iContact Vs VerticalResponse Vs Jangomail Vs MailChimp Vs Constant Contact: Which E-mail Marketing Client gels best with Salesforce.com?
Smart organizations choosing Salesforce.com as a CRM solution, would have experienced the power of the cloud in improving their bottom-line. The sales structure as well as processes undergoes a startling transformation with Salesforce.com’s integrated platform. The high degree of accessibility, versatility of interfaces including the mobile one, and a collaborative approach to knowledge and information are all aspects that make it the CRM of choice for your enterprise.
Campaigns and marketing are critical today, and the inbuilt email tools provided in Salesforce.com might have some limitations in terms of scale and usability. This is why many organizations opt to use an email marketing tool that can easily be integrated with Salesforce.com. The choice might be very specific to your organization, as well as the requirements of your campaigns. Here’s a quick look at the popular choices:
iContact: The iContact mail client can be fully integrated with Salesforce.com, which means that users needn’t learn a new interface. Using this client, you can:
- Reach a larger number of contacts, compared to the 1000-a-day limit of Salesforce.com
- Send out emails for a campaign and segment the members based on ‘open and click actions’, to then target them with a better focus
- View statistics of contacts based on their responses to multiple campaigns
- Use the functionality of social media by integrating like and tweet buttons
Note: To integrate existing iContact customers into Salesforce.com, their accounts would have to be imported explicitly
VerticalResponse: You could manage all your marketing campaigns using the VerticalResponse mail client, which offers seamless integration with Salesforce.com. Using this client, you can:
- Create professional looking emails with ease, using the drag and drop editor
- Perform easy searches on your data to come up with a target group of contacts, without tedious uploading and downloading
- Receive detailed information through reports about the opens and clicks on links in your emails, making it easier for you to plan the future campaign steps
- Share easily on social media
- Receive customer support when you need it
- Send the first 500 emails for free, along with affordable and subscription pricing as you expand your campaign
Note: Some features may be available at an additional cost, so do ensure that the functionality you require is covered before you make your decision
Jangomail: The Jangomail client is also well integrated with Salesforce.com and allows you to:
- Place “Send” buttons within Salesforce.com tabs, which allows you to easily query your contacts as well as send them the campaign emails seamlessly
- Perform a search for your leads or contacts from within the Jangomail interface, making it easier to send emails
- View the detailed history of all tracking information right in your Salesforce.com account
- Analyze the deliverability of emails using SMTP log files
- Make effective use of Google Analytics Integration
- Take advantage of a pricing model based on number of emails
Note: Jangomail does not offer a drag-and-drop editor which could be a minor inconvenience
MailChimp: The popular mail client MailChimp offers many features for use with Salesforce.com, and allows you to:
- Use drag and drop templates on the intuitive interface, to design attractive and professional looking email content
- Handle subscribers who might be on multiple MailChimp lists
- Create separate campaign lists in MailChimp based on your Salesforce.com contacts
- Sync your leads and contacts back to your Salesforce.com list
- Avail the built-in integration with Salesforce.com, which could be very useful for smaller organizations
Note: Campaigns and campaign data does not get recorded to Salesforce.com, and a third-party tool is needed for this functionality. This MailChimp blog post talks about the possibility of this appearing in future versions
Constant Contact 2.0: The Constant Contact email client promises to save you time on administration and compliance issues, by providing functionality that helps you:
- Save or upload data updates from Salesforce.com to Constant Contact automatically
- Sync opt-out information between the mail client and Salesforce.com
- Take advantage of the great pricing and support
- Easily view the campaign history on Salesforce.com
Note: The user interface might make some functions feel time-consuming, and transfer of email lists is a slightly long process
If you are looking for options beyond the mail clients mentioned above, the following might be worth considering as well:
- Marketo for efficient lead management and marketing automation
- Eloqua for multi-channel marketing campaigns
- Pardot for great compatibility with Salesforce and good marketing automation support.
The key to making the right choice would be to zero in on a mail client that does not just suit the needs of your organization today, but would also seamlessly scale up as you grow. Once you ensure that all the functionality your organization needs is available for the right price, you’ll be all set to get the best out of your marketing campaigns. For more digital marketing tips, as well as to integrate just about anything with Salesforce.com, do get in touch with us: services@suyati.com
Image Credit: Maria Elena on Flickr
2 comments
How about Pardot?
Salesforce bought the email marketing arm from Exact target and next year its fully integrated into SFDC!
Since Pardot is a part of Salesforce.com and needs no introduction to anyone who is using Salesforce, we did not explicitly cover it in this review. We agree that it has a lot of great features and could be a good fit for customers with a higher budget.
We have included it in the list of additional clients, along with Marketo and Eloqua.