dotMailer vs. VerticalResponse

dotMailer is a great tool whether you are a standalone shop or a global company. I am not familiar with many other programs, but my favorite thing about dotMailer is the ability to have all of our constituents on the same account to share templates and ideas, as well as gauge our performance levels. To any colleague within our Group, I would 100% recommend dotMailer

For businesses requiring advanced email marketing features like sophisticated automation, in-depth analytics, and extensive customization, VerticalResponse might fall short due to its limited featuresVerticalResponse is ideal for small businesses or freelancers who need a simple, straightforward email marketing tool. Its ease of use and basic features make it suitable for those without extensive technical expertise in email marketing

Incentivized

• Segmentation by distance.
• RFM segmentation.
• Product recommendations.

Incentivized

• The tools that they provide you with for building out emails are particularly easy to use. I love the drag and drop ability that gives anyone the opportunity to build professional looking emails without any extensive experience.
• With the majority of people checking emails on mobile, it is necessary to have highly responsive designs and this tool does all the work for you, no developer is needed and that is a MAJOR plus.

Incentivized

• Updating contact lists can be cumbersome. It would be much easier if we could just make mass update to contact lists without having to export and re-import them. For example, if you upload a list of Joe's contacts and then want them to all be individually tagged with Jane instead, you would have to export the list, change everyone's rep to Jane, and then import the list again.
• The time zone on our account is set to London which creates challenges for the other cities (New York, Chicago, Seattle, Sao Paulo) that we send emails for. We definitely have to be cautious when scheduling out emails so that we get the timing correct.
• I would love to be able to view previous months' activities and expand the comparison tool to view trends over time.

• The type face is small. Not sure if this is to avoid overwhelming the reader, but I could see this being an issue with vision-impaired people or people who don't see small print well.
• Sometimes I find it takes multiple clicks to make one simple change. I wish there was a search field at the top of the screen that allowed me to jump directly to a client's entry to update it there.

Since this is used on a global scale and it is preferable to all of our brands, I cannot see us switching to a different provider. We have built years worth of contacts and templates within our current system, which saves our marketing team a lot of time when putting together future campaigns. All of them are mobile optimized which makes it even easier to work with

Product is easy for both technical and non-technical people to use. A cost effective solution for sending out large number of messages. We can manage unsubscribes by individual accounts, so we can have multiple multiple accounts combined to maximize our buying power on credits. Effective API for sending/receiving data makes tool a valuable asset.

I truly love this product. We are moving to an all-in-one system next year and my greatest fear in doing so is how much I will miss this platform. Although we are excited for things ahead, I will always keep Vertical Response in my back pocket incase I don't love the new platform as much

Incentivized

Never had an issue with uptime

No issues

At Vertical Response the help desk associates are courteous, knowledgeable and helpful. You can tell they enjoy what they do. And clearly, they are well trained because most times, the first point of contact is able to resolve any issue you may have. There have been very few times where an associate has needed to get back to me or escalate me to a supervisor

Incentivized

Basic functions and online help...we used what was needed, at the time, and will continue to explore other online trainings as our functional needs expand

Salesforce integration never worked right. We had to abandon.

DotMailer is built for eCommerce. Drip, ActiveCampaign, and Infusionsoft are not eCommerce platforms out of the box, though they can be tailored to that use case. DotMailer is especially geared toward retail businesses.

Incentivized

I am a true believer in Vertical Response. So much so, that this is the first and only software I have used for this type of marketing. When this program was first launched it was a godsend - truly innovative for its time. And in the years since, I have continued to implement this software at three other winery properties because there is nothing else I want to use

Incentivized

• Gave us more granular segmentation than simply pages visited or products purchased.
• Helped us segment local customers vs long-distance customers, and send different messaging to each.
• It takes a product feed, so enabled us to launch personalized product recommendations in emails.

Incentivized

• We were able to blast out promotions our company was having to customers which created an increase in business.
• By blasting out any service issues, it keeps our customers informed so that they are not wondering what is going on.
• Allows us to store unsubscribed emails so that we are not constantly pestering people who do not want to be emailed.

Incentivized