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Acoustic Campaign

Acoustic Campaign
Formerly Silverpop / IBM Watson Campaign Automation

Overview

What is Acoustic Campaign?

Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) is a scalable, SaaS-based, cross-channel, digital marketing platform providing digital marketers the ability to implement and manage email, mobile, social, and lead management campaign processes.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Users have found Silverpop Engage to be a valuable tool for their mass mailing and global program campaigns. It has also been used for …
Continue reading

I Love Silverpop!

10 out of 10
June 17, 2015
We use Silverpop for marketing, retention, and transactional emails. Prior to Silverpop we had very little insight into the performance of …
Continue reading

Marketing evolution

10 out of 10
February 25, 2015
Silverpop Engage is used for all of our customer-facing marketing emails and is administered by the Email Marketing team. Marketing …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 26 features
  • Email deliverability reporting (10)
    8.0
    80%
  • A/B testing (10)
    7.0
    70%
  • Dashboards (10)
    4.2
    42%
  • WYSIWYG email editor (10)
    4.0
    40%
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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

What is Acoustic Campaign?

Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) is a scalable, SaaS-based, cross-channel, digital marketing platform providing digital marketers the ability to implement and manage email, mobile, social, and lead management campaign processes.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.ibm.com/marketplace/cloud/d…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

Acoustic Campaign demo - introduction

YouTube
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Features

Email & Online Marketing

Using software to manage lists, send emails, automate email campaigns, and track results.

7
Avg 7.7

Lead Management

The process of tracking and managing prospective customers from lead generation to conversion.

7.4
Avg 7.7

Campaign Management

Users can schedule campaigns and/or events with reminders, announcements, etc.

7
Avg 7.6

Social Media Marketing

Using social media networks to help amplify marketing endeavors.

6.3
Avg 7.5

Reporting & Analytics

Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.

4.5
Avg 7.5

Platform & Infrastructure

Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.

5.7
Avg 7.6
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Product Details

What is Acoustic Campaign?

According to the vendor, Acoustic Campaign is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance businesses' understanding of customer behavior on both a personalized and large-scale level. The product provides various tools for insights, planning, and implementation that enable data-driven experiences across multiple channels. By leveraging these features, brands aim to develop enduring connections with customers while driving revenue through tailored and impactful interactions based on individual preferences. Integration capabilities with existing tools and systems offer marketing processes flexibility, efficiency, and optimization. Although no specific industries or professions are explicitly mentioned, it can be assumed that any business desiring enhanced marketing efforts and increased customer base may find value in utilizing this platform.

Deep Insights and Personalization

The product is designed to provide marketers with the necessary tools to deliver personalized experiences across various interaction points, both online and offline, in order to enhance customer retention and establish enduring brand allegiance. The vendor asserts that by utilizing behavioral data, Acoustic Campaign enables marketers to construct meaningful and timely messages, fostering long-term connections with customers. Through its real-time personalization functionalities, the product aims to empower marketers to deliver compelling experiences that promote customer advocacy and drive revenue expansion.

Integration and Efficiency

The product is designed to enhance operational efficiency and streamline business processes through its advanced technology and extensive capabilities. The vendor claims that Acoustic Campaign delivers a user-friendly experience, supported by cutting-edge technology, enabling users to navigate the platform effortlessly. By seamlessly integrating with existing tools and systems, the product aims to simplify workflows, eliminating manual data transfer or redundant procedures. This integration also facilitates smooth collaboration between teams, ensuring a seamless marketing process from initiation until completion. Ultimately, Acoustic Campaign equips businesses with the necessary resources to optimize returns on investment and effectively achieve their marketing objectives.

Acoustic Campaign Screenshots

Screenshot of Digital marketingScreenshot of Journey design

Acoustic Campaign Video

Acoustic - Free your inner marketer. Learn more: https://acoustic.com.

Acoustic Campaign Integrations

Acoustic Campaign Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) is a scalable, SaaS-based, cross-channel, digital marketing platform providing digital marketers the ability to implement and manage email, mobile, social, and lead management campaign processes.

Constant Contact, Oracle Marketing, and Emarsys are common alternatives for Acoustic Campaign.

Reviewers rate Dynamic content and Email deliverability reporting and List management highest, with a score of 8.

