LinkedIn Marketing Solutions vs. OutboundEngine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is a recently (2015) expanded marketing platform for reaching audiences through the popular Linkedin work-oriented social network that includes modules like the Lead Accelerator (supporting segmentation features to improve conversion), Sponsored Updates, LinkedIn Onsite Display, LinkedIn Network Display, and Sponsored InMail. While still at its core a social marketing engine, Linkedin Marketing Solutions now presents a more comprehensive B2B advertising platform. The…N/A
OutboundEngine
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
OutboundEngine provides a hands-off way for small business owners to market and grow their business. The product aims to provide small businesses with what big companies have achieved with marketing automation. The service aims to help users keep in touch with clients and prospects with professionally designed, branded campaigns. Benefits include: driving engagement, surfacing warm leads from current contacts, generating referrals and repeat business from their existing contacts, social…
$199
per user
Pricing
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsOutboundEngine
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essential
$199
per user
Value
$299
per user
Premium
$499
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsOutboundEngine
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee$99 per user
Additional DetailsMore information is available on the vendor's website.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsOutboundEngine
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsOutboundEngine
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
-
Ratings
OutboundEngine
8.3
48 Ratings
8% above category average
Mobile optimization00 Ratings8.443 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting00 Ratings8.648 Ratings
List management00 Ratings7.943 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
-
Ratings
OutboundEngine
7.9
37 Ratings
11% above category average
Automated sales alerts and tasks00 Ratings7.937 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
-
Ratings
OutboundEngine
8.1
46 Ratings
16% above category average
Social sharing and campaigns00 Ratings8.146 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsOutboundEngine
Small Businesses
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM
Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 6.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Sprinklr Marketing
Sprinklr Marketing
Score 7.4 out of 10
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 6.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsOutboundEngine
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(47 ratings)
8.2
(59 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(8 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(26 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(6 ratings)
7.3
(24 ratings)
User Testimonials
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsOutboundEngine
Likelihood to Recommend
LinkedIn
Although it offered great features, we didn't really see a lot of traffic or results from the ads we placed. Working in hospitality, we had to strategically time and place our ads around holiday seasons and it can be difficult to predict a marketing campaign. Depending on your market, LinkedIn may not be the best avenue to advertise with.
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Elm Street Technology
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.
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Pros
LinkedIn
  • Targeting - they have done a great job of allowing you speak to ideal audiences
  • Support - dedicated customer service and account advising is always accessible and very responsive
  • Curation of professional audiences - one of the biggest advantages to the platform is that its users are for the most part are professional
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Elm Street Technology
  • 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.
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Cons
LinkedIn
  • The Campaign Manager is not good. It seems like the Campaign Manager (where you create and manage your self-serve ad campaigns) is buggy and doesn't have a good flow. Contrast with FB Ad Manager of the Google Adwords/Ads interface, which has a much more simple process to create and edits campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, audiences, budgets, etc. LinkedIn Campaign Manager seems to actively work against you trying to make changes to your campaigns.
  • LinkedIn Campaign Manager offers three options: sponsored content, InMail, and text ads. LinkedIn used to offer other ad services that you couldn't access unless you had a "managed ad account" run by LinkedIn Staff with a dedicated monthly ad spend. It seems most of those "hidden" features have disappeared, though you still have to contract with LinkedIn to offer dynamic ads. It would be better if LinkedIn empowered marketers to create the ads they want. (Perhaps with a dedicated acct. manager like how Google Ads works.)
  • This is silly, but it isn't easy to navigate to Campaign Manager. I have a bookmark for Campaign Manager because if you want to click there through LinkedIn, it takes 2 or 3 different screens to get to Campaign Manager. In my opinion, when you click the "Work" dropdown from the LinkedIn header (by your profile picture) you should have a link to Campaign Manager.
  • LinkedIn, in recent months, has made substantial changes to the Ads platform and Campaign Manager. Though these changes work to address some of the above issues, LinkedIn still has quite a ways to go before their platform is on par with their competition.
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Elm Street Technology
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
LinkedIn
No answers on this topic
Elm Street Technology
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.
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Usability
LinkedIn
in terms of promoted content reporting and usability, the platform is not as flexible or easy to use compared to more established social platforms like Facebook. However, it does offer plug-ins to Google Data Studio which makes pulling and manipulating data easier. My main usability gripe comes when looking at organic performance of a company page. There isn't an easy way to export organic performance data.
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Elm Street Technology
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
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Reliability and Availability
LinkedIn
No answers on this topic
Elm Street Technology
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.
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Support Rating
LinkedIn
So, everything what I just said previously adds up to the value of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Definitely recommending it to a friend. It has its things to improve but its nothing major or nothing to worry about. So I give a 9 because it still has that, some user interface glitches that can be improved but do not damage the experience that you have with it.
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Elm Street Technology
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.
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Alternatives Considered
LinkedIn
If you want more precision in B2B targeting, then LinkedIn is without question the better alternative. However, as I established before, I've rarely seen LinkedIn campaigns be successful for anything other than brand awareness/thought leadership. And that's almost 100% what Twitter is for. Twitter campaigns almost always have a cheaper CPC AND CPM than LinkedIn and accomplish the same thing, so I would say go with Twitter. At times LinkedIn campaigns are just so you can tell someone at a higher level that you did precise targeting to the exact audience they wanted and check that box, because it's easier for them to understand how you'd do well on LinkedIn, and more difficult to tell that story on Twitter. But I honestly prefer Twitter and its platform for B2B awareness campaigns. Heretic, I know, but it's how I feel after several years of experience with both. Facebook is bottom of the barrel for B2B in my mind, so I'm not really going to discuss it. I would take LinkedIn over Facebook for many reasons, but Facebook is an option too, but more for SMB and just covering all bases, not as a primary choice for B2B marketing.
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Elm Street Technology
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.
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Return on Investment
LinkedIn
  • We have seen a marked increase in inbound agent calls since we began LinkedIn marketing.
  • LinkedIn marketing is an excellent way to put your content in front of people that are actually going to read it, this has led to a major increase in our content being consumed and acted on.
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Elm Street Technology
  • 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
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ScreenShots

OutboundEngine Screenshots

Screenshot of Automated Social Media MarketingScreenshot of A personalized snapshot of your account activity and warmest leads.Screenshot of Personally designed, tested, and automated emails