ActiveDEMAND vs. Marchex

When choosing a marketing automation system, it is important to think of what exactly you want it to do. I think no matter what you are hoping to get out of a marketing automation platform, you can achieve it with ActiveDEMAND. It can be used for simple/basic marketing email sending and campaign execution or it can be used to develop a microsite, create sales and marketing kiosks, run multi-step campaigns, host protected assets or whatever you want to do with it. You can easily choose (or ignore) the modules and features to be as creative as you choose to be.

The Marchex platform is suitable for you to draw conclusions on how to approach your users. It also helps you with conversational improvements and data analysis. I recommend if you already have a large user base who buy your service and are always asking for explanations to hire Marchex for sure

Incentivized

• Customer Service - this company EXCELS at customer service, always answering our questions and being helpful.
• Innovative Ideas - they stay on top of the trends in marketing, offer ways for us to incorporate these items into our efforts.
• Friendly staff - the staff at ActiveDEMAND are great to work with and are responsive to our needs.

• Marchex does exactly what you need it to do. It allows businesses to quickly and effectively create online and offline call-tracking numbers to measure marketing performance.
• Marchex offers a variety of additional options, features, and capabilities outside of their core business model, which is call tracking. These business offerings appeal to smaller businesses, since they are primarily an enterprise-level call-tracking platform.
• Marchex allows you to listen and mark phone calls based on whether or not they lead to a conversion, if you business has the time to manage this process, it is an effective way to determine which source/mediums are providing the highest inside-conversion rate.

Incentivized

• Reporting - Though the reporting is extensive and very very good... I sometimes miss a simplified view of email opens/clicks/link clicks etc.
• Don't get me wrong, you can get to this data in ActiveDEMAND relatively easily, the default views through the campaign dashboard are just quite detailed (which some people would probably prefer) and I just don't think that we need that level of reporting on first glance. That being said, I do love the option to drill down and uncover the complex detailed data when i do want it (ActiveDEMAND is very good at this).
• One element of reporting that I would also like would be an event registrant report showing all registered people (this part exists) and their responses on the registration form they completed to register for the event. (These things would be dietary restrictions, industry, customized responses to other event related questions).
• I also wish the reports autorefreshed more frequently.
• ICS Files - Right now there are work arounds for loading an ICS file (Calendar meeting invite file) that can be accessed in campaign assets. I just wish this was more native to the tool.
• Archive Filing - Now, first of all, it is so amazing that ActiveDEMAND even has an archiving feature... I LOVE this. One small downside, however, is that the archiving cannot be organized using a folder structure or anything. I would like to be able to group my live events together, then group my webinars together etc.

• Although customer support is only a phone call away, trouble shooting was not their strongest area. There was usually only one person who could help with technical support and getting past the gate keepers to talk to that person was not easy.
• Salesmen were difficult to get in touch with. You think it would be easy to negotiate a contract to add more services but this proved to be a difficult task as well.
• Online reporting could use improvement. If you wanted to sift through data you had to download a spreadsheet to manipulate the data. Very little beyond simple reporting could be accomplished on their platform.

Incentivized

We renew Marchex each year, we love it! It's a great investment. It's woven into a few of our products that we offer our clients so we wouldn't stop using it any time soon. The clients are big fans of it

Vertical Response wasn't a full marketing platform at the time when we used it, but it was clunky and the tech support wasn't easy to use. I like the one-on-one response we get from ActiveDemand and really being on a first name basis with the folks there

I love how easy it is to listen to calls, filter and export reports for clients. Super happy with the services that are provided for me!

Incentivized

• Simplified email marketing and event management
• Better tracking of leads
• Better intelligence about which initiatives are working well and where future opportunities lie
• Less reliant on IT department/third party to execute our online marketing

• Quick and easy distribution of phone numbers with city specific area codes
• Easy to set up after business hours and alternative forwarding numbers
• It has been very helpful in showing clients how their staff answers the phone and where there is opportunity for more training

Incentivized