Omnisend vs. Sales Engine Media (discontinued)

It's kind of an automation workflow, but for example you can set up a popup to appear at a specific time on a specific product page and offer the visitor something. The visitor then signs up and then (after you've set up your automation sequence) that visitor gets a specific welcome page based on the popup they signed up through, and then a specific order confirmation email and everything else flows from that specific popup. That's great because it's allowed us to sort of fine-tune our offerings to get our visitors' emails in the first place and offer, for example, someone browsing a product page for 3 minutes something different than someone staying 20 seconds on the homepage and then leaving.

We used the Manticore Marketing Automation solution for almost/just over 2 years, and initially, it was a great solution. Everything just seemed to work. When Manticore Technology, Inc. and Sales Engine International merged on May 31st of 2012, the overall product quality began to decline. As browsers and other programs (like our CRM environment) went through updates and new releases, Manticore just didn't keep up. Parts of the program became incompatible with certain browsers, forcing us to change where and how we logged into the back-end of the system. It was a silly workaround, but not the end of the world. When we learned that other client-facing portions didn't work with certain browsers, we brought it to their attention, and were told that we needed to find some way to work with it, and that the changes to the system were not possible. We ended up having to change our 200+ landing pages/forms, and could no longer have the State/Province field as a required field for registrations. That is just one example of our experience, and there have been others that are just as troublesome.

• Newsletter campaigns - the content editor is the usual one you see on email marketing apps, but it works so smoothly and well. Of course, there's Product Picker that allows you to just pick a product from your store and it goes straight into your newsletter--no need to add images or descriptions. Really easy.
• Popups are great because they look amazing right out of the box. It's all pre-filled so if you don't like looking at a blank screen, you can just adapt the wording and it's there. voila!
• Automation really is nice and it's the bulk of what we're doing now. It's like second level ecommerce marketing I guess, because you really see after some time how having automated steps can really save you time and make you a lot more money. Omnisend's automations are really good and intuitive and was really easy to learn and implement.

• Awesome integration with CRM/SFDC.
• Support is US-based, free with subscription, and very helpful.
• Best workflow capability (drag and drop) I've seen in any comparable product.
• Custom templates are available for purchase and are great for branding.
• Easy to use landing pages.

• Initial setup wasn't firing right, support issue was handled pretty quickly and easily.
• It does not go back and put previous orders/customers into the automation. It will only work with go-forward customers from the time you install the product. (At least that's what the outcome of our support inquiry told us...).
• Would like to see more sample templates and campaigns.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• List Building for Resends - I like to resend my email campaigns to non-openers and there is no easy way to pull this list within Manticore (If did not open this email is not an option). Typically I pull the report for the campaign, then re-import my list of non-openers to create a new list.

I've been incredibly pleased with Manticore/SEI and have selected them at several companies now. It's worked in a variety of different business environments, both big and small, and everyone on both the sales and marketing side have been extremely pleased with the results

The platform is super easy to use — even without deep technical knowledge. And the best part is, Omnisend keeps improving all the time.

Some of the actions require you to be in a specific section before actions are available to you, like adding a list. You first have to navigate to that section for options to be available to you

Manticore hardly ever has "product down time" and almost never during a normal work day for our company

Email campaigns are deployed instantly when you launch, unlike other Marketing Automation tools I've used in the past that queue emails in batches and can take hours to complete a send

Support is weird. They ask you to keep everything in one thread, but they can't see your replies if they forward it to tech, and things easily get lost. Also tech support is HORRIBLE, they just seem snobby, and give horrible advice liek to test things on a live version vs staging

The Manticore team is very knowledgeable, I haven't had an issue where a ticket was left unanswered or unresolved

Training was done online, but was one-on-one, giving me a lot of time to ask very specific product questions. They also walk you through setting up a test campaign, email, and landing page

It was the easiest integration and implementation that I've ever experienced. I've implemented other CRM integrated services before that provided the same services as Manticore that were extremely technical and expensive to integrate with Salesforce.com or Microsoft CRM Dynamics, or just plain couldn't integrate

We can create marketing campaigns that can span across multiple channels so that we can reach more customers regardless of the platform they are using. The system combines multiple channels into a single workflow for maximum engagement. Comes with various features that make it easy to personalize messages based on the customer's journey.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

We migrated to Marketo approximately 6 months
ago, and were extremely happy with the change. Besides the higher sticker
price and the "everything's a sales pitch" communications from
Marketo, we can't find any fault.

Sales
Engine International - Manticore (commonly referred to as Manti-beast
internally) created many problems for us. And while they did integrate
with our Microsoft Dynamics environment, the software quickly ate through our
purchased storage and forced us to constantly purchase more. That alone
cost us many hundreds of dollars in Microsoft Dynamics CRM storage every year.
And, when confronted about it, Manticore support flat out lied about how
much storage their activities were taking up in our system. So, while it
integrates, it's a very poor integration.

• I am able to see if ordered were placed based on who opened the email and clicked on links.
• It’s had a positive impact on my business by being able to see what emails have produced direct sales.
• It has helped to increase website traffic
• It has allowed my to expand how I can communicate with potential customers.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• Errors in forms led to a decrease in registrations - found workaround to correct it, but was never informed of certain incompatibilities
• Reports have been inaccurate and very inflexible, and have not allowed for reliable forecasting/planning