iContact Pro Select (formerly Outmarket) includes email marketing, landing pages, social media management, press outreach, and analytics. The software was originally Vocus Marketing Suite, and then was known as Outmarket. It was acquired by Cision
$300
per month
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
PFL helps businesses deliver authentic moments by
creating impactful direct mail that is data-driven, bringing measurement,
personalization, and predictability from digital to direct mail. PFL offers direct mail that is... Simplified: PFL simplifies direct mail execution by managing the entire process under one roof from strategy and production to delivery and measurement. Engaging: Supports engagement that results in action by paring digital tactics with memorable…
Vocus is well-suited for press release posting via Vocus’ PRWeb subsidiary. Vocus is also great for social media such as Facebook promotions e.g: sign-up pages, sweepstakes, and fan offers. However, I did not like that "buying signals” draws on Twitter only. Vocus was well-suited where user rights are organized around “profiles”, which might relate to a company, brand, or product line. This approach made sense for our small business. However, since users are either assigned to a profile or not, there does not appear to be finer divisions of rights for specific features
The reason it's not a seven or above is purely because of the timing of a solution we had requested originally back in August 2023. It's now February 2024, and we're waiting for a wow-factor pitch deck. Previously, we only received a demo recording and an order form quote. These truthfully aren't helpful enough to convince and sway our senior leaders into spending the $35k+ investment into the PMC.
Personalization: It allows us to create highly personalized direct mail pieces tailored to individual recipients. For instance, we can include the recipient's name, relevant product recommendations, or even custom images that resonate with their preferences.
Multi-Channel Integration: The platform seamlessly integrates with our existing digital marketing tools and CRM systems. It enables us to orchestrate cohesive campaigns that combine email, social media, and direct mail to reach our target audience through multiple touchpoints.
Automated Workflows: PFL offers robust automation capabilities, streamlining the entire direct mail process. We can set triggers, such as website visits or email engagement, to automatically trigger the sending of personalized direct mail pieces, ensuring timely and relevant outreach.
Variable Data Printing: The platform simplifies variable data printing, enabling us to print custom content for each recipient efficiently. This is particularly useful for A/B testing different messaging or designs within a single campaign.
Vocus works very well for a variety of business sizes. It is also well-suited for both mobile (iOS and Android) and PC platforms. These reports are comprehensive:
Campaign Performance Reports
Email Performance Reports
Landing Page Performance Reports
Web Analytics
In addition, they also offer great technical support and a lot of resources such as white papers, blog, and tips and hints
The UI is friendly, clear, and accessible, and I access it directly through the interface (Salesforce) that I perform my function in every day. It is intuitive to navigate, and I am able to find most functionalities I need without the need to consult an admin and/or support teams.
Only thing holding me back from a perfect 10 would be the timelines for involving the technical team on occasion. There have been a few times where the PFL technical support team has been booked up for days or more than a week out which can delay our project timelines. This doesn't happen often, let me be clear. But when it does, it's usually at the worst time for our campaigns.
I've used MailChimp before to generate emails and found Vocus to be a better option because it is an overall suite providing the tools to create customizable emails as well as many other features including press releases, social media etc. Vocus is an all-in-one platform for marketing which makes things more efficient for the user by being able to handle all marketing through one outlet.
JourneyMail is one I have evaluated. It did not seem as full featured as PFL Direct Mail Platform, nor did it integrate with the rest of the Salesforce products like PFL Direct Mail Platform (journeymail ONLY integrates to marketing cloud). My customers tend to be cross-cloud and own multiple products and want solutions that can integrate across their stack easily.
It does take a while to launch or re-launch a campaign, which can make it difficult to pivot quickly. However, if you're integrated with Marketo, then PFL is as scalable as your database and marketing strategy! The sky is the limit in terms of creativity. Post launch, the program is hands-off apart from report monitoring and potential optimization tweaks.
