Holy Cannoli - Persado has got me hooked!
August 16, 2018
Holy Cannoli - Persado has got me hooked!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Persado
Persado consistently teaches me that I am not as intelligent as I think I am. We use Persado to help us get higher engagement with our emails, and I can say with extreme confidence that despite trying to come up with my own Persado-style subject lines and testing them against their AI-driven subject lines, I lose every single time (not like I come in second, but like.... my subject lines rank way at the bottom). Persado contacted me and, despite receiving easily 10+ marketing emails a day asking for a demo, I saw what they did (we were looking at Phrasee, but wow - that was insanely expensive) and was SO excited to see they offered a free trial! Wait - what? I can actually use the product for a period of time so I can prove to finance that there is real ROI? Sold. Our engagement rates have skyrocketed since we started the trial, and it keeps learning our audience and increasing engagement. If I had to manually do Persado's job, I'd have failed by now. But they help me keep my job. ;)
- They know way more than me on how to create effective subject lines that actually get people to open. We have solid creative and cool emails, but without the hook, it means nothing. Persado is that hook. (Side note, they are also customizable so if your company has specific guidelines/tone, you can set those parameters.)
- The analytics are amazing! It's so cool to see the responses to various emotions ebb and flow over time. We have a few that consistently perform well (and some that consistently underperform, which makes sense for them to), and a few others that seem to react to the season somehow. How would I know this on my own? (That's right, I wouldn't.)
- Creating these subject lines and exporting them to Listrak (our ESP) is insanely quick and easy. It takes more time for me to set up the split test in our ESP than it does to set up the subject lines in Persado.
- It's hard to say, because I haven't had any real issues using Persado. It's so easy to get started and it only gets easier. I guess my only issue is more of a problem on my side and how it affects our contract. Sometimes upper management wants to change the promo on an upcoming email, but the subject lines have already been created. I have to contact support/our AM to see if it's possible to get that experiment back. They've let me the past few times, of which I'm highly appreciative. I know it's more of an issue on our end, but it would be easier if there were say a 10-experiment buffer where you can simply click a button that says "Oops... I've made a mistake" which notifies the AM and they can make the judgement whether or not to credit the experiment back (and get say 10 of those for the life of the contract).
- Stemming from the above, if I've wasted an experiment, it is still visible in our ESP and I don't seem to have a way to remove it from the options. Perhaps it's on the ESP side (I still haven't figured out from either end how to make this not visible anymore), but I'd like to see a quick way to remove these once they've been exported to the ESP (or basic instructions on how to do it with their integrated partners).
- My Account Manager has rescheduled/canceled 3 calls - last minute - with me since we started (about 4 months ago). Not the worst, but the last-minute part was the most frustrating. He left, so we will see if that will happen again with our new AM.
- We've seen a significant increase in email open rate, which has resulted in higher conversion rates overall. YTD (from the time we started using Persado), we have seen a 20%+ increase over last year. That's huge!
- It takes the thinking away from me and onto what works. Sure, I try to come up with some cool, catchy subject lines. But each time I think I got something that will beat Persado, I lose. Badly. Why oh why???
- Our unsubscribe rate has trended downward. Slightly, not significantly, but we used to average about 1.4% unsubscribe and we are seeing about 1.3% (on an ever-increasing list size). I won't complain about those numbers.
Phrasee wasn't an option to select, but we did evaluate them after hearing about them at a digital marketing summit. I liked what they were doing and the emails they were sending, but the pricing structure was outrageous! There was a 0% chance our CFO would approve the budget. To add salt to the wound, they also charged outrageously for a trial period. Ugh - as much as I wanted it, there was no way I could justify the ROI.
Enter Persado. I got an email from a sales rep which accompanied a resource. I got excited but hesitated. I then saw they offered a free 14-day trial. Wait - what?? Free?! Yes. Wendy gave me the grand tour and holy cannoli I was immediately impressed with the results of our very first send. And it's only gotten better. Sorry Phrasee, I'm with Persado now.
Enter Persado. I got an email from a sales rep which accompanied a resource. I got excited but hesitated. I then saw they offered a free 14-day trial. Wait - what?? Free?! Yes. Wendy gave me the grand tour and holy cannoli I was immediately impressed with the results of our very first send. And it's only gotten better. Sorry Phrasee, I'm with Persado now.