Campaigner vs. Cheetah Messaging

Workflow feature makes this best suited for those who want to send a series of emails over time based on contact attributes and behavior. Ability to add custom fields and define segments makes this tool valuable for very targeted email campaigns. Lack of communication about releases and poor technical support means your users will need to be fairly skilled in critical thinking and more technical than average. Our knowledge of system came from lots of trial and error.

I think CheetahMail, being one of the main ESPs in the market, is a quality choice. However, I would suggest that it's really only valuable for a bit larger of an organization, generally having staff of 100+ and revenues in tens of millions -- this is mainly to justify the amount of investment required, so may be cost-prohibitive to some. You also need to make sure that you understand the entire "level of support" you will gain through your specific contract.... the key is understanding what types of resources are within your organization (who's doing the coding? who comes up with the next campaign? What's the overall strategy?) Depending on these questions and resources, may help determine your final needs from a services point of view. CheetahMail can provide a wealth of various services specific to needs (and changes over time as your business changes), but a clear understanding of what you have before you bring them on will really help getting up and running quickly. Also be sure to truly understand the costs for the initial integrations, setups, IP senders, etc.

• Number 1, is it's ease of use. We have not run into any problems where someone finds Campaigner difficult to use and this comes in handy every day. The more people that know how to use it the better because it reduces stress/buildup on others.
• We love the reporting system here. We use the clicks and opens to follow up with people all the time so to have all that detailed information is very beneficial.
• Customization is great. You can really make all your emails look exactly like they're pictured in your head.

• Internal management - This is a great web-based tool that allows our users to see what emails go to whom.
• Organization - Many layers of organization for templates since there are many types of remarketing emails that we send out.
• Historical Records - CheetahMail sends us the raw text files of all email actions so we can upload them to our database.

• Campaigner is just too bare-bones. When we first started using Campaigner close to a decade ago it was perfect for what it was. But nowadays Campaigner is missing several features that their competitors offer like exit intent and cart abandonment emails.
• Campaigner has an astonishingly bad unsubscribe option. We have had many customers complain to us over the years that when they try to unsubscribe through the emails Campaigner sends, their unsubscribe does not go through.
• Hard to change account settings such as changing our subscription plan. We had to call and were told to wait 24 hours just to make a small change to our account.

• The organization of CheetahMail could at times be better, as you create more and more mailings, they just pile up in a long list. It would be useful to be able to create folders to store specific mailings in. (ex. editorial, newsletters, marketing, etc.)

I can't see us not renewing unless we find something better. This is highly unlikely because there was a thorough research done for use to chose the best marketing client and it always came back to campaigner.

As I have begun exploring competitors, I've come to realize that every competitor offers so much more functionality and integration than CheetahMail does. When we first signed our contract, CheetahMail was much more innovative and at the forefront of email. Since being bought out by Experian, we've seen a huge decline in service and innovation. They have laid off much of their staff and moved their account representatives to Costa Rica. They also heavily rely on on third parties which you will have to pay large amounts of money for while other Email Service Providers have integrated new technologies into their platform. You will get more for your money going to a different email service such as Responsys, Silverpop, Listrak and the like,

Great features but awful tech support experiences over five years of use. Some releases broke our workflows and Campaigner could never explain why. Our initial plan provided a designed client support contact. This individual changed frequently without notice and at one point they decided our plan no longer included a designated contact. Of course this was never communicated to us until we tried to reach out to the person. If you are tech savy this system might be for you but you'll be on your own.

CheetahMail has a high learning curve to master and requires a lot of backend work with tech teams to set up. Navigation is not the best and everything that should be automated is still extremely manual.

Everything takes a minimum of 24 hours to solve and after being with campaigner for several years we were just told for the first time we have an account rep which we never even spoke to.

Account reps have a quick response time but a very slow resolution time. Because account reps do not have technical knowledge, there is a long long lead time between flagging a problem and tech team resolution.

MailChimp is far more customizable and User-Friendly, although Campaigner gets the job done. Campaigner could benefit from a design upgrade to bring their look into the modern realm. The drag and drop features and email customization of MailChimp, Campaigner is lacking. However, MailChimp is pricier. So you are definitely getting what you pay for.

CheetahMail is very far behind these other providers. Specifically in Lyris we could build forms that automatically generated code connected to specific lists and be up and running in less than a few hours. With CheetahMail that would take days and developers at times.

• We are able to sell Campaigner as a premium feature
• The plans can be a bit pricey
• We do cover cost by using their flexible "bucket" model.

• The customer service team at CheetahMail was good and efficient. It is always a frustrating experience to call in when your stuck on something but the CS team did a good job of quickly and effectively helping us when we called them for support.
• Compared to other ESPs that our employees support, this platform was quite easy to learn and the documentation provided often helped us figure things out without having to go and call CS.