monday.com for marketing planning and CRM

monday.com is a work management platform: a visual, flexible system where teams organise work, projects and processes in boards with columns, statuses and automations. It started as an alternative to Excel sheets and to-do lists, but has grown into a platform that's also used as a CRM, a marketing planning tool and a project management system. This article looks at how to set monday.com up in practice for marketing work, where it's strong and less strong, and how it compares to tools like Trello and Notion.

What monday.com is

monday.com (formerly dapulse) is a cloud platform where you organise work in "boards": tables with rows (items) and columns you configure yourself. A row can be a task, a campaign, a lead, a piece of content or a project, and a column can be a status, deadline, owner, budget, priority or a custom field. That generic setup is exactly why the platform is so widely applicable: the same basic principle works for an editorial calendar, a sales pipeline, a product roadmap or an HR onboarding process.

On top of those boards sits a layer of automation, integrations, dashboards and views (timeline, kanban, calendar, Gantt), letting you grow from a simple list into a full process management system without switching tools.

Who monday.com works for (and who it doesn't)

monday.com works well for:

• Marketing teams who want to oversee campaigns, content calendars and collaboration with multiple departments or agencies in one system.
• Teams that switch between functions: project planning today, CRM-style lead follow-up tomorrow, a content calendar the day after. monday.com covers all of that with the same foundation.
• Organisations that value reporting and oversight: dashboards clearly show progress, workload and budgets for managers.
• Companies that want to grow in complexity: you start simple with a few boards and expand with automations, integrations and multiple departments.

It works less well for:

• Freelancers or very small teams who just need a simple to-do list. monday.com quickly becomes too much system for too little need, and Trello is simpler.
• Teams that mainly want to structure documents and knowledge (wikis, notes, handbooks). Notion is naturally stronger there.
• Teams without time to set it up. monday.com is flexible, and flexibility means someone has to make choices about columns, statuses and automations. Without that setup time, the board stays messy.
• Companies that need a deep, mature CRM with extensive sales functionality (forecasting, complex deal stages, advanced reporting). monday.com CRM is fine for a growing team, but a specialised CRM goes further.

The main building blocks

• Boards. The foundation: a table with items (rows) and columns. You create boards per project, team, campaign or client, depending on how your organisation works.
• Column types. Status (with colour coding), people (assignment), date, timeline, numbers, formula, link to another board, file, and many more. This makes a board as powerful as a spreadsheet, but more visual.
• Views. The same board can be viewed as a table, kanban board, calendar, timeline/Gantt chart or workload overview. A marketing team plans content in the calendar view, while a manager looks at the same data as a Gantt timeline.
• Dashboards. A separate screen where you combine data from multiple boards into charts: progress per campaign, budget versus spend, workload per team member.
• Automations. Rules like "if status changes to Done, notify the manager" or "if the deadline approaches, move to next week". This saves manual work and makes sure nothing falls through the cracks.
• Integrations. Connections with, among others, Slack, Gmail, Outlook, Google Drive and advertising platforms, so updates flow automatically between tools.
• monday CRM. A separate product line (monday sales CRM) built on the same platform, with pipeline boards, contact management, email integration and forecasting. It uses the same boards logic, so anyone already working in monday.com recognises the setup immediately.
• monday WorkForms. Forms that create new items directly in a board, handy for lead forms or internal requests.

Setting up monday.com step by step for marketing

1. Choose your main boards. Start with a board for your content calendar, one for campaigns and possibly one for the sales pipeline if you use monday CRM. Building too many boards at once is the fastest route to chaos.
2. Set up columns you'll actually use. Status, owner, deadline, channel, budget and priority form the foundation for most marketing teams. Add extra columns later once you notice you're missing them.
3. Connect boards to each other. With the "connect boards" column you link an item in your campaign board to the matching tasks in your content board, so you can click from a high level down to detail.
4. Build automations for recurring work. Status changes that send notifications, deadlines that automatically shift to the next sprint, or new items that automatically get an owner based on category.
5. Create a dashboard for oversight. Combine the progress of all your boards into one screen you review weekly with the team or management.
6. Connect your tools. Link Slack for notifications, Gmail or Outlook for emails from items, and possibly an advertising platform for budget overviews.
7. Train your team on one way of working. The biggest failure factor isn't the tool, but inconsistent use: if half the team updates status and the other half doesn't, the dashboard stops working.

Practical examples

• Webshop. A content board with columns for channel (Instagram, email, ads), status, publish date and creative file. A separate campaign board links promotions (Black Friday, new collection) to the related content items, so you see at a glance what's ready for a campaign.
• B2B service provider. A sales pipeline in monday CRM with stages from lead to customer, linked to a marketing board where leads from forms (via monday WorkForms) automatically appear as new items. Marketing and sales work in the same system without separate lead lists in spreadsheets.
• Local business. One clear board for all marketing activities: social posts, local ads, a newsletter and events, with a calendar view that shows in one click what's planned this month.

