Adestra vs. Right On Interactive

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

Right On Interactive is well suited if you need to bring in lots of data from numerous sources and be able to reference across tables to build a detailed segment. This also lends it to being more useful when a company has people that know data and have the time to dive deep into it to build lists. For teams without multiple people or dedicated people to use the system it can be cumbersome.

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

• It is able to pull in as many data sources as you would like.
• It is easy to connect data across multiple sources to create segments.
• Forces you to think about your customer lifecycle to get the most out of the software.

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 interface is improving in recent months but it still has a way to go to catch up to competitors.
• The system seems to be reactionary when building out campaigns instead of more proactive. You can go through the entire campaign setup and forget to check one box at the very start and have to go all the way back to just pull in a piece of personalized data.
• Could use more integrations with marketing softwares.

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

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

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

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

Incentivized

• It saved us a bunch of money in getting a higher tier of SFDC. The workflows it allowed us to create (using their staff writing MySQL) saved us having to double our SFDC spend to get workflows.
• It allowed us to easily send emails to people added into SFDC campaigns buy external sales staff which saved time from manual emails.
• The time it took the marketing team to create the campaigns could've been faster.

Incentivized