Adestra vs. Airship

Small businesses with even smaller marketing budgets and no email marketing experience would be better off selecting a lower-end email marketing provider. However, Adestra will provide a growing company with every email marketing tool along the way.

Incentivized

Well-Suited for: 1. Mobile App Notifications: Ideal for targeted push notifications in apps. 2. Customer Segmentation: Effective for personalized marketing campaigns based on user data. 3. Event-Triggered Automation: Great for automated messaging based on user actions. 4. A/B Testing: Useful for optimizing campaign messages and strategies. Less Appropriate for: 1. Non-Mobile Channels: Less effective if the primary focus is on non-mobile communications like email or direct mail. 2. Basic Email Marketing: Other platforms might be better suited for simple, broad email campaigns without complex segmentation or personalization needs.

Incentivized

• Adestra's "dynamic" list allows users to consolidate multiple lists in combination with data filters and exclusion lists. This implements segmentation and is a powerful marketing tool.
• Adestra's MessageFocus API integration provides developer-tools for list, campaign or transactional automated requirements.
• Campaigns can be sorted into project folders. This allows marketers to group campaigns together for management or reporting requirements. Moving or copying campaigns from one project to another is a simple process.
• Data downloads via Reporting is available at every level, from overview to individual KPI.
• Creating "core" tables helps marketers develop lists with similar attributes. Whether a list has many fields or simply the one required email address field, a "core" table helps to quickly map data labels from spreadsheet to online database. Creating data labels on the fly is a simple process, as well. The "core" table also groups similar contacts into one core database.
• Any list can be quickly "emptied" for to manage refreshed data. The contacts within the "emptied" list would still be members of the "core" table and so the process does not negatively impact reporting.
• Unsubscribes can be managed in one list (as a default) or individual lists. Creating individual unsubscribe lists -- dependent on business requirements -- would allow for a preference center, whereby recipients could be given a choice as to which campaigns they receive.
• The Form tool creates signup forms, simple surveys and landing pages. These can be hosted via Adestra or otherwise on the web. The tool provides for branding and proprietary cascading stylesheets, with a number of actions available through a drag-and-drop interface.

Incentivized

• The marketing push notifications are very effective, and it gives us free hand to define different business criteria to target user groups
• The user experience or the message content could differ from Android and iOS, and this is a huge benefit for us
• As an Architect, troubleshooting an issue is very detailed and the time it takes to troubleshoot an issue is considerably less from our previous product

Incentivized

• As of this writing, there are at least 3 different editors available (a drag-and-drop, a WYSIWYG and HTML). However, only a small template library is available if requested through support. Those expecting to find ready-built templates for re-branding would find them through the third-party EDM Designer drag-and-drop editor.

Incentivized

• The automated A/B testing winner selection and application should be added
• The flexibility of message shape, specifically incorporating transparency so messages do not need to be a rectangular shape
• Faster and more reliable servers around the globe
• Making more detailed use cases and tutorials to be followed can simplify things for users

Incentivized

I have been self-trained on different ESPs for over 10 years, so my experience isn't comparable to most users. However, I've trained people on various email marketing platforms, and with some training, clients have a positive user-experience with Adestra.

Incentivized

The interface takes a bit getting used to in order to know how to take advantage of everything. Some of the analytics that are available are particularly hard to find, so it's important to pay attention when customer support reviews everything, but everything I'd want and need in terms of Push and In-App messaging is all there.

I have had campaign related issues solved very quickly. When there are technical issues, that involve more than one departmental, it may involve a longer turn-around and management.

Incentivized

I have not had to interact much with customer support as I have been able to find the vast majority of the answers I'm looking for within their documentation, which I very much appreciate because it saves me a lot of time. Customer support has been responsive and helpful for the most part during the couple of interactions I've had.

For medium and large sized businesses, Adestra competes well with dotMailer. While many of the functions are available through either provider, creating campaigns, managing lists and reviewing metrics are somewhat different. As of this writing, dotMailer's drag-and-drop editor dominates that platform and performs well for low-end users with little-to-no HTML experience. Even high-end users will appreciate how quickly campaigns can be built via the drag-and-drop editor. While Adestra utilizes the EDM Designer drag-and-drop, the third-party functionality is not completely cohesive and lack of a template library gives dotMailer a bit of an advantage.

Incentivized

We've tested a bunch of different CRM tools over the years and Airship has been a winner for its functionality, features, cost, and ability to integrate with other softwares that we use. It has been great for SMS and mobile in particular. It could certainly be a one stop shop for CRM.

Incentivized

• For companies that focus on goals and analytics, Adestra provides all the necessary tools.

Incentivized

• The ROI has increased more than approx. 50% (exact details to be confirmed) based on cross-channel orchestration
• Using push notifications alone, we have seen a huge increase in app engagement which was a challenge before to nudge users to get back to the App after initial download

Incentivized