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…
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Sendoso
Score 9.4 out of 10
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Sendoso is a gift sending platform designed to support B2B sales and ABM, and provide a sales accelerant.
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.
For the most part when we have been curating our own swag and having it sent to the warehouse we have had great luck at keeping our costs minimal and then curating a holiday or themed swag box for our staff to be sent. The ease at which we can set up a build your own box and have it curated how we like is fantastic and super helpful. We love the touch of the "handwritten" notes as well! Our team always say they love these. There have been a few instances where we had issues with Sendoso and how something was handled. One example is when we created and ordered glass travel mugs from KeepCup to be sent to our team. Some of them arrived damaged and they were rejected before we could even do anything about it, we were told after the fact and not given any ability to work with the Vendor for replacements and Sendoso with a plan to use the cups that were still in tact. Through this we lost 4 boxes of inventory and hundreds of dollars of swag for our team and clients - which doesn't sound like a lot but w are a small company and this has a bit impact on us. Not to mention resolving this issue then took 5+ months of admin power and time. In the end we didn't get much resolve and being the customer in the situation felt like we were in between two companies and their policies, KeepCup did all they could to work with us for a resolution but Sendoso didn't. We felt like we got the short end of the stick in this instance
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.
The Custom Brand Shop has been a real game-changer.
Easy to place curation requests and quick responses.
The ability to send items through Amazon but also include inventoried items is great for higher value gift bundles and lets you avoid having to source items that you may not be 100% sure about the quantity needed.
We're very sticky with Sendoso and would prefer to not train the entire sales org on a new platform! That and we've already sent up a plethora of gifts the team can send out (eGifts, physical branded items, treats, plants, etc.).
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.
I log in to the Sendoso website each time to use it, I'm not sure if there's an easier way. There may actually be a chrome extension that I'm just not using for whatever reason. I bet there is. But the website works well enough. Doesn't blow my mind, but it's all I need
Sendoso occasionally has downtime, but it's usually isolated to a single feature and doesn't effect the entire platform. They are responsive when it comes to intaking these outages and are quick to work to resolve them
Their platform doesn't take a long time to load, and it typically isn't too buggy once a new feature has been out for a while. Reports are pretty quick to generate and are emailed to the user on file for use typically within ten minutes or so. I have not noticed Sendoso slowing down any of the software it integrates with at all
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.
They listened to the problem with delivery times but did not present a reasonable solution. Again, the shipping costs consumed too much budget. On one bulk send their support team agreed to take over a project for a few of the reps which is encouraging to see.
Our in person trainings were on zoom, but they are not recordings which is why I listed them as in person. You get a live person to walk you through integrations, how to use the platform, sendings best practices, setting up other users, etc. The customer success team will help you training staff users too. Ours even ran a contest for them to encourage them to send to prospects and they provided the prize!
These were CSM and Onboarding team zoom meetings where they hand-hold you, which is nice especially compared to other company onboardings. After that they have Zen desk articles and regular check-ins where you can get the training you need. I also am on a slack channel with Sendoso staff where I can ask additional questions or look for best practices.
Get Sales and Marketing both involved in the implementation so you can strategize on how you'd want to use it across your organization. This will help your CSM roll it out the way you want instead of trying to piecemeal it after you've finished the onboarding process. Also I would recommend using a mix of Sendoso Direct, Inventory and eGift sends. Relying all on one or the other will not serve you well
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.
Sendoso Adoption: we struggled with sales adoption. They never fully bought into Sendoso campaigns. With Alyce, all sales reps are using the tool and there's accountability by each team member. They love using the tool because it's so easy. Reporting: we never had a true picture of how gifting campaigns were driving revenue against what we'd spent. Our MOPs team had to manually pull and report on ROI from gifting. With Alyce, it's automated. Overall ease-of-use: Sendoso was easy to use as a marketer, but we hated building our own landing pages in Marketo (I'm not a fan of Marketo pages). The Alyce LPs are cookie cutter, but clean, you can personalize the message, gift and the sender's profile picture and contact information are viewable. The sales team leads love creating their own campaigns, create friendly competitions between teams and get creative with the campaigns (we never saw them using Sendoso like this). Reachdesk Personalization: Reachdesk's personalization is better. You can send any gift (whiskey bottle, pickleball set, you name it) with sketched personalization in a one-off setting vs. ordering in bulk. Alyce is not quite as efficient in one-off personalizations. You still need to go through a curator. Automation: both Reachdesk and Alyce are comparable in SF, Marketo, HubSpot integrations, but Reachdesk doesn't integrate with 6sense the way Alyce does. Right now we're able to gift to ICPs at accounts that are in-market in decision or purchase stage (showing real intent). This means we experience less people taking the gift for a demo and running and gifting to those that are more likey to buy.
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.
Sendoso has really improved here. Along with helping you train your staff, you can now clone gift touches, sync them with salesforce from the platform directly, and send out address confirmations using your own or their email sending platform - they also just released an option for you to white-label your own domain. helping you save time and get a lot off the ground quickly
We had an increase in people visiting our booth at a conference based on receiving an item via Sendoso and bringing it with them to the show.
We have seen more leads come in from partners ever since we started sending reps at those partner companies gift packages as certain benchmarks for leads were hit.
