Markel Business Hub – Important changes for existing users &how new users can unlock exclusive content

Markel 29 April 2025 Markel

As a valued Cobra Network member, you can receive complimentary access to the Markel Business Hub – a powerful online toolkit created and maintained by qualified solicitors and business advice experts from Markel Law and Markel Tax. Designed specifically for SMEs, the Business Hub is available 24/7 and packed with resources to support the everyday challenges of running a business.

For those of you who are already making use of the fantastic benefits of the Business Hub, please note that the access process is changing (see below).

New login process (as of 1st May 2025 . . .

This content is restricted to subscribers

Tags: Business Hub

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SEO

Open Site Explorer is a great free tool for checking your website domain and page authority and also for checking how many links you are getting and from which source. You can plug your URL into Open Site Explorer to see the high-level stats like page authority and incoming links. You can also click over to the Just-Discovered tab to see recent links and Top Pages to see which pages on your site get the most links. In addition, you can also check your competition. Note – the free version of Open Site Explorer gives you 3 reports per day, only. If you want more you’d need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Try Open Site Explorer for free

Email Marketing

Looking for a way to run your email marketing efforts without breaking the bank? There are a number of free email marketing services that let you send thousands of emails per month without spending a single penny. If you have lots of subscribers but you don’t need to message them all at the same time, our top pick is Sendinblue. If you want to send out email blasts to all your subscribers at the same time, a good alternative is Mailchimp. Mailchimp free plan includes 10,000 emails per month for up to 2,000 subscribers.

Sendinblue has a great free plan (unlimited contacts) along with support for SMS text message sending, SMTP, in-depth analytics, powerful marketing automation features all in the same dashboard. The free plan lets you have an unlimited number of contacts, but you’re limited to 300 emails per day.

Try Sendinblue for free

CRM

We could dedicate a whole website on choosing a CRM system as there are so many of them out there and so much discussion around which is best. Keeping things simple, if you’re looking for a better way to manage customer relationships, but don’t have the budget, our top pick is Hubspot free edition. It’s an all-in-one business solution with hubs for sales, marketing, and customer service.

HubSpot’s comprehensive free plan is better than many paid CRMs out there. You get hundreds of powerful features and the ability to manage up to a million (1,000,000) contacts without ever paying a penny. But it’s not always perfect and it doesn’t come without its share of drawbacks. Then again, no CRM does. Not even the most expensive!

Try Hubspot for free

Stock Media

Finding decent images for your brochureware, social media and or websites can be one of the biggest headaches and can eat into time you don’t have. You can spend hours (days) searching to then discover that perfect image you’ve found is not royalty free or it costs a small fortune. Thankfully, there are some amazing sources of free, royalty free imagery, in addition to Canva, which we mentioned in the design category. It’s knowing where to find them. Here’s a selection of some of the best resources for downloading free imagery.

Pexels
Unsplash
Pixabay

Design

Canva is another great time and money saving tool especially where you don’t have an internal design resource or budget to outsource. One of its best uses is to help create images for social media and blog posts, but it can be used for practically most basic design requirement and you don’t have to have any design skills!

Canva has a suite of built-in templates that you simply select and add your company logo, edit as required and download. If you fancy yourself as a budding designer or have someone in the business who is, there is also the option to create bespoke designs and resize to your requirements within Canva, so you don’t have to buy additional design software. Canva also has a free suite of images built into the system which you can simply select and use. Plus, you can also upload your own images.

Canva is quick and easy to use and with over 2 million registered users there’s a wealth of free tutorials and tips you can find online. We also love the upgrade if you do have some budget. It’s around £10.99 a month, so won’t break the bank, but it’s worth it for the wider access to images alone that you get.

Try Canva for free

Social Media Scheduling

The best time-saving tip for social media marketing is scheduling posts ahead of time for your social profiles, and Hootsuite is a tool that will enable you to do that.

It has a free plan that gives a single user a social media dashboard for three social accounts. You can set up a social media posting schedule with up to 5 messages scheduled in advance. Note – if you need to schedule content for more than three profiles you’ll need one of the paid Hootsuite plans instead, but for most, the free plan should cover your needs.

Currently, Hootsuite supports Twitter, Facebook (profiles, pages, and groups), LinkedIn (profiles and pages), Instagram (business and personal profiles), Pinterest, and YouTube channels. It also supports Google My Business through the Hootsuite app directory.

Try Hootsuite for free

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