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Bronto Marketing Platform has proven to be a valuable tool for various use cases based on user experiences. Users rely on Bronto to send …
Overview
What is Bronto Marketing Platform (discontinued)?
The Bronto Marketing Platform was an email marketing solution from Oracle which was acquired from NetSuite in 2016. It was optimized for creating automated, yet personalized emails, and subscriber profile segments, analyzing click and visit behavior, and tracking geolocation. It…
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Popular Features
- Email deliverability reporting (58)9.494%
- Dashboards (57)7.878%
- Standard reports (56)7.878%
- List management (56)7.474%
Pricing
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What is Bronto Marketing Platform (discontinued)?
The Bronto Marketing Platform was an email marketing solution from Oracle which was acquired from NetSuite in 2016. It was optimized for creating automated, yet personalized emails, and subscriber profile segments, analyzing click and visit behavior, and tracking geolocation. It has since been…
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What is Bronto Marketing Platform (discontinued)?
The Bronto Marketing Platform aims to help organizations of all sizes grow revenue, save time and optimize marketing resources. By delivering powerful and flexible email marketing solutions that work seamlessly with numerous ecommerce platforms, Bronto's goal is to allow brands to maximize the value of customer data so they can deliver irresistible customer experiences. According to the vendor Bronto solutions incorporate best practices from 16 years of email marketing success and are used by over 1500 of the worlds top brands, including Rebecca Minkoff, Theory, Lucky Brand, Trek, Ashley Homestore and Christopher & Banks. The vendor offers more information and a free product tour on their website.
Bronto Marketing Platform (discontinued) Features
Email & Online Marketing Features
- Supported: WYSIWYG email editor
- Supported: Dynamic content
- Supported: Ability to test dynamic content
- Supported: Landing pages
- Supported: A/B testing
- Supported: Mobile optimization
- Supported: Email deliverability reporting
- Supported: List management
- Supported: Triggered drip sequences
Reporting & Analytics Features
- Supported: Dashboards
- Supported: Standard reports
- Supported: Custom reports
Bronto Marketing Platform (discontinued) Integrations
- NetSuite ERP
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud
- Shopify
- Shopify Plus
- Magento Commerce Cloud (formerly Magento)
Bronto Marketing Platform (discontinued) Competitors
Bronto Marketing Platform (discontinued) Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
| Supported Countries | English-speaking countries |
| Supported Languages | English |
Bronto Marketing Platform (discontinued) Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
The Bronto Marketing Platform was an email marketing solution from Oracle which was acquired from NetSuite in 2016. It was optimized for creating automated, yet personalized emails, and subscriber profile segments, analyzing click and visit behavior, and tracking geolocation. It has since been discontinued.
Reviewers rate Email deliverability reporting highest, with a score of 9.4.
The most common users of Bronto Marketing Platform (discontinued) are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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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!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Bronto Marketing Platform has proven to be a valuable tool for various use cases based on user experiences. Users rely on Bronto to send targeted email marketing campaigns, including promotional emails, newsletters, and important pre-delivery information. With Bronto's workflows and automation features, users can improve their email marketing strategies over time and effectively nurture leads. The platform's tracking capabilities provide valuable insights into email performance through click tracking, interaction monitoring, and conversion tracking. Additionally, the API integration allows users to tie Bronto tightly into their websites and third-party applications for seamless communication. Users appreciate Bronto's built-in features, particularly when creating email content with DreamWeaver. The software's ease of use and flexibility make it suitable for mid-cap and larger businesses in need of comprehensive features and functionalities. Overall, Bronto Marketing Platform serves as a complete email management solution, supporting sales and marketing efforts across multiple brand sites within organizations.
User-friendly Workflow Interface: Users consistently praised Bronto Marketing Platform's workflow interface, describing it as highly impressive and one of the best they have seen. Many users found it easy to use and intuitive, allowing for quick email creation without any hassle.
