Flexible, powerful, ESSENTIAL!
September 06, 2016
Flexible, powerful, ESSENTIAL!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Evergage Free,Evergage Pro
Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio
We use Evergage across nearly all of our websites, including those we build and control for major financial institutions' cardholder loyalty rewards programs. Evergage empowers our Marketing Department. In lieu of a ridiculously complicated CMS system, Evergage puts control that should be in the hands of the Marketing Department actually into the hands of the Marketing Department -- control over the ability to deliver a personalized UX, A/B/n testing, user segmentation, and more. We just could not do a great many things without it, in some cases because a particular use case might simply be technically impossible for our web developers to implement within the existing code base without having to rewrite chunks of code and make significant back-end database changes, etc., -- all very time consuming and always an important resource-related ROI consideration.
- Evergage plays nicely with most code frameworks and has been very stable. The only situation in which we could not (yet) find a way to use Evergage is in conjunction with Handlebars.js templates.
- Enterprise-level data security considerations are well-handled by Evergage. Trust me... as a top-level PCI compliant company that builds travel loyalty solutions for major US banks, we have no greater concern than data security.
- "No flicker" synchronous integration is a VERY important feature Evergage offers -- I'm unsure if any other competitors offer the same as I think Evergage has a patent on this. So when the webpage loads, users don't see the original page contents flash before being replaced with personalized/alternate contents.
- The powerful user interface is easy-to-use and comes in two flavors: a more traditional CMS-style "admin" view and an on-page WYSIWYG view.
- Test use cases in the browser prior to going live.
- It's easy to build and measure A/B/n tests, either as rule-based tests, or as % split testing.
- I love the ability to create user segments based on "sentence-style" logic structures that incorporates actions, KPIs, even third-party data.
- Evergage is built to accommodate everyone from non-technical users to coders. Use the WYSIWYG editor to bring things to life, build complex front-end use cases with Javascript/JQuery, or use the API for control from the server side.
- Documentation could be more robust... I would love to see more detailed how-tos that get more technical than the basic use cases.
- More out-of-the-box third-party integrations would be nice. I would love to see analytics integration with my favorite Heap Analytics.
- We have measured double-digit+ lifts in online and offline transactions tied to Evergage campaigns. In one case, we launched a special offer campaign to residents of a particular region and saw a 19% lift in bookings that resulted from that campaign. In another case, we served destination-specific vacation offers to users based on flight destinations they had recently searched and saw a 17% increase in sales.
- Considering ROI in terms of human resources, Evergage has saved us an unbelievable amount of man-hours as we have saved our Web Developers from time-consuming changes to their code in order to achieve our marketing / UX / testing objectives.
We looked at Monetate alongside Evergage and found Evergage to provide a comparable level of flexibility and features at a price point comfortable for us as we jumped into the brave new world of personalization. Plus, Evergage has the "no flicker" capability and from what we found, Monetate does not. Monetate claims to be more of an enterprise-level solution, but after three years of use, we have experienced nothing that would indicate Evergage -- a smaller player -- is not just as stable. It may not have all the bells and whistles (which you will pay dearly for), but maybe we're not the average user... we've successfully found ways to exploit Evergage's inherent flexibility to meet our precise needs thus far.
Using Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio
7 - Evergage is currently used by 7 people in our Marketing Department, including specialists, designers and one developer. Of these, two are the primary users, and we have been able to achieve quite a lot with just these two. The rest of the team is getting up-to-speed on its use.
We have no need for in-house support. If we cannot find a solution ourselves, Evergage support has always been readily available and has always successfully addressed our questions/issues and provided solutions.
- Delivery of relevant messaging and offers to segments of website users
- Understanding the user experience and testing the efficacy of alternate experiences
- Bridging the transaction attribution gap that once existed with "offline" (print, direct mail) marketing
- Providing a means of quickly implementing some front-end website changes that might ordinarily take our web developers considerable time and resources to otherwise accommodate
- We have used Evergage to completely rebuild entire pages of a website with content relevant to the particular user -- content provided via an API link to our internal CMS
- We have seen success in serving special offers to geo-targeted website users
- Better integration with the CRM to provide CSRs with insights into the caller's recent behavior on the website.
Evaluating Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
Product features was the most important factor in our decision. Price was the secondary consideration. Overall, Evergage delivered the best value.
I would have liked to have a free trial of the product, but not many of the competitors offer this anyway.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation - For most organizations, change management may not be an issue. For us, the issue is coordination between Marketing and our Web Development departments. In cases like ours, where there are several websites undergoing enhancements in a complex development environment with QA, UAT and Production branches, it is important to ensure Marketing and Web Developers are on the same page with regards to front-end changes being implemented with Evergage. If a front-end change relies upon certain CSS definitions, or the existence of specific DOM elements on a page, naturally you'll run into problems if these were to change... so both sides need to be aware of what the other is doing.
- Coordination between Web Development and Marketing.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio Training
- Self-taught
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
No
We have not needed additional support beyond the standard support, which has been fantastic.
I like to think of myself as a pretty technically proficient user. But there have been a couple instances when I just couldn't figure out how to accomplish something. Evergage support to the rescue! They didn't just talk me through the solution, but they actually built an example of the solution under my installation so I could adapt that to my particular needs. They're generous with their knowledge of the product. That's going above and beyond.
Using Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Defining user segments in a "sentence-like" structure and based on actions performed, KPI metrics, or third-party data.
- Creating "campaigns" to swap content or otherwise deliver targeted messaging for specific user segments, or on particular pages of the website, etc.
- Installing Evergage was simple.
- Not exactly difficult or cumbersome, but complex and requiring carefully consideration is the ability to define how user engagement is scored.
- Working with "regex" (regular expressions) for defining pageview actions can be difficult for non-technical users.
- Evergage is a complex product that can accommodate both simple and very sophisticated use cases... naturally there is a learning curve if you wish to do more sophisticated things with the product.
Yes, but I don't use it