Clicktools vs. Intuit Mailchimp

For any organization that is using salesforce.com and needs to implement a survey system that directly ties back to their salesforce.com system I would highly recommend Clicktools. We tried building our own customer satisfaction survey and it was not worth the effort, especially as our questions are ever changing. The integration with the case module was easy to configure

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I loved Mailchimp 10 years ago, and as a long-time user, I appreciate working with the brand I've been attached to for so many years. It still works well with regular email campaigns and with automation. However, if your email audience is constantly growing and you have a limited budget, it may be wise to explore the more affordable options.

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• Integration with SFDC: Makes it easy to trigger survey sends - and store survey results within SFDC - so that multiple departments and stakeholders can view results.
• Hidden Questions - Since we are mostly surveying our customers, we use Clicktools Hidden question fields to improve the survey experience. This way we don't need to ask the person filling out the survey their name or company - but are still able to attach the survey to their profile within SFDC.
• Ease of Use - Clicktools is a robust, yet easy to use software. As someone who manages a team of people that deploy Clicktools, I don't use the product everyday, but I have a very small learning curve when I do need to jump in and create a survey.

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• Mailchimp allows you to manage your mailing list really well. You can subscribe people, unsubscribe people manage the mailing list directly into segments, and what not.
• Mailchimp has features where you can create campaigns based on your mailing lists and send out newsletters to your subscribers based on a multitude of parameters that you can setup. Such as send email daily, weekly, monthly and they also have event based mails that you can send out.
• Mailchimp also has a feature where you can design your emails. The look and aesthetics are very important when sending emails to your subscribers and all those needs are addressed here.

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• Using conditional questions (if yes, then skip to question 5, if no, continue to question 2) can be tricky initially. And it can be really tricky once you have multiple conditions that send a person all over the place. Be sure to test repeatedly so that you know that your customers are getting to the questions they are supposed to be at and not being kicked out early. There are certain nuances you will pick up on over time that make conditional questions easier - BUT you can clone surveys, so build once and then work off your own template.
• No matter how many questions types are available, inevitably you will find a question in which Clicktools does not have a type to support it. They do have quite a few options though... just wish their matrix option was more robust.
• Not many template "themes" to pick from - surveys look very bland.

• The interface remains a cluttered, non-intuitive mess. That's true from the haphazard way features are organized to the actual email layout.
• Analytics have never been a priority, and I don't see that changing with Intuit's new ownership. I'm very frustrated over the limited choices for reporting, even when using third-party solutions. If I needed that function, I would not use MailChimp.
• I would love to develop a workflow screen that lets me focus on the things that I use all the time. Customizing the interface where the content actually goes into the software would help.
• I never understood why we couldn't import a document into a MC template. At best, we're spending time copying-and-pasting from one app into MC.

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We have loved using Clicktools and will continue to use it for the foreseeable future. The price and Salesforce integration is what really sets it apart from any other solution out there. I have learned a great deal about surveys and how to manage them in a CRM by using Clicktools. We will certainly be renewing our contract.

We love the product. One thing we haven't mentioned yet is the human element. Recently, MailChimp re-structured their plans/pricing based on the feedback they had received. They listened to a pain their users were experiencing, then strategized a solution, and implemented it fairly. The updated pricing strategy was intended to save subscribers money, and they did a great job of communicating it to their users. I would be surprised if anyone reacted negatively to the change.

It's fairly intuitive, produces a great product and the customer support is fantastic. I only lowered the score because I find that the in-depth surveys that we run most often can take up to five minutes to produce results, which can be tiring since the interface only allows me to open one window of Clicktools so I can't run multiple results at a time. When I asked support if this was an issue that could be fixed they said it was because the graphics took time to generate the data.

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I think Mailchimp enables companies to cater to their customers without requiring direct interaction with them. A simple email can convey a great deal of information. The SMS feature can give a brief link with a sentence to show promotional offers. I think that best fits with the upcoming generation; I don't always want to read a long email with lots of pictures. I think Mailchimp is easy to navigate and has many valuable features.

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I have, in the 4+ years that I've used Mailchimp, never seen an issue that restricted the use of their software/tools. I don't know of a single time when they're system crashed or went down. I could be wrong, but I honestly haven't experienced any issues with outages, errors or unplanned downtime

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ClickTools is always available when I need it. The interface is quick and does not drag. Survey responses show up quickly after a survey is submitted. The survey analyzer is swift as well. There is no waiting around for something to process when you are using ClickTools.

I haven't noticed any slow speeds from Mailchimp or their tools. I think the landing pages load quickly and look nice. The email reports and editing operates smoothly and doesn't take time to load. Additionally, when I use Mailchimp in conjunction with Zapier + Hubspot I don't notice any drag between any of these tools

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I get frustrated by not being able to find the answers to my questions online by myself. I would rather search FAQs and find things that way, but it seems I always have to contact support to get the answer I need. They need a more robust support center so you can do it yourself. But on the upside, when I do contact support, they respond immediately and usually solve my problem quickly

Any time we needed their help or support they responded promptly, friendly, and straightforwardly. It's a great feature to have multi-language support as we are a diverse team, and anyone can reach out to receive help. We've always solved our inquires

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If you are setting up integration with a CRM (Salesforce) get this done early on in the process. You can always do it later, but it's easiest to lay your foundation first and then build up and around it later

I am little satisfied with the MailChimp implementation process, since although it has been a bit complicated and we have had various complications that tried to affect our performance, with a little general effort, we take full advantage and currently It is out main marketing and advertising campaign platform.

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Secure, integrated with Salesforce and allows for better graphics that can be presented to customers. It produces a valuable tool for our sales team by collecting data and turning it into something that is comprehensive and easy to navigate and fun to look at, vs numbers and data gathered onto a sheet.

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We chose Intuit Mailchimp over competing solutions because we found their free tier more generous, which allowed us to get started easier. Also compared to other solutions we found their drag and drop email builder to offer a much better experience and easier UI. We also liked their paid features and could see that we would be able to use Intuit Mailchimp for a long time and not need to migrate to another solution.

Mailchimp over the years I've used it has grown in leaps and bounds. They have added so many additional features than were previously available. They are truly an all-in-one marketing platform now. If you're a small operation and just want to add email to your marketing efforts, they're there for you. If you're a larger operation and want to start sending postcard advertisements, they can do that. If you'd good with that and want to kick up your marketing by going social, you can do that on their platform. They are truly able to be as small as you need, but also get quite large in whatever it is you'd like to do through their system.

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• Increased employee efficiency: due to the fact that it links to the Salesforce, it saves time to update our stakeholder records. It is, at least, a 100% ROI.
• Better customer service. The data we collect help us improve our operations. It is hard thought to estimate the role of Clicktools in the retention of our clients.

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• One of my retail web store clients was sending out email specials and notices about once a month. After clicking the send button, we would watch Google Analytics and the current site users would light up immediately. Often, the current site visitors would pop up to 20, 30 or more after the email was sent. On a normal day, seeing 1 or 2 online users would be OK.
• Pretty much in all cases, we could see an uptick in positive activity after sending out a Intuit Mailchimp email to a list.

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