Likelihood to Recommend SharpSpring is great for creating and tracking campaigns that span multiple channels. With the Salesforce integration, we are able to keep our Sales team focused inside Salesforce without them needing to learn a new tool. Our Marketing team uses SharpSpring to nurture leads before handing them off to the Sales team. Though the features are available, SharpSpring would not be suitable for social media management or blogs; our third-party tools do a better job at that.
Read full review The platform is most scalable-- works for small and large companies alike. Key for most of our clients is the little to no IT support required to implement and run the platform. I would definitely explore this when looking at a marketing automation platform beyond the "batch and blast" solutions. We've yet to have an issue working with our clients' sales and/or marketing teams to implement. And most of our clients work in the platform independent of the programs we run; are able to set up acampaign, upload lists and/or pull for CRM, and run reports on their own in very short turn.
Read full review Pros Their Emailers are very easy to construct and user-friendly. It takes your Newsletter and sales emails to the next level, especially with the action groups and trigger functionalities. The life of the lead functionality allows you to see when leads get warmer, so you know when to send them what. Helps improve conversions. Read full review Really easy to use. We can build a campaign in about 30 minutes and our new hires can learn to use it very quickly. Free phone support. I can always get someone to help me and they actually return calls quicker than most all companies. We are able to create campaigns before we finish all the assets. We can launch, then change the flow and add assets when they are ready. Integration with Google AdWords is very easy to setup, and has lots of ROI and campaign peformance reporting. Read full review Cons The landing page builder is a bit hard to use. Doesn’t have much flexibility. Sometimes confusing between types of workflows to use. Opportunity versus visual. If you imported contacts that weren’t formatted correctly. It is hard to delete a bull amount. Need to type DELETE for each one manually. No bull options to make changes. Read full review I've never been too crazy about the reporting within DemandCenter. There is always a solution for any type of report I'm seeking, but it involves report designing (choosing data points dragging/dropping columns & rows) which is made difficult by the lack of descriptions & values for the data points. To their credit, they did release a new suite of simplified (and pretty) reports, dubbed "Marketing Effectiveness". Relegating the older, complicated (yet super-flexible) reports as "Business Analytics". The UI will be a little unfamiliar at first. That is, where you think you should be clicking, you'll need to double-click or drag-and-drop. And I would say DemandCenter has always (and still does) have an issue with UI elements that are "windows within windows" or modal windows with scrolling. But, at least these UI components are consistent throughout the entire application - so once you're used to it, you can actually achieve some pretty impressive speeds. One of DemandCenter's greatest features is being squished down to uselessness: Derived Data. As mentioned, I scrub our data on a regular basis, and this means filling/appending data, or extrapolating to fill missing data. DC released a feature called "Derived Data" that scours useful info from the prospect's IP address (mostly geographical info). Now, while you can create campaign & list conditions based on derived data, there is no easy way to simply extract that oh-so-valuable derived Country or State and have it map those values to the standard fields. Or at least let you export derived data. They have plans to fix this - but for now it's like dangling candy in front of a baby. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We have been very impressed with all aspects of this software and the potential for it to radically change how we operate is huge! Support has been exceptional and we have discovered many extra uses for the software than originally thought. Not only will it give us benefits for our company's growth, but for our client's growth as well.
Read full review We have tried other systems and eTrigue is the easi est to use , easiest to train new people on, and m ost responsive support team we have ever experienced. They ask our input on new features they are developing, and have implemented some of our suggestions in their product rollouts. We get new features almost every month. We get live support without any cost, and they return our phone calls within an hour every time. They treat us like a true partner.
Read full review Usability This rating is coming from an administrative perspective. With so many features, workflows, dashboards, and more, there is certainly a lot going on, and even the most savvy software user can get a little overwhelmed when trying to decide how to best implement and utilize the platform to its full potential. That being said, the SharpSpring platform is well-implemented and well-organized, with most solutions being fairly intuitive, once you have a grasp of the software. It is fairly easy to learn , but difficult to master . Just like any powerful platform, however, the complexity is worth it, and once you are comfortable navigating and problem solving within SharpSpring, it becomes a great marketing and sales tool which can do virtually anything you need it to.
Read full review Having used Marketo, Act-On, and Pardot, eTrigue is MUCH easier to use and easier to train new team members to use.
Read full review Support Rating The support is great which really helps overcome challenges if you become stuck and the training videos are great too. Same-day replies are great and I even got some help with some CSS code on the chat. Not many organizations would do this or even respond.
Read full review Been very happy with their responsiveness and ability to resolve issues
Read full review Implementation Rating Overall I would say to be patient and bring everyone who will be touching the platform to the onboarding sessions. The Virtual Classroom lets you onboard as quickly or slowly as you want. Sales, marketing, design, account management, get 'em all in on it. For the most part, they will be happy to use this platform. I recommend getting as many people as possible to see the SharpSpring demo.
Read full review You will need to think about which users you want to have each role, and the features allowed in each role. You should watch the training videos before you get live training. It saved us several hours as they had already answered 90% of our questions.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We use different CRMs for different clients, mostly due to budget and other requirements. SharpSpring from Constant Contact is in the middle, price-wise, but is slightly more user-friendly than
ActiveCampaign when it comes to certain things, such as drip campaigns and workflows. Though the price can be prohibitive to some clients, it is extremely robust. I definitely prefer the list-building, the ability to send smart emails and the WYSIWYG editor.
Read full review Constant Contact offered now tracking, lead alerts. Marketo wasn't as flexible-- for example not easy to schedule campaigns in advance, to launch in the future. Also liked the interface and the DemandCenter lead alert format more than Marketo.
Read full review Return on Investment Streamlined Processes - sales and marketing are now all in the same place. Reduced Number of Platforms/Tools - CRM/lead management, email, automation, landing pages, forms, etc are all in the same place rather than using multiple tools. Time-saving - sales pipeline is very easy to use for sales. For marketing, we have dozens of workflows that eliminate much of our manual processes from the past. Return on Investment - We're more focused on moving the building the business than ever before because SharpSpring has simplified so many of our business operations and we're seeing massive results! Lead generation - Up SIGNIFICANTLY (between 3x & 4x) since setting up SharpSpring. Read full review We get the upper hand on follow-up with return visitors... not by reverse DNS lookup or pattern match but by direct cookie validation. Inside sales productivity is boosted by 33% easy with eTrigue. The alerts and data are lightning fast, giving marketing immediate feedback on campaign data and prospects. Read full review ScreenShots