Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM vs. OutboundEngine

SharpSpring is great for creating and tracking campaigns that span multiple channels. With the Salesforce integration, we are able to keep our Sales team focused inside Salesforce without them needing to learn a new tool. Our Marketing team uses SharpSpring to nurture leads before handing them off to the Sales team. Though the features are available, SharpSpring would not be suitable for social media management or blogs; our third-party tools do a better job at that.

Incentivized

OutboundEngine does a referral campaign and I've been able to close a couple of deals based on getting in touch with people who engage with this campaign and state they could use my services in the next 6 months. This is a great follow up tool for those you may or may not know are going to be needing your services.

Incentivized

• Their Emailers are very easy to construct and user-friendly. It takes your Newsletter and sales emails to the next level, especially with the action groups and trigger functionalities.
• The life of the lead functionality allows you to see when leads get warmer, so you know when to send them what. Helps improve conversions.

• The content that they generate to send to our clients is relevant and the clients want to engage with us. It makes us appear more professional and consistent, even though we are a smaller company.
• It helps us stay in touch with clients and helps us stay top of mind. We are able to generate more new business leads if we are in consistent contact with current, former, and potential clients.
• Their customer service and support is outstanding. All my questions were answered and I went into the program feeling confident and knowledgeable.

• The landing page builder is a bit hard to use. Doesn’t have much flexibility.
• Sometimes confusing between types of workflows to use. Opportunity versus visual.
• If you imported contacts that weren’t formatted correctly. It is hard to delete a bull amount. Need to type DELETE for each one manually. No bull options to make changes.

Incentivized

• Logging into Outbound Engine on my phone is difficult because I can't save the login name and password. Being able to save it would be very helpful.
• Posting my new listings on social media would help if that's possible.
• Being informed of what you're posting on social media and when would also be helpful.

Incentivized

It delivers everything it promised and more. SharpSpring is marketing automation transformed. Easy to use, affordable and well supported. Many of our clients will become dependent on the information SharpSpring provides for their marketing initiatives and we are confident they will be there for the long run. When some of the over-funded 'big names' flame out, SharpSpring will be the clear choice for small business users.

AS my business is beginning to change and with volatility in the market, I have to rely seriously on a budget. That and nearing retirement consideration has me more likely to opt out in the near future.

Incentivized

This rating is coming from an administrative perspective. With so many features, workflows, dashboards, and more, there is certainly a lot going on, and even the most savvy software user can get a little overwhelmed when trying to decide how to best implement and utilize the platform to its full potential. That being said, the SharpSpring platform is well-implemented and well-organized, with most solutions being fairly intuitive, once you have a grasp of the software. It is fairly easy to learn, but difficult to master. Just like any powerful platform, however, the complexity is worth it, and once you are comfortable navigating and problem solving within SharpSpring, it becomes a great marketing and sales tool which can do virtually anything you need it to.

Incentivized

Overall, OutboundEngine is very user friendly. It is simple to set up and explore, and if there are any issues or questions, the customer service team and account managers are always available to help. They are very knowledgeable and were able to explain everything in detail to me. The program is easy to navigate and helps me stay organized, and an uncomplicated and straightforward solution was exactly what I was looking for

I don't recall having any issues needing to contact OutboundEngine. I believe maybe I once emailed about an issue and got a quick response. I also believe I may have messaged through the app and gotten a response. To my knowledge, there has been nothing like app errors or outages.

Incentivized

The support is great which really helps overcome challenges if you become stuck and the training videos are great too. Same-day replies are great and I even got some help with some CSS code on the chat. Not many organizations would do this or even respond.

Incentivized

The customer service was excellent! Everyone I spoke to was kind and knowledgeable. My account manager was easily reachable. Setup of the OutboundEngine program was explained really thoroughly, and we knew how we could best use the product to meet the needs of our clients and get our online and social media presence off the ground.

Simply that we recommend a thorough training process where you take the time to really learn the system and the features so that you can take full advantage and maximize your results. Don't skimp on the training as the more you understand, the easier it will be to implement. A sk a lot of questions and test everything until you know it well.

Incentivized

Constant Contact doesn't stand up against Klaviyo, so we're permanently migrating our lists and customer profiles over to Klaviyo. Constant Contact is an excellent choice for solopreneurs, brick-and-mortar, and businesses that are more heavily focused on face-to-face human interaction. However, companies - or individuals - primarily market and/or sell online, especially Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, and Yotpo, which seem to be more robust solutions.

Incentivized

I selected it for the ability to have an automated system do 3 things all at once, social media posts, emails and the instant communication with the chat box. I have never seen a chat come through that lead to a helpful client touchpoint. I have never used another product but have since begun to weigh some of the less expensive options.

Incentivized

• Streamlined Processes - sales and marketing are now all in the same place.
• Reduced Number of Platforms/Tools - CRM/lead management, email, automation, landing pages, forms, etc are all in the same place rather than using multiple tools.
• Time-saving - sales pipeline is very easy to use for sales. For marketing, we have dozens of workflows that eliminate much of our manual processes from the past.
• Return on Investment - We're more focused on moving the building the business than ever before because SharpSpring has simplified so many of our business operations and we're seeing massive results!
• Lead generation - Up SIGNIFICANTLY (between 3x & 4x) since setting up SharpSpring.

• Outbound Engine keeps me top of mind by automatically sending articles to my database and posting to my facebook.
• I spend zero time researching and writing articles.
• I spend zero time taking great pictures.
• I spend zero time dealing with mailing lists.

Incentivized