CIsion Communications Cloud is used for identifying key media and influencers, connecting with audiences, monitoring traditional and social media, and analyzing outcomes.
N/A
Full Circle Insights
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Full Circle Insights (formerly Full Circle CRM) is built on the Salesforce platform and is primarily a marketing performance management tool. It is used to calculate the ROI from marketing programs and includes robust analytics dashboards. As such it integrates with the major marketing automation systems including Marketo, Eloqua and Act-On.
For a small start-up, the cost-benefit to add lift to press releases [and] particular milestone accomplishments is definitely there with the Cision [Communications] Cloud. Much of what we do, by necessity, is done internally without the benefit of outsourced press folks, so the Cision [Communications] Cloud ease of use and reporting is very important.
In full disclosure as a professional services marketing agency and consultancy, based on our very positive experience with Full Circle CRM, the robustness of their offering, and our ability to work together, we have entered into a partnership to provide implementation and consulting services in cooperation with Full Circle CRM. Rather than paint this review as biased, I hope that it provides insights into our decision to partner with an impressive and growing company.
Their upgraded press release templates and ability [to] pull in an entire, completed release makes the [process] faster and easier, and allows for more graphics, such as company mastheads, [are done well].
The media tracking offers the ability to find relevant placements across the entire country.
The journalist database streamlines the process of finding relevant reporters to directly connect [to] on news releases that are relevant to their beats.
The process of setting up, creating, and distributing a release is seamless, easy to use, and not labor-intensive.
In the media influencer database, the classic Cision allowed us to do a zip code radius search to really drill down to the neighborhood level. That's because we do localized media advisories and press releases for events at neighborhood schools. One part of a big city like Chicago really doesn't care what's happening in another part of Chicago that's too far away. The zip code radius search was a feature in the classic Cision but not with the current Cision Communications Cloud. We've asked for this to be restored several times, but nothing's happened. In fact, we were told to use DMA — which actually goes wider in a search (bigger than a city), not more narrow as needed. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of what we need.
Another missing feature involves a merge field when sending out an email press release through Cision. This is the "select insert field" button in the upper right that's used to personalize a release with the media contact's name and other information. This is key for localization of the release. Many media outlets won't run a release unless it's local. While "county" is a feature in the influencer database when putting together a media list in Cision, "county" is not available to insert into a press release as a merge field. Counties are important because this is how many newspapers and health departments are organized and identify themselves. I've asked for this to be implemented, to no avail. As a workaround, we've had to use "contact city" or "outlet city."
After refining a media list in Cision using filters, I've had to download the list and take it offline to see the big picture, screen for duplicates, etc. While there is a button on the bottom left intended to help with this, it doesn't do the trick. That's because there may be multiple contacts with the same email address. In addition, one media contact may represent numerous media outlets, so this same contact could show up several times. It would be nice to have a better way to see the whole list online and eliminate both duplicates as well as those who previously opted out.
We worked closely with the vendor to add functionality to their current release to allow us to track multiple separate waterfalls simultaneously in order to operationalize the new Sirius Decisions Waterfall model. With the needed changes, the product works as advertised, and is providing the specific results we anticipated. In 6 months, we have not found anything else that we would want to change.
While I am happy with the product performance overall, TrendKite's recent merger with Cision is cause for concern. When we first signed on with TrendKite, I spoke with several users and the best response I received was that the company was a startup and we could expect there to be hiccups along the way as the company grew and the platform got more robust. That has certainly been the case. However, now that they have merged with Cision — a company that has grown too fast, has not focused on improving its product and has poor customer service — I have concerns that TrendKite will lose some of the qualities that have made it a great company and great product to work with.
Full Circle CRM has solved a major visibility problem for us that was the result of architectural differences between Eloqua and salesforce.com that cannot be solved by reporting alone. We rely on this visibility as much as the core systems themselves.
The flexibility and customization of Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* is among its most important features. Changing the dashboards, using keywords in the saved searches to pull out the best stories and the integration with marketing automation tools gives me confidence that I will able to continue using this tool well into the future. The future implementation and integration of the media contact database will complete the suite, making list management and email marketing programs much smoother. *This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
Generally, Cision performs well day to day, but it's got some annoying bugs that slow down usage/require user workarounds which is inefficient. More seriously, a few months ago, as a result of a major system upgrade, certain critical functionality was not working and I was unable to use the service for more than a day when I had time-sensitive work to execute
For Cision TrendKite in particilar, support always responded, but it was sometimes slow. For some of our booleans and search queries, we would need help refining and excluding terms/phrases that weren't relevant to our client or campaign. This sometimes took 1-2 days just to get a response back, which sometimes was too late when a last-minute report was due. This was only with the support staff, not necessarily our customer success manager or sales rep.
The vendor worked with us tirelessly, never complaining about our broken processes and bad data. In fact, they went above and beyond their responsibilities to assist us in the process re-engineering and the data clean-up
The instructor was the same person who guided our implementation so they not only knew their application but they were also familiar with our data and our specific configuration and processes within salesforce.com. They were able to provide customized instruction to match our needs and personnel.
The online training sessions available for the Cision Communications Cloud are helpful and informative. There's more than one option - initially, I signed up for the live webinar classes on basic functions and that is what I recommend other new users do as well. If I have specific questions or something I want to learn more about, I can search the online database and find article or online training videos to get the information I need.
When I look back at where we were on November 25th compared to where we were on January 25th, having been live for just one month, the difference is amazing. Our management discussions had already moved from discussing the validity of the data to the implications of the insights. As we approach the mid-point in our year, it is difficult to remember the old days when we could not see the road in front of us.
It's a similar product. I think Meltwater sells itself as being a bit more niche, but I have not found many significant differences between Meltwater and Cision. Meltwater's sales process is a very high pressure and their prices are inflated.
Full Circle's main competitors are standalone reporting tools which perform well and are a good first step into attribution. All tools require significant investment to improve your marketing data model and how you plan and execute campaigns. Full Circle is heavily married to Salesforce and takes advantage of Salesforce's reporting suite vs. visualizing in a standalone tool. This approach also works well if you prefer to visualize data in an alternative tool such as Tableau or Looker. The proprietary approach to visualization used by Bizible and BrightFunnel are less appealing to enterprise companies who are building a modern stack.