Flexible Customization Options: The flexibility of Bronto Marketing Platform was highly appreciated by users. They specifically mentioned its robust API, which enables them to customize the software according to their specific needs, even if the software doesn't initially have the desired functionality. This customization capability has been a valuable asset for many reviewers.
Powerful Segmentation Tools: Users highlighted the usefulness of Bronto Marketing Platform's custom segment tool, considering it to be fantastic and best-in-class. Many users mentioned that it allows them to create pools of subscribers based on any criteria they can think of, which is crucial for sending targeted and relevant email messages. The segmentation functionality in Bronto Marketing Platform has greatly contributed to successful email marketing programs for numerous customers.
Pricing Structure: Some users have expressed frustration with Bronto's pricing structure, finding it problematic and lacking transparency. They feel that they are being charged for features that should be included or were previously included in the software. There is a perception among some reviewers that the pricing practices are deceptive, suggesting a need for more transparent pricing on Bronto's website.
Customer Support: Several users have mentioned experiencing difficulties with Bronto's customer support. They express frustration with longer response times and difficulty in getting answers and resolutions to their issues or questions. This dissatisfaction seems to have increased after Bronto was acquired by Netsuite, with users feeling a lack of internal communication and external updates post-acquisition. Some users also mention difficulties with Bronto's billing department and the effort required to obtain credits.
Lack of Commerce Features: Users feel that Bronto is slow in introducing features geared toward commerce. They mention that simple tools like Cart Recovery are not included in the platform and have to be paid for as separate apps. Users compare Bronto to competitors like MailChimp and feel that Bronto lacks useful third-party apps. They also mention instances where third-party companies had a terrible experience trying to integrate with Bronto, with the business development team not responding or ignoring them.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
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June 30, 2020
Works well for mid-cap and up
We're utilizing Bronto as our ESP for transactional and batch sends, soon to be behavioral triggers as well. I find the platform easy to use and flexible when it comes to real-life use, allowing us clear access to configuration for testing, delivery control, and workflow management. I would highly recommend it as an ESP for mid-cap and up businesses, it is not a small business platform. Overall it makes our internal workflows smoother and reduces time needed for internal reviews.
- Email deliverability in terms of IP reputation maintenance.
- Workflow management - easy to utilize tools for drip campaigns on multiple triggers.
- Campaign targeting - segment tool allows incorporation of a wide variety of data sources.
- Clarity in list upload features - not always easy to figure out what goes where.
- Nav structure takes some getting used to.
- Popup manager needs work to be more polished.
June 04, 2020
Experience with Bronto and Deliverability
Bronto was being used as our ESP specifically by the marketing team. We used Bronto for daily blast e-mail sends as well as automated e-mails to subscribers for rewards point expiration reminders, birthday offers, and other special e-mail only exclusive offers. It addressed our need for an email service platform.
- Top for deliverability
- Ease of use in sending e-mails daily
- Easy to use analytics
- Heat maps for email clicks
- Not a lot of built-in insights
- Not great for advanced or predictive segmentation
- Not a lot of plugins available
February 04, 2020
Bronto Marketing Platform - Think Dinosaur for Power, Strength and Size - Not Extinction!
We were using the Bronto Marketing Platform as a new email marketing campaign management tool for all of our email marketing efforts across a few different business verticals. We migrated from an existing platform that we weren't necessarily unhappy with but we were looking for some potential new functionality and perhaps cleaner UI and UX features that what we'd currently had available with one of their competitors.
- Organization of Customer Information
- Ease of Developing Email Campaigns
- The amount of features can be overwhelming at first.
- Sometimes we experienced a laggy response to working within the tool.
October 23, 2019
Excellent choice for sophisticated email campaign needs
We use Bronto to support a variety of email marketing campaigns across the entire organization, both proactive as well as automatically recurring (i.e. cart recovery, welcome campaigns, post order followup). We are also users of NetSuite and utilize Bronto's NetSuite integration in order to manage workflows based on orders, carts and product interactions.
