Acoustic Campaign vs. emfluence Marketing Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Acoustic Campaign
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) is a scalable, SaaS-based, cross-channel, digital marketing platform providing digital marketers the ability to implement and manage email, mobile, social, and lead management campaign processes.N/A
emfluence Marketing Platform
Score 8.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
The emfluence Marketing Platform is a marketing automation platform featuring drag-and-drop email editors and automated campaign builders, simple social media scheduling, manageable landing pages, workflow management, analytics, website tracking, surveys, and modals. The platform works for B2B and B2C marketers, marketing agencies, and CRM providers. The product supports CRM integrations and an open API for custom integrations. emfluence offers digital marketing consulting…
$1,000
per month
Pricing
Acoustic Campaignemfluence Marketing Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Up to 30,000 Active Emails
$1,000
per month
Up to 60,000 Active Emails
$1,200
per month
Up to 80,000 Active Emails
$1,400
per month
Up to 100,000 Active Emails
$1,600
per month
Up to 150,000 Active Emails
$2,000
per month
Up to 200,000 Active Emails
$2,400
per month
Up to 250,000 Active Emails
$2,600
per month
Up to 500,000 Active Emails
$4,100
per month
Up to 1,000,000 Active Emails
$5,400
per month
More than 1,000,000 Active Emails
Custom
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Acoustic Campaignemfluence Marketing Platform
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee$3,100 one-time fee
Additional DetailsThe emfluence Marketing Platform offers month-to-month pricing that’s based on the number of contacts added, with no restrictions on how many emails are sent each month or by which features are used.
More Pricing Information
Features
Acoustic Campaignemfluence Marketing Platform
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.0
10 Ratings
11% below category average
emfluence Marketing Platform
8.4
6 Ratings
8% above category average
WYSIWYG email editor4.010 Ratings9.16 Ratings
Dynamic content8.07 Ratings8.66 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.58 Ratings8.26 Ratings
Landing pages5.18 Ratings8.24 Ratings
A/B testing7.010 Ratings8.25 Ratings
Mobile optimization6.97 Ratings7.75 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.010 Ratings9.16 Ratings
List management8.09 Ratings8.26 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences8.08 Ratings8.24 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.4
8 Ratings
4% below category average
emfluence Marketing Platform
8.1
5 Ratings
5% above category average
Lead nurturing automation6.18 Ratings9.15 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading7.97 Ratings7.74 Ratings
Data quality management8.07 Ratings8.24 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks7.54 Ratings7.33 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.0
8 Ratings
9% below category average
emfluence Marketing Platform
8.4
3 Ratings
10% above category average
Calendaring6.58 Ratings8.23 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing7.44 Ratings8.63 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
6.3
5 Ratings
17% below category average
emfluence Marketing Platform
8.4
3 Ratings
11% above category average
Social sharing and campaigns6.54 Ratings8.23 Ratings
Social profile integration6.25 Ratings8.63 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
4.5
10 Ratings
50% below category average
emfluence Marketing Platform
6.7
6 Ratings
11% below category average
Dashboards4.210 Ratings9.16 Ratings
Standard reports4.210 Ratings7.26 Ratings
Custom reports5.18 Ratings3.76 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
5.7
10 Ratings
28% below category average
emfluence Marketing Platform
8.2
5 Ratings
8% above category average
API5.29 Ratings8.63 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals6.04 Ratings8.63 Ratings
Customizability5.95 Ratings8.25 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com4.38 Ratings7.22 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM5.03 Ratings8.22 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Acoustic Campaignemfluence Marketing Platform
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
Acoustic Campaignemfluence Marketing Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
4.1
(40 ratings)
9.1
(6 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.5
(30 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.9
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.4
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Acoustic Campaignemfluence Marketing Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Acoustic
Silverpop is a powerful and comprehensive tool for digital marketers, and is apprprioate for companies of varying sizes, as well as both B2B and B2C models. It's particularly well-suited for companies with large, accurate customer databases and the ability to track customer actions on their websites to use as marketing automation triggers.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
The reporting feature is not as detailed as we require for our documentation, so we have to organize the results into charts and graphs. For every other component of our social media and digital marketing, emfluence checks all of the boxes.
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Pros
Acoustic
  • Automated Messages - we currently have over 70 automated messages going out on any particular day through feeds and API calls that we pass to Silverpop. We rely on these automated messages to communicate to our customers and can rely on Silverpop to always be up and running to get these messages out.
  • Robust query building - We can target customers easily based on a combination of demographic profile data, as well as email and site behavior and purchase behavior, allowing us to finely segment our audience
  • Deep dive reporting - the UI reporting, as well as the available reports to download through the API give us tremendous insight into how our subscribers are responding to email.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
  • Custom landing pages to dive deeper into campaigns and track results
  • Responsive customer service with any problems we come by
  • A/B testing
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Cons
Acoustic
  • Data syncing and errors - Silverpop does not do a great job of getting data to sync regularly with our CRM (Salesforce.com). The data had to flow back and forth several times before being added to campaigns and in some instances, it took days to update leads! Also, failed lead syncs get stuck in an alert list but it does not notify you otherwise that a lead failed the sync.
  • Design issues - we use custom HTML to build emails and landing pages, and we were unable to render background images on our campaigns. Also, once you toggle between design and source (code) view to make edits, it often broke the code and threw off the design.
  • Administrator alerts - when sync fails altogether between systems, there is no email alert sent to the system admin (me/my team) so we at times have found that we have gone 18 hours until we stumble across the fact that the system sync has failed.
