Persado vs. Unsplash for Brands

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.

Incentivized

A specific scenario was for our website. Making photos in a church is not easy, since it's very personal and private. However I could find some photos of people and communities on Unsplash for Brands that were really helpful. It was hard to find the right images, because when I searched for prayer the photos were very obvious prayer. While in normal life, prayer is much more down to earth, and not always on your knees with the bible in front of you.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Provides beautiful natural and in action photos
• Provided royalty free imagery which is great for charities who have a budget or not budget for photography
• Photos are more stylistic and creative than traditional stock sites like Adobe, iStock, Shutterstock

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• The layout and UX is not as friendly as many other similar platforms.
• Search engine could be improved.
• Bulk download would be wonderful.

Incentivized

I need to learn a little more about the product and its capabilities before I give a higher review. However, the availability of image trending is far superior to Getty or Getty Enterprise.

Incentivized

It is very easy to use. Searching, saving, downloading - all very easy. Also grouping saved items if you are working on different projects to save photos in folders is very helpful. The only thing I would improve is sometimes finding my saved files is difficult. Other than that I would say easy.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

There is one obvious major advantage to Pexels (and Unsplash really) in that the images are royalty-free. We can use them without fear of being sued afterward, and we don't even have to create an account, just download the image and it's ready to go. When it comes to Pexels' photos, you can photoshop words on them, but sometimes you don't want a photo designed for photoshopping, you just want a photo that's ready to use, such as Unsplash.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Excellent for using photos for content creation, keeps things fresh yet still on brand for our program's needs
• Ease of use, directly implemented in the program to directly find an image without needing to leave the site
• Perfect since it's free!