- Automated cart recovery email campaigns
- Bronto has a very user friendly interface for building complex workflows for automated campaigns
- Bronto's analytics are very good
- Bronto is built for complexity and volume. It is probably not the ideal tool for smaller organizations with simple email needs.
- The integration with NetSuite has been "buggy" at times.
- Bronto is pretty expensive. You get a lot of bells and whistles, but you pay for them.
October 18, 2019
All-in-one platform
Bronto is the end to end marketing automation platform. We love how it incorporates social posting with email marketing and SMS. Such a time saver! The integrated spam testing is also brilliant. The platform is speedy compared to others, till you realize how much it can do. It’s like ActiveCampaign + Litmus + Hootsuite + WhatCounts, which makes it a bargain compared to those tools since it’s in one platform.
- All-in-one.
- Spam testing.
- Marketing automation.
- Social posting.
- Omnichannel.
- Needs integrations.
- Integrated browser push notifications.
- Integrated messenger channel.
- Integrated retargeting ads.
September 24, 2019
Bronto - A powerful email marketing tool for everybody
We currently use Bronto to manage the marketing and triggered email programs for several clients. It makes the setup and deployment of large marketing sends straightforward and seamless. There are simple tools included for creating dynamic workflows and even API connections to set up transactional sends programmatically and pull reporting. You can develop your HTML messages outside Bronto or use the built in WYSIWYG.
- Simple list and segmentation management
- Flexibility of interaction, through the web application or API.
- Automation of triggered emails
- Variable message personalization
- Integration with outside ecommerce platforms
- More options and granular flexibility on the workflows.
- Better API documentation.
- Speed, the web application can bog down frequently.
September 24, 2019
Long Time Bronto Marketing Platform User
- We use the Bronto Marketing Platform across our entire organization to send emails to our customers.
- It is used for 5 different brands, to send both transactional and promotional emails.
- It serves as the system-of-record for our email contacts and their preferences.
- We are also able to use built-in workflows to send automated messages based upon certain trigger activities conducted by our customers.
- Workflows are excellent. Easy to use, drag-and-drop creation of automated email sends based on activity.
- Management of email preferences to ensure compliance is seamless.
- Scheduling and set-up are very simple.
- A/B testing is easy to use.
- Reporting leaves a lot to be desired. Probably our biggest complaint.
April 22, 2019
Bronto Marketing Platform Review
We use Bronto to interact with our customers - whether they be current or brand new. We are able to blast out events or other mass emails to keep our customers engaged. With the use of Bronto we can target specific groups of customers as well. This program has helped us drive new customers to our site every day.
- Easy to use template builder
- Drag and Drop feature is very useful
- User friendly interface
- Metrics do not update in real time
- Too many layers for approval
January 18, 2019
Using Bronto for email marketing
Bronto is being used across all areas of the business. It is used for most of our email marketing needs whether that be marketing or transactional. We also use Bronto for pulling out data segments for other areas of the business due to the ease of accessing it.
- Integration with NetSuite
- Constant updates to the platform
- Simple and easy to use
- There are lots of extra apps that you can purchase however, I feel like some of these apps (i.e pop up manager) could be better - they’re way far behind other apps available
September 21, 2018
Bronto a great affordable choice for ecommerce
We use Bronto as our main source of communication with our customers. All of our batch and blast as well as automated welcome campaigns, post purchase, browse and abandon and shopping cart abandonment.
- Very easy for anyone to use.
- Great customer service
- The learning curve to create segments and send emails is very low.
- The need to create a staged order forms. So if someone signs up for your emails if they come to the site later it doesn't ask for email again it needs to ask for other information, so you can build better profiles over time.
September 21, 2018
Solid ESP for a growing company
Bronto is our primary ESP used to manage our B2B and B2C email marketing and transactional email for 30+ markets in 15 languages. We also used the sub-account functionality to extend the platform to our additional brands and partners.
- User management setup is comprehensive as we have 80+ users with different roles and permissions.
