Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Persado is an excellent tool for a small marketing team seeking to "work smarter, not harder." The tool itself is simple to use and generates instant results, all while learning and reporting at a deeper level than a human on a marketing team could. We have been able to reach the right eyes within our audience at the right time, improving open rates and generating more revenue from our promotional emails.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review They know way more than me on how to create effective subject lines that actually get people to open. We have solid creative and cool emails, but without the hook, it means nothing. Persado is that hook. (Side note, they are also customizable so if your company has specific guidelines/tone, you can set those parameters.) The analytics are amazing! It's so cool to see the responses to various emotions ebb and flow over time. We have a few that consistently perform well (and some that consistently underperform, which makes sense for them to), and a few others that seem to react to the season somehow. How would I know this on my own? (That's right, I wouldn't.) Creating these subject lines and exporting them to Listrak (our ESP) is insanely quick and easy. It takes more time for me to set up the split test in our ESP than it does to set up the subject lines in Persado. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Not so much a con, but area for improvement: an option to have reports generated automatically and sent to me weekly or similar. It would automate my learning and understanding of how the tool is working. When we write control subject lines that include emojis, I have to go outside of Persado to find the emoji I want to use, copy, and come back to Persado. However there is a button to add emojis to the Persado generated subject lines. Since Persado integrates with our ESP, Bronto, we'd really like to see more to the connection such as sharing conversion and revenue data. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Phrasee wasn't an option to select, but we did evaluate them after hearing about them at a digital marketing summit. I liked what they were doing and the emails they were sending, but the pricing structure was outrageous! There was a 0% chance our CFO would approve the budget. To add salt to the wound, they also charged outrageously for a trial period. Ugh - as much as I wanted it, there was no way I could justify the ROI. Enter Persado. I got an email from a sales rep which accompanied a resource. I got excited but hesitated. I then saw they offered a free 14-day trial. Wait - what?? Free?! Yes. Wendy gave me the grand tour and holy cannoli I was immediately impressed with the results of our very first send. And it's only gotten better. Sorry Phrasee, I'm with Persado now.
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Read full review Granted these numbers are driven by a number of other factors as well, our email marketing program has grown by 44% and 35% in the last 2 years respectively. More email opens from Persado subject lines has certainly contributed to this growth. Open rate improvement of 11% between control subjects and Persado subjects. Click rate improvement of 27% between control subjects and Persado subjects. Read full review ScreenShots OutboundEngine Screenshots