HCL Unica is available as a cloud or on-premise solution that provides fully integrated marketing automation software for enterprise. It includes enterprise marketing automation tools that optimize marketing activities, to ensure excellent customer experiences and data privacy.
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Optimizely Content Marketing Platform
Score 6.9 out of 10
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Optimizely Content Marketing Platform brings teams together in a single, AI-powered workspace to share plans, collaborate on assets and execute campaigns.
I think it is wel suited for a business with a lot of one on one relations in the database. For example a supermarket that sells products to a client and gives a reduction on that product. It is nice if the selection process is not to complex and does not involve to many calculations. It is also nice if it is very clear what you want to follow up. In our environment we have lots of many-to-many relations. for example one product is held by more then one client. And that client might have more of those products with other clients. These kind of situation demands for a lot of calculations with derived fields(*), and there things go far too slow. Unica is probably not such a good solution for us, because our environment is too complex, and so is to process of creating the selection, we often have to change things in the selection flows. Because of the complexity it is difficult to see what the flow is exactly doing afterwoods, it also takes to much time to modify existing campaigns. The interface is not handy to work with, if you have long lists of variables, of tables or derived fields(*) you have to scroll through trough them, you can not really search them or reorder them. You can not drag and drop fields or other objects like derived fields in the flow, what would be easy if you have to make frequent changes to the proces flow. When you copy objects something the content of the object changes because the links with other objects or lost. (*) derived field: field to calculate something
A 7 only because I think there's question marks around customization. However, I've seen very similar tools in the past where stakeholders have been skeptical, but as you get to know it and use it, you'll find actually you realize those benefits. I just think Optimizely could help its stakeholders and clients see those benefits early on versus later on. However, that's not to say it's not possible, so a 7 at this stage, but I think it's got potential in future. If you are a marketing firm who wants a centralized system for managing workflows and campaigns, it's great. It does that. However, there are better competitors fill in some of the gaps better than optimized leaders does. It could do better. I think for me, visually when I see, when I create a workflow or a campaign, I can see all the tasks associated with it and I've seen the way that our parent company uses it. It's just a list of all the tasks you see in one view. I think visually it needs improving. However, the purpose that it serves fundamentally, it's got potential, if that makes sense. It's going in the right direction, but I think competitors are doing some of it better than Optimizely is. I think they, like I was saying earlier, if they really want to realize the benefits of the product visually there needs to be some improvement. And then the controls element that I mentioned earlier as well, hopefully that answers both of your questions.
Ability to translate Multiple SQL queries into a very easy to use visual GUI.
Provides the ability to pre-define segments, run them once in off hours, store them in their own system tables for quick youth and a significant reduction in CPU utilization on the database.
It’s use of Reusable objects. Including user variables to pre-define calculations one time, macros that you can create and pass values to parameterize the SQL code And the creation of templates to easily replicate work.
It’s ability to bring in external data on the fly that can very easily be mapped into any flowchart.
It’s flexibility and creating UNIX script via triggers to automate sending of files to multiple vendors with different FTP sites
It’s flexibility in the output layouts that it can create.
The CMP really is useful for us not only to manage the processes behind how we create content that we serve in different platforms like websites, landing pages, emails, social media, but it also help us as a team that is scattered around the globe to be able to be connected all the time to be able to see what we're working on, to be able to share assets as well. We are not reinventing the wheel to be able to show to other people within the organization what is happening at any given point. We use it not only for assets now, but we use it also for things like planning our webinars, planning our face-to-face events, so it truly is the heart of our marketing organization within the business.
Greater integration of real time (Interact) capabilities with outbound channels, in particular IBM eMessage Email & SMS delivery.
Additional outbound channels to be integrated into eMessage, including Facebook Fanpage & Twitter DM broadcasts. At the moment these are possible only through custom additional integration.
Support for additional marketing database technology, e.g. MySQL, Exasol, ParAccel, WX2.
Provision of database technology with software purchase, as Web technology (IBM WebSphere Express) is supplied for free, but no database is supplied - since IBM also market DB2, which is a supported technology it seems a shame.
One thing that could be improved is some of the promotions that happen in platform. For example, there's a Opal AI little bubble at the bottom right of the corner, which you can't move across the screen. So if you're trying to change the status of a step or you're trying to update a description within a step, that can be a bit challenging and as it seems to be quite an easy fix.
I would love to see a capability in terms of having visual representation that we can share out with stakeholders that don't necessarily need access to CMP. But for that level of detail, we don't want it to go too granular, but we do want to be able to share in a quick and visual manner some of the activities that are happening so we can keep everybody in the loop without having to create different variations via different tools.
There are three main factors to renew a licence: 1) Cost to migrate to another platform would be rather expensive and time consuming, plus the requirement of retraining employees to use a new tool 2) It has been proven time and time again that it is a market leader in the space (10 years +) 3) It can be built upon, with the addition of additional IBM EMM modules - despite theories it does have very strong digital capabilities.
As a Content Operations Manager, I find the customizable task views and calendar views to be most helpful in the Plan Module. This allows me to have visibility into each team's overdue tasks, and determine where my time is best allocated to help in content production. The Library is a easy to access and highly used function as well for sharing assets across teams
Optimizely Content Marketing Platform's performance is generally good. Nothing that has impacted production. Page load speed doesn't typically lag longer than a few seconds. Reports take some time but not any longer than we're used to with other platforms. We have not experienced lag when integrating with other platforms
Training was clear and concise. It was intuitive and helped me understand how to navigate the platform. Options to dive in on each action or skip to learn about areas of regular use. Resource links available to when I had additional questions or needed more training in a specific area. Overall, the training allowed me to use the platform without interruption
- We had to rebuild a part of the datamart afterwards to tighten up and simplify the selection process. But as it was too time consuming to rebuild all the existing campaigns, we no run campaigns on different versions of the datamart. - The response tracking of the campaigns never worked out well, it was impossible to implement a direct response where there is a link between the lead and the response in our operational process
The contact history and the response history are so powerful. You can track whatever you want to help the call center to push relevant offers to our customer. In addition, predictive models can be built, with patience, in IBM Campaign. If you have some complaints from the call center about any campaigns, you can easily validate it into the contact or response history.
Honestly, I'd rather use Smartsheet paired with a digital asset management tool. It’s more flexible, easier to navigate, and better suited for mid-size teams that need to move quickly without the overhead and complexity that comes with Optimizely. We currently have Optimizely because an investment has been made in the tool.
Optimizely is generally a reliable platform for A/B testing and digital experience management. It's helpful for it's stability, flexibility, and comprehensive features, which is helpful when managing an enterprise website
The program has allowed us to meet our content goals more easily (e.g.: we publish X articles per month and track where each article is at).
It's helped us improve the accuracy of our information. We have SEO, content strategists, and legal teams involved in the workflow now because it's easy to manage.