The most common users of Acoustic Campaign are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(124)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Users have found Silverpop Engage to be a valuable tool for their mass mailing and global program campaigns. It has also been used for automated lead nurturing and mass mailing. Marketing teams have utilized the platform to administer customer-facing marketing emails, while marketing communications managers have accessed it to track the performance of their individual email campaigns. Large enterprises like Texas Instruments have been able to engage with customers across different locations using Silverpop Engage. Its relevant and responsive marketing automation capabilities have enabled users to engage with customers at the right time based on their actions on the site. The platform has been widely used for emails, landing pages, marketing automation tracks, and lead scoring within global marketing organizations. Sales teams have benefited from its features by being able to rank leads based on their actions and qualify them accordingly. E-commerce departments have relied on Silverpop Engage for powering their entire email programs, including promotional messages, browse behavior, confirmation emails, and more. With its versatility, Silverpop has assisted organizations in communicating quickly and effectively with customers, leading to improved revenue generation. Additionally, the web tracking functionality of Silverpop allows for deeper insights into subscriber interactions with websites, leading to more targeted messaging based on opens, clicks, and interactions.

Toggle between HTML and Design views: Users have appreciated the ability to toggle between HTML and Design views for creating emails. This feature has been mentioned by several reviewers, making it easy to update photos and hyperlinks in emails.

Newly added features for test emails: Reviewers have mentioned that the newly added features for test emails have made it easier to ensure the accuracy of the email before sending it out. This improvement has been well-received by users, who find it valuable in preventing errors and mistakes.

Thorough examination process before sending: Users have commended the thorough examination process of the email before sending it, which helps prevent it from getting stuck in junk mail and ensures proper rendering on different platforms. Several reviewers have highlighted this aspect as a positive attribute of the product.

Outdated Usability: Users have consistently mentioned that Engage's usability is outdated and cumbersome, with confusing user interfaces, cryptic notifications, and old-style drop-down menus. Some users even reported browser lock-ups when editing signup forms.

Limited Email Creation Engine: Several users expressed frustration with Silverpop's email creation engine, which requires manual HTML coding instead of offering advanced Ajax or jQuery based creation engines like other ESPs. This limitation hampers flexibility in layout design and adds complexity for users.

Confusing Reporting Tools: Many users criticized the overall reporting in Silverpop, stating that it is confusing and lacks flexibility. They found it difficult to generate comprehensive reports, as well as extract contact information for opens/clicks. The presence of two different reporting engines, one legacy and one new, further added to the confusion.

Users have provided several recommendations for IBM Watson Campaign Automation. The three most common recommendations are:

Consider the software for organizations: Users recommend considering IBM Watson Campaign Automation for organizations, especially those with a limited marketing budget. They believe that the software has an edge over competitors like Adobe campaign and Salesforce marketing cloud in terms of intuitiveness and quick setup.

Use the software for marketing automation: Users highly recommend using IBM Watson Campaign Automation for marketing automation and automating inbound and outbound campaigns. They find it great for creating and managing end-to-end campaign management.

Seek help and support from IBM: Users advise seeking help and support from IBM when using IBM Watson Campaign Automation. They recommend hiring an Acoustic Partner consultant for implementation and training to ensure better long-term results. They also suggest reaching out to tech support for assistance before considering switching to another program.

Overall, users recommend considering IBM Watson Campaign Automation for organizations, utilizing it for marketing automation, and seeking help and support from IBM throughout the process.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 40)
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Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Acoustic to deploy multiple marketing emails to all our customers on a daily basis. We are always promoting new products and promotions, and email is one of the biggest drivers of traffic and sales for our e-commerce business.
  • Setting up complex email journeys.
  • Scoring models for contacts.
  • Currently no simple drag and drop email template editor.
  • Fragmented/not intuitive reporting-- You have to go to a few different places to piece together information.
From my experience, Acoustic is a strong platform if you have a large team and very experienced and ideally tech-savvy members dedicated to email. For a smaller company, we have definitely had challenges with the platform's usability. We tried SMS with Acoustic and quickly migrated away from that, but continue to use them for email. We are happy with the direction Acoustic seems to be heading in since they transitioned away from IBM and the new account rep we got in the transition has made a world of a difference, but it remains to be seen how these new/promised changes and features will work in the application.
Lawrence Ladomery | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Watson Campaign Automation was being used by two clients in two different ways. For one-off campaigns, simple email blasts, and more sophisticated cross-channel campaigns. And, to support the 'buyer journey' taking leads and engaging them to learn more about who they are and what they want, to be able to personalize communications and offers. Using data, both clients were able to offer a better brand experience as well as put the right products in front of their prospects.
  • Flexibility in using to data: databases (including relational databases), segmentation and powerful querying.
  • Personalization and conditional content for email as well as landing pages.
  • PURLs to extend personalization in direct mail.
  • The interface is clunky and heavy, resulting in a slow UX. This is particularly true with the email builder.
  • Processing of data (eg. returning a list of contacts for a query) is handled via 'Jobs', which means that it's not a dynamic process. Jobs need to start, crunch and end before you get a result.
  • Reporting
IBM Watson Campaign Automation is a powerful platform but one that hasn't innovated as much as its competitors. It's well suited for those organizations that have already invested in IBM products. All other ones should have a look at other platforms that are more feature rich and have a more usable interface.

