CIsion Communications Cloud is used for identifying key media and influencers, connecting with audiences, monitoring traditional and social media, and analyzing outcomes.
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TapClicks
Score 9.1 out of 10
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TapClicks is a leading marketing technology company for agencies, media companies, brands, and enterprises. Its integrated Marketing Operations Platform includes workflow and order management, analytics, and automated reporting -- all within a single intuitive user interface available on demand in the cloud. TapClicks has delivered over 1,000,000 dashboards to over 5,000 brands and over 500 media companies and agencies worldwide. The TapClicks platform leverages over 150 native API…
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Pricing
Cision Communications Cloud
TapClicks
Editions & Modules
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No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cision Communications Cloud
TapClicks
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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TapClicks offers a subscription on a month-to-month basis. We offer multiple packages catered to your needs. Try us out for free, no credit card required.
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.
For advertising agencies and marketing departments looking to aggregate and consolidate marketing, advertising, and website analytics performance data into one centralized platform, TapClicks is a market-leading solution. TapClicks provides customizable modules, charts, and graphs to make visual sense of your data. TapClicks is designed for organizations that are trying to import reporting data across multiple marketing, advertising, and web analytics platforms. It probably does not makes sense to license TapClicks if you are just getting started with your digital marketing and are only utilizing 1 or 2 third-party platforms that TapClicks has an API connection with, it's probably premature for your organization to invest in TapClicks.
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.
Customizable dashboards: these are easy to set-up and manage and tell a powerful story. We appreciate that they can be exported.
Import Wizard: it's very important that we are able to include custom data points in our reports through the Import Wizard. After a short learning curve, we are not importing data on a weekly basis for a comprehensive report that not only shows marketing trends, but the business results too.
Groups and Clusters: The ability to manage client groups and clusters has been vital to how we report out to the client.
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.
The support team sometimes isn't very responsive, and I can go a week without hearing from the TapClicks team on an open issue.
I would love to have the categories feature enhanced so that I could combine several services, and be able to break out reporting by the flights/adgroups/lineitems within those services.
I would love for the custom dashboards that are created to be integrated into reporting so that, for example, I could use the Categories dashboard as the title page of an exported report.
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.
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.
TapClicks provides an array of on-demand training videos coupled with account management support to help your organization get up and running. That being said, TapClicks integrates with hundreds of marketing, advertising, CRM, and website analytics third-party platforms, so depending on how many integrations you want to activate, it can be a steep learning curve. Overall, we like the usability of the product.
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.
Our organization experienced a very thorough onboarding process that helped us get up and running with TapClicks. It's pretty easy to integrate or "connect" with other platforms. We have developed a long-term relationship with our Account Manager at TapClicks and we really value her support. In today's world, most technology companies change your Account Manager seemingly almost every year, but that has not been the case with TapClicks.
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.
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.
The companies I interviewed are either limited in the number of APIs built with the data source, especially with DFP. Some of them charge us cloud storage fees. TapClicks came in with enthusiasm and so far they have helped us jump start the building of dashboards for our clients.
