7Sheep vs. PFL Direct Mail Platform

I use 7Sheep for marketing as a sales person. This works well for me as a single user. I do not think I could use the software together with my colleagues. Although we could have separated lists the access rights might not fit our use case. It has a strong marketing focus and cannot replace a full CRM system.

The reason it's not a seven or above is purely because of the timing of a solution we had requested originally back in August 2023. It's now February 2024, and we're waiting for a wow-factor pitch deck. Previously, we only received a demo recording and an order form quote. These truthfully aren't helpful enough to convince and sway our senior leaders into spending the $35k+ investment into the PMC.

Incentivized

• Affordability: the only solution we found on the market that gave us what we needed at a price we can afford!
• Flexibility: 7Sheep seems to offer enough flexibility in the advance features that we can customise it as we need.
• It's easy enough for our whole team to be able to use.
• Their team is helpful and supportive.

• Personalization: It allows us to create highly personalized direct mail pieces tailored to individual recipients. For instance, we can include the recipient's name, relevant product recommendations, or even custom images that resonate with their preferences.
• Multi-Channel Integration: The platform seamlessly integrates with our existing digital marketing tools and CRM systems. It enables us to orchestrate cohesive campaigns that combine email, social media, and direct mail to reach our target audience through multiple touchpoints.
• Automated Workflows: PFL offers robust automation capabilities, streamlining the entire direct mail process. We can set triggers, such as website visits or email engagement, to automatically trigger the sending of personalized direct mail pieces, ensuring timely and relevant outreach.
• Variable Data Printing: The platform simplifies variable data printing, enabling us to print custom content for each recipient efficiently. This is particularly useful for A/B testing different messaging or designs within a single campaign.

Incentivized

• The personalized tags cannot be accessed from the menu/page you create your emails. I get around this by opening two windows, but in the future this might be an improvement.
• I needed to create custom reports in order to get the overview on the campaigns that I needed. More generic reporting would be a useful feature.
• I would like to be able to duplicate e-mail campaigns across different activities/databases. I could set up a mailing template for this but sometimes it would be good to be able to just re-create a particular campaign that we received a good response to for another, entirely different, activity.

• There is no built-in functionality to automate direct mail; this has to be created through triggers in Salesforce.
• The sales cloud integration didn't give us the syncing or reporting we thought would be available.
• We would like to see more support from team members in the post-onboarding process.

Incentivized

The tool serves our needs and we like the user interface. The few times we contacted support they were super helpful and responsive. When we asked for more integrations they confirmed the integrations we need (e.g. Hipchat) for the near future.

I will continue to use the platform as long as my employer provides access, but I do not have purchasing power myself.

Incentivized

It is easy to use and if I do have a problem or question I receive an answer almost immediately.

The UI is friendly, clear, and accessible, and I access it directly through the interface (Salesforce) that I perform my function in every day. It is intuitive to navigate, and I am able to find most functionalities I need without the need to consult an admin and/or support teams.

Incentivized

With both chat and email support I have always had enough ways to get through to them! Their support is good, honest and most importantly supportive. They helped us set up and start using the tool when we got stuck. Moving from Mailchimp where there were some semantic lessons to learn and they took the time to help us get used to 7Sheep

Only thing holding me back from a perfect 10 would be the timelines for involving the technical team on occasion. There have been a few times where the PFL technical support team has been booked up for days or more than a week out which can delay our project timelines. This doesn't happen often, let me be clear. But when it does, it's usually at the worst time for our campaigns.

Incentivized

I've used MailChimp before and I liked their product as well, however, data protection is key in our organization. As we are working in multiple countries, some of which have very strict data protection laws, and it was important that we kept the data stored on servers in Europe. MailChimp's servers are in the US, as is the case for many other similar companies. That alone was a major reason for us to go with 7Sheep, which is a European company that keeps all data stored on servers in Europe

JourneyMail is one I have evaluated. It did not seem as full featured as PFL Direct Mail Platform, nor did it integrate with the rest of the Salesforce products like PFL Direct Mail Platform (journeymail ONLY integrates to marketing cloud). My customers tend to be cross-cloud and own multiple products and want solutions that can integrate across their stack easily.

Incentivized

It does take a while to launch or re-launch a campaign, which can make it difficult to pivot quickly. However, if you're integrated with Marketo, then PFL is as scalable as your database and marketing strategy! The sky is the limit in terms of creativity. Post launch, the program is hands-off apart from report monitoring and potential optimization tweaks.

Incentivized

• I was previously part of a survey with 7Sheep and results showed that we were saving 20 mins per participant per event we held, a working week for an event of 100 people.
• Automating our operational logic with the admin triggers in 7Sheep means there is no time lag between tasks and teams, certainly greater efficiency.
• Tracking engagement on our site and with our outbound campaigns means better and faster reporting and enables us to report on impact in a more quantifiable way. (On the human side, my team members get positive feedback from our target audiences which is very motivating. It is nice to see data backed up by people.)

• Increased live webinar attendees that lead to booked meetings
• Increased client satisfaction and rapport with sales teams and leadership
• Increased pipeline generation from events we are a sponsor of

Incentivized