OutboundEngine vs. Zerys

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.

Incentivized

I sold a few inbound marketing contracts with the expectation that I could find writers for the project on Zerys. We were looking for good writers that can understand the tone and branding of our business and after a few trials with some of the writers at Zerys, I finally found the one that understood us and then created amazing content in no time.

Incentivized

• 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.

• The customization options for the written pieces you can request are endless and thorough.
• Some writers are very fast and effective, making our link-building process quicker.
• It provides notifications along every step of the writing process so that you always know where in the pipeline your content is.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• There are instances where the writers don't understand the article to be written and don't give you the content you are looking for.
• The auto reporting feature needs some work. Too many email alerts and no option to change that.
• Hard to find good writers. Often writers only loosely follow directions so you end up reworking their content anyway.

Incentivized

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.

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

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.

Incentivized

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.

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.

Incentivized

Access to many freelancer writers covering a wide range of topics and the relative ease with which you can manage the writing and editing process with a freelancer writer is good. I believe Zerys has acquired a talented group of writers that are well-versed in a diverse number of topics. Zerys is reliable, and the customer service response is fast, which I greatly appreciate. I do not believe Zerys' interface is as simple as it could be, however.

Incentivized

• One client identified how one article I sent that he read saved him from having to replace his entire AC system.
• One client actually thought I was sending this to him personally because I valued him
• One of the above transacted with me twice for over $3M in sales

Incentivized

• Zerys has allowed us to grow our linkbuilding campaigns much more quickly than we would if we tried to create all of the content in-house.
• We save so much time hiring outside writers to write content rather than writing it ourselves.
• We are able to take on more projects than ever because we can rely on Zerys' writers to get things done on time.

Incentivized