduled social marketing content.”
Outbox Pro further amplifies the impact of social content by enabling companies to involve authors from departments beyond traditional digital marketing roles. For instance, a restaurant’s marketing team could leverage content created by its produce buyers, showcasing fresh ingredients “live from the market” in the most effective format for each social media platform.
Singapore Days and Ramada Hotels have already adopted Outbox Pro, empowering their customer-facing teams to generate real-time content and establish a consistent stream of engaging social media material across their various platforms.
Tony Cousens, General Manager of the Wyndham Hotel Group Singapore, commented, “To effectively communicate our achievements and better engage with our customers, we’ve been actively utilizing social media, and more recently, Outbox Pro. With at least four brands to manage across multiple social media sites, having an efficient, productive, and secure social media strategy is essential."
“The ability to schedule posts across multiple channels with a single click is an invaluable marketing feature for us. Moreover, we can now source compelling content from a wide range of contributors – our staff, partners, guests, and even customers themselves. This is only possible due to the streamlined workflow and approval process that Outbox Pro provides. We’re already exploring opportunities to expand its use to other Wyndham Hotel Group properties across the Asia-Pacific region.”
Source: Unified Inbox.
Although companies like Buffer and Hootsuite offer comparable features, Unified Inbox presents itself as a more sophisticated alternative to Buffer while being significantly more user-friendly than Hootsuite. Both Hootsuite and Buffer operate on a monthly flat fee model, while Outbox Pro charges per post. Additionally, Outbox Pro prioritizes internal and external content approval workflows, whereas Buffer and Hootsuite primarily focus on scheduling final posts.
Outbox Pro can be downloaded from the Google Chrome Web Store. As an incentive for new users, the first 100 posts on Outbox Pro are free, with subsequent posts priced at US$0.25 each.
At a rate of one post per weekday per month on a single social network, Outbox Pro would cost between US$5 and US$6.25 per month. This contrasts with Hootsuite Pro’s monthly fee of US$9.99 and Buffer’s small business plan, which costs US$50 per month. Buffer also provides an ‘Awesome’ personal plan priced at US$102 annually.
However, both Buffer and Hootsuite offer unlimited posts. Hootsuite Pro allows users to schedule up to 350 posts at a time, while Buffer’s queue accommodates up to 200 posts. The key difference lies in the flat fee structure, where users can schedule more posts as their queue depletes.