Emma by Marigold vs. Mad Mimi

Using Emma for weekly templated email use with minimal changes is awesome. If you want you can create a master and make minor graphic edits quickly and easily from your smartphone. Any edit is possible as long as the artwork is on the online server. Only time I hit a bump in the road is when I was asked to change the style sheet and did not know that the pricing plan I was on did not include this feature. Client had to wait to send new format until Emma performed the requested changes.

It's ideal for the new to email campaign/SMB user as they take great pains to ensure your campaign is ready for success. It's also ideal for those who are used to using the 'Goliaths' of email campaigns as the difference is night and day, in my opinion. Mad Mimi does exactly what we needed done to engage just the right audience with proven, scalable results. It's great software, but it's also the value of the team at Mad Mimi that one gets as a customer.

Incentivized

• Drag and Drop Interface - I love the drag-and-drop interface used to design campaigns. It makes it easy for creative types to get the look they want, and it helps less technically and aesthetically adept users to create campaigns that still look great. After using both Constant Contact and Mailchimp, I think Emma comes out on top in terms of ease of template design.
• Master Admin Account - Having a master admin account controlled by one person allows us to deploy brand assets to each sub-account, and we're also able to push out templates for users who aren't ready or don't have the time to design their own.
• Dynamic Content - Dynamic content has proven so useful to us, especially in our Admissions Office. Making it possible for regular users to easily create emails using dynamic content is a VERY strong feature that, in my experience, is unique to Emma.
• Great Tutorials - Emma does a great job taking care of its users. The support folks are always kind and helpful, but Emma publishes an array of tutorials and resources to help with just about anything its users encounter, from how to use custom merge fields to advice on creating the best campaigns.

Incentivized

• Very easy to upload pictures and drop them into an email I am creating.
• Easy to create links within emails to web hosted documents or websites or videos.
• Easy to see who has read what, who has engaged with what emails, who has unsubscribed, so I know exactly how to follow up with people.
• Easy to upload new contacts, in a batch or one at a time.

Incentivized

• Setup of users - We used to be able to setup a user and send them our own welcome email. Emma has since set up the ability to add users where they send the welcome email. It's a great new feature, but it doesn't always work. We've had some users who never receive these emails and then we need to reach out to support anyway.
• The code to set up a configurable email is cumbersome. It's great that it is so customizable, but there is a learning curve.

Incentivized

• The reporting features are pretty basic. I often feel like I need to switch email providers in order to excel ahead of competition.
• The drag and drop tool is easy to use but very limited. It's really difficult to be creative with columns and content.
• The entire tool itself is pretty basic. Not wow'd by any features.

Easy to use and gets the job done without too many "extras" (ex. we didn't need a full marketing automation platform so Emma had what we needed to send email marketing communications without having to pay for the stuff we didn't need)

Incentivized

Pretty simple, I know I'm getting what I pay for and a little more. Although simple and easy for the new user; a more seasoned marketer can still get the most from MadMimi. Especially if the primary purpose is to generate strong brand loyalty with effective communication that integrates your various outlets: MadMimi makes it easy for your customer to pick-up what the business owner wants to relay.

While every WYSIWYG software will experience glitches, Emma handles them well. Keep in mind they rarely happen, but they do, it can be of annoyance. Regardless, Emma allows my organization to create seamless email campaigns using fresh data. Emma makes coming up with strategic decisions very easy. The list segmentation that Emma feature allows us to easily manage a large list without issues. Overall, Emma is extremely usable with nearly no learning curve!

Incentivized

I find it very easy to use just like my colleagues too. The learning curve is straight forward.

Incentivized

I hate that to get support I have to submit a question to a public forum and wait for a response. I just want the ability for a quick live chat to answer my simple help questions quickly or at the very least submit a ticket via email and get a status update.

Incentivized

My issues are usually quickly resolved and their support staffs are very knowledgeable on the software generally

Incentivized

Emma had a more robust multi-level account structure which empowered individual locations to participate at the ground-level. Additionally corporate was able to maintain oversight, template creation, marketing automation, and data reporting. The goal is to provide the locations with the ability to send their own marketing messages, saving corporate marketing time, and providing more genuine, locally-focused email campaigns. Emma was very effective at making that happen.

Incentivized

Mad Mimi is not as complex to use for preparing emails as some competitors like Mailchimp. Mad Mimi has a lot of integration for third-party apps. Unlike Mailchimp, Mad Mimi is more suitable for our e-marketing strategy. Mad Mimi does not offer free trial whereas Mailchimp does offer a test service for 1000 emails. Mailchimp has more functionalities, for instance, the A/B testing which is lacking in Mad Mimi but is very effective in Mailchimp. The email template from Mad Mimi is not as responsive as the one of Mailchimp but when it comes to overall usage, Mad Mimi can do basically what Mailchimp can do. Mailchimp has more functionality in autoresponder usage than Mad Mimi. We chose Mad Mimi because it is cheaper.

Incentivized

• It's been pretty overwhelmingly positive. Our clients are happy about the savings that we're able to pass onto them.
• We're able to better determine what headlines receive the most clicks from our client's emails based on the dashboard.
• Super easy email designer that frees up some of our graphic designers to take on other jobs.

Incentivized

• I've spent 3 years creating blog posts, and it is only now encompassing the breath that allows me to draw upon this pieces as a reusable resource, but now this is happening.
• I preferred the Mad Mimi platform to Mail Chimp, and I suspect it continues to offer advantages. I felt Mad Mimi did themselves a disservice by failing to support their free subscriber service to the same extent that Mail Chimp does. When one's mail list gets sufficiently large, then it does pay to pay them, but not in the context I was using it.
• It seems that Mad Mimi is targeting direct marketing purposes, as this is a use where ROI is more easily measured.

Incentivized