Listrak, headquartered in Pennsylvania, offers a customer data and marketing platform for retailers that features email marketing with social network engagement, abandoned cart rescue, and in-store data / information retrieval. Listrak is retail-specific and helps create an integrated and personalized customer experience across physical stores, ecommerce stores, social networks, or email, helping retail entities of widely varying sizes, small to large, to achieve their marketing goals.
Listrak…
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Twilio Zipwhip (discontinued)
Score 8.1 out of 10
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Zipwhip, a texting-for-businesses application for two-way text between a company and its customers, was acquired by Twilio, and discontinued.
It is definitely a contender if you run an e-commerce website. It connects with a host of different e-comm platforms (we use Magento) which makes product recommendations, purchase history/amounts, website behavior, etc. a lot easier to segment on and set trigger campaigns or targeted sends. If you're a B2B company, you probably won't want to use Listrak. The tools they have don't accommodate that segment as well as B2C, as many features would go unused since they simply don't make sense. I'm sure there are instances where Listrak would work just fine, but coming from that area previously, it is definitely a B2C tool.
Zipwhip is well suited for many scenarios. Not only do we save money and time with integrations with other programs we have, but we can follow up with a client regarding a trip, should we need further information. A client makes an online reservation and we receive a notification. While we have most of the trip details, the number portion for the drop-off location is missing, so we can reach out directly to the client via Zipwhip and request this information. All aspects of the booking can be done online and with texting and without emails or calls, which is often what many clients who book online prefer. Zipwhip has improved its images/ photos which is fantastic as we use this to send vehicle images to clients, which helps secure bookings. Our employees also use it to send us images of receipts, vehicle engine warning lights that may come on, and other issues (such as a client who may have left a mess in a vehicle). We're also able to send clients documents too, which is great. Obviously, if we have a client with an issue or who is upset, texting is not the best platform on which to address their issues, but it helps us to assess the situation/ issue and gather information before we call the client in person.
It is rare that I have issues or feel like Listrak has an area to improve in. The company is constantly ahead of the market and making additions/improvements on a monthly basis. That being said ... I have one area to suggest improvements: COMPOSER
Composer - Drag & Drop editor: Although their design software with the new 'Composer' is better than your average WYSIWYG editor, their drag & drop editor lacks some basic design tools that stunt your ability to design out-of-the-box email campaigns. I typically write all my email code, so this doesn’t necessarily affect me in a negative manner. But ... if coding emails isn't your strong point, then the lack of design features and limited template selection could be bothersome. (*disclaimer - I do not believe Listrak's drag & drop editor is garbage, but it does fall short when compared to some of its competition.)
It was very easy for users to use, straight forward, and user friendly. The desktop app is very basic but easy to reply to an incoming text, but the user had to know to allow Chrome notifications to see new incoming text via the web browser, which is how they mainly used it.
Swift response time, multiple people have been willing to help with any issue, really anything you could be looking for from a service standpoint, they offer.
The Bronto platform is so similar to Listrak in that it made no sense for us to move unless there were significant cost savings (there weren't). We are so intertwined with Listrak that it would be painful to move for the sake of moving. Klaviyo is very DIY which can be great. We find that we do our best work with hand-holding and account support.
Zipwhip is just a little bit more user-friendly than AliveChat because it allows you to text people on more scale. AliveChat has a great website chat function, but its texting platform is a little more clunky than Zipwhip. Zipwhip is a little more expensive but definitely the better product.
Increasing our awareness of effective marketing email campaigns
Reducing the effectiveness of our campaigns due to the complexity of software and inability to cancel our contract despite being LOYAL customers for 2 years.
