BenchmarkONE vs. Wishpond Propel IQ

Both small and large companies alike can utilize it. The simplicity is great and automation is a real winner. It is most appropriate in scenarios where you already have a contact list or an established plan to get emails from contacts. A potential customer should simply talk about their current challenges and let Hatchbuck explain how their product would provide a solution.

I would never recommend Wishpond to anyone. They provide a fancy marketing plan that is promptly ignored. You're far better off managing everything yourself as the things which are done are done against your instructions, or so badly it takes more time to fix them than just do them yourself. You'll have to ask for any reporting and when it is given it will be worthless as all campaigns are combined (across all advertising channels). You'll never be told what tweaks are made, keywords you specifically say not to use will be used, you won't be told how to check anything, and will have to chase up anything that is meant to be delivered. The first meeting was rescheduled, but I wasn't told, and things didn't improve from there. After 2 months I still had not received much and wasn't getting replies so had to take things up the chain. Things were then put in place, but no one ever checked if they solved anything. They didn't. One of my big problems is the only meeting times offered were between 3 and 4am my time. When the customer support person finally got in touch they also only offered between 3 and 4 am on a Sat morning. Nothing had been paid attention to at any stage. My manager's manager who is meant to solve problems has not replied to my emails from a week ago. The contract also auto renews, but there is no information on how to get out of it. I don't trust that the folks I have told I don't want to renew will pass that information on and will soon be looking into doing chargebacks on my card due to not being supplied with the services promised.

• Email marketing. Their WYSIWYG email editor has a lot of options for customization, but also offers templates if you're not great with code or you're in a hurry.
• Keeping contacts organized. There are tons of ways to categorize contacts - using tags, labels, and other data.
• Automated contact "points." You can set up automations to add or subtract points from contacts based on their behavior (site visits, social media visits, clicks, etc.) to gauge how warm/cold your leads are.
• Customer service. Their team is really stellar and they really care about their clients!

Incentivized

• Very small learning curve, thanks to wonderful real-time tutorials and help, and drag-and-drop editors.
• Easy to navigate - there are only 3 main sections of the site (content, lists, and emails).
• Excellent customer service. I've always gotten prompt answers to any questions I've had.

Incentivized

• It'd be great if the tool had landing pages and calls to action. It would eliminate the need for multiple tools and streamline the efforts and results.
• Form design could be better. Although there can be custom coded, the default options are pretty basic.

Incentivized

• The marketing tool is still not very intuitive
• We still don’t know how to use the contest feature
• We wish we could have more elements to add to our landing pages

Incentivized

It has just about everything I want and then some. What I want but they don't have - calendar and e-mail integration, social media integration, and a mobile app, I believe are all in the works for a future release.

Hatchbuck offers on-boarding, training, and has a suite of videos, which makes it super easy to get started. As with any software that is the key. Have a plan, stay focused, and get started. Once, you begin to play with Hatchbuck you will see that it is very user friendly.

There has never been any downtime for Hatchbuck, which is very reassuring for me as I market and recruit strenuously for the University at Albany's executive Weekend MBA Program. Hatchbuck team members have also been available when I have reached out to them with questions or issues. With one exception, where one of my e-mails became lost in the Internet "black hole," they have gotten back to me in very timely fashion!

I always get a response within 24 hours, unless I ask on a weekend. The team seems to work together to resolve my issues, answer my questions, and update me on changes. In fact, they have even connected [with] me to ask how they can improve the Hatchbuck software and their service. This is why I love them so much.

There is no support at Wishpond. I contacted my project manager's manager over a week ago without a reply. When I responded to the automated 'How is your experience' email saying how awful it was there was no follow-up. When I had trouble and had to escalate things it resulted in some new procedures being put in place that changed nothing and they never checked in to see if things were fixed.

Overall very satisfied. More sample please.

We really liked the unique mix of a CRM, an email marketing tool, and a sales funnel tool we found with Hatchbuck. Additionally, the software was easy enough to learn so that multiple team members were able to quickly get up and running using the system. Other tools we evaluated either had too heavy of a sales focus, were too clunky, or were lacking some flexibility within their automation or email options that were important to us.

Incentivized

I actually ended up using AgoraPulse AFTER Wishpond because my company was looking for ways to cut down our marketing budget and Agora had the contest capabilities, lead management, along with social media platform scheduling and management. I ended up loving Agora more and not only using it while at Clarion UX/Urban Expositions but bringing it over when I worked at Yale University as well.

Incentivized

• I personally experience approximately 10-12 positive prospect interactions due to Hatchbuck.
• It makes it easy to see how many times attachments are viewed, and projects a prospects interest.
• It guides you to some degree as to when to reach out again.

Incentivized

• Negative google ROI.
• A few conversions in September on paid social then none - negative ROI.
• Between ad spend and Wishpond fees every month is negative ROI. Can’t wait until I can get out of this contract.
• Emails don’t perform as well as my own for open rates or clicks.