LocaliQ vs. Marigold Engage+

The forms of online marketing continues to grow and LocaliQ's associates have the relevant skills to keep up with this and recommend what is suited for our business. Geo fencing is another area that makes a lot of sense as people use their phones more and more for accessing the web. Through LocaliQ we can pinpoint physicial places where we can market to a group that matches our target audience.

Incentivized

I think CheetahMail, being one of the main ESPs in the market, is a quality choice. However, I would suggest that it's really only valuable for a bit larger of an organization, generally having staff of 100+ and revenues in tens of millions -- this is mainly to justify the amount of investment required, so may be cost-prohibitive to some. You also need to make sure that you understand the entire "level of support" you will gain through your specific contract.... the key is understanding what types of resources are within your organization (who's doing the coding? who comes up with the next campaign? What's the overall strategy?) Depending on these questions and resources, may help determine your final needs from a services point of view. CheetahMail can provide a wealth of various services specific to needs (and changes over time as your business changes), but a clear understanding of what you have before you bring them on will really help getting up and running quickly. Also be sure to truly understand the costs for the initial integrations, setups, IP senders, etc.

• ThriveHive is a smaller marketing team dedicated to helping small to medium sized businesses perfect their marketing messages. ThriveHive is particularity good at understanding how Google, and other search engines work, and have been instrumental in helping my company to grow and evolve.
• With ThriveHive, you get a dedicated coach who is matched to your type of business. This experience with similar businesses gives your coach a better understanding of your business and the challenges your company faces.
• My coach is very good at responding to my needs within 1 to 2 business days. Email contacts are fluent and as often as I need, to discuss ideas or questions. I can only speak of my relationship with my coach, and I am very pleased.
• I feel that ThriveHive makes every effort to take excellent care of their clients, and makes you feel like you are their most important customer. I definitely believe that this is one of ThriveHives' greatest assets.

Incentivized

• Internal management - This is a great web-based tool that allows our users to see what emails go to whom.
• Organization - Many layers of organization for templates since there are many types of remarketing emails that we send out.
• Historical Records - CheetahMail sends us the raw text files of all email actions so we can upload them to our database.

Incentivized

• LocaliQ could improve how it tracks and reports on customer journeys across those channels to provide a clearer view of ROI.
• The pricing structure is not fully transparent, making it hard to understand the true costs associated with campaigns. Breaking down the fees associated with LocaliQ would make budgeting easier.
• LocaliQ is able to provide basic ad creative, but there tends to be a disconnect between our brand voice and what is expected with creative. It would be nice to be able to get all design work within LocaliQ rather than have to use and outside designer all the time.

Incentivized

• The organization of CheetahMail could at times be better, as you create more and more mailings, they just pile up in a long list. It would be useful to be able to create folders to store specific mailings in. (ex. editorial, newsletters, marketing, etc.)

Incentivized

As I have begun exploring competitors, I've come to realize that every competitor offers so much more functionality and integration than CheetahMail does. When we first signed our contract, CheetahMail was much more innovative and at the forefront of email. Since being bought out by Experian, we've seen a huge decline in service and innovation. They have laid off much of their staff and moved their account representatives to Costa Rica. They also heavily rely on on third parties which you will have to pay large amounts of money for while other Email Service Providers have integrated new technologies into their platform. You will get more for your money going to a different email service such as Responsys, Silverpop, Listrak and the like,

Overall usability pretty good. If we would have gotten better return on our advertising dollar I would have continued with them - their dashboard was very easy to use and the recaps they provided were helpful. They try to put data in bite-sized pieces for the client that are understandable (unlike google's reporting page itself which can be a bit difficult to understand at times). Their team was friendly, semi-responsive, and provided explanations when requested

Incentivized

CheetahMail has a high learning curve to master and requires a lot of backend work with tech teams to set up. Navigation is not the best and everything that should be automated is still extremely manual.

Account reps have a quick response time but a very slow resolution time. Because account reps do not have technical knowledge, there is a long long lead time between flagging a problem and tech team resolution.

I have investigated national services like American Eagle and also small market locally owned business like Red Shoes. Each year, I look into at least one other service provider to evaluate our service value. So far, no other company has come close to providing an all around service

Incentivized

CheetahMail is very far behind these other providers. Specifically in Lyris we could build forms that automatically generated code connected to specific lists and be up and running in less than a few hours. With CheetahMail that would take days and developers at times.

Incentivized

There is always the challenge with practices that have multiple locations, trying to target a geographical zone that is sometimes to wide. But we have successfully navigated this issue when needed to target those who need the most added volume.

Incentivized

• It's hard to quantify but I know I've had at least 5 to 10 new clients in the last 6 months come from efforts related to my website
• Not having to work on my website myself also helped free up my time, I don't need to worry!
• Customer service is good, the team doesn't wait till there is a problem, they schedule check ins regularly

Incentivized

• The customer service team at CheetahMail was good and efficient. It is always a frustrating experience to call in when your stuck on something but the CS team did a good job of quickly and effectively helping us when we called them for support.
• Compared to other ESPs that our employees support, this platform was quite easy to learn and the documentation provided often helped us figure things out without having to go and call CS.

Incentivized