#1 most frequent
United States of America
59.2%300 installations of 507
What is Acoustic Campaign?
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) is a scalable, SaaS-based, cross-channel, digital marketing platform providing digital marketers the ability to implement and manage email, mobile, social, and lead management campaign processes.
Categories & Use Cases
Media
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Screenshot of Digital marketing
Top Performing Features
Dynamic content
Users can tailor email, website or landing page content depending on the viewer or recipient (e.g., email salutations that include the recipient’s name).
Category average: 6.8
Email deliverability reporting
The software helps ensure inbox delivery of email campaigns, through features such as deliverability tests, opt-in management, bounce handling, suppression lists, dedicated IP addresses, and delivery monitoring.
Category average: 7.9
List management
This involves creating, filtering, editing, merging and de-duping lists of contacts.
Category average: 8.5
Areas for Improvement
Dashboards
Users can create, customize and share dashboards, which provide an overview of the most important metrics.
Category average: 7.5
Standard reports
The software offers pre-built reports with metrics standard to the category.
Category average: 7.5
WYSIWYG email editor
Users can create html emails through a drag-and-drop interface, without html coding knowledge.
Category average: 7.9
Who Buys & Uses Acoustic Campaign
#2 most frequent
Canada
7.7%39 installations of 507
#3 most frequent
Australia
7.5%38 installations of 507
Powerful, but clunky and hasn't innovated fast enough
Pros
- Flexibility in using to data: databases (including relational databases), segmentation and powerful querying.
- Personalization and conditional content for email as well as landing pages.
- PURLs to extend personalization in direct mail.
Cons
- The interface is clunky and heavy, resulting in a slow UX. This is particularly true with the email builder.
- Processing of data (eg. returning a list of contacts for a query) is handled via 'Jobs', which means that it's not a dynamic process. Jobs need to start, crunch and end before you get a result.
- Reporting
Return on Investment
- ROI very much depends on the strategy driving a data-driven marketing project, and not so much the platform itself.
- IBM Watson Campaign Automation is more expensive than other platforms to use, day in day out, because of its clunky interface.
- It's a flexible product and can achieve more than most.
Alternatives Considered
HubSpot CRM, HubSpot, HubSpot Sales, Adobe Campaign and ActiveCampaign
Other Software Used
ActiveCampaign, cPanel, WordPress, HubSpot, Trello, Teamwork Projects, Teamwork Desk
Nice integration between b2b and b2c
Pros
- Marketing campaign to customers
- Sending the policy of insurance to customers to certify receipt
Cons
- The main [area for] improvement would be the user interface..... it’s extremely hard to compare to Eloqua or Responsys
- Reports !!! Please include Watson Analytics or something !!
Return on Investment
- Quick B2C and B2B integration
- Very hard to implement
Alternatives Considered
Oracle Responsys and Oracle Eloqua
Other Software Used
Oracle Responsys, Oracle Eloqua
Although there is a learning curve, mastering IBM WCA can prove beneficial for your email services.
Pros
- Data integration / segmentation / list management -- the opportunities to segment and test data is second to none within WCA.
- Reporting -- Silverpop has pretty much everything I need for reporting
- Comprehensive -- Silverpop has virtually every tool I need for email marketing.
Cons
- Template Builder -- Can be very buggy with certain chrome extensions (i.e. Grammarly), can be slow to refresh when making changes, no auto-save features, requires HTML knowledge.
- Clunky UI/UX -- Overall, little time-saving features (Such as recognizing when you're in a folder and wanting to save a copy in that same folder or creating queries for people who don't open emails) seem to be overlooked.
Return on Investment
- Overall it has been positive from an agency standpoint, however the lack of accessibility and ease has created a difficult learning curve for our self service customers.
Other Software Used
Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, Infusionsoft
Hopeful that Acoustic will continue to improve and evolve from what IBM was
Pros
- Setting up complex email journeys.
- Scoring models for contacts.
Cons
- Currently no simple drag and drop email template editor.
- Fragmented/not intuitive reporting-- You have to go to a few different places to piece together information.
Return on Investment
- Email fell from 57% of our traffic to just over 40% from 2018 to 2019 with the introduction to new channels, mainly SMS.
- We currently get a 34x ROI from our Acoustic investment.
Alternatives Considered
Bluecore and Klaviyo
Other Software Used
Yotpo, HiConversion
IBM Watson Campaign Automation Review
Pros
- A/B testing
- Customer journey building
- Performance insights and reporting
Cons
- Product documentation
- AI-powered Watson Assistant
- Email personalization
Return on Investment
- Lead Scoring and Grading
- Segmentation
- Budgeting
Alternatives Considered
HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot and ActiveCampaign
Other Software Used
Clearbit, DiscoverOrg, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
