Omnisend (formerly Soundest) is an email marketing solution built specifically for eCommerce platforms, from the London based company of the same name.
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Zoho Campaigns
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Zoho Campaigns is an email marketing and social networking campaigning tool for smaller companies that helps create, send, and track effective email campaigns. It features list management and segmentation, A/B Testing, tracking and reporting, automation, and mobile campaign management.
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Pricing
Omnisend
Zoho Campaigns
Editions & Modules
Free plan
$0
Standard plan
$16
Pro plan
$59
Forever Free
$0
Standard Plan
$3 for 500 contacts
per month
Professional Plan
$4.5 for 500 contacts
per month
Pay as you go
$14 for 500 contacts
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Omnisend
Zoho Campaigns
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
$16 Month
No setup fee
Additional Details
Omnisend offers three pricing plans: Free, Standard and Pro.
Using Free plan you'll be able to explore all of Omnisend's features (emails, SMS, push notifications, popups, segmentation, analytics, etc), send up to 500 emails and push notifications, plus 60 SMS per month at no cost.
The standard plan starts at $16 per month, you get everything in Free, unlimited web push notifications, a customer success manager and 24/7 support.
From $59 per month, you can use Pro plan and send unlimited emails and push notifications, get advanced reporting features, a dedicated Customer Success Manager, and priority 24/7 support. You'll also get free SMS credits equal to the price of your plan.
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.
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.
Zoho should start by throwing this tool in the trash and then recreate it from scratch. There are so many flaws I would be here all year trying to list them all. Start by the fact that creating templates is an absolute nightmare. You'll find over and over again that something that should be easily executed can't be done. It is NOT a plug and play program. Everything is trial and error.
The reporting SUCKS bad. It gives you basics, but if you want any real insights... I have to export all my data into my own spreadsheets to compare results from multiple campaigns.
Customer service is B.A.D. You'll spend HOURS upon HOURS with a tech support team that knows less than you. The only time anything gets accomplished is when you work with a programmer. BUT, you'll seriously waste 1-2 hours explaining a problem to someone who is only taking notes. You'll get so frustrated when they try to show you how they think it works and you respond with... "I know how this works because I have used it for a year - the problem is that it stopped working the way it always did before. They will argue with you. You will respond accordingly. They will close tickets without resolution. Speaking of tickets, you'll never get one. They say they will take care of it and a week later you will follow-up and no one will have any idea what is going on. You'll start from scratch and be even more frustrated. You will learn to "fix" it on your own or deal with it, broken.
After two years, I'm still not sure if my emails even make it to an inbox. When asked, you'll be told that you need to write better subject lines. I call bull****. Don't rely on this product to deliver your email. And don't question Zoho, as it will always be your fault.
You can't use this tool to send to ANY group email addresses. You can't even override the system. I have a lot of clients that use info@xxx.com or sales@xxx.com, etc. and I have to send them personal emails since this will not allow them to be sent. They say it is to protect them from getting blacklisted. I call bull**** again.
The templates offered by the system are crap - unless you only send holiday emails. Not a large selection of just generic templates. You'll be pulling your hair out trying to use their builder to create your own. In the end, you'll end up sending emails with nothing "pretty" about them.
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
I would say Omnisend is fairly similar in UX, usability, pre-built content templates, and customizable features. I chose Omnisend because it seemed simple to start and the price was within budget. The list segmentation and contact import features feel superior to the other competitors.
Zoho Campaigns is not for beginners to email marketing, but it’s an excellent choice for those who want to send out a lot of emails with few restrictions and great reporting. It’s a no-brainer if you’re already a Zoho user, as Campaigns is included in Zoho One subscriptions and integrates nicely with other Zoho apps.
ROI has gone up when compared to other email marketing. Our open rates have increased and naturally also our conversion rates. Both in absolute and percentage terms. I don't have hard figures with me, but I'd say we've almost doubled what we've done with other email marketing apps.
It allows us to communicate with all our customers or lists together or individually, and to track how successful our campaigns are.
Customer Service is a target area of why we use Zoho Campaigns, and it meets our needs greatly.
To date we have not really measured the ROI or impact that Zoho Campaigns has on our marketing efforts but with this product it certainly has the means to do such.
