Aurea List Manager vs. Emma by Marigold

Lyris LM is suited well with an organization or group that have several lists, as virtual list hosting is not represented by any other hosting company as far as I can tell.

Using Emma for weekly templated email use with minimal changes is awesome. If you want you can create a master and make minor graphic edits quickly and easily from your smartphone. Any edit is possible as long as the artwork is on the online server. Only time I hit a bump in the road is when I was asked to change the style sheet and did not know that the pricing plan I was on did not include this feature. Client had to wait to send new format until Emma performed the requested changes.

• Reports: extensive reporting on mailings and membership. Pre-built reports/charts include Mailings, Members, Server Performance, Web site, Purchases, Interest and Surveys. If Aurea ListManager doesn't have the built-in chart needed, you can easily create your own.
• Easy to analyze mailings: Completed mailing can be analyzed quickly. Options include viewing any errors that may have resulted, and checking list performance, evaluating recipient actions, ( opens, click-troughs). Details can be seen on a per-recipient basis, allowing you to see exactly what happened with each message sent.
• Discussion Lists. There are numerous list setting to customize each list.

Incentivized

• Enterprise-level email marketing with multi-level account structure allowing for multiple users at different levels to send campaigns
• Easy-to-use WYSIWYG email template editors to create dynamic emails with enhanced personalization through merge-fields
• A large API index that connects to many different platforms and the ability to work with Emma support to create new connections to new platforms as needed

Incentivized

• Tech support is limited for standard users, especially during non business hours even for critical errors
• Installation/upgrade is often complicated
• Version releases are too frequent

Incentivized

• Their customer service leaves something to be desired. We ran into an issue with one of our campaigns, and we decided to reach out to support, but they didn't get back with us until 3 hours later! Time is money!!
• We don't like that their photo editing capabilities are limited, you can only choose small, medium or large photos with no way to resize to exact dimensions. Makes emails a bit of a pain
• The upgraded premium tools are buggy and leave something to be desired as well – it's a shame.

Incentivized

We will most likely not use Lyris LM for much longer. We have recently been offered to utilize a different software that better meets our needs, is current, user friendly, and has fantastic reporting capabilities.

Emma has been a great tool for our marketing. It's easy to use and I've had no issues in the almost two years we've been with them. It's really been a great way for us to stay connected with customers that takes no time to setup and send

Incentivized

While every WYSIWYG software will experience glitches, Emma handles them well. Keep in mind they rarely happen, but they do, it can be of annoyance. Regardless, Emma allows my organization to create seamless email campaigns using fresh data. Emma makes coming up with strategic decisions very easy. The list segmentation that Emma feature allows us to easily manage a large list without issues. Overall, Emma is extremely usable with nearly no learning curve!

Incentivized

I have not needed to utilize customer support during my use of Lyris LM.

I hate that to get support I have to submit a question to a public forum and wait for a response. I just want the ability for a quick live chat to answer my simple help questions quickly or at the very least submit a ticket via email and get a status update.

Incentivized

I was not part of the implementation process.

We selected Lyris LM based on cost, the fact that we can create custom reports and the way that they handle bounced emails just to name a few, It is easy to use and we have control of who can and cannot use. With a virtual list I can create a list or take a list down at any given time without filling out a form or contact with my provider and my list looks as if it is coming from my own server @museum.com.

At the time we made the decision to move to Emma, my organization was using both MailChimp and Constant Contact. Emma's drag-and-drop template editor surpassed both, and even editing the pre-made template HTML in Emma was easier. List management was much smoother than the clunky Constant Contact and MailChimp lists we had. From a design perspective, we chose Emma for its ease of use in creating templates and modifying existing ones, as well as the ability to push out branded templates and brand assets through its master admin/subaccount capabilities. Emma's analytics and reporting were much less frustrating to navigate and understand, such that, rather than spending all of our time trying to make sense of the metrics from a campaign (which we were definitely doing), we were attracted to being able to report easily and then move on to determining how to make real improvements

Incentivized

• Aurea as a company is mediocre with support. The former LM staff was better informed about the product.
• LM can do almost anything you need. it's complete.
• ROI has suffered as Aurea has not updated the product, charges a considerable amount for renewals, promises with no results.

Incentivized

• Stores using the platform have seen good deliverability stats. Open rates and click-through rates are high with the templates that Emma creates. We still face the challenge of getting more users on the platform.
• User satisfaction is high for our users who are regularly using the platform.

Incentivized