Email automation software with optimized personalization to drive engagement.
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ShippingEasy
Score 8.0 out of 10
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ShippingEasy, an Auctane (formerly Stamps.com) company, offers their cloud-based ecommerce shipping platform, providing full support for USPS, UPS, FedEx and integrating with online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Volusion, and others. ShippingEasy allows automated order tracking with fulfillment data, and inventory levels to populate in real time.
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.
ShippingEasy is perfect for a small business that needs the inventory system but doesn't want to pay through the nose. The customer service is excellent - they help you in set up, making changes, and make sure you understand how to use it. They save me time in managing our inventory and save me time when there is a problem - I call and get an answer right away. Plus if there is a system wide problem, which there rarely is, they make announcements and keep us up to date during and after
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.
ShippingEasy makes it very easy to set up shipping rules for various scenarios so that shipping is fairly automated. It really is a click and ship type set up.
ShippingEasy integrates into our BigCommerce platform very well. We very rarely have any issues with ShippingEasy syncing orders and shipping status to BigCommerce and vise versa.
ShippingEasy's marketing service is very easy to use. It makes email campaign design extremely easy and aesthetically pleasing and it also makes automated emails very easy to set up as well.
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.
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.
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.
ShippingEasy customer support is excellent. We rarely have to wait on hold, the reps are knowledgeable, well trained, well spoken, and understand technical issues. They listen carefully to make sure they understand the issue and check if they do not know something. I feel confident that I am getting correct information and rarely have to make more than one phone call to get an issue corrected.
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.
ShippingEasy has really had a positive impact overall on our business. It is very simple to use and the flexibility of the shipping rules has more or less automated shipping. So for a small organization like ourselves, it allows us to reduce overhead by not having to have multiple employees to ship.
It also has helped reduce overhead significantly by switching our email marketing from Constant Contact. It is about a 10th of the price and has more functionality. So that was definitely a no-brainer
All in all, ShippingEasy helps us reduce overhead the most in labor. It is extremely easy to use so a lot less of our time is devoted to shipping concerns such as manually entering shipments like before and making sure shipment information is transferred over to BigCommerce, or doing return labels. Everything integrates so well it is essentially automated.
