Emma by Marigold vs. Litmus from Validity

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Emma by Marigold
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Emma by Marigold is an email marketing solution. Its key features include mobile-ready design templates, email automation, audience segmentation, and dynamic content. The software includes integration with third-party CRM solutions, ecommerce platforms, and social networks.
$500
per year per user
Litmus from Validity
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Litmus, from Validity, is an email marketing solution used to create error-free emails in less time. It is also used to build email campaigns, personalize and test them thoroughly, monitor deliverability, and analyze email performance.
$500
per month
Pricing
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Editions & Modules
Basic
$500
per year per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsLitmus offers different plan types to fit various needs, offering monthly and annual plans, as well as fully customizable Enterprise plans.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Features
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Emma by Marigold
9.1
31 Ratings
14% above category average
Litmus from Validity
5.3
356 Ratings
40% below category average
WYSIWYG email editor8.024 Ratings7.855 Ratings
Dynamic content9.025 Ratings7.756 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content9.024 Ratings7.7231 Ratings
A/B testing9.024 Ratings1.84 Ratings
Mobile optimization9.029 Ratings9.1345 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting10.031 Ratings8.1252 Ratings
List management10.031 Ratings1.82 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences9.021 Ratings1.01 Ratings
Landing pages00 Ratings2.63 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Emma by Marigold
10.0
31 Ratings
27% above category average
Litmus from Validity
6.7
234 Ratings
13% below category average
Dashboards10.030 Ratings5.610 Ratings
Standard reports9.931 Ratings7.7233 Ratings
Custom reports10.019 Ratings6.6165 Ratings
Pre-Send Testing
Comparison of Pre-Send Testing features of Product A and Product B
Emma by Marigold
-
Ratings
Litmus from Validity
8.9
346 Ratings
12% above category average
URL Validation00 Ratings8.6261 Ratings
Link Tracking00 Ratings8.6229 Ratings
Spam Testing00 Ratings8.9258 Ratings
Email Previews00 Ratings9.5344 Ratings
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Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(32 ratings)
9.1
(370 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(5 ratings)
8.9
(27 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.4
(21 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(8 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
2.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(2 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.6
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
2.7
(12 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
4.4
(7 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
3.7
(8 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
3.6
(5 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Likelihood to Recommend
Marigold
Using Emma for weekly templated email use with minimal changes is awesome. If you want you can create a master and make minor graphic edits quickly and easily from your smartphone. Any edit is possible as long as the artwork is on the online server. Only time I hit a bump in the road is when I was asked to change the style sheet and did not know that the pricing plan I was on did not include this feature. Client had to wait to send new format until Emma performed the requested changes.
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Validity
Proofing your emails is necessary. This is a tool that allows you to see how your email not only renders on multiple devices but how it performs. Some email building platforms will tell you their drag and drop templates are ready to go, however they stop short of analyzing accessibility, checking links, load speed among other things. I've also experienced drag and drop template issues as new email clients are released. Litmus provides peace of mind that you did your due diligence on crafting your email. While Litmus does provide some reporting you will not see every typical analytic an email report offers. However, you can use your Litmus data to enhance your email reports which in turn creates a robust view of email performance.
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Pros
Marigold
  • Enterprise-level email marketing with multi-level account structure allowing for multiple users at different levels to send campaigns
  • Easy-to-use WYSIWYG email template editors to create dynamic emails with enhanced personalization through merge-fields
  • A large API index that connects to many different platforms and the ability to work with Emma support to create new connections to new platforms as needed
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Validity
  • We haven’t explored the personalization features in depth yet, aside from using the Add-to-Calendar option, but we're excited to dig in further. Tools like live polls offer an easy way to boost engagement in our product marketing emails, and we see a lot of potential in using these templates to enhance personalization moving forward.
  • Litmus’ continuing education resources have been really helpful. I recently read an article on email deliverability that offered practical insights my team can apply moving forward. I especially appreciate how Litmus uses real examples and stats from the brands they work with—it makes the content feel actionable and relevant.
  • Online Training.
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Cons
Marigold
  • Their customer service leaves something to be desired. We ran into an issue with one of our campaigns, and we decided to reach out to support, but they didn't get back with us until 3 hours later! Time is money!!
  • We don't like that their photo editing capabilities are limited, you can only choose small, medium or large photos with no way to resize to exact dimensions. Makes emails a bit of a pain
  • The upgraded premium tools are buggy and leave something to be desired as well – it's a shame.
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Validity
  • I've not seen many limitations but I have noticed that sometimes emails sent from our CRM take too long to land in Litmus, or sometimes don't land at all.
  • As a beginner it was quite difficult for me to make my way around the platform - I thought "Create new" CTA was actually creating something new, maybe "Import from CRM" would have been more understandable. There were a few others but I remember this one.
  • In the Emails section, whenever I hover over an email, I want to be able to copy the subject line instead of getting the different CTAs appear intrusively (Summary, Builder, Previews & QA, Proof, Analytics, Monitor) - maybe these could appear on the bottom of the textbox, instead of them being imposed on top?
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Likelihood to Renew
Marigold
Emma has been a great tool for our marketing. It's easy to use and I've had no issues in the almost two years we've been with them. It's really been a great way for us to stay connected with customers that takes no time to setup and send
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Validity
