eClincher aims to be the most powerful, complete and intuitive social media management software. According to the vendor, the product is designed to help users, businesses, and agencies manage social media presence with one platform, and offers the following capabilities: advanced publishing publishing automation (queues, RSS feeds, recycle evergreen content) engagement with unified social inbox & live social feeds monitoring content…
$49
Meta Business Suite
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Formerly known as Facebook Business Suite or Facebook for Business, a solution for small businesses used to manage all business activity on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram from one place. It is presented as a one-stop shop where business owners can manage all marketing and advertising activities on Facebook and Instagram. It centralizes tools that help the user to connect with customers on all apps and get better business results.
Best suited for a marketer that cares about reports, needs a social media management platform and doesn't want to pay more for a more aesthetically pleasing version of a platform with the same or less functionality, such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social. For a social media marketer that wants to automate some of their postings, the queues feature is great for this functionality. Not best suited for beginners to social media, as their platform is best utilized with someone familiar with the industry that knows what they are doing. Their chat support team is very good though, but this type of individual might find themselves spending a lot of time on the platform.
Meta for Business has made a lot of improvements, but a lot of work still needs to be done as far as troubleshooting. I've had ad issues for months. It's probably getting close to a year. Every time I've submitted troubleshooting tickets, they're either slow to respond or don't respond at all. More than five times I've asked for help with getting the ad issues resolved. This included an online meeting (quite a first), emailing them, and even chatting with them. I went as far as multiple submissions of the materials they requested; I'm still at square one.
eClincher supports nearly every social network and connects to a large number of sources (blogs, bit.ly, Google Analytics, Google My Business). This makes workflow tremendously easy.
Posting Groups. At higher levels of service, eClincher allows you to set-up individual brand accounts. My agency isn't at that level, so we utilize eClincher's posting groups to make 1-click groups that post to all of the profiles for each client. This allows us to quickly post a cohesive message across all channels.
Workflow management: eClincher adds plenty of additional tools to make your workflow fast. Connections to free stock photo services make it easy to add generic pictures to your content. Google Analytics and bit.ly can keep track of statistics and measure success. The Inbox allows you to handle all your clients' accounts from one screen (including comments, messages, reviews, and more). The Feeds and Influencers tabs allow you to understand your market and what's being said. Altogether, eClincher makes a 1-app solution for Social Media Management.
Segmentation is HUGE. You can segment by almost anything you want, be it demographic, sociological, behavioral... you name it. You can also create targets based on your visitors and their actions. Even custom lists.
They are very good at optimizing your campaigns automatically. This is so important because it will improve your ROI in several multiples otherwise
Managing ads in general works fine, and the data, even though is not exactly as accurate as Analytics, it's pretty decent.
Gives you placements and different ad types so you can get the most out of it.
Pixel and catalog integration are very powerful. You can almost instantly start tracking and catalog fetches your site daily for updates.
It's not very visually appealing, but this is not a dealbreaker.
The reporting features could definitely use some work. I still get more value from the native SNS pages, but this is quickly changing. They removed the "export to CSV" functionality, but they plan to reintroduce it soon. As mentioned previously, they really respond to criticism well and update the tool constantly.
The inbox could use some work. I don't like being directed offsite to view certain comments deemed "requests for further info" when they could just easily display them there.
The amount of text allowed on images can be frustrating since it will include ALL text in the image regardless if it is part of the copy or on something random in the background of the image
Labeling ads and ad groups can be frustrating as we often had them default to generic titles which we would have to go back and edit. A mandatory field would be helpful, however, that might not be popular opinion as that much detail is really just a personal preference.
The constant emails from their sales team to "help you improve" your results are a little much.
Unless the price of eClincher moves to a point where it is too much to justify, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't continue to use eClincher for our agency. The value at this price-point is unbelievable and we'd be foolish to move to a pricier program purely for the sake of slicker graphics or UI. eClinchers pricing is fantastic, and is only matched by its functionality—it matches or beats any of the major Social Media Manager SaaS programs out there for a fraction of the cost. This tool is great for growing agencies, but would also be useful for any marketing department or large agency that wants to streamline their social media workflow.
We have to continue using this tool in order to be effective on this marketing platform. Though there are several changes I wish we could see, the fact is that we will still need to use this product to provide customers with the information they need.
Its usability was good until they changed their plans and stopped their LTD program for its early adopters who helped raise the tool by giving it positive reviews. I don't think eClincher is ethical in any sense based on the recent actions.
I gave it this rating because it is so easy to learn to use and you are able to grow a following quickly by knowing when to post and who to post to or how to get in front of those prospects easily, and using those prospects to reach even further without any additional processes on your end through the sharing from your engaged readers.
[In my experience,] due to the fact that they did a bait and switch on their plans and blamed AppSumo for the lifetime program ending is simply wrong. [I believe that] it's unethical to get support and reviews from their early adopters then take the plan away later.
I've found the Facebook for Business support to be hit or miss. For billing questions they're timely and helpful. For complex questions about specific services I've often received a longer wait and a less helpful experience. I'm often redirected to their docs, which are often not particularly helpful.
Be patient. eClincher isn't perfect and has some software issues. These issues will be exacerbated if you get frustrated or have a slow connection. If something "breaks" or locks up, just refresh the page and re-do that step. It may take your team a couple weeks to get use to using the new system. Once they've gotten the hang of it, I'm sure they'll love the amount of time they save. I'd recommend taking your time with the set-up. Though there aren't a lot of steps to get everything squared away, you can break the process into small chunks to make sure you're managing your time. To just hook-up all the social accounts, it may only take an hour or so. But, if you want to set-up all the extra tools (such as user accounts, listening feeds, posting groups, schedules, etc.) it'll take longer. I think it took around a day to set-up completely, but your mileage my vary.
If you don't want to display your feed to your boss before going over scheduled posts for the week, use the Business site and it will be less awkward instantly. Having someone lean over your shoulder is always a bit awkward, you think about how you smell, maybe consider offering them gum because they have bad breath
There are loads of social scheduling tools out there. I was using Buffer but then found it was limited in terms of listening and reporting so I started to look at a more professional software. I tried Hootsuite but hated the interface, way too busy with the primary focus being on feeds rather than scheduling. Sprout Social I found clunky and hard to use. eClincher was recommended to me by a friend. I think the interface (desktop and mobile) is easy to use but what sets it apart is its support - the live chat is brilliant.
Facebook stacks up against them in terms of its service. I choose Facebook for Business since I use it for business for almost more than a year now and I need to say this it is the most best possible business tool definitely a must-have for all the businesses type.
I haven't had much ROI from using Facebook for Business, and unfortunately, other local businesses I know haven't felt that they got much ROI on their paid ads either.
The good point of Facebook for Business is that I can still look into who is interested in my products and build around my audience that way.
