What's Online

I just watched a one hour demo of Vertical Response (VR) and have come away with mixed feelings about it. A number of my past clients have used VR before becoming SalesForce.com (SFDC) users, and that is how I first became acquainted with the VR email marketing application. They needed their VR account integrated into SFDC as part of their SFDC implementation.

Since they were clearly already sold on the app, they had very positive things to say about it, and this first gave me a positive impression of it also. The demo today revealed some great things about the app, but also raised a few issues, which a perusal of customer reviews on the AppExchange confirmed were issues for others too.

The Pluses:

• Low prices - Send 1000 emails for $15; 10,000 for $120; the price per email goes down the higher the volume goes. Non-profits can send up to 10,000 emails per month for free and everyone can start with 500 free emails to test the system.


• Free to install - Great idea to make the app free to install. That gives you the ability to play around with it and learn how it works, deciding if you want to work the way it works before you invest a penny. You only pay for the emails you send.


• Easy to install - There really isn't much to it. Just go through the standard AppExchange installation wizard then add a couple picklists to two page layouts.


• Nice template selection - It would take a lot of space to really give a comprehensive review of all the good things about the template selection. These are high quality templates, on a higher level than Constant Contact and other well known email marketing packages. That said, there are also some related Minuses I will get to next.


• Tight integration with SFDC in terms of using the lists already provided by Leads and Contacts, instead of having to maintain external lists and SFDC lists.
  


• Google Analytics integration creates a link between behavior within emails and behavior on the website when links in the email are followed.


• Numerous on-demand video tutorials on using the system: How To Do Everything SFDC
  

The Minuses:

• Only one SFDC user account can be attached to any given VR account. This means 1) all the images you upload are unavailable to anyone else; 2) you can't see anyone else's stats, even if you're the marketing director or a Sys Admin; and 3) there is no way to see a schedule/calendar of all emails to be sent by anyone at your company, only to see your own.


• It is way too cumbersome to save and use your own templates once you've customized one of theirs to be exactly what you want. You either have to redo all those choices each time, or copy the HTML of the template once you've edited it to desire, then paste that into SFDC as a custom HTML template there. Thereafter you choose the SFDC Template option (a small link) on the templates page in VR instead of choosing one of the VR templates.


• You cannot use VR to email market to members of purchased lists. Email recipients must have come to you through your website, someone who gave you their business card, someone who is a member or customer, or somehow has a direct relationship with you such that they would expect to receive communication from you. It is therefore more a relationship building email tool than an official email marketing tool. You can't do "cold-call" email marketing with them. This is enforced by their surveillance of your bounce and opt-out stats, and complaints. If they see anything unsavory, they will request your documentation of the opt-in of each member of your list and failing to provide this your account will be terminated.


• As a minor inconvenience, in order to send more than 30,000 emails at once, you must get approval by writing to [email protected] first.


• No native website analytics tracking within VR so that Google Analytics is not required. (Compare to ExactTarget, which includes native website tracking integration.)
  

In general I have to say that I like VR enough to not steer companies away from it if they feel they can deal with the above limitations. I even recommended it to one non-profit I help out immediately after watching the demo.

I'm still liking Predictive Response (PR) better, because of the extra analytic and automated drip campaign handling features of PR (see previous post, Predictive Response Delivers), but PR is also a little more expensive. Let's say you had 12 users in SFDC and send 50,000 emails per month. With PR you'd pay about $740 a month and with VR you'd pay $500. (Oddly, for 50,001 you'd pay $425, due to how the price per 1000 is tiered.) You can see the exact price you would pay for any number of VR emails going out at the following link VR Pricing. You type the number you would be sending into the "Pay as You Go" box. Monthly unlimited plans are not available within SFDC VR acccounts at this time.

Additionally, setting up PR is a little more complicated, though not ridiculously so, due to it being more tightly integrated with many parts of SFDC and your website. You also can't try it out for free and the tutorials are always by request, rather than on-demand videos (though there is a helpful intro video available here: PR Overview Video). With PR you put a little more in for setup, learning and monthly expense, but also get a lot more in terms of integrated management of the entire marketing campaign.

While Vertical Response might be more appropriate for sending a monthly newsletter, Predictive Response is more appropriate for actual sales & marketing campaigns, where you are trying to promote specific products or services.