You Can Make this Easy or Hard on Yourself - You Decide
Updated February 08, 2016
You Can Make this Easy or Hard on Yourself - You Decide
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ion interactive
We use ion interactive (ION) for all of our marketing landing pages in support of each distribution channel. We use it for direct to consumer, paid search, B2B and affiliate and affinity group pages as well as white and private label pages we have for clients. We needed something that would allow us to utilize customer data as well as passed data for hyper-targeting purposes. We also liked the capabilities it offered non-technical users to work in it and create pages that could be used fairly quickly. We use a lot of API connections between the ION pages and our ESP and CRMs.
- They allow for multiple connections between data sources, which helps in personalization and dynamic content generation for specific target audiences.
- It offers the dynamic capabilities I mentioned before in which we can send over our segments in an API and create very personalized landing pages based on that data. It also has a lot of internal data it can use to help hyper-target content to segment. You just need to know how to use it.
- It has many templates for non-developers. If you have a business that needs landing pages (and they all do), then it's pretty easy to use one of their prebuilt landing pages to get rolling right away.
- If you want to create more of a branded page for your company... something that goes outside the template experience, then you really need a developer that knows ION to make the magic happen for you. Good thing is ION can do it for you.. but expect to pay extra.
- The reporting is shiny, but not really good. It is much better to use your Google Analytics (or whoever you use) for those details.
- You can't test a page before it saves live. That's a big issue. You want to change text or adjust something and see what that would look like live... oh no! Don't you dare, unless you make a copy first and try it on that.. otherwise it'll save live and if you broke it, it's broke to the world.
- It has been helpful to get us out of our internal IT department when it comes to creating pages. We can get nothing done internally, so from that perspective it has been a godsend! We have hundreds of pages in Liveball and although there are bugs, Liveball is very helpful. Our internal IT - not so much sometimes.
- Lets us create pages faster - ok, wait... copy pages faster. Create multiple copies faster. We can go things we couldn't do before faster. I'm sure we could do even more if we understood all the capabilities better.
- We have our data safely tucked away. We have internal data issues, but with ION, all of the lead data coming through the landing pages is safely tucked away in their database where we can access in emergencies (internal systems failures, et al). Yes we pay for storage above our standard cost, but it's worth it to us.
We actually like and still use Optimizely, but ION is much more robust.. again with its pros and cons. We even use this on our ION pages for testing at times. I think we could get rid of it if we had a better grasp on how to A/B on ION (which I believe it does offer).
Ion, by Rock Content Feature Ratings
Using ion interactive
4 - We use the product solely in the Marketing department. We have three outside developers who are in varying degrees of expertise on ION so that we can begin utilizing the more in depth functionality that really drives the personalization and other areas that move the needle in lead gen and content marketing.
1 - Our in-house users are very light users to make simple changes such as logos, images, copy and the like. We use our contractors to do the heavy lifting in creating the massively dynamic pages that we typically use for the landing pages. They do the bigger changes in layout and structure as well as creating new pages and functionality for those pages.
- We use this greatly for paid search. You need both highly dynamic as well as quite a few different varieties of landing pages to try and fit what the user wants or is looking for form paid search. ION allows for that.
- We use this for specific targeted and highly modeled marketing campaigns. We drive users to the pages to give them the content they need prior to moving them into the enrollment path. This is where we educate on plans and pricing and communicate offers and other things.
- We also use these pages as private label pages for some clients. When a client wants to sell our products to their customers, we create pages in Liveball again to communicate and educate. These pages are branded for the clients or possible co-branded for both.
- We have used these pages for highly dynamic pages in various ongoing marketing programs we have running in regards to customer marketing. We can literally have one page that seems like 10 depending on the data being passed through it. This creates highly personalized pages for each user with not only segment marketing dynamic changes, but customer specific details to drive engagement.
- We plan on using even more dynamic content to really get to that one-on-one personalization with our customers. ION allows for that kind of creative change to really have true communication with our customer.
ion interactive 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 |
Yes - Yes and yes! Like I mentioned before, they are on top of it. They want to make sure we are using the product and happy with it, and it shows. We have had issues with mobile functionality at times and they are on top of it as soon as notified. We are very happy with the help. One thing to keep in mind, they dont always send emails letting you know about platform updates. They expect you to be logging in to see them. That has caused a problem now and again, but if you ask them to put you on a list to get an email they will, so problem solved.
We were on a tight deadline and our mobile pricing button wasnt working. Well, this project was highly time sensitive and very mobile first (as everything is today, really). We had a client hungry to see this live and they go right on it and helped us out with the bug - by the next day it was fixed!
Using ion interactive
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Easy to use Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn | Do not like to use Unnecessarily complex Requires technical support Feel nervous using Lots to learn |
- If you are just using the templates it's easy - changing an image or some copy. Using the prebuilt algorithms and functionality you can create pretty complicated pages that can take you far.
- The finished product can be very detailed and hyper personalized if done right. You just need to know how.
- If you want to do more complicated things, like personalize based on internal data actions, you really need to know what you are doing.
- The reporting is not very flexible. It's a prebuilt set of reporting that doesn't let you drill very well... customization would go a long way.
- Recreating the admin area would be nice. It's a little dated and the folder structure issues make my portfolios specifically very long and not as easy to navigate as one would think.