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Watson Campaign Automation was used in our B2B Enterprise division. It was set up by our digital marketing team for global users. Works well for running automated email campaigns using trigger based elements. It allows for seamless marketing across mobile and other digital channels. Has strong lead management and scoring capabilities.
  • A/B testing
  • Customer journey building
  • Performance insights and reporting
  • Product documentation
  • AI-powered Watson Assistant
  • Email personalization
Tracking performance of keywords and links in major search engines. IBM Watson Campaign Automation measures search rankings and performance. Improves page-level SEO with tools to diagnose and improve page performance. Integrates well with Google AdWords. It tracks which emails a prospect opens and clicks, what web-pages they visit, what keywords they use, even what they say on social networks.
Mariano Cento | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
I’m reselling the WCA to Zurich-Santander as the main marketing campaign manager.
  • Marketing campaign to customers
  • Sending the policy of insurance to customers to certify receipt
  • The main [area for] improvement would be the user interface..... it’s extremely hard to compare to Eloqua or Responsys
  • Reports !!! Please include Watson Analytics or something !!
If you have to run campaigns into B2B and B2C it’s great .... because with others vendors you will need to buy two products. Also the send time optimization is a great feature that other vendors charge a lot for. The bad scenarios would be if there was a need to purchase a complete CX suite integration. Oracle's CX suite is more compete and integrated.
Brandon Mitchell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use IBM WCA for our main email marketing efforts. For our clients, we have about 10-20 clients within the platform across 2 services -- one full service, the other self-service. For full-service accounts, our agency runs email marketing efforts on behalf of the client from start to finish, while our self-service accounts run email for themselves with our analysts available to assist when needed. We also use IBM WCA for our agency's client-marketing.
  • Data integration / segmentation / list management -- the opportunities to segment and test data is second to none within WCA.
  • Reporting -- Silverpop has pretty much everything I need for reporting
  • Comprehensive -- Silverpop has virtually every tool I need for email marketing.
  • Template Builder -- Can be very buggy with certain chrome extensions (i.e. Grammarly), can be slow to refresh when making changes, no auto-save features, requires HTML knowledge.
  • Clunky UI/UX -- Overall, little time-saving features (Such as recognizing when you're in a folder and wanting to save a copy in that same folder or creating queries for people who don't open emails) seem to be overlooked.
IBM WCA is great for anyone who is familiar with CSS/HTML or has the resources to have a CSS/HTML template builder outside of Silverpop. Those without that experience will find this platform to be extremely cumbersome and sometimes difficult to work with. Regardless, the features available in IBM WCA are worth the hassle.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Watson Campaign Automation is being used by our department to send emails to people who sign up on our websites to receive information about available and relevant education courses for them. Our clients are private colleges.
  • Very simple to use.
  • Very effective results.
  • Great user interface.
  • I struggle with the reporting at times. The reports UI can be easier to use and interpret.
  • The automation can get a tad tedious. It takes time to implement it.
Easy to use, but reporting can be improved upon.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use IBM Watson Campaign Automation (WCA) ourselves as well as for reselling and offering implementation and best practice consultancy. It offers comprehensive integration options to CRM solutions such as Sugar and Salesforce, both with native integration and via a comprehensive suite of APIs, allowing us to automate and have an easy vision of our own marketing and lead generation activities.
  • Very easy to learn with extensive on-demand, self-paced e-Learning, a knowledge base to query other users' learnings and responsive 24/7 support via a portal.
  • Intuitive interface; work from left to right to join up data (contacts), email creative, campaign automation, reporting and integrated products.
  • Great automation capability: set up and automate the easy stuff quickly, allowing you to pay more attention to the hard stuff.
  • Easily import and personalise your HTML in the WYSIWYG editor, simple A/B/C/D testing process with automated execution to the winner and capacity for complex personalisation and dynamic emails creation.
  • My clients are crying out for a drag and drop email editor. While the WYSIWYG editor is fine, this would be a huge win for IBM!
  • The inbuilt reporting suite could do with an overhaul and to allow users to build more customised reports. Some elements of the reporting could do with better filtering options as well, or start with a filter rather than loading everything in the first instance.
  • Would be good to be able to make more assets portable between databases and have an 'asset import mapping' process to re-point/configure anything that doesn't match the original source.
This is a great product and its top feature to me is how easy it is to get up and running with it. You can learn the basics easily via the on demand eLearning and quickly be automating simple email campaigns. So if you're a small team with limited IT resources, you can get up and running with automated campaigns from a simple spreadsheet and some HTML in no time.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Watson Campaign Automation is being used across several divisions within my company. We use it for our email marketing campaigns, ezines, and reporting.
  • The WYSISWYG is very user friendly for new people working with the product.
  • The reporting is very detailed. You have several ways to conduct reporting, and fully scope how your campaign did.
  • It's great for its capabilities to create automated mailings and trigger series.
  • Some of the reporting features could be grouped together. I don't like that i have to do a general report pull and a deliverability pull to see how well the entire campaign did. I would prefer if these reports were grouped together.
  • I also wish that when working in a template and you want to save in the folder you are currently in, it would automatically populate to be where you are currently working not force you to find your folder again.
This product is great if you have a very detailed marketing program. Its very robust, but covers a lot of specific needs many companies may have. For smaller companies looking to use it for email marketing purposes I would encourage a different platform, as this one can do so many things, it may be an overkill for a smaller company.
June 17, 2015

