Likelihood to Recommend I think Inbox25 is a great fit for companies outgrowing lower-end, disconnected email marketing applications. Companies with a more formalized marketing organization that send a lot of emails (tens of thousands monthly or more) will be better served with a product like Inbox25 that is less complex, easier to use, and much more affordable (30% lower by our experience) from the larger marketing automation products on the market. Our company has 3 full-time marketing staff with over 100,000 contacts (with valid emails) that we target in various direct and drip email campaigns and Inbox25 fits our needs just fine. I suspect that we may outgrow the product eventually but I think it'll meet our needs just fine for many years to come.
Read full review The reason it's not a seven or above is purely because of the timing of a solution we had requested originally back in August 2023. It's now February 2024, and we're waiting for a wow-factor pitch deck. Previously, we only received a demo recording and an order form quote. These truthfully aren't helpful enough to convince and sway our senior leaders into spending the $35k+ investment into the PMC.
Read full review Pros SugarCRM integration Ease of building workflows Responsive, helpful support team Read full review Personalization: It allows us to create highly personalized direct mail pieces tailored to individual recipients. For instance, we can include the recipient's name, relevant product recommendations, or even custom images that resonate with their preferences. Multi-Channel Integration: The platform seamlessly integrates with our existing digital marketing tools and CRM systems. It enables us to orchestrate cohesive campaigns that combine email, social media, and direct mail to reach our target audience through multiple touchpoints. Automated Workflows: PFL offers robust automation capabilities, streamlining the entire direct mail process. We can set triggers, such as website visits or email engagement, to automatically trigger the sending of personalized direct mail pieces, ensuring timely and relevant outreach. Variable Data Printing: The platform simplifies variable data printing, enabling us to print custom content for each recipient efficiently. This is particularly useful for A/B testing different messaging or designs within a single campaign. Read full review Cons Inbox25 is in a growth phase and has transformed their product pretty fast. With that comes an increased need to continually learn how to leverage new features. Tutorials and product documentation exist but it is relatively minimal. They overcome this with personalized, one-on-one training that is recorded for future review using a project management platform. Inbox25 has expanded beyond Sugar CRM to include Salesforce.com integration. I'm not sure if they plan to add integrations to other applications but they are positioned well for growth. Read full review There is no built-in functionality to automate direct mail; this has to be created through triggers in Salesforce. The sales cloud integration didn't give us the syncing or reporting we thought would be available. We would like to see more support from team members in the post-onboarding process. Read full review Likelihood to Renew I will continue to use the platform as long as my employer provides access, but I do not have purchasing power myself.
Read full review Usability The UI is friendly, clear, and accessible, and I access it directly through the interface (Salesforce) that I perform my function in every day. It is intuitive to navigate, and I am able to find most functionalities I need without the need to consult an admin and/or support teams.
Read full review Support Rating Only thing holding me back from a perfect 10 would be the timelines for involving the technical team on occasion. There have been a few times where the PFL technical support team has been booked up for days or more than a week out which can delay our project timelines. This doesn't happen often, let me be clear. But when it does, it's usually at the worst time for our campaigns.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Different platforms stack up particularly well for different use cases. INBOX25 is our default choice for SugarCRM users.
Read full review JourneyMail is one I have evaluated. It did not seem as full featured as PFL Direct Mail Platform, nor did it integrate with the rest of the Salesforce products like PFL Direct Mail Platform (journeymail ONLY integrates to marketing cloud). My customers tend to be cross-cloud and own multiple products and want solutions that can integrate across their stack easily.
Read full review Scalability It does take a while to launch or re-launch a campaign, which can make it difficult to pivot quickly. However, if you're integrated with Marketo, then PFL is as scalable as your database and marketing strategy! The sky is the limit in terms of creativity. Post launch, the program is hands-off apart from report monitoring and potential optimization tweaks.
Read full review Return on Investment We have successfully moved cold suspects to leads and leads to opportunities, and opportunities to customers with Inbox25. We are just now starting to realize more value given that we've only recently started using the more advanced drip marketing and lead scoring features. When we used the pay-as-you-go version we were paying just pennies per email and remained CAN-Spam Act compliant. It was harder to quantify the ROI then but it was apparent that email marketing was working and moving prospects from one sales stage to another. It was also very useful for re-engaging prospects and promoting products and services to customers. Our total investment in the advanced edition is less $30,000 annually and we expect the ROI to be less than one year. It could have been sooner if we'd have been more thoughtful in our initial implementation. Read full review We've sometimes struggled to maintain a positive ROI due to some issues with packages not arriving, arriving broken, or including the wrong items. Read full review ScreenShots PFL Direct Mail Platform Screenshots