- The drag and drop visual editor is easy to use once the base templates are established.
- The workflow automation visual editor is one of the best I've used from an ease of use perspective.
- Edge cases for reporting can sometimes be difficult to handle. Finding a specific date a group of contacts was added to a list, for example.
- A couple of elusive bugs remain that they've been unable to resolve. A few times a year a couple users will randomly lose list access permissions.
- Support could respond faster, esp if it gets escalated to engineering.
- Zapier integrations would be nice.
August 09, 2018
Advanced email marketing tool
It's currently only being used in the marketing department for our email marketing campaigns. It addresses the need for us to communicate with our closest consumers. We have a separate CRM with our consumer affairs team who uses Wilke Global. We'd ideally like to move forward with condensing our CRMs into one database, but it will be a significant undertaking for us.
- Live chat- the Bronto platform is very complex in the sense that there are a lot of things that it offers, so it helps a lot to have a dedicated chat function.
- New drag and drop editor- I love the ease of use of building new email templates and the amount of customization that's possible without needing HTML knowledge.
- Reporting- the metrics that Bronto provides help us easily judge the overall health of our email lists at a glance. We're also able to dig in with more detail if needed.
- Segmenting- although there's a lot that can be done with segmenting audiences, there's a bit of a learning curve when it comes to setting up segments. Wish it was more intuitive.
- Workflows- setting up automation workflows requires some practice and I've needed to consult a Bronto support person each time I set up a new workflow.
- Bronto Pop-up manager- we use this feature, not sure how common it is among Bronto clients, but there is overall some improvement needed with this tool. There is limited capability to update the look and feel of the pop-up manager, and we've run into some conflicts with other pop-ups on our website interfering with the Bronto pop-up.
August 03, 2018
Bronto... it's okay
Bronto is being used by our Marketing department with the main focus on email marketing. We do use the text message service to communicate to our employees.
- The email builder is good and user-friendly and saves us time.
- The coupon manager is a lifesaver in its ability to generate unique barcodes.
- Customer service is responsive and helpful.
- The UI is clunky at times and difficult to use, particularly the automation workflow process.
- Creating segmentations can be difficult and I find myself second guessing whenever I produce a segmentation.
- Although the analytics are good, I believe they could be better. I almost wish there is another layer that we could drill down when looking at our customers.
July 31, 2018
Powerful but not as user-friendly as others
It is being used by the marketing department to send emails to segments for various campaigns. It helps us get the proper content only to those it applies to.
- Segmentation- you have a lot of control over who gets what, when
- Reporting- you can easily see stats on campaigns
- The drag and drop feature when creating emails is clunky and can be frustrating. It gets the job done and having the customization without having to know HTML is nice, but it feels like they dropped the ball on this one. It feels almost like they made sure the concept worked, then never went back and finessed it to be user-friendly.
- The amount of users who can be editing an email- other platforms - I have used have real-time updates from multiple users. If 2 people are in it at the same time, only one set of changes is made.
July 31, 2018
A happy customer
Bronto is used primarily to drive ticket sales to our venue, but is also used as a retailer. Over the course of 12 months, 80% of its use is to drive ticket sales. One department manages Bronto, but it aids all aspects of our operation. The largest business problem it addresses is awareness - when our events are and what is being featured.
- The platform is very user-friendly. The addition of the Drag-and-Drop editor has made everything infinitely easier when it comes to organizing a clean layout for a message.
- The customer service is top-notch, from a live chat for support to the Bronto blog to the account manager. It's extremely rare there's a time where I have a question or issue that can't be solved.
- Automation campaigns are extremely easy. Setting up triggers and entry points are quickly completed on the front end and reap strong rewards on the back end without having to think about it.
- I think a cleaner dashboard could help. The current one seems out-of-date and not as sleek as it could be.
- The ability to host more than 100MB of content would be a great addition.