I Love Silverpop!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Silverpop for marketing, retention, and transactional emails. Prior to Silverpop we had very little insight into the performance of our email campaigns and the channel was not providing much value to the business. Thanks to Silverpop we've grown the email channel tremendously and have also been able to provide a better experience to our customers.
  • Silverpop is more than just an email service provider. They have really lead the way of the marketing automation trend and have continuously focused on a product road map that keeps marketers ahead of the trends.
  • Engage offers the flexibility I need to manage, track, and report on a robust array of marketing programs. From simple email blasts to complex multichannel campaigns, the only limit is my imagination.
  • Their customer service, account management, training and industry advice/best practices has always been a fantastic resource.
  • You can integrate their product with almost any other software especially if you have access to technical resources in house although they do offer many plug and play solutions too.
  • I've been a customer for over 6 years and have very few complaints. And many that I had at one point or another along the way have already been improved. But if I have to pick one, my biggest complaint would be that there are a lot of options for achieving the same task (which is really not a bad thing!). The key to having all those options is knowing all of the finite details like what kind of reporting you will get with one option or another. Sometimes we've learned those lessons the hard way although it's never really caused a problem.
Silverpop is really a great tool for any company looking to do more with email campaigns than send regular blasts.
Michael Hobley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Obviously, sending email is its core function and it does it well. It has all the necessary functionality to help maintain sending reputation (throttling, spam threat estimation, etc). The built in functionality that allows you to have "mail-merge" type functionality (through personalization, dynamic content, and adding data from relational tables) really adds a whole new level to email marketing -- it lets you take your marketing to as detailed a level as you can potentially go.
  • Scoring models allow you to quickly and easily automate lead qualification by adding your own rulesets and criteria. Very easy to tweak and add email alerts when people meet specific ranks or scores.
  • The Landing pages (form builder) allows a user to quickly add a form on a webpage that interacts directly with Engage database. You can either use their default form builder (which, honestly, is not real attractive and very difficult to alter the appearance of), or you can import your own forms and map your form fields to fields in the database.
  • The Engage API is very well done, and very well documented. It is constantly evolving and being updated.
  • The community forum and knowledge base are also a very excellent resource for finding answers to questions without having to call support. Of course, it takes action on the user's part to find these answers - but it's a really valuable resource for those willing to take the time to search.
  • I think the Programs functionality of Engage is amazing, and you can really do a lot of awesome stuff with it -- but testing (and sometimes even updating) a program is laborious and sometimes difficult to do. I know they are aware of this and there has been much discussion regarding the topic on the community forum and within Silverpop.
  • The WYSWYG editor used by Silverpop (at the time of this writing is a version of FCK Editor) isn't super great in terms of the HTML it produces. It's not going to maim your email to look terrible, but it will alter your code if you have imported it (ex, changing hexidecimal colors to rgb, adding various font and span tags, etc). Nothing super critical, and if the user is comfortable with HTML - probably won't care (or even be aware it's doing it).
  • CRM Integration. Currently, Silverpop integrates with Salesforce.com (SFDC) and MS Dynamics. Salesforce integration has been available for years, and I cannot personally speak to it. We use MS Dynamics, and it is in its infancy. Current features and functionality are extremely limited. The initial introduction of the integration service was introduced mid-2013. Also, there is additional cost (setup and monthly licensing fee) for CRM integration, and - at least for MS Dynamics, requires a subscription to Scribe Online for usage (another cost, but not through Silverpop).
Silverpop hosts an annual conference every year (Amplify) in Atlanta. It's a 2-day conference (3 if you do the boot camps) where you can network and meet the staff, attend trainings, listen to expert panels, see new features. Really great experience and really got my teams excited to try new things.

