Acoustic Campaign vs. Vero Cloud

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
Vero Cloud
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Vero Workflows is an email marketing solution built to make customer engagement simpler with features such as in-app behavior tracking, audience segmentation, and workflow automation.
$54
per month
Pricing
Acoustic CampaignVero Cloud
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Starter
$54
per month
Pro
$219
per month
Growth
$549
per month
Enterprise
$1,429
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Acoustic CampaignVero Cloud
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details15% discount applied with an annual subscription, paid upfront.
More Pricing Information
Features
Acoustic CampaignVero Cloud
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
Vero Cloud
8.1
2 Ratings
1% below category average
WYSIWYG email editor4.010 Ratings6.02 Ratings
Dynamic content8.07 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.58 Ratings10.02 Ratings
Landing pages5.18 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing7.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization6.97 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.010 Ratings8.02 Ratings
List management8.09 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences8.08 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.4
8 Ratings
4% below category average
Vero Cloud
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation6.18 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading7.97 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks7.54 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.0
8 Ratings
9% below category average
Vero Cloud
-
Ratings
Calendaring6.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing7.44 Ratings00 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
Vero Cloud
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns6.54 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration6.25 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
4.5
10 Ratings
50% below category average
Vero Cloud
6.0
2 Ratings
27% below category average
Dashboards4.210 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Standard reports4.210 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Custom reports5.18 Ratings1.01 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
5.7
10 Ratings
28% below category average
Vero Cloud
-
Ratings
API5.29 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals6.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability5.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com4.38 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM5.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
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Acoustic CampaignVero Cloud
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User Ratings
Acoustic CampaignVero Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
4.1
(40 ratings)
8.0
(2 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 CampaignVero Cloud
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.
Read full review
Vero
Vero tends to play nice with companies that have their websites as the primary source of truth. This allows them to send as many events as they need and develop more complex workflows that introduce conditionality into Vero emails. However, for those that rely more on Salesforce, it might have more limited applications. The product is fairly easy to use, so it's easy for multiple people on the team to pick it up and do what they need for their respective groups. On the other hand, creating email templates will require some knowledge of HTML/CSS, unless those are copied from another source. That would require another product of course that provides more robust layout editing features and templates.
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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.
Read full review
Vero
  • Email template editor allowed our developers to design emails to looks like beautiful marketing emails or basic personal emails.
  • The Vero API allowed our developers to connect triggers and events from our visitors to kick start campaigns.
  • Campaign flows were fairly easy to create and define.
Read full review
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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Vero
  • While Vero offers some WYSIWYG editing, it's on the limited side, as it mostly allows you to edit copy, but not necessarily the layout.
  • The UI/UX has improved dramatically over the course of the last few years, but it can still lag from time to time and experience sluggishness.
  • While reliability is really good, it does have lapses from time to time that will introduce delays into emails being sent out. Once or twice, the system went completely down for a period of time.
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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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Vero
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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Vero
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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Vero
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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Vero
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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Vero
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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Vero
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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Vero
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.
Read full review
Vero
Vero's price tag is far more attractive but for what you will find to be clear and obvious reasons. Vero has no CRM unlike HubSpot and Infusionsoft. Vero also has limited tracking unlike the seemingly endless possibilities offered from HubSpot which as we all know comes with at a significant cost, often not feasible by a small startup company.
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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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Vero
  • The overall costs of using Vero have been much lower than using two comparable products that handle transactional emails and newsletters, respectively. MailChimp has relatively recently integrated their Mandrill product for transactional emails, so that's worth looking at as well.
  • Using a single product for many things lowers the learning curve, as team members only have to learn one product well, rather than several.
  • While infrequent, Vero's outages have impacted our operations at times. If absolute reliability is crucial to your business, then you may have to find a larger provider with a more robust infrastructure. As mentioned, though, it hasn't been a big problem for us.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Acoustic Campaign Screenshots

Screenshot of Digital marketingScreenshot of Journey design

Vero Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of WorkflowsScreenshot of ReportingScreenshot of Customer profilesScreenshot of Workflow toolkit