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Robly

Score9 out of 10

69 Reviews and Ratings

What is Robly?

Robly is an email marketing solution designed for small businesses. It's key features are its ability to auto-resend unopened emails, pop-up widgets, and proprietary AI-powered software that sends emails based on schedules specific to each recipient.

Categories & Use Cases

Top Performing Features

  • Email deliverability reporting

    The software helps ensure inbox delivery of email campaigns, through features such as deliverability tests, opt-in management, bounce handling, suppression lists, dedicated IP addresses, and delivery monitoring.

    Category average: 8.7

  • Standard reports

    The software offers pre-built reports with metrics standard to the category.

    Category average: 8.4

  • A/B testing

    Users can experiment with different variations of a campaign and measure results. Testable aspects might include subject lines, header images, or landing page copy.

    Category average: 8.1

Areas for Improvement

  • Triggered drip sequences

    The software allows users to set up automatic / drip email campaigns triggered by certain events.

    Category average: 8

  • WYSIWYG email editor

    Users can create html emails through a drag-and-drop interface, without html coding knowledge.

    Category average: 8.3

  • List management

    This involves creating, filtering, editing, merging and de-duping lists of contacts.

    Category average: 8.3

Easy to Use and Great Reports for Email Campaigns

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Robly to send out the majority of our bulk email communications. This includes newsletters, promotional emails, event announcements, invitations and other group messaging. Robly allows us to create creative, attractive campaigns and easily send to many contacts at once. We use the reports from Robly to adjust how our marketing messages are sent.

Pros

  • easy to use
  • comprehensive reporting
  • creative functions

Cons

  • managing contacts - importing / exporting
  • more creative options
  • layout/ display suggestions

Return on Investment

  • We have received business through our newsletter, product launches and email marketing outreach.
  • We have received positive feedback on the educational information and tips shared in our newsletter.
  • We have gained attendants for special events and educational classes promoted through the newsletter.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Intuit Mailchimp

Other Software Used

Typeform, Freshdesk Omni, DocuSign

Great for newsletters and other email content

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Robly primarily to produce weekly e-newsletters, and another similar content. One newsletters is sent consistently every Tuesday, while others are tailored to more specific events, initiatives, and announcements as needed. The service allows us to reach segments of our community at a low cost of return, and minimal time.

Pros

  • Managing contact lists
  • Separate interest lists
  • Newsletter design

Cons

  • Unable to resubscribe a contact

Return on Investment

  • We are able to reach segments of our constituencies quickly, and easily
  • Allows us to segment by interest

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

Other Software Used

Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

Robly, a cost effective pure email tool.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use it to send emails to our master email list. We use graphics, special fonts, links to blog articles and landing pages on our website. Sometimes we have used surveys. I especially appreciate the reports which give a very good breakdown of which contacts are opening the email and when they open it.

Pros

  • Report on opens
  • Report on receipts
  • Smart send resends the email at times more likely to get a reading.

Cons

  • The Robly editor is not all that good. Its sometimes better to do it elsewhere in HTML and cut and paste
  • Signup forms are doable but not easy
  • links to social networks are present, but other products do this better

Return on Investment

  • increased our web traffic
  • Reminded existing customers we are still around
  • I can't really attribute any business to it, but I think it has increased it.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Constant Contact

Other Software Used

HubSpot CMS Hub, HubSpot CRM, TaxAct Business, Sage 300, Sage Fixed Assets, Sage 50cloud Accounting, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Datto Autotask PSA, Datto WIFI, Datto RMM, Datto File Protection, Dashlane Password Manager, Helcim, Huntress

Have you Seen that new Orange Bird?

Pros

  • OpenGen - Great way to automate the sending out process and change the subject line retroactively. Plan ahead.
  • AI Sending monitors the open rates and maximizes the potential open click rates based on the user's habit and proclivity to email.
  • Sends out dual function email push attempts to guarantee better success the next time around.

Cons

  • We would have liked spam filters to ascertain where the email would have otherwise gone to spam.
  • We would like dual address footers as options for companies like ours that have several physical addresses for sending out emails.
  • Better compliance with social media tabs and presence.
  • Expertise workshops held in big cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to spread the word and attune users into best practices. They could be used for retention and marketing as well.
  • Feedback with account managers at Robly that can take the account to the next level and up sell and retain needs that are addressed early on.

Return on Investment

  • Spam filters need to be addressed.
  • More interaction with my customers. We like the new Profile mugshots you have attached to our contacts online, but wonder how you were able to bring them up like that.
  • Tracking and calibrating campaigns is very useful.

Alternatives Considered

Constant Contact and Zoho CRM

Other Software Used

Smartsheet, Zoho CRM, Vonage, Intuit Payroll, QuickBooks Online

Usability

Robly is an incredible acquisition to enhance marketing capabilities

Pros

  • Robly constantly updates the status information of each email that is sent from its platform, which helps to ensure that there are no problems reviewing the number of people among the targets that could be interested in our service or product, and become customers, when it is necessary to identify them from those who are not, and that otherwise would cause high error margins in the reports.
  • The software has a visual power that is very easy to extend through third-party platforms, allowing us to create content in services such as Photoshop, which we can then include in mailings, although it is also feasible to import the content in the traditional way, through image formats. Among these, the best one to work with is PNG, which allows us to remove the background content so that the important section of the image fits better with the format of the e-mails.
  • Robly works with services based on the optimization of group projects, whose integration serves to send emails to all participants equally, and that these are kept constantly notified about updates to the work, and can be coupled well in advance to these updates, so that no confusion arises at the time of unifying the work sent and points within the same should not be exposed.
  • In reality, Robly's technical support is something we have never had the opportunity to interact with, as the platform is not so buggy that we would need to contact them for advice. In any case, they are likely to show promising results considering the quality of the service.
  • It has been very easy to get familiar with the functions Robly has to work with advanced email address database configurations without losing track of the progress of each campaign, and this is thanks to the well-optimized structure of the platform.

Cons

  • We have created several form formats to add to our landing page prior to the use of Robly as a service for obtaining visitor data, but the platform did not support these formats, as it does not generally integrate with external software for generating forms, which would be useful for creating fully customized campaigns based on the information provided by each customer prospect.
  • Robly is not sufficiently adapted to work with CRM services to be able to apply communication mechanics to different customers through direct messages, since the platform somewhat limits the actual communication capabilities with customers, allowing us to rely only on e-mails to cover special situations that require immediate communication.
  • Robly does not show enough adaptability to contact lists that a mailing service should have, which unlike other similar platforms that support more document formats to upload emails, such as Mailchimp, leaves it at a great disadvantage. Fortunately this is compensated by its reach, which from the basic and free plan is greater than most of these services, and therefore serves to reach more people if you have the right document format.

Return on Investment

  • There have been huge gains since we started working with Robly as an automated email generator, especially since the different outreach features allow us to make a quick profit depending on the plan chosen.
  • Automating the revenue generation based on a service like Robly has paid off for our ROI, which has increased recently.

Other Software Used

Citrix ShareFile, Dropbox, Webex (formerly Webex Teams)