They also do annual user-group conferences (in various cities) that allow users to meet other local users and discuss features and do hands-on examples. Not as helpful as the conference, but good nonetheless.
Dimitris Rakopoulos | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We offer Silverpop as a marketing solution for our clients. We provide professional services around the email marketing, marketing automation. Scoring features are provided by Silverpop.
The tools sets provided allows us to run automated campaigns and monitor the results in an effective way. Also, the integration features gives us the mechanisms to connect and ecommerce system and get insights on the performance of our campaigns.
  • Marketing Automation
  • Scoring
  • Integration to CRM systems such as Salesforce.com
  • Email marketing
  • Database management
  • The overall interface looks a bit old fashioned. However, areas of the solution have been revamped on each update with latest technologies.
In case of marketing automation Silverpop Engage gives the right tools to perform complex automation tasks with ease. The provided interface is so intuitive that it is extremely easy to perform even the most complex automatic processes. The ability to combine email, sms and other systems gives flexibility and helps exploit the tools set provided to the fullest.
Amanda Wheeler | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Silverpop for email marketing to prospects and current customer base. It was chosen based on its integration with Salesforce.com. It allowed us to easily track communications to these audiences and engage our sales team in follow ups on those communications.
  • Integration with SalesForce.com
  • Easily able to create queries of lists.
  • Easily able to test campaigns before sending out.
  • Hard to build emails if you have little familiarity with HTML.
Silverpop Engage is well suited for Salesforce.com. The support on the product was phenomenal when needed. The personal training was lacking unless you wanted to pay for it, but their online courses were helpful and always available. I would refer back to them frequently.
John Mix, PMP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
At the moment we are using solely for sending email to our donors or those who signed up to receive emails from us, like newsletters and updates on programs
  • Selecting the group that received the email. Though it may not be intuitive to navigate it does allow for some sophisticated segmentation.
  • The integration with Salesforce is very easy to manage.
  • The Query building functionality it very easy.
  • The navigation process is a bit bulky. For example, trying to open a "link" in a new tab or back arrowing, only opens the page you're on. Does not open the object you either want to see or were working on.
  • Organization of Databases and lists can be very confusing.
  • The filing of cloned queries or emails is annoying. It always defaults to the main folder regardless of your filing structure.
How advanced or sophisticated is the email program. Silverpop tends to lean toward the more complex side and my not be necessary for programs that are more straightforward.
Alexis Garberis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Silverpop has a great learning process to start using the product and features, and one of the best Support Services I've ever experienced.
  • Silverpop has an easy to set-up product in order to implement simple campaigns and then you can use more sophisticated features for more complex campaigns.
  • Maybe Silverpop can improve the report feature
February 25, 2015

