Stop looking for a marketing automation system - SharpSpring is the best!
January 03, 2017

Stop looking for a marketing automation system - SharpSpring is the best!

Lisa Kipps-Brown | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review

Overall Satisfaction with SharpSpring

Our design and marketing firm uses SharpSpring internally to manage automated workflows, email marketing, and our CRM. It allows us to save time while nurturing prospects to move them through the sales cycle, and to communicate more effectively with our current clients.

We also work with clients to help them implement SharpSpring in their organization. This has allowed us to help our clients in more advanced ways while adding a new revenue stream to our business.

Pros

  • The ability to identify anonymous visitors is great! Recently I noticed that an anonymous visitor from a specific state was on our site for almost 2 hours, but the visitor didn't have a dedicated IP address so I didn't know who or what company it was. Soon after, a client from that state emailed letting me know he had referred us to someone and they would be emailing me. I immediately knew that was the person who had visited the site, and was able to see exactly which pages she looked at, the order she visited them in, and how much time she spent on each page. When we spoke by phone I already knew what she knew about us so we were able to have a high level conversation about strategy rather than basics about website design. She later said that she was thrilled that within 20 minutes I had given her so much strategic input. I confessed how I was able to get to that point so quickly, and now she wants to start using SharpSpring!
  • The landing page generator is great for setting up marketing campaigns with targeted sales pages. And since SharpSpring has dynamic content, one landing page can be used and customized for multiple types of targeted visitors.
  • The logic capabilities allow you to set up very advanced automation workflows without having to be a programmer. This lets us train clients in how to manage their own campaigns so they don't have to always be reliant on us, unless they just want to ;)
  • We're even able to help clients track ROI for offline campaigns by using tracking codes that correspond to those campaigns. This is key since so many businesses still use traditional advertising; to be able to track ROI for both offline and online campaigns in one place is very convenient.
  • We can even get text messages and emails if an important prospect or client visits a specific page on our site. If I've been speaking with a prospect, it's nice to get a heads up that they've returned to the site because it allows me to know they're still interested, and also to know what content they're looking at.
  • Personalized communications are easy, not only with emails but also with dynamic website content that's customized to the visitor. To be able to address a website visitor personally and adjust copy and images to their profile is awesome.

Cons

  • I would like to be able to assign emails, workflows, etc. to folders when I create them rather than having to go back and do it afterwards. It isn't a big deal, but I sometimes forget.
  • The landing page generator adds more span tags than I would like so I have to go into the code and clean it up; that's just me being OCD ;) Also, sometimes it adds nonbreaking spaces when I edit existing content and I have to make sure to remove them or it leaves gaps in the copy. It's pretty new, though, and I'm sure these quirks will be ironed out.
  • I would like to be able to duplicate a landing page if it's one that I've customized from a template, rather than having to copy the code from the page and then paste into a new landing page or new template.
  • It's allowed us to provide advanced services to our clients and add a new revenue stream to the business.
  • It saves us tons of time in communicating with clients and nurturing prospects.
  • Being able to identify anonymous website visitors enables us to anticipate and prepare for contacts from prospects, or to reach out to them in some way.
We didn't actually sign up for any competitors but reviewed several. SharpSpring was the winner hands down for us because:
  • the pricing structure is affordable, month-to-month, and didn't require paying for a year upfront
  • the full features are available to all users rather than tiered
  • the sales team was very forthcoming with information. In contrast, one competitor would only drip out information and then only if we asked a specific question that nailed them down; that felt very predatory and we felt we couldn't trust the company.
  • since SharpSpring works with any CMS, it doesn't lock you into a proprietary CMS.
SharpSpring is great for anyone who seriously wants to pursue marketing automation. The only time I can think that it wouldn't be appropriate would be if you just don't have the need for all of the features, but since SharpSpring now has Mail+ that's not even an issue! You can get started with advanced automation features just by using Mail+, and then upgrade to SharpSpring when/if you're ready to use the sales features. And Mail+ is affordable for anyone.

Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG email editor
10
Dynamic content
10
Ability to test dynamic content
10
Landing pages
10
A/B testing
10
Mobile optimization
10
Email deliverability reporting
10
List management
10
Triggered drip sequences
10
Lead nurturing automation
10
Lead scoring and grading
10
Data quality management
10
Automated sales alerts and tasks
10
Event/webinar marketing
Not Rated
Social profile integration
8
Dashboards
10
Standard reports
10
Custom reports
10
API
10
Role-based workflow & approvals
10
Customizability
10
Integration with Salesforce.com
10

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