It's one the best tools that we've found for this type of tool but we would like some additional features like spell check so if there's a platform that features that with everything else Litmus has, then we'd potentially look to move over to that platform instead. However, we are overall pretty help with the platform
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Usability
Marigold
While every WYSIWYG software will experience glitches, Emma handles them well. Keep in mind they rarely happen, but they do, it can be of annoyance. Regardless, Emma allows my organization to create seamless email campaigns using fresh data. Emma makes coming up with strategic decisions very easy. The list segmentation that Emma feature allows us to easily manage a large list without issues. Overall, Emma is extremely usable with nearly no learning curve!
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Validity
Litmus has integrations that make the software an integrated part of my work every day. Being able to test right within my email builder is just brilliant. Daily I also use the web interface to review analytics and spam testing. Overall it is one of the pieces of software I use daily without any complaints or issues.
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Reliability and Availability
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
We have never had a problem with Litmus being unavailable so I would say their availability is fantastic. There might have been one time years ago that the site was down briefly but it also might have been a server issue on my end. Either way, Litmus was back up and running in a very short time
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Performance
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
As with all technology, there are inevitably use-cases where you are unable to get to your original goal without some good old-fashioned experimenting. Some situations will (and are) more urgent which complicates an effective integration of a new process or a new team using an existing process but the "issues" are regularly resolved by re-starting the process specific to when Litmus is introduced to a project. If it doesn't come out the way you're anticipating, run it again and verify there is an issue before declaring all is lost
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Support Rating
Marigold
I hate that to get support I have to submit a question to a public forum and wait for a response. I just want the ability for a quick live chat to answer my simple help questions quickly or at the very least submit a ticket via email and get a status update.
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Validity
I am always so so impressed with the litmus support team. They are not only prompt but attentive and offer very personalised responses and support
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In-Person Training
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
I had internal training for how to use, not lead by litmus. Unsure if there was any external training which took place before my time
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Online Training
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
It has all the required information.
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Implementation Rating
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
I didn’t really personally participate much in the implementation of Litmus, but from what I observed during the process, it was a smooth process with minimal disruptions. The team was able to get up and running quickly, and the platform’s user-friendly interface made onboarding fairly easy for everyone involved from the start.
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Alternatives Considered
Marigold
At the time we made the decision to move to Emma, my organization was using both MailChimp and Constant Contact. Emma's drag-and-drop template editor surpassed both, and even editing the pre-made template HTML in Emma was easier. List management was much smoother than the clunky Constant Contact and MailChimp lists we had. From a design perspective, we chose Emma for its ease of use in creating templates and modifying existing ones, as well as the ability to push out branded templates and brand assets through its master admin/subaccount capabilities. Emma's analytics and reporting were much less frustrating to navigate and understand, such that, rather than spending all of our time trying to make sense of the metrics from a campaign (which we were definitely doing), we were attracted to being able to report easily and then move on to determining how to make real improvements
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Validity
This is not applicable to my role as I have used Litmus to test emails since I have started. Because of the ease of use, timeliness, consistent quality, and affordability that Litmus offers, I haven't found the need to look at similar products or organizations. If all of these features continue to stay strong, I don't plan on changing providers
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Scalability
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
With our enterprise account, scalability is not an issue. I have not yet seen or heard of significant issues with user access, API connections for integrations etc. This includes down time for "Scheduled Maintenance" as some providers call them, Litmus has the technology backing to support a global team with a 24-hour workday across regions
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Return on Investment
Marigold
  • Stores using the platform have seen good deliverability stats. Open rates and click-through rates are high with the templates that Emma creates. We still face the challenge of getting more users on the platform.
  • User satisfaction is high for our users who are regularly using the platform.
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Validity
  • Litmus saves our team so much time by making the QA and email review process so much easier, streamlined, and efficient.
  • We often send out campaigns out to thousands of members, and Litmus gives us the assurance and peace of mind that everything is working as it should before it gets sent out.
  • Decreases the number of email review cycles we go through.
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ScreenShots

Emma by Marigold Screenshots

Screenshot of dynamic content used to send unique, personalized content to each subscriber based on the data stored about them from a single email.Screenshot of the editor's drag & drop layouts and inline text editing, that help to keep the creative process fast and flexible.Screenshot of a display of account activity, email performance and recent mailings in one place right after login.Screenshot of insights on the go using Metric, the included iPhone and Android app.Screenshot of response results that give insights into what's working and provide next steps.Screenshot of customizable, mobile-optimized templates to show off a brand and content in the template gallery.

Litmus from Validity Screenshots

Screenshot of Litmus Personalize Essentials, with live polls to give subscribers a voice and drive email engagement.Screenshot of Litmus Email Guardian, featuring 24/7 link monitoring to safeguard emails.Screenshot of Litmus' integrated insights reports, that can automatically combine metrics from Salesforce Marketing Cloud with subscriber engagement insights from Litmus.Screenshot of campaign preview, available in 100+ popular email clientsScreenshot of Litmus' inbox previewing and feedback tools, that help users to spot and fix issues early.