Marketing evolution

Kristin Lucido | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Silverpop Engage is used for all of our customer-facing marketing emails and is administered by the Email Marketing team. Marketing communications managers have report access to track the performance of their individual email campaigns. As a very large enterprise with tens of thousands of customers, Silverpope Engage allows Texas Instruments to engage with customers across town and across the globe. Marketing automation (Programs) enables us to be relevant and responsive at the right time when customers indicate interest in our offerings through their actions on our site.
  • Customer support
  • As someone very new to the administrative side of email marketing a few years ago, I needed a thorough onboarding to the tool. And that's just what I received. Online training, technical support, webinars, and the personal involvement of our Relationship Manager and Account Director helped me ramp very quickly and achieve proficiency with the tool. SIlverpop has robust and varied offerings that meet the needs of multiple learning styles.
  • Flexibility
  • As a company with marketing teams in multiple countries, a vast product portfolio, customers in many different industries, our business is inherently complex. TI needs a partner that is flexible and can adapt to our sometimes unique needs. One example of this is Silverpop's willingness to help make connections between our database and the tool to ensure accuracy and efficiency.
  • Product Development
  • Silverpop is constantly evolving its offering. In an industry like ours, change is the only constant - so this makes Silverpop a very good fit for TI. Making the jump to marketing automation has been a seamless one, thanks to the capabilities available in Engage. We also greatly value the opportunity to provide input toward future development, as our needs change.
  • Reporting for Programs
  • Tracking results for automated programs is very manual (does not calculate open and click rates) and time consuming. It's also not possible to pull reports for multiple programs at once, as can be done using 'comparison report' for push emails.
Silverpop is a powerful and comprehensive tool for digital marketers, and is apprprioate for companies of varying sizes, as well as both B2B and B2C models. It's particularly well-suited for companies with large, accurate customer databases and the ability to track customer actions on their websites to use as marketing automation triggers.
December 04, 2014

Silverpop Review

Carey Marston | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Silverpop is currently being used to power our entire email program, run by our e-commerce department, from promotional messages, browse behavior, confirmation email and more. The variety of messages we send span across the entire organization and assists us in easily and quickly communicating with our customers and driving revenue.
  • Automated Messages - we currently have over 70 automated messages going out on any particular day through feeds and API calls that we pass to Silverpop. We rely on these automated messages to communicate to our customers and can rely on Silverpop to always be up and running to get these messages out.
  • Robust query building - We can target customers easily based on a combination of demographic profile data, as well as email and site behavior and purchase behavior, allowing us to finely segment our audience
  • Deep dive reporting - the UI reporting, as well as the available reports to download through the API give us tremendous insight into how our subscribers are responding to email.
  • Testing - The testing functionality could be a bit more robust. We would love to be able to A/B test automated messages/programs, as well as more easily test one content against another, which is currently a bit manual
  • Frequency caps - while Silverpop does offer frequency caps, we would like to be able to set frequency caps depending on whether it is a promotional message or an account related message. Currently, it sets it at the organizational level, which could potentially prevent somebody from not getting an account related email if the max emails for that day went out, even if promotional. For this reason, we don't use frequency settings.
