Benchmark Email vs. Swift Digital

Their free option has no time limit and accepts an email list of 2,000 contacts. That's generous considering that some similar software have free trials limited to a month or less and will allow only about 1,000 contact lists, if not less. With that 2,000 contact space available for free on Benchmark email, I can gather 2,000 leads or buyers into my email program without paying. Thus, Benchmark Email is suited for profitability, especially for a start-up business.

it's well suited to a business that relies on constant email marketing and to keep in contact with leads or customers. This is the heartbeat of business and suits us. We can segment qualified leads, data scores, track campaigns and effectively save time to work on other customer campaigns. If you are a smaller business that only sends one email a month, it's not for you. This software is very sophisticated and can be technical in the beginning.

• They have the option to incorporate email automation.
• HTML is available if you want to use your own templates.
• They give you the ability to edit some HTML on their drag and drop version.

Incentivized

• drag-and-drop campaign builder
• email templates
• lead scoring
• Analytics

• Glitchy editor - powerful drag and drop features, but precise formatting can have issues.
• Stagnant platform - few notable features or fixes over the past two years.
• Delivery Success - anecdotal customer reports suggest high percent of emails are diverted by spam filters.

Incentivized

• More email flexibility would be good.
• Simplify the modules-there is a lot, and it can be overwhelming.

At the time of the decision, we anticipated a larger audience and a high potential cost of MailChimp. We also believed that Benchmark Email would be less complex and therefore quicker to implement and learn. Given the current needs and pricing, I believe MailChimp may be competitive and provide a more refined UI

Incentivized

We looked into Swift based upon a recommendation. We have previously used ActiveCampaign but found it very clunky for what we wanted to use it for. We also looked into Pardot, but was on the other end of the spectrum, it had far too many features, complexities and required an implementation specialist at our expense of $15K. Swift was just the right fit for us, and we like knowing that our data is kept in Australia

• We were able to reduce recurring costs by 20% per year by buying an extended contract plan.
• Benchmark is more robust than our previous software, and we've been able to increase newsletter sales by about 10% per year.
• We were able to introduce split a/b testing into our newsletter mix, as it's a native feature of Benchmark.

Incentivized

• Better lead quality
• Has allowed us to close clients quicker.
• Higher ROI
• Access to much more targeted customer data
• Getting used to the software took more time thn anticipated