Impact vs. ReferenceEdge

Impact is well-suited for those trying to upgrade their affiliate program and get more partners. It's one of the best solutions out there for advertisers looking to make a huge push. It's less appropriate for very small businesses that may not be able to afford the high monthly minimum of $1,000 or more.

Incentivized

Absolutely the best for managing customer references/ advocacy. Comprehensive functionality and attentive and responsive support model, and they don't charge extra to use value-add functionality, such as the automated check-in on reference status, contacts, etc. They know this field and need thoroughly and have thought of everything. Native to Salesforce streamlined deployment and up-leveled cross-company support, and also were my full partner in educating me on how to use Salesforce reporting, which is a valuable professional advantage.

Incentivized

• There are no hidden charges and tracking is instant and automated.
• As an affiliate, Finding relevant offers and managing the programs is quite easy.
• It has a great user interface which is quite easy to use and manage.
• There is nearly zero downtime, which makes it much more efficient and reliable.

Incentivized

• Simplifies and streamlines complex matrixed customer information
• Enables strategic engagement through easy access to customer reference accounts, contacts, content, and activities they've participated in as well as are interested in participating in
• Cross-company adoption and visibility through native Salesforce integration
• Load balancing and protection from over-use/ burnout - critical.

Incentivized

• User interface could be improved a little, as it is a quite difficult task to find the content or links
• Approval from the advertisers sometimes takes a huge amount of time. If they can somehow reduce the response time, it will be great
• New affiliates might find the onboarding process a little difficult

Incentivized

• Ability to pre-populate a 'win wire' with deal info from SF. I believe this is being developed now.
• Standard organization of 'attributes' so it's easier to break out that report column into per-attribute columns.
• I like that they have an active Trello board for user suggestions and incorporate requests with each update.

Incentivized

Impact has had a major impact on our business. It is pretty easy to use if you don't have multiple accounts with them, so be sure you keep things streamlined. Otherwise, it can be confusing if you have to bounce between different accounts you've applied to. While they are managed under a single login, they can be difficult to distinguish between when trying to see how successful your campaigns are.

Incentivized

We've been reaching out requesting support for two months and no one has responded. They completely ghosted us. We've emailed the original sales rep, our account manager, our sales rep and account manager's bosses, and others. Still no response, though I can see the emails have been opened multiple times. I've never experienced worse support.

Everflow had ok tracking but didn't have a great payment process and their marketplace was geared towards larger marketing conglomerates that we would have had to sign other contracts with. CJ is very comparable in terms of features their marketplace is bigger but the quality isn't always as high. The impact has the best tracking and SEM policy monitoring of the bunch.

Incentivized

We also evaluated ReferenceView from ROInnovation/ Upland. ReferenceEdge from Point of Reference was lower cost for complete functionality, plus their ongoing support model is second to none. SlapFive has great video functionality, which we may use at some point, but isn't a customer reference/ advocacy management platform. And its comprehensive marketing functionality was more than our team needed. ReferenceView was a failure, unfortunately. Way more expensive. limited functionality, and an abysmal support model.

Incentivized

• By using Impact we were able to increase the number of advertisers on our platform.
• Delayed payments on the part of advertisers or Impact creates so many execution issues.
• Multi regional campaigns helped us to increase our presens in the market.

• Faster access to critical customer references
• 360 degree view of customer engagement
• Full visibility through comprehensive pre-built reports

Incentivized