  • Reporting on automated messages within the same campaign could be rolled up a little better. Using the UI today, to get to any detailed reporting of a particular campaign, you have to go into each individual mailing sent. For this reason, we typically use the API, but that might not be an option for some people due to a little more technicality.
Overall, we have been extremely satisfied with Silverpop, the platform, as well as the high level of account support we have. Outages are rare, if any, and we are always notified well in advance if there is a release (usually once or twice a year), that could short term affect the speed of the system. For someone looking at Silverpop during the selection process, some key questions to ask could be how they handle import of data, whether email lists or data from your e-commerce platform as well. What is on their roadmap that will help handle more of the 1:1 messaging and trying to prevent recipients from getting too many emails in 1 day more easily - currently a bit manual to manipulate each individual query. Silverpop is a self-service platform, so someone looking for more full-service should ask about the level of support they might receive and if they offer any full-service features.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We implemented Silverpop to help us automate offers/responses/activities based on behavioral factors. We were looking for something beyond the traditional auto responder and drip campaigns of standard email platforms. We wanted to leverage both email and website behaviors so we could identify and treat leads appropriately with minimal human intervention. We needed something scalable.
  • The ability to examine email and website behavior together was cool, and what we really hoped to leverage
  • Customer support was ok
  • Training was ok
  • Creating email templates was shockingly difficult. Getting them to look good across all major clients was a lot of work.
  • Reporting was surprisingly complicated. And some numbers were suspicious. Then when we double checked, we did find errors (comparing reports to queries).
  • The amount of work required meant that this tool was not automatic at all. After about 6 months, we still needed at least 25+ staff hours a week or more to use Silverpop and analyze results. Really, you need a full time manager on this platform if you want to get a return on your investment.
Silverpop was a poor fit for our company. We are a small business (database at the time was only 6,000 or so), and sell B2B. Maybe it would be better for companies with truly large databases--they may be able to get a better ROI on a fulltime staff person + the sw license. Also, at the time there was no "out" clause; they really should offer a 60 day trial OR a cancellation clause. At the time, and this may have changed, it was a one year contract, no exceptions, no flexibility.
Ruth Michel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
Our IT and Marketing departments use Silverop Engage to send B2B and B2C emails. We've been dabbling in automation, which SilverPop has been developing excellent solutions for. We've also used Silverpop Transact, the Email Insights add-on powered by Litmus for mobile testing/reporting and Silverpop Survey. If you have a chance to attend its annual Amplify conference, definitely go! The whole Silverpop team is super friendly and I was able to gain enough knowledge to introduce mobile (responsive) emails to our marketing team.
  • Customer Support
  • Partnerships with data, marketing, social media and other companies that can beef up your marketing in connection to email. (They understand that we don't work in a silo!)
  • Reliability - Glitches are very rare and handled right away. We never worry that our data will be safe or that our emails will be delivered. You can trust the product and company.
  • SilverPop Survey is outdated, but it's not a main focus of the company. It worked for small projects but we had to find a different company when we started surveying on a large scale.
  • It's been difficult to fully sync our data with SilverPop, but I think this is more a lack of time/resources on my company's end that SilverPop's. It definitely takes some effort to take full advantage of the product though. My job is just more manual that it could be at times because of this.
Silverpop is excellent for small to large businesses, but if you are a mom-and-pop shop or just starting, it may be more expensive than you're willing to pay initially. However, it's worth every penny as soon as you have a budget for it. We had deliverability issues before we used Silverpop.
March 28, 2014

