Tools of the trade...
Yet another MarTech based post.
What makes up your go-to toolkit for Marketing Operations?
Here are some must-have tools that have helped keep things running seamlessly and make my day a little bit easier:
1.HubSpot
The backbone of my marketing systems. HubSpot simplifies everything, making customer management, engagement, and communication a breeze. Everything we do from a marketing side runs through HubSpot and if you have read any of my other posts you will know we use almost every tool HubSpot provides.
2.Amplitude
Dive deep into user analytics with Amplitude. It's my trusted companion for understanding user behavior, split-testing, and ensuring every move is data-driven. Amplitude also makes it easy to build targeted audiences and sync them to various platforms.
3.Make.com:
Data integration efficiency withMake.com. This tool is a powerhouse for crafting simple automations that move data to the correct location. Sure you can also go with Zapier but Make has always seemed to have cleaner integration options.
4. Jira/Confluence:
Previously we used Asana and it was hard to really grasp what the team was working on at a glance. Jira has been amazing for sprint planning and clear project management. Confluence has enable collaborative documentation of all the crazy things that we build. Together, they keep my team synced and tasks on track.
5.Lucidchart:
Visualizing complex processes is a breeze with Lucid Chart. It's my secret weapon for creating clear, concise visuals that simplify the most intricate workflows. I won’t hate on Miro board or Figma, both are great tools and we use them as well, but the OG of process charts is hard to replace.
6.ChatGPT
I have written about some of the ways that I have used ChatGPT to make working easier. I do not think there is a day that goes by without me touching that tool for one reason or another. If you are not yet using this tool.. why?
7.LinkedIn
The community on LinkedIn is always sharing news, ideas, wins, and losses. Helping improve systems and processes. Inspiring one another to try new things, look at something a little different, and maybe even run that experiment you were nervous to push.
Each of these tools plays a vital role in elevating marketing operations, for me.
Related: Another Use Case for HubSpot Custom Events and 1 Million Opt-Ins in 26 Days.
2026 Update: What Changed
I wrote the list above in early 2024. Two years later, the toolkit looks different. Not because those tools stopped working, but because the way I work changed fundamentally.
HubSpot is still the CRM backbone, but I spend far less time inside it manually. Most of my HubSpot interactions now happen through AI agents that monitor campaigns, triage leads, and generate reports autonomously. Amplitude remains solid for product analytics, though I increasingly query data conversationally through AI instead of building dashboards by hand.
The biggest shift is in development and automation tooling. Claude Code replaced ChatGPT as my primary AI coding tool. It is not a chatbot I paste code into. It is an autonomous agent that reads my codebase, runs tests, opens pull requests, and deploys changes. I run a production engineer agent on a cron that monitors deployments, triages Sentry alerts, and fixes issues while I sleep. Make.com still handles simple data plumbing, but anything complex is now an agent workflow.
Jira and Confluence are still in the mix for team coordination, but Linear has taken over for my own project tracking. It is faster, cleaner, and integrates better with the AI-driven workflows I have built. Lucidchart gave way to AI-generated architecture diagrams that get created as part of the planning process rather than as a separate diagramming step.
The meta-lesson: the best tools in 2026 are not the ones with the most features. They are the ones that expose APIs and data in ways that let AI agents operate them. If your tool requires a human clicking through a UI to get value, it is already falling behind.
