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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

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
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.
I really like SharpSpring for its marketing automation tools, and have implemented it at two companies. Neither have used it much for a CRM platform, though I find the CRM in SharpSpring to be much more intuitive than others. I can see how helpful it would be for high quantities of incoming leads and sales opportunities. The drip campaigns you can set up would also be beneficial for large companies with high engagement.

Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM Feature Ratings

9.2
WYSIWYG email editor
7
Dynamic content
10
Ability to test dynamic content
6
Landing pages
10
A/B testing
10
Mobile optimization
10
Email deliverability reporting
10
List management
10
Triggered drip sequences
10
10.0
Lead nurturing automation
10
Lead scoring and grading
10
Automated sales alerts and tasks
10
Campaign Management ()
Not Rated
9.0
Social sharing and campaigns
8
Social profile integration
10
9.0
Dashboards
9
Standard reports
9
Custom reports
9
9.3
API
10
Role-based workflow & approvals
10
Customizability
8
Integration with Salesforce.com
Not Rated
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Not Rated
Integration with SugarCRM
Not Rated

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
I enjoy the marketing functions that SharpSpring offers. Their customer support team is phenomenal, and the price is much more reasonable than HubSpot.

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

I did not have any issues during implementation, and the rep was always able to answer my questions and help me with the setup.
  • 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

All the reps are great. They know the platform well, offer alternative ways to do something if what I'm looking for is unavailable. They also have a feature request where users can submit changes they want to see, others can vote on the ideas, and you get to see if/when they are reviewed and worked on by the development team.
ProsCons
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

I think the navigation is very intuitive and easier to use than HubSpot or ConnectWise.
ProsCons
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