Blackbaud Online Express vs. LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Gmail

For 100% tax-deductible donations, I 9.5/10 recommend Blackbaud Online Express. The only thing is that it does not charge debit cards automatically, so I have to do it myself. Using Blackbaud Online Express forms for events gets more complicated. The way events work in Raiser's Edge in general is already complicated, so maybe it's more on Raiser's Edge than it is Blackbaud Online Express.

Incentivized

The Sales Navigator has allowed us to increase our awareness of our potential lead pool and has allowed us to grow our customer base. The system is easy to use and allows us to have great control over the number of leads we can see and the number of leads that we can connect to. Using the system has also helped us in being able to manage the number of leads that we can send.

Incentivized

• Online donation forms are easy to create and place within our existing website. The donations received are easily transferred into our Raiser's Edge database.
• Creating email communications for our constituents is very simple to achieve in Online Express and the statistics provided are very helpful to see what our constituents are clicking on.

Incentivized

• Has many filter capabilities for me to find exactly who I am looking for.
• Integrates with other prospecting tools to create a well rounded with the information it can collect.
• Integrates with SFDC- automatically uploads them as leads.
• Integrates with Salesloft for me to easily start the cadence.

Incentivized

• It does have some "quirks." It can be a little tricky to process the batch until you have done it a few times.
• I had a problem finding a constituent yesterday - he was purchasing a program ad for an event - that I knew was in the database. It turned out that he had been marked inactive, and so apparently wasn't included in the search results.

Incentivized

• Sometimes it tells me I need to log into my LinkedIn profile when I've already logged in. It's weird. It seems to be when the email address is not found. Instead of just saying the email is not found, it tells me I need to log in. Just something I've noticed.
• Sometimes I get this weird thing where I go to compose an email and instead of having it open all the way to the right, it opens all the way to my left. I'm pretty sure Rapportive is what's causing it. It doesn't happen very often but sometimes I see that.

Incentivized

Rapportive is simple and great at what it does. Plus I anticipate they'll probably add more features in the future.

Customer service for all of Blackbaud's products has really lacked over the years. They are starting to get better in the last year but it can very frustrating. The online knowledge base community is the best resource for information. At times it can take hours for a customer sect even rep to help with questions or problems which is not at all ideal in this industry.

Incentivized

Blackbaud Online Express is mainly used strictly because of its integration with Raiser's Edge. If a client uses Salesforce for constituent/lead management, other products can offer more flexibility in designing donation forms, email templates, etc. However, they all have their own negatives in Salesforce integration -- that is a whole other can of worms. While the Raiser's Edge integration of Online Express isn't perfect, it is relatively painless compared to the competition's Salesforce integration. Also, for NFP's, Blackbaud's NFP focused business model is a plus.

Incentivized

LinkedIn Sales Navigators provides different services than most other products and has the unique ability to take advantage of LinkedIn's proprietary user data. That also comes with a drawback that the system is dependent on users to update their data in a timely and accurate manner in order to get the correct intel back to users. I'd recommend other products like Seamless.ai or MediaRadar for more accurate and updated contact information, but also to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Gmail for better market and company intel, timely pitching opportunities and seamless integration between Gmail and LinkedIn.

Incentivized

• Regardless of project or initiative, all fund-raising efforts are managed in one place for the entire organization.
• Donor management is concise, thorough, and systematic - no individual or organization is overlooked.
• Snapshot reporting of successful grant applications and fund-raising are readily available.

Incentivized

• Really lets me leverage my entire business network
• Empowers me to see the prospect's whole picture (who they know, where they went, what they do) and take advantage of that opening
• We have no other system like it, so it's irreplaceable for us

Incentivized