Clunky and slow

Andy O'Neal | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marketing evaluated several marketing automation vendors to replace Eloqua for our email team. Silverpop ended up winning our selection. We put our top three side by side to compare features and capabilities and Silverpop ended up checking the most boxes.
  • Database structure - similar to a relational database
  • Email creation
  • Pretty UI
  • Speed
  • Programs
  • "polish" - UI feels clunky
Almost every experience using Silverpop was frustrating. There are too many other good options to recommend Silverpop for any scenario.
Jim Haviland | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Inexpensive to implement: Our inexperienced team was able to begin utilizing the toolset very quickly and the starting price was very low.
  • Constant improvements: The regular upgrades have addressed many usability challenges
  • Helpful Support: The support team is knowledgeable, repsonsive, and attentive.
  • Training Materials: The basics are easy to learn using their on-line video library
  • Usability for non-technical marketers: While I believe all marketers should strive to be highly technical, the level of user-friendliness, especially around data management is quite low
  • Documentation Deeper Usage: Even after years using similar tools, there are some features I don't understand and that aren't well documented.
  • Error messages: There are some common use cases that fail and present users with an entirely unsatisfactory error message.
Alex Ahmad | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use silverpop for all of our email marketing efforts, we send 5 to 6 emails a day. to about 100k recipients. Its been used on our email marketing department.
  • Great for creating emails and easy to use WYSIWYG.
  • Very easy to load lists and segment databases or queries.
  • I love the spam check feature, it helped us prevent so many problems.
  • The schedule feature is great, easy to use and goes through every single details to ensure we do not make any mistakes
  • The ability to select multiple lists when sending an email instead of having to create a query to combine both
I haven't used any other emails system like it. it gives you everything you need from being able to laod the lists to creating the email and finalizing the send. they even help you become white listed!
Dave Iles | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Engage is used by the Kallidus Marketing Team for email marketing and automation programmes to help us send relevant emails and content to prospects and clients who would be receptive to our offer. We chose such a powerful automation platform as we wanted to ensure that we could measure and respond to the 'reader journey' at all online touchpoints.
  • Integration with Salesforce is very good, our sales team can obtain contact engagement insight from Engage without having to move outside of Salesforce
  • Support is very good, always quick to respond and willing to resolve.
  • Contact list management is very good, including the management of unsubscribes.
  • Reporting is complex, just getting access to the detail of who has opened or clicked emails can be challenging
  • The email and landing page template editors are very weak, creating good design within them is difficult. Easier to create HTML in an external tool and import. Defeats the objective of non-programmer email creation
  • Online training is not great. Always best to signup for live webinars which are much better
  • Automation programs are not straightforward to create and test. More online help is required to ensure users can be confident that programs created will act as expected.
It's very powerful but complex, if you need a system that you can use quickly then this is not it. Consider the ability of your users and how much time for training and learning they would need. Make sure you review the design and creation elements, they are not easy to use.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • List segmentation based on behavior - It was very easy to pull an "openers" list or "non-opener" list, then re-market accordingly.
  • Also, as previously mentioned, lead scoring with online behavior was easy to set up and post to Salesforce.com.
  • Some of the improvements that they made to setting up the Lead Nurture programs I wanted weren't available until the next product roll-up.
  • If you didn't test your processes thoroughly, strange errors could happen, like a lead never receiving an email, or receiving the initial email but not the second email in the workflow.
Becca Ray | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
My company uses Engage to email product alerts and event notifications to our existing customer base. Our sales department is the primary user and has full control of the tool for the organization. Email marketing accounts for 46% of our yearly online sales. It allows us to run a welcome campaigns, post purchase treatments, cart abandonment campaigns, etc.
  • Automation was a big plus for us. Allowing us to set daily record uploads freed up resources and added integrity to our customer service.
  • Throttling the emails allowed us to relieve the load on our website on high traffic days without having to cancel email campaigns.
  • A/B testing gave us invaluable insight into our customer response rates.
  • Programs allowed us to control a sequence of emails to customers based on trigger points such as their profile, purchase behaviour, site behaviour, etc.
  • The reporting functionality falls short of my expectations. The API with our web analytics tool is sufficient so we use it instead of Silverpop.
  • I was disappointed that mobile marketing is a separate module from email marketing. Considering the growing trends, we wish to tie them together on campaigns but will have to pay more for the features.
The ease of use and the reliability of Engage set it apart from other solutions. The features and functionality are geared to revenue increases and customer engagement.
February 11, 2014

So Long, Silverpop

Jennifer Lewis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We have been using Silverpop Engage for the past 3 years, but I've only been responsible for the system for the past year. I've worked with it for 2 years. We are using it for emails, landing pages, marketing automation (nurture) tracks and lead scoring across our global marketing organization. We were looking to provide sales with the ability to rank leads based on how qualified they are depending on the action they took.
  • Scoring Model - it was easy to implement and manage
  • Dynamic content - this worked well once we started using it for emails and landing pages. We used this for localized language versions of programs.
  • Data syncing and errors - Silverpop does not do a great job of getting data to sync regularly with our CRM (Salesforce.com). The data had to flow back and forth several times before being added to campaigns and in some instances, it took days to update leads! Also, failed lead syncs get stuck in an alert list but it does not notify you otherwise that a lead failed the sync.
  • Design issues - we use custom HTML to build emails and landing pages, and we were unable to render background images on our campaigns. Also, once you toggle between design and source (code) view to make edits, it often broke the code and threw off the design.
  • Administrator alerts - when sync fails altogether between systems, there is no email alert sent to the system admin (me/my team) so we at times have found that we have gone 18 hours until we stumble across the fact that the system sync has failed.
  • Reporting - it is not very comprehensive and we had difficulty generating the level of reporting that we need to have.
  • Support - there are a few gems in the support team who know what they're doing, but largely calling support is a lesson in frustration.
  • Product bug fixes - in two instances, my open support tickets were identified as product bugs. One related to incorrect cookie tracking which was causing our leads not to be scoring properly. They determined that this wasn't critical enough to build into their product fix road map. This is core to an automation system working properly.
Silverpop is possibly an option for companies who are just starting with automation in general or are on a tight budget. For us, we run campaigns globally in multiple languages and we are quickly outgrowing it as our automation needs increase. We need an automation program that can grow and scale with us. Also, its important to have a support team that's responsive and listens to the issues that customers face and makes the necessary improvements. We are looking at other solutions like Pardot and Marketo and they have functionality and usability that far surpasses what we have in Silverpop.
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