March 20, 2018
Bronto Marketing Survey
At the company I am working at we use Bronto daily. It is a very organized software program that keeps each of our daily tasks separated nicely and provides easy access. Specifically, we use it in our e-commerce department, but other departments have used it as well. It addresses all of our e-commerce and e-marketing supplies. It has a great setup so we can check up on items from the past and add new ones every day.
- Organized platform to quickly access what you need to use at all times.
- Great customer and site support. Can provide help with any issues.
- The tabs and sections on the site are detailed and helpful for data separation.
- Could have a faster loading time, sometimes freezes for a while.
- Have more multiple access to a few things at once, constantly having to go back then forward again.
March 16, 2018
Long time Bronto user
Bronto is used to primarily promote ticket sales for our minor league baseball team. We do occasionally promote non-ticket events. Our primary departments that utilize Bronto are our marketing and ticketing departments. We maintain contact with our fans with digital newsletters and/or team updates with the purpose of initiating ticket sales (sometimes tickets sales may relate to individual games, other times to ticket/season packages). On rare occasions, we offer access to our Bronto email database to select sponsors of the Knights.
- Bronto is a valuable asset to us for its ability to track ticket sales (click-thrus that amount to purchases).
- It's a nice benefit to have the scheduling features that Bronto offers for sending email blasts to our segmented groups.
- The email reporting is very detailed and informative and gives us valuable data about adjusting email content and delivery schedules.
- The ability to extract user data fields to include within emails is a great feature, but sometimes it gets forgotten and is not promoted enough imo within the user portal.
- Would like to see Bronto offer some sort of RSVP type features/services for using Bronto to manage event registration (which we send email notifications for quite often).
March 16, 2018
Bronto took us from zero to hero in 2 years
Bronto is used to support sales and marketing on 2 different brand sites within 1 parent company. We send all of our promotional marketing with Bronto, as well as nurture new leads through a number of campaigns aimed to educate and convert. We also use Bronto to provide important information to customers of our top channel partner before delivery in an effort to reduce customer service calls.
- The message editor is easy to learn, easy to use, and allows you to build sophisticated messages with little to no development knowledge.
- The available feature set has allowed us to not only significantly grow our revenue from email marketing, but also allows for years of future growth and expansion of our email marketing programs. Key to this growth is a newer feature called Recommendations which serves up real time product suggestions based on browsing and purchase data of existing customers.
- When needed, the Bronto support team is knowledgeable, and quick to resolve issues, help us learn a new feature, or just point us in the right direction of solving our own problems.
- Reporting has been much improved in the last 12 months but still has room to improve. Often the view and format of reports varies depending on where you are looking at the data.
- Although the feature IS coming, we have been looking for transactional messaging for our CRM since we signed with Bronto. Given we use NetSuite, who owns Bronto, we expected this feature much sooner.
- More real-time and personalized content within Bronto would be welcomed.
March 08, 2018
Bronto is a great choice
Bronto is used to manage our email marketing campaigns, and our transnational messaging. The solution is used by the marketing department to promote events, market products, and inform customers about the status of transactions.
- Ease to use interface
- Constantly adding new features to platform that make the solution stay current
- Reliable solution
- Template Marketplace to use already formatted templates in the Template editor. Yes, you can create your own, but sometimes it'd be quick to just pick a fresh template and make a few edits without having to start from scratch each time
- Static Blocks for the template editor - where you can save re-usable html content, not just images
- Hosting fees for images fees - it's ridiculous how much or that this is even a fee considering how cheap storage space is these days
March 08, 2018
Effective platform for base tactics
We use bronto for all marketing email, and we use it across the whole organization. It primarily supports our e-commerce business for outbound marketing, transactional emails, etc.
- Easy integration for transactional emails
- Good segmentation
- Overall basic reporting (open, click-through, etc.)
- Dashboard load time, specifically unsubscribe
- Personalization and customization is limited
- Integration with social media and other ad platforms
March 08, 2018
Bronto FTW
At Columbia's Office of Alumni and Development we use Bronto across the organization. I specifically handle marketing for the Office of Gift Planning within the larger Alumni and Development office. Using Bronto allows our central unit to distribute emails across all the schools and units within Columbia with efficiency.
