Epsilon PeopleCloud vs. SessionM vs. VerticalResponse

Appropriate for large organizations who want customization in their emails. The tool - while intuitive if you have previous background - is hefty and large in scope of capabilities. It's great for organizations who have multiple users and shows the name of person who last made changes. The reporting is really good - but may be a bit overwhelming for organizations who don't need a lot of detailed information

Incentivized

SessionM is ideal for enterprise restaurants, brands, and organizations to build and drive loyal behaviors via technology platforms. They've built their system via robust APIs integrations, but are now diving into a white label app system that allows smaller brands (100 units+) to utilize their incredible technology in their own brand, as opposed to just bigger players. They're the best at what they do.

Incentivized

For businesses requiring advanced email marketing features like sophisticated automation, in-depth analytics, and extensive customization, VerticalResponse might fall short due to its limited featuresVerticalResponse is ideal for small businesses or freelancers who need a simple, straightforward email marketing tool. Its ease of use and basic features make it suitable for those without extensive technical expertise in email marketing

Incentivized

• Fairly intuitive if you have previous experience with high-end email tools.
• The training opportunities are good - they offer both online and/or live training.
• The support we receive is very good.
• The reporting feature is good - a lot of detailed information.

Incentivized

• Using data science to determine guest tendencies and actions: their system is incredibly smart and tracks historical actions to guess/estimate future actions, and creating programs to influence those actions.
• Integrated communication platforms to speak to all of our guests within various tactics—email, push notifications, text messages, in-app messages, etc.
• Loyalty management & CRM: creating and managing a program that runs consistently across the system.

Incentivized

• I love the ease of list builder because we often times have a lot of data to import. It would be simply impossible without this tool, considering the amount of customer data we have for any one given email.
• We really enjoy the ease of use of the HTML wizard as well. It helps even a novice be able to make a beautiful and attention grabbing email.
• The dashboard is functional and easy to find when you need with a quick search.

Incentivized

• The tool could be improved to "remember" where you last left off (specific user). Having to constantly retrace steps if you get logged out is annoying.
• Hitting the "back" arrow sends you back to a main section, when it should send you back to where you previously were.
• It would be nice to see performance reports available within the campaign itself, as well as within the reporting section.
• Ability to NOT be able to change anything in a campaign after it has launched. This has happened multiple times. We usually copy a previous campaign to start a new one but often, we end up changing content on the version we are copying from -- this is very annoying and dangerous.

Incentivized

• Some improvement could be made on their integrations process with all platforms (olo, monkey media, etc.).

Incentivized

• The type face is small. Not sure if this is to avoid overwhelming the reader, but I could see this being an issue with vision-impaired people or people who don't see small print well.
• Sometimes I find it takes multiple clicks to make one simple change. I wish there was a search field at the top of the screen that allowed me to jump directly to a client's entry to update it there.

Product is easy for both technical and non-technical people to use. A cost effective solution for sending out large number of messages. We can manage unsubscribes by individual accounts, so we can have multiple multiple accounts combined to maximize our buying power on credits. Effective API for sending/receiving data makes tool a valuable asset.

I truly love this product. We are moving to an all-in-one system next year and my greatest fear in doing so is how much I will miss this platform. Although we are excited for things ahead, I will always keep Vertical Response in my back pocket incase I don't love the new platform as much

Incentivized

Never had an issue with uptime

No issues

At Vertical Response the help desk associates are courteous, knowledgeable and helpful. You can tell they enjoy what they do. And clearly, they are well trained because most times, the first point of contact is able to resolve any issue you may have. There have been very few times where an associate has needed to get back to me or escalate me to a supervisor

Incentivized

Basic functions and online help...we used what was needed, at the time, and will continue to explore other online trainings as our functional needs expand

Salesforce integration never worked right. We had to abandon.

While both Epsilon Agility Harmony and Oracle Responsys are great for larger organizations that send a lot of emails, I think Epsilon Agility Harmony is more robust than Responsys and is easier to use. It is significantly more complex than HubSpot and requires previous knowledge of using an email tool that has content blocks and or dynamic content.

Incentivized

SessionM was light years ahead of Fishbowl, in the data science tendency assumptions that are built into the system, plus they don't offer an app for your brand to use. You'd have to employ a 3rd vendor to manage that. It's also important to note that SessionM sees ALL guests and POS content in the system, not just loyalty identified transactions.

Incentivized

In addition to using Vertical Response personally I also manage email marketing for clients that already use Mailchimp, Robly and Constant Contact. While most of these platforms all offer similar features I choose Vertical Response first if the client does not have a platform in place. Typically I am also teaching the client how to use this tool and the Vertical Response visual interface is very easy for me to teach a client how to navigate and create their own campaigns.

Incentivized

• Increased email production = more communication to customers.
• Better reporting = determine areas for improvement or scale up efforts.
• Working on getting our triggered emails optimized - there's a great opportunity for this with this tool.

Incentivized

• Our work with SessionM has been so incredibly impactful to our brand loyal guests, and the value they bring to our brand. For example, our loyal guests are worth $100+ more than our non-loyalty guests.

Incentivized

• We were able to blast out promotions our company was having to customers which created an increase in business.
• By blasting out any service issues, it keeps our customers informed so that they are not wondering what is going on.
• Allows us to store unsubscribed emails so that we are not constantly pestering people who do not want to be emailed.

Incentivized