Sailing Thru #Startuplife
May 08, 2014
Sailing Thru #Startuplife
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Other
Overall Satisfaction with Sailthru
Sailthru is being utilized to manage our email campaigns for two product lines - our dinner and catering menu. It is being used by our Business Development, Sales Ops, and Marketing team to send general email blasts as well as personalized follow ups for our customers. Overall it addresses the problem of efficiency not only as an automated email system but as a simple one to use and learn. Even if you aren't using "if" statements and A/B testing or coding, you can use it and experience the value.
- It tracks analytics (open rate, click rate, top users) for every email blast. If we are sending a personalized follow up from a Sales Rep, they could be sending out to 100+ people. Narrowing it down to the 25 people who opened and prioritizing the 10 who clicked helps them know who to track down and close.
- SailThru has the BEST customer service in the world. The people there are nice, efficient, funny, and most of all, helpful. Every single time I have called the problem is fixed within a day and the people on the phone were so positive to make it a memorable customer experience.
- SailThru also has great list tracking. For instance you have the option of having a one off list that maybe is just a random promotion to a specific group of people - or you can track people who are added to your general blast database and see how it has grown over time. It helps us as a company recognize our growth in the area of email marketing.
- The UI could be "prettier", but that is a very small thing. On the other hand, a lot of functionality and use from the user end is knowing the site looks friendly and easy to use. It's a balance.
- The Campaigns and Communications menus show different options. When I want to see a sent campaign only one of the menus goes there, but I always end up clicking both before figuring out the right one. I don't know if it is just me or the vocabulary should be tweaked for user direction.
- When looking at sent campaigns you can't see the subject line beyond the preview (unless I'm blind). Again, not a big deal - just something that's noticeable.
- I have already mentioned this but the efficiency of doing blasts of follow ups from our reps is amazing for our efficiency. They know who is available and ready to close by open and clicks on the emails
- SailThru has aided us in promotions by knowing who opened and clicked. This has also helped us drive revenue and efficiency to reactivate inactive customers who have not ordering awhile.
- The site has helped up increase our lead conversion as well due to the fact that we are not only email blasting our leads for follow up but also keeping up with them via our general email blast list. The consistent communication has allowed us to stay top of mind and leads to order from our restaurant group.
- MailChimp,HubSpot,cakemail
SailThru doesn't have the UI of any of them unfortunately, but the high level of functionality (if functions to switch text for specific customers) is the BIGGEST strength. None of these have that complexity available. My old company needed to build our own automated email platform to be able to that and none of us knew SailThru. HubSpot does connect to Salesforce which is a huge plus and tracks the lifecycle of the customer. SailThru does this to a point, but at a very high level. Otherwise everything is just as easy.