Customer.io vs. SwiftERM

This tool is well-suited for companies looking to run email marketing campaigns or send out newsletters regularly to their users/customers. The workflow setup is especially useful for companies who want to send specific emails based on user behavior - i.e. they've not logged in recently, have bought a specific product, haven't opened any emails, etc. This could also be useful for freelancers like me since you can create different workspaces within Customer.io. I have configured it this way to handle email marketing for a few of my clients, and the software keeps everything organized and separate. This might not be the best tool for small businesses, considering the price. It may be better to start out with a cheaper email marketing tool, and then if/when necessary, scale-up with a tool like Customer.io.

SwiftERM only works on specific ecommerce platforms including Magento, Shopify, Woo Commerce, and OpenCart. It is intended for regular communication with consumers who visit that retailers site more often. so it works well for food and drink, fashion and pet food etc. People selling beds or something which you buy less frequently would get lower returns.

• Managing users, attributes and events. You are easily able to modify any user, based on their ID, and add or remove attributes, assign events to them. That makes it very easy to segment later and to assign them to several campaigns based on behavior. Just a warning: this integration isn't so easy (at least it wasn't for us).
• Creating workflows of campaigns is very easy. You can quickly create behavioral campaigns based on attributes, segments and add elements to the workflow. You can send an email, then wait, then send another, then exit the campaign if they converted, etc. The workflow is easy to configure and very powerful for automation.
• We don't use many email templates (we make them in MJML) but it's very easy to add senders, to change templates and in general to test designs.
• Deliverability works very well, at least for us. It sends emails pretty fast and without issues.
• Exporting is very quick and easy. Importing wasn't a feature until recently, but it works well too.
• Seeing activity it's also useful. In general, logs are awesome (be it of a customer, of activity on the site, email sends, etc.).
• We don't use environments, but it might be very useful for a bigger company.

Incentivized

• Automatic email marketing
• Predictive analytics
• Publicises our Trustpilot product ratings

• Push notifications are very rudimentary. Everything has to be done by hand unless you're sending an extremely simple message.
• A bit too email centric.
• Lacks an ability to schedule messages on a daily, weekly, etc. basis.

Incentivized

• Introduce an SMS version
• Making the reporting system more idiotproof

It is the only system we have able to find in the world that is 100% automatic. There is an element of automation in many email products, but these always require some input, if only setting the distribution time. No other analyses down to individual consumer level. No other system in the world is authorized to send Trustpilot product ratings in outbound emails. This really is superb.

Setting up is a simple plugin. I did my own in three minutes including the registration. As it is automatic, there is no need for training or paying for users, etc. In six years we have never needed any support, but I know there is a team of developers there if that day ever arrives.

Customer.io was really the first pure, full-featured drip email program on the market and as far as I know, it's still the simplest and best overall for that specific function. SendGrid has also added drip campaign features, but I would seriously evaluate Customer.io against any other drip email provider because they really have all the key elements you need to make it work.

Incentivized

Mailchimp, DotMailer, Emarsys. But none of these does exactly what SwiftERM does, leaving us in a situation where we now run both SwiftERM and Mailchimp.

• Fast testing for new products to specific groups. It saves a lot of time and money.
• Removed workload from marketing = more time to make it better.
• Better contact with specific groups, seeing a increase in sales because of this.

Incentivized

• Our initial ROI was over 4,000%
• It has freed up many days each month spent segmenting audiences.
• Our customer churn has been reversed.