  • Reporting - it is not very comprehensive and we had difficulty generating the level of reporting that we need to have.
  • Support - there are a few gems in the support team who know what they're doing, but largely calling support is a lesson in frustration.
  • Product bug fixes - in two instances, my open support tickets were identified as product bugs. One related to incorrect cookie tracking which was causing our leads not to be scoring properly. They determined that this wasn't critical enough to build into their product fix road map. This is core to an automation system working properly.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
  • I do have issues sometimes when making a website popup. I specify certain measurements of my popup yet when it shows up on my website, the graphic doesn't adjust and I have a bunch of white space. But that could also be my website.
  • When adding a new contact into the contact section, once you hit save, the contact information stays on the screen instead of an empty contact profile so you can immediately add the next person.
  • Sometimes when I update a template, The unsubscribe link will link to my email address instead of the person the email is being sent to.
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Likelihood to Renew
Acoustic
SilverPop is a great marketing tool that integrates with Salesforce to provide customers and employees a great buying and selling experience. The software takes some very difficult tasks and makes them easy to accomplish. With proper setup and management, Silverpop gives you the tools to gain insight into the productiveness of campaigns.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
No answers on this topic
Usability
Acoustic
This is a little bit difficult to rate because Silverpop is gradually updating its interface to improve usability all around. I know users are able to do their job with minimal assistance. However, some of the interface is dated, and the Programs interface, while functional, has a bit of a learning curve.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Acoustic
While several of the other reviews have mentioned poor performance in this department, we have only had one situation where the system was down (although it was down for several hours). Silverpop segments its clients on different servers, and I know that the problem we experienced only occurred on our specific server (maybe other servers have had their own problems?) but our service has been reliable otherwise.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
No answers on this topic
Performance
Acoustic
The throttle time for sending emails would vary depending on how many other campaigns were going out that day, which I found inconsistent
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emfluence Digital Marketing
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Acoustic
The Salesforce Integration support team is fantastic. I'd give them greater than a 10 if possible. The rest of the support team can be extremely frustrating to work with. Too often they try to blame something obscure and refuse to escalate or look into the issue. And on occasion when you find system glitches they don't seem to care about fixing them
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emfluence Digital Marketing
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Acoustic
The online trainings are very detailed (for the most part) and really walk through the entire system. They are a little dry, but they are usually broken up into segments to allow you to skip to the parts you need.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Acoustic
Based on recommendations from Silverpop we made some implementation decisions that we later regretted pretty substantially. In hindsight we should have started a pilot implementation earlier so we could learn and then start over. The big issue for us was that Silverpop recommended a non-keyed database, or at least a database that doesn't use email address as primary key. This is resulted in a large number of duplicate email addresses so that the end user is forced to unsubscribe multiple times to stop receiving emails.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Acoustic
We evaluated alternate providers less than a year into our IBM Watson Campaign contract because the system was so clunky to use (and we wanted a system that would include or better integrate with our SMS provider). Bluecore and Klaviyo were the front runners at the time, and we came close to moving forward with Bluecore. The pricing model and overall the cost of Bluecore was much higher than IBM for us though, and the timing of this was right when the IBM to Acoustic changes took place. We decided to give Acoustic a shot and are optimistic it will be enough to keep us on board once all the dust settles, though I find it unlikely we will renew with Acoustic when our contract is up again. My main email specialist is a Klaviyo expert and finds that platform very easy to use in comparison-- it might be a better fit for a team of our size.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
They were the only company that could solve our specific problems. When we looked at larger companies like Constant Contact, they weren't as capable at handling our specific needs for a reasonable price. Some companies need to charge us programming hours. Bigger companies couldn't help our issue. emfluence is more flexible.
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Return on Investment
Acoustic
  • we have not experienced any currently but moving to lead automation and lead scoring could change that.
  • i'm not sure how increased employee efficiency would ever be a benefit b/c lead importing and visibility, along with setting up email templates is quite cumbersome.
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emfluence Digital Marketing
  • It's allowed for us to generate more traffic to our client's websites.
  • It's allowed for us to generate more leads from email marketing through emfluence.
  • Visual click maps, more customized dashboard and email templates, and a deeper dive in data would help further business objectives.
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ScreenShots

Acoustic Campaign Screenshots

Screenshot of Digital marketingScreenshot of Journey design

emfluence Marketing Platform Screenshots

Screenshot of search perimeters and contact characteristics using the Dynamic Marketing Group Query Builder.Screenshot of Google Analytics, used to measure the success of email and social media alongside spikes in website traffic. Granular reports can be scheduled for an overview of surveys, landing pages, forms, social posts, emails, and list growth.Screenshot of the drag-and-drop Workflow Canvas visual interface used to create automated marketing campaigns, plus send contacts from a single group into branches based on email views, clicks, or custom queries.Screenshot of the interface to build branching into automated workflows based on opens, clicks, or custom decisions (based on custom or out-of-the-box contact fields, dates, and more).Screenshot of a schedule with a month's worth of social media and email, built using the drag and drop marketing calendar.Screenshot of custom email templates, which can be reused or rebuilt with a drag and drop editor.