- Friendly user interface: I appreciate that the user interface is generally intuitive and easy to use (also easy to teach others how to use).
- Ability to pull analytic reports that meet our needs: I am able to pull analytic reports with relative ease and the data suits our departmental needs.
- Copy and paste ability from a Microsoft Word Doc (sometimes the text formatting, such as the font/size/spacing, will be slightly off).
- Removing/swapping fields within an email template (I personally have difficulty with this - not sure if this is reflective of a larger user issue).
- Image editing capabilities (sizing specifically) within the WYSIWYG.
March 08, 2018
Reliable Marketing Platform
We use Bronto for our email marketing campaigns primarily focused on client retention and reactivation. Email marketing is essential to our marketing efforts as it allows us to reach a much larger target at a lower cost and faster response time than other marketing avenues. Bronto's detailed reporting helps us identity trends as well as determine which processes work and which need reconsideration and/or attention.
- Fully customizable email marketing campaigns.
- Detailed reporting.
- Effective communication from support staff regarding some subjects.
March 08, 2018
Reflections on our Experiences with Bronto
We work with a beauty company based in Southern California, slicing and coding their marketing emails. They use Bronto to send these to their mailing lists. We upload the images to Bronto's hosting service, then upload the HTML code into the messages area, where we preview the email before notifying our client that it is done. We also incorporate some of Bronto's own dynamic code, to populate the first names of email recipients from the mailing lists, and to ensure compliance with anti-spam regulations.
- Bronto is easy to learn and use. It only took one conference call with Tami Urban, a Bronto consultant, to get started, and after that, it was fairly simple to learn the system more thoroughly. The interface and menus are generally fairly self-explanatory.
- The dashboards are easily customizable, so we can see only information, such as the remaining hosting capacity, that's relevant to us.
- Bronto has two different ways for us to preview our completed emails - the 'Show Preview' at the top of the section where we enter the HTML code, and then the web preview, which we can do after saving and closing the email code. The web preview allows us to test any hyperlinks contained in the email. Both previews allow us to see if there are coding errors or superfluous characters that need addressing.
- The section where we enter the HTML code updates instantly - we can see any changes we make to the coding immediately WITHOUT having to save it - that is a big time-saver!
- When we started using Bronto, and until within the past year, we were able to send test emails to our AOL or Gmail email accounts, even though the email we have our Bronto account under, through our client, is our AOL email. However, we were suddenly unable to do that anymore, apparently because we do not have a private domain. This has hampered our ability to thoroughly test the accuracy of our work! We would like to be able to utilize that feature again, with our existing email accounts!
March 08, 2018
Great if you use all it has to offer, and can afford it.
We used Bronto to send out all of our marketing and transactional emails. The transactional emails are filtered through Magento. For the marketing messages, those are done in-house and scheduled manually except for a few workflows and automated messages we have set up.
- Workflows
- Segmentation
- Scheduling email blasts
- Integrating with Magento
- Most add-ons are very expensive.
- Support to set up our API was pretty non-existent.
- Communication with our Account Manager has been slow.
- The data-retention period of 90 days is a joke.
March 08, 2018
Bronto is Outdated
Bronto is used as our main ESP and supports the bulk of emails sent from our email program. All of our marketing emails that drive sales deploy out of Bronto and some of our automated series deploy out of Bronto.
- Deliverability on our emails is always high, which is critical to the success of our email channel.
- The ability to only keep customer engagement data for 3 months is extremely limiting and makes it hard for us to create a sophisticated email program in Bronto.
- Overall Bronto is very clunky to use and not very user-friendly. I've used a lot of ESPs in my career, and Bronto is one of the more outdated in terms of functionality and features.
- The tech team takes a very long time to resolve issues and doesn't do a great job of communicating when issues will be resolved.