Email automation software with optimized personalization to drive engagement.
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Campaigner
Score 2.2 out of 10
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Campaigner is an email marketing solution built by marketers that is designed to help small, medium and large businesses strengthen customer relationships and drive sales.
The vendor's value proposition is that Campaigner provides advanced features such as industry-leading A/B split testing, workflows, API integration, segmentation, detailed reporting, and responsive design, to provide corporate-level senders with the functionality that they need to effectively track and monitor email marketing…
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.
Workflow feature makes this best suited for those who want to send a series of emails over time based on contact attributes and behavior. Ability to add custom fields and define segments makes this tool valuable for very targeted email campaigns. Lack of communication about releases and poor technical support means your users will need to be fairly skilled in critical thinking and more technical than average. Our knowledge of system came from lots of trial and error.
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.
Number 1, is it's ease of use. We have not run into any problems where someone finds Campaigner difficult to use and this comes in handy every day. The more people that know how to use it the better because it reduces stress/buildup on others.
We love the reporting system here. We use the clicks and opens to follow up with people all the time so to have all that detailed information is very beneficial.
Customization is great. You can really make all your emails look exactly like they're pictured in your head.
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.
Campaigner is just too bare-bones. When we first started using Campaigner close to a decade ago it was perfect for what it was. But nowadays Campaigner is missing several features that their competitors offer like exit intent and cart abandonment emails.
Campaigner has an astonishingly bad unsubscribe option. We have had many customers complain to us over the years that when they try to unsubscribe through the emails Campaigner sends, their unsubscribe does not go through.
Hard to change account settings such as changing our subscription plan. We had to call and were told to wait 24 hours just to make a small change to our account.
I can't see us not renewing unless we find something better. This is highly unlikely because there was a thorough research done for use to chose the best marketing client and it always came back to campaigner.
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.
Great features but awful tech support experiences over five years of use. Some releases broke our workflows and Campaigner could never explain why. Our initial plan provided a designed client support contact. This individual changed frequently without notice and at one point they decided our plan no longer included a designated contact. Of course this was never communicated to us until we tried to reach out to the person. If you are tech savy this system might be for you but you'll be on your own.
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.
Everything takes a minimum of 24 hours to solve and after being with campaigner for several years we were just told for the first time we have an account rep which we never even spoke to.
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.
MailChimp is far more customizable and User-Friendly, although Campaigner gets the job done. Campaigner could benefit from a design upgrade to bring their look into the modern realm. The drag and drop features and email customization of MailChimp, Campaigner is lacking. However, MailChimp is pricier. So you are definitely getting what you pay for.