Free versus paid

monday.com works with plans that increase in functionality and number of users. In broad terms:

There's also an Enterprise plan for large organisations with extra security and governance. monday.com regularly changes what's included in which plan, so check current pricing and features on monday.com before choosing. The rule of thumb: Free is fine for trying it out with a small team, but once you need automations, dashboards combining multiple boards or calendar views (quickly the case with marketing planning), you'll end up on Standard or Pro.

monday.com as a CRM

monday sales CRM is monday's separate CRM product, built on the same boards technology. You get a pipeline view with deal stages, contact and company management, email sync so you see your mail exchange with a deal, and basic forecasting. For a team that's just outgrown spreadsheets or already works in monday.com for projects, this is a logical step: the same interface, no new tool to learn.

It's less suitable if you have complex sales processes with multiple products, advanced forecasting models or deep reporting needs: specialised CRMs go further there. For marketing-sales alignment (leads flowing from a form or campaign to sales), monday CRM is strong, precisely because marketing and sales boards live in the same system.

monday.com versus Trello and Notion

All three are flexible, visual tools, but with a different centre of gravity:

In practice, growing marketing teams often move to monday.com once Trello becomes too limited for reporting and automation, but Notion feels too loose for tracking deadlines and status. Some teams use both: Notion for documentation and briefings, monday.com for the execution and planning of that work.

Common mistakes

• Building too many columns and boards at once. Start small and expand based on what you actually miss, not on everything that's possible.
• No clear owner for the setup. Without someone responsible for structure and naming, you quickly end up with duplicate boards and inconsistent statuses.
• Ignoring automations. Many teams use monday.com only as a list, while the automations and links between boards are what actually save time.
• Never updating or checking dashboards. A dashboard nobody checks is as useless as no dashboard.
• Using monday CRM like a list. Without clear deal stages and discipline in updating status, you lose the oversight a CRM is supposed to give.

monday.com and other tools

monday.com rarely stands fully on its own. Commonly used combinations:

• monday.com and Slack for direct notifications on status changes, so nobody has to constantly refresh the board.
• monday.com and Google Tag Manager / Looker Studio indirectly: campaign data from ad platforms and analytics ends up in Looker Studio reports, while the planning and follow-up of those campaigns lives in monday.com.
• monday.com alongside Mailchimp or Hootsuite: the content calendar and approval happen in monday.com, the actual sending or publishing happens in the specialised channel tool.
• monday WorkForms and Typeform: both collect input via forms; WorkForms is handy when you want an item to be created directly in a board, Typeform is stronger for extensive, brand-focused form experiences.

Checklist: is monday.com the right choice?

• Do you work across multiple teams or departments that need visibility into each other's progress? monday.com is a strong candidate.
• Do you need reporting and dashboards beyond simple task lists? monday.com provides that out of the box.
• Do you want marketing and sales in the same system? monday CRM makes that possible without separate tools.
• Is your team small and is a simple kanban list enough? Consider Trello first.
• Is your work mostly about documentation and knowledge rather than statuses and deadlines? Look at Notion first.

Frequently asked questions about monday.com

Is monday.com suitable for marketing planning?

Yes, a content calendar, campaign board and related dashboards are easy to set up with monday.com. The combination of views (calendar, timeline, kanban) makes it easy to view the same plan in different ways, depending on who's looking at it.

Can I use monday.com as a CRM?

Yes, via monday sales CRM, a standalone product on the same platform with pipeline management, contact management and email integration. For a growing team that's often enough; for complex sales processes with advanced forecasting, a specialised CRM is a better fit.

What's the difference between monday.com and Trello?

Trello works from cards on kanban lists and is simpler to set up. monday.com works from tables with columns, which enables more reporting, automation and customisation, but also requires more setup time. For a small team with simple tasks, Trello is often enough.

What's the difference between monday.com and Notion?

Notion is stronger at documentation, notes and wikis, with databases you link together flexibly. monday.com is stronger at process management, reporting and automating recurring work. Many teams use Notion for knowledge and monday.com for execution and planning.

Is monday.com free to use?

There's a free plan, but it's limited in number of users, automations and views. For marketing planning with calendar views and automations, you'll quickly need a paid plan. Check current pricing and features on monday.com.

How much time does it take to set up monday.com properly?

That depends on the complexity of your processes. A simple content board can be set up in an afternoon; a fully configured system with linked boards, automations and dashboards for multiple teams takes more time and, above all, a clear owner who maintains the structure.

Does monday.com work with other marketing tools?

Yes, there are integrations with, among others, Slack, Gmail, Outlook and Google Drive, and many teams connect monday.com indirectly to advertising platforms and analytics tools by letting campaign data flow through manually or via automations.

Is monday.com suitable for a solo business?

Usually not necessary. monday.com's strength lies in coordinating multiple people, teams and processes. A freelancer often has enough with a simpler list or planner, such as Trello, and can switch once the team grows.

Further reading

Want to know how monday.com fits your marketing planning and channel choice? Also read social media marketing and channel choice. Not sure whether monday.com, Trello or Notion is right for your team? Book a free strategy session.