Campaigner

Pros

This program was already in use when I joined the company and the learning curve was minimal. It has all the standard templates, contacts, and reports that you would need. Every time I have called customer service, they have been helpful.

Cons

Working with the templates can be really finicky. It can be difficult to get it to do what you want at times. It is also not as user friendly as MailChimp, for instance. Their reporting is there but you have to do click more time to get to it and comparing email sends can be annoying the way it's laid out.

Pros

Campaigner is really easy to use and allows you to create beautiful, visually appealing and versatile newsletters seamlessly. The design os fully customizable and works very intuitively. It’s as easy as clicking wnd dragging.

Cons

Certain email servers seem to give us a high number of bounce backs ant that’s not ideal.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Campaigner

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Campaigner

Pros

Nothing. Really it is a terrible email platform.

Cons

The design features to layout and design creative emails is horrid. Nothing is intuitive. The platform is old and couldn't even convert a design to a text version. Every email campaign had to be designed first in visual form and then again in text form. It caused terrible overtimes in building out campaigns. Also its email automation/funnel system is really laughable.

Pros

The reporting software is excellent. After analyzing the numbers after time, we have learned when is the best time to send, which formats work best, and it helped us optimize and improve the number of client opens, clicks, responses, and increase ticket sales. It works very well for that. We get more action from clients on a single email release then from all of our social media combined. It works well for us to increase our business.

Cons

1. We don't like nor use ANY of the stock templates supplied, so we write our own code in an external HTML compiler. Their stock HTML compiler is OK, but becomes tedious and lacks features. So we write our emails in an external HTML compiler, and then paste it into Campaigner. Sometimes, after a test email, we need to make changes in the external compiler. Then we repaste it into Campaigner, for reasons unknown sometimes the formatting becomes corrupted, esp when using tables. It tends to add information that we did not supply.
2. We find the 'Save' command - should be simple - very confusing. Sometimes if we worked on an email for hours, and we want to send - there is a message asking if we want to send this version or the prior version that was not saved? We never know how to respond to that. Occasionally we have unknowingly sent out the wrong version.
3. Our old email software had a 'read more' feature, which was very convenient and functional. Campaigner does not supply this function.
4. The image library is very confusing. If we use an image in our email, we would expect it to be saved in the Image Library for future use. But it is not saved. We have learned to upload all of our images to the library in advance, otherwise there are always problems.
3. The uploading of new contacts often has problems occasionally. We go through the process, and nothing happens. Then we connect with customer service, and end up sending them the files via email for uploading.

Pros

Campaigner is easy to use, and doesn't require a lot of technical knowledge to get started (although it certainly helps). Their technical support team is fantastic, though, unlike most other SAAS. They actually have people you can talk to - and they are consistently awesome.

We use it mostly for email marketing. The reporting is great, and everything (except for the 'cons' below) is pretty intuitive.

Cons

Campaigner is missing some critical functionalities that are becoming deal-breakers. Fairly simple things like integrations with Wordpress. One of the biggest gaps is the complete inability to easily create attractive sign-up forms for websites or popups. They have some templates - which are just, well, horrible.