Great marketing automation tool for high engagement and lots of leads
October 22, 2019
Great marketing automation tool for high engagement and lots of leads
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SharpSpring
SharpSpring is being used for its marketing automation tools, such as forms, lead capture, drip campaigns and email blasts.
- Awesome customer support.
- Workflows for marketing automations are pretty detailed and customizable.
- The user interface and navigation is intuitive and looks good.
- The email and landing page builders are a bit finicky.
- The Outlook sync doesn't tell you when someone reads, forwards, opens, clicks, etc like HubSpot does.
- Opportunity updates don't appear in the activity feed, so it's mostly just a list of emails being sent and received.
- We are a small B2B company that does not have high engagement or large quantity of incoming leads, so SharpSpring has not shown a high ROI for us, unfortunately.
Compared to ConnectWise, I prefer SharpSpring. I think SharpSpring is much more intuitive, the UI is way cleaner and the customer support is amazing. However, ConnectWise has other features we use that SharpSpring does not, including service ticket queue and management, as well as the ability to create and send quotes. ConnectWise also has marketing capabilities that are very similar to SharpSpring. ConnectWise offers social media reports that include engagement metrics, and I have not found this report in SharpSpring. It becomes cumbersome for us to manage Zapier and make sure our team knows the rules of what fields are mapped between ConnectWise and SharpSpring. Even though we don't use SharpSpring for sales management/CRM it still requires accurate contact data so our lists are updated appropriately, and our emails are sent to the right people.
Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM Feature Ratings
Using SharpSpring
4 - Sales and marketing.
1 - I'm the admin of SharpSpring, and my job title is Digital Marketing Manager.
- Email blasts
- Forms for our website
- Marketing automations / workflows / drip campaigns
- Media center to track our views or opens on PDFs, videos, etc
- Tracking materials specific to our marketing campaigns through the media center
- Automations based on form-fill
- Visitor ID list is sent to our team weekly for review of hot leads
- The sales pipeline is currently not being utilized by our company
Evaluating SharpSpring and Competitors
Yes - HubSpot was used prior to my time with the company. I was familiar with SharpSpring from my previous employer, and preferred it to HubSpot for price and usability.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Prior Experience with the Product
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
I would say single most important factor for us was price. SharpSpring offers many same functions as HubSpot.
I would choose SharpSpring again if I am working with a company that has higher engagement and/or incoming leads.
SharpSpring Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Yes - I worked with a SharpSpring rep and each meeting focused on a dedicated subject or area of SharpSpring. They also have online courses to help learn the system.
- I don't recall any issues during implementation. If someone doesn't have access to the DNS and adding CNAME records there could be a delay with that.
SharpSpring 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, I was notified the same day about the issue and they were working to resolve it.
I was having trouble with formatting my email. The support rep took the time to look into my HTML code to find the source of the error and let me know what was wrong. She could have simply told me to not copy/paste blocks of content, but instead she provided me with the actual cause so I knew what/why it was happening.
Using SharpSpring
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Forms are easy to build and embed on a site or landing page
- Media center is straightforward and provides tracking capability on content
- Visitor ID shows valuable information about the types of people visiting our site and what pages they're viewing. If they are anonymous and come back, SharpSpring tracks that and ties any new information to the original visit.
- I have trouble with the email builder WYSIWYG and overall builder/formatting
- The landing page builder is a little different than the email builder, however I find it's better for me to just create a landing page on our WordPress site rather than through SharpSpring.
Yes, but I don't use it