Vertical Response Review 2012
We wrote this Vertical Response Review based on our extensive testing of their email marketing software. If you don’t agree with this review of Vertical Response or if you have already used their software, please provide your comments at the bottom of the page.
Vertical Response Rating
Features: 3 out of 5
Vertical Response offers basic email marketing features.
It is easy to create webpage sign up forms and you can customize them in terms of changing colors,
background, fonts etc., but they don’t get fancier than that. Vertical Response does offer some other neat features, like 25MB free image storage and ROOST – an application that lets you easily manage your social media accounts free. The platform is integrated with your email application, so you can handle your email marketing and social media all at the same place. It also generates free suggested content. In addition to email marketing, you can also use their online survey and post card mailings tools for off-line marketing. You don’t have to purchase all the features together. The regular tracking tools are available with easy to view formats. Their list management tool is also robust. Just like other providers, Vertical Response also offers social media integration.
Salesforce and Google Analytics integration are also useful features if are using these applications already. A distinct feature offered by Vertical Response is their Calendar tool which lets you add and see at a glance which email campaigns you created and sent in addition to personal events.
However, if you are looking for advanced features like, autoresponder, video email marketing, iphone application etc.,
then you should consider another provider.
Vertical Response Calendar Tool
Price: 5 out of 5
Vertical Response offers a choice between post-paid and pre-paid plans. The post-paid plans are competitive. The pre-paid plans cost more but you don’t have to buy any minimum email credits and there are no contracts. So if you are sending out an email campaign once a month or once a year, pre-paid plans work out to be a good deal. A free trial is available for 30 days that allows you to send 100 emails.
The same is true with the post card mailing plans and online surveys. If you want to send 10 post cards to your prospects, you can design it online with their easy to use tools, pay for it at maximum around $0.98 per card and they will print them and mail them out for you. If you are sending more cards, then the rates also go down.
Vertical Response offers a generous plan for Non-Profit organizations i.e. 10K emails free per month and if they buy more, a 15% discount is also available.
Deliverability: 3 out of 5
This score will give you an idea about whether your messages will make it to the inbox if your subscribers. The higher the score, the better are the chances. Based on the our investigation after checking a bunch of their IP addresses, their score is mostly medium and some of them are high on a third party website. Something like this is normal for high volume senders For you, it means that you don’t really need to be concerned, however they do need to work on improving them.
Deliverability Score for an IP Address of Vertical Response
Newsletter Creation: 4 out of 5
With Vertical Response, you can use either an easy to use email wizard, use your own template or simply use a “fixed” template (with the ability to change contents and images), to create your newsletters. With the fixed template you can’t adjust the length of the email, however you can use the email wizard feature for that purpose which is as good as Constant Contact’s email editor. The only missing feature is “Spam Check”, so you can’t tell in advance whether your email is spam-friendly or not. However, they will most likely let you know before your newsletter is distributed to your database.
Vertical Response’s email creation tool forces you to preview the text only and HTML version of your newsletter before you can send it out. It also forces you to send a test email to yourself. All of these steps ensure that you never send out a newsletter by accident to your subscribers, which is half-complete or contains errors.
Vertical Response Email Wizard
Ease of Use: 4 out of 5
Vertical Response has an easy to use interface and you may have to go through a few tutorials in case you are having troubles understanding something.
Support: 4 out of 5
Vertical Response offers offers live chat, phone support (available 7 days a week until 5 pm PST.), email support and online tutorials. It would be nice if they could also provide transcripts for each video tutorial in case somebody does not want to watch the full video tutorial.
Conclusion:
CONS:
Vertical Response does not offer autoresponder. If you plan to send automated series of emails, then you’ll need to look for another service, however if you only want to send out email broadcasts, then Vertical Response could be the right email software for you. There is no automated spam check feature while creating newsletters. Deliverability is medium to high which is acceptable.
PROS:
Vertical Response is a great tool for sending email broadcasts. You can easily manage your social media accounts and do email marketing all from one single platform. They also offer 75000 free stock images that you can use in your email newsletters and insert them via the email editor. Inserting different images relevant to your email topic can help you create unique looking email newsletters. Images are also able to catch people’s attention which is a great advantage.
Vertical Response is a people-friendly company. They are constantly evolving. The pricing is also reasonable. We recommend that you given them a try first by sending out a few emails and see if you like them.