Inbox25: A Sweet Marketing Automation Option for Sugar CRM
May 04, 2018
Inbox25: A Sweet Marketing Automation Option for Sugar CRM
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with INBOX25
We started using Inbox25 for stand-alone email campaigns. The integration with our Sugar CRM system was our primary decision for selecting it along with the lower costs compared to other marketing automation platforms. It worked well for us to send out email campaigns for the first four years. We recently expanded to utilize more advanced capabilities including full marketing automation for drip campaigns. While it was a lot more work to setup, it is now running and producing results. We use Inbox25 for email campaigns to all audiences - suspects, prospects, and customers across four lines of business including our calibration lab, ERP software business, and Anytime Collect product line which is all very different business units with unique needs from a marketing perspective.
- Inbox25 integrates very well with Sugar CRM where you do not have to manually export lists for email marketing and the results of campaigns update data back to the CRM including bounces (invalid emails), opt-outs, and lead scores when recipients click through on calls to action.
- The automation engine takes some time to learn but is extremely flexible. We use it to build list segments that we could never build inside our CRM. We also use it for drip marketing automation.
- The company is small enough that they take a personal approach to each implementation. We've spent a lot of one-on-one time with an Inbox25 consultant to understand the system and to troubleshoot things that we set up incorrectly as we were learning how the application works.
- Inbox25 is in a growth phase and has transformed their product pretty fast. With that comes an increased need to continually learn how to leverage new features.
- Tutorials and product documentation exist but it is relatively minimal. They overcome this with personalized, one-on-one training that is recorded for future review using a project management platform.
- Inbox25 has expanded beyond Sugar CRM to include Salesforce.com integration. I'm not sure if they plan to add integrations to other applications but they are positioned well for growth.
- We have successfully moved cold suspects to leads and leads to opportunities, and opportunities to customers with Inbox25. We are just now starting to realize more value given that we've only recently started using the more advanced drip marketing and lead scoring features.
- When we used the pay-as-you-go version we were paying just pennies per email and remained CAN-Spam Act compliant. It was harder to quantify the ROI then but it was apparent that email marketing was working and moving prospects from one sales stage to another. It was also very useful for re-engaging prospects and promoting products and services to customers.
- Our total investment in the advanced edition is less $30,000 annually and we expect the ROI to be less than one year. It could have been sooner if we'd have been more thoughtful in our initial implementation.
We found Inbox25 to be the most cost-effective marketing automation platform with the best possible integration to Sugar CRM. We evaluated three additional products. Only one was comparable in scope and integration but the cost was 30% more.