LiftMetrix (discontinued) vs. OutboundEngine

The free trial is a good option for start-up businesses or nonprofits. You are limited to 3 accounts and 5 scheduled posts, but you can save drafts ahead, then schedule after some are posted. The paid version is nice but higher price point for start-ups. I can't remember if the insights are useful.

OutboundEngine does a referral campaign and I've been able to close a couple of deals based on getting in touch with people who engage with this campaign and state they could use my services in the next 6 months. This is a great follow up tool for those you may or may not know are going to be needing your services.

Incentivized

• Custom filter comparisons
• organic vs paid insights
• easy to digest suggestions moving forward

Incentivized

• The content that they generate to send to our clients is relevant and the clients want to engage with us. It makes us appear more professional and consistent, even though we are a smaller company.
• It helps us stay in touch with clients and helps us stay top of mind. We are able to generate more new business leads if we are in consistent contact with current, former, and potential clients.
• Their customer service and support is outstanding. All my questions were answered and I went into the program feeling confident and knowledgeable.

• The tagging feature could be improved. It currently does not map well to Hootsuite Enterprise's publishing dashboard and requires manually mapping on the back end to connect the two systems.
• We pay separately for Hootsuite Ads. Hootsuite Impact could better integrate with the Ads platform to get a holistic view of paid and free campaigns.
• There are a lot of different sections in the platform--for recommendations, insights, dashboards, etc. You can also search things by saving filtered searches and applying those filters to other areas of the platform. How these things work together isn't always clear or intuitive.

Incentivized

• I do not like the use of drawings to attract new customers, and they have ignored my requests to eliminate that for my personal emails.
• I do not like it when a competitor in my immediate market has the same posts. It cheapens the service or makes it appear that I am simply sharing another's post.

Incentivized

The biggest issue is poor ROI. The second biggest issue is rigid customer service process, lack of a sense of urgency, and inability to reach out to upper management with issues.

Overall, OutboundEngine is very user friendly. It is simple to set up and explore, and if there are any issues or questions, the customer service team and account managers are always available to help. They are very knowledgeable and were able to explain everything in detail to me. The program is easy to navigate and helps me stay organized, and an uncomplicated and straightforward solution was exactly what I was looking for

I haven't had to contact Outbound Engine because I haven't had any application errors or unplanned outages. I basically have had such a trouble free experience with them that I haven't had to call. Everything is automated and I get a notice to review every isse. I suppose if I personalized the newsletter a bit more and added some of my own articles, I would need to contact them, (which I should really start to do) but so far things have been so on point, I haven't felt the need.

Incentivized

The customer service was excellent! Everyone I spoke to was kind and knowledgeable. My account manager was easily reachable. Setup of the OutboundEngine program was explained really thoroughly, and we knew how we could best use the product to meet the needs of our clients and get our online and social media presence off the ground.

Hootsuite Impact is far easy to use, both in setup and in pulling reports, than Adobe Social was for us. The visualizations make data far easier to read, and being able to quickly filter through mentions has helped us to be more nimble when pulling reports.

Incentivized

I selected it for the ability to have an automated system do 3 things all at once, social media posts, emails and the instant communication with the chat box. I have never seen a chat come through that lead to a helpful client touchpoint. I have never used another product but have since begun to weigh some of the less expensive options.

Incentivized

• The time savings for posting has positive ROI by adding leverage.
• They send emails offering a free upgrade trial but didn't say it was only for first-time users. When I tried that, they charged me for the whole year. Luckily they did refund the cost ($588) and moved back to the free version. That was a shock to see on my card.
• This was a helpful step for my business.

• It has provided a consistent email message to my clients
• It has provided a consistent social media presence for my past clients
• It has helped me obtain and correlate customer reviews
• Unfortunately I cannot say that I have any direct information that a sale was generated directly as a result of OutboundEngine. I feel that it has but I have no measurable proof of this

Incentivized