Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review As far as I know, Delivra is the only email marketing software that allows for every instance of a personalized email to be bcc'ed to an internal email address. This is a niche feature, but can be very useful for companies that need detailed records of all client communication for posterity.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review User-friendly - once I understood the platform better, it took only a few minutes for me to prepare the reminder based on the survey invitation. Trustworthy - I could trust that my emails were sent successfully. Had the necessary tools - I only used a few of the features, but the ones I did use were easy to implement for the emails. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review The contact database is not easy to navigate and we are limited by the number of contact categories we can create, and the ones we can delete. When personalizing emails it is hard to see past all the unneeded database properties to find the ones I want to include. Every time I log in from https://www.delivra.com/ it opens a second window with the app and leaves the first window. It should go directly to the app in the same window. Within the app, you can't open links in new tabs for easy comparison between different files/versions. It would be nice to have one email open and be able to easily open a different draft "in a new tab" without having to open a new window, log in again, and navigate to the needed file. Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review I had the ability to manually suppress who I wanted to send the email to, as well as individually send a link to members/customers without depending on
Qualtrics ability to "send to non-survey respondents."
Read full review Return on Investment For companies that focus on goals and analytics, Adestra provides all the necessary tools. Read full review Delivra has been well suited to the needs of a particular client, and allowed for campaigns to be executed in line with their needs. Delivra is another tool in our company's email marketing/marketing automation toolbox that can be used when needed or at a different price point from other platforms. Overall, we haven't widely deployed Delivra. Read full review ScreenShots