Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) vs Mapp Digital

• 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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• API functionality, alongside reporting, is unparalleled in an environment where you may not have IT support to build out tools.
• The user interface is easy to understand, allowing users to have control over the creative delivery for MIME, HTML, text and mobile ads.
• It allows deliverability experts to throttle deliveries by selecting mailing domain and IP pairs, granting access to stats on these individual paired delivery tools.

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• 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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• I have used Blue Hornet over the last few years as it is the selected email platform used by my content provider. I have never used a more glitchy platform! Every time I use it I run into broken links, glitches and kinks. Their tech team is very quick to blame your machine - but I have access to several machines on all major OS platforms, and I run into the same issues every time.
• The Blue Hornet user interface is poor and clunky. They have a great looking homepage - but you can tell that there focus is on selling and not on current clients. This is plainly apparent by the fact that the login button is buried at the very bottom of the page and difficult to find the first time you look for it. Not to mention the fact that the user interface itself is nowhere near as smooth and polished as their branded website is. Additionally, their reports are often inaccurate.
• I would suggest any serious marketer looking to execute an email campaign with Blue Hornet to look elsewhere. I have reached out to my content provider to ask that they provide support on a different system - and was kindly informed that they are working around the clock to make this happen due to the overwhelmingly negative criticism of Blue Hornet from their clients.

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• 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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• They have had a positive impact on our ROI and have allowed us to achieve most of our business objectives.
• It has allowed us to shave some of the setup time out of our normal process to increase efficiency.

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