Constant Contact Advanced Automation helps users to send the right message at the right time, from Social to SMS and email to ecommerce. Multi-Channel Campaigns - Create comprehensive marketing campaigns with just a few clicks. The Campaign Builder tool can help launch a multi-channel campaign across email, social, and SMS. Pre-Built Automation Templates - Setup your automations quickly with pre-built automation templates to…
$449
per month
OutboundEngine
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
OutboundEngine provides a hands-off way for small business owners to market and grow their business. The product aims to provide small businesses with what big companies have achieved with marketing automation. The service aims to help users keep in touch with clients and prospects with professionally designed, branded campaigns. Benefits include: driving engagement, surfacing warm leads from current contacts, generating referrals and repeat business from their existing contacts, social…
$199
per user
Pricing
Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM
OutboundEngine
Editions & Modules
Lite
$12
per month
Standard
$35
per month
Premium
$80
per month
Lead Gen & CRM
Starting at $449
per month
Essential
$199
per user
Value
$299
per user
Premium
$499
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM
OutboundEngine
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
$99 per user
Additional Details
Above pricing based on 5000 contacts.
More information is available on the vendor's website.
Constant Contact is excellent for small businesses wanting a simple email to their customers and leads. We've found that it's not the most robust solution for more complex funnels involved in e-commerce or information publishing. For instance, setting up specific flows based on user behavior, VIP status, and other attributes is lacking.
OutboundEngine does a referral campaign and I've been able to close a couple of deals based on getting in touch with people who engage with this campaign and state they could use my services in the next 6 months. This is a great follow up tool for those you may or may not know are going to be needing your services.
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.
The content that they generate to send to our clients is relevant and the clients want to engage with us. It makes us appear more professional and consistent, even though we are a smaller company.
It helps us stay in touch with clients and helps us stay top of mind. We are able to generate more new business leads if we are in consistent contact with current, former, and potential clients.
Their customer service and support is outstanding. All my questions were answered and I went into the program feeling confident and knowledgeable.
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.
I do not like the use of drawings to attract new customers, and they have ignored my requests to eliminate that for my personal emails.
I do not like it when a competitor in my immediate market has the same posts. It cheapens the service or makes it appear that I am simply sharing another's post.
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.
The biggest issue is poor ROI. The second biggest issue is rigid customer service process, lack of a sense of urgency, and inability to reach out to upper management with issues.
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.
Overall, OutboundEngine is very user friendly. It is simple to set up and explore, and if there are any issues or questions, the customer service team and account managers are always available to help. They are very knowledgeable and were able to explain everything in detail to me. The program is easy to navigate and helps me stay organized, and an uncomplicated and straightforward solution was exactly what I was looking for
I haven't had to contact Outbound Engine because I haven't had any application errors or unplanned outages. I basically have had such a trouble free experience with them that I haven't had to call. Everything is automated and I get a notice to review every isse. I suppose if I personalized the newsletter a bit more and added some of my own articles, I would need to contact them, (which I should really start to do) but so far things have been so on point, I haven't felt the need.
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.
The customer service was excellent! Everyone I spoke to was kind and knowledgeable. My account manager was easily reachable. Setup of the OutboundEngine program was explained really thoroughly, and we knew how we could best use the product to meet the needs of our clients and get our online and social media presence off the ground.
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.
Can send content & templates to Sales to send in their reach-outs (Outlook extension)
Ad retargeting
Social listening tool
Social media scheduling
Email builder: dynamic content
Landing pages: dynamic content, rebrandable domain name
Chatbot Platform seems intuitive to use
Forms auto-complete for known visitors
Instant 2-way sync with Salesforce
Trigger automated workflows from social media
It was easy to receive demo, streamlined sales process
SharpSpring: approx. $13,000 USD per year + $2,000 USD one-time for onboarding Pardot: $32,400 USD per year + $3,000 to $5,000 USD one-time for onboarding HubSpot: $20,381 USD per year + $3,000 USD one-time for onboarding Marketo: $29,015 USD per year + $4,500 USD one-time for onboarding
I selected it for the ability to have an automated system do 3 things all at once, social media posts, emails and the instant communication with the chat box. I have never seen a chat come through that lead to a helpful client touchpoint. I have never used another product but have since begun to weigh some of the less expensive options.
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.
It has provided a consistent email message to my clients
It has provided a consistent social media presence for my past clients
It has helped me obtain and correlate customer reviews
Unfortunately I cannot say that I have any direct information that a sale was generated directly as a result of OutboundEngine. I feel that it has but I have no measurable proof of this
