Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring) Erfahrungen

Full-featured marketing automation on a budget

Kommentare: Prioritizing leads for Salesforce, collecting customer feedback, and better tracking the effectiveness of marketing efforts are the key things we get out of SharpSpring. We are able to collect leads using SharpSpring forms and then deliver them to the right salesperson using their visual workflow tools. We can make lists and campaigns based on ANY criteria in the system, which is super impressive. The Life of the Lead is a revelation: Being able to see all digital interactions of our customers is a complete game-changer for Sales. With Life of the Lead, Sales is more informed and can take on calls armed with the right information to best serve the customer.

Vorteile:

The support is top-notch. They go above and beyond to ensure all questions are answered. If there is a key feature needed in the software, they'll work to make sure that you get that feature or have a workaround. They respond quickly, and they are incredibly knowledgeable. It's hard to list just one thing I like best! It's the most competitively-priced tool on the market... and it's a fraction of the cost of nearly any other marketing automation tool on the market.

Nachteile:

With their constant upgrades, SharpSpring occasionally can be a bit buggy while features get ironed out. Nearly all issues have easy workarounds, and the fixes come fast. It's a minor quibble for a service that is basically as good as it gets.

A better option to Hubspot and other Marketing Automation solutions

Kommentare: We like the platform as we can track online and email interactions with prospects, customers and partners. This helps us with qualifying lead generation and tracking the stickiness of campaigns. The training of SharpSpring was challenging but we were able to muddle through and figure out a lot of stuff on our own. Customer support has also been great when they are able to help with issues that may arise.

Vorteile:

We like the fact it is much cheaper in cost as compared to HubSpot and other marketing automation platforms. The ease of using the platform has made it easy to early adoption of the end users and we are able to fully track our MQL and ROI.

Nachteile:

SharpSpring has an extremely high demand on email accuracy rate of 98% so quite often we get suspended due to bounced back emails. Sometimes it is difficult to have an almost 100% list when people leave companies. We have as a solution, pay for 3rd party email checker services,to help mitigate this and we also send a larger portion of emails though mailchimp.

Review

Kommentare: Started out fine until we realized that all the report data within SharpSpring was false. We understand that data accountability is an issue in the marketing automation industry as a whole, but SharpSpring is especially terrible at this. The fact that upper management in IT recognizes that email report data is different between what's in SharpSpring email reports, what's in SharpSpring Life Of The Lead, and what's in the exported email report excel list and subsequently admits that none of it is entirely correct is beyond me. The software is meant to provide genuinely insightful feedback to track user activity and potential conversions, however, the development team.

Vorteile:

Marketing automation features are very helpful.

Nachteile:

- There is no escalation process for customer support requests that are above a customer support reps expertise - Email report data is BS and one of the heads of IT at SharpSpring admitted it. The report data within SS differs from the data exported; the excel file has duplicate headline titles with different meanings/data; email data is shit - we sent test emails internally and didn't open them and it shows we opened them 3 times in SS and 4 times in the exported report - Life of the Lead is the most valuable data within SS and yet you cannot automate based on any of it - Life Of The Lead duplicates email "opens" and "clicks" based on how many people are in the chain, giving a false view of engagement from customers - Email clicks are a load of BS - it shows that emails were opened and every link clicked within 10 seconds of sending because of spam bots/filters. SharpSpring doesn't filter this data out, so we can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not. "Can't we export the excel sheet and do that filtering ourselves?" Nope - as stated before, one of the head IT guys at SharpSpring validated our concerns that the excel email report is indeed, shit data. None of it is usable - Rather than creating a backlog of needed updates and releasing them as a batch update on non-business-hours, SharpSpring product development teams push updates during work hours, breaking crucial functionality for 3+ hours/week, leaving our sales staff twiddling thumbs and complaining.

Great Solution for a Small Agency

Kommentare: It has been a great enabler for our business and has really become and extension of our capability that we deliver our clients

Vorteile:

We love the fact that we can white label the product and resell to our clients. It adds a new source of recurring revenue for our business that we would not have without this capability

Nachteile:

We’ve had some challenges setting up billing for our managed client accounts - that said, the SharpSpring team has been helpful and very responsive in sorting out our challenges.

The marketing automation choice when value-for-money matters

Kommentare: We moved from HubSpot to SharpSpring primarily because of the price: HubSpot can be very expensive, particularly if you need to use the CRM and marketing capabilities. HubSpot is the market leader in usability and reporting (in my opinion) so we did notice a difference when moving to SharpSpring, but for 95% of the activities we undertake SharpSpring is at least as good as HubSpot and often better. The grouping of landing pages into funnels is one example of some great SharpSpring functionality that helps make your campaigns more effective.

Vorteile:

SharpSpring does everything you would expect at a competitive price. The tool is a very capable marketing automation system, with good email and automation capabilities, as well as some great tracking and social media features.

Nachteile:

Reporting is good, but not as good as the best (which is HubSpot in my opinion). Although the capabilities don't hold us back, it would be nice to be able to have easy ways to measure the performance of landing pages/funnels.

SharpSpring makes my life easier.

Kommentare: It's a great platform, and the support team has been very responsive with any questions we've had over the last few years. The onboarding process was great and we never felt alone in learning how to use it. I also like the regular webinars and learning opportunities that SharpSpring hosts for marketers/agencies.

Vorteile:

The email builder, landing page builder and form builder are all straightforward and fairly easy to learn. There are also help/support articles for pretty much anything I need help with or get stuck on. The "life of the lead" view is helpful to see a contact's interactions with our brand.

Nachteile:

The email and landing page builders offer a lot of flexibility in layout/design, but sometimes they are a bit too restrictive in terms of moving elements around.

SharpSpring is the Best of the Best

Kommentare: My overall experience with SharpSpring has been wonderful! While the platform still has kinks to work out (what platform doesn't?), their customer service is amazing and they move at a rate unseen by others to make the platform better every day. I highly recommend them not just for their platform, but their people are friendly as well.

Vorteile:

I really enjoy the various features that are available within the platform! It allows us to quickly and easily identify our prospects, capture their information on the website, and then market to them in a way that is meaningful and generates new business for us.

Nachteile:

In their mission to make their platform compete, they often focus on getting new features out quickly but then have to go back and update later. I've seen this happen for them with tools like Video Calling, which became quickly available due to COVID-19 but lacks the robustness of other dedicated video platforms that I would imagine most companies already use.

SharpSpring a full marketing automation platform everyone

Kommentare: Our experience with Sharpspring has been very satisfactory, since it gives us control over each client from the moment they are born as a lead until they become a client. has given us to reduce response time to a client and have better control of all actions taken with them through Automation

Vorteile:

Powerful tools for lead generation to pretty good customer management, tons of options to personalize a lot of aspect of the company. very good tools for building email marketing and landing pages with out third parties

Nachteile:

I think one point where sharpspring lose flexibility is on landing page creations, how designer we need more tools for layout.

SharpSpring Great Platform With Amazing Support

Kommentare: Overall the platform is powerful at a great price, and the team at SharpSpring wants you to succeed, and that shows in their support, courses, documentation, and forums. Not only does SharpSpring benefit Right to Evolve internally, but our clients and the work we do see the benefits as well.

Vorteile:

SharpSpring has features to create marketing operations and track those campaigns either manually or automatically. Considering I can tie all the potential avenues of a campaign into one spot and see how users interact with is a great win. At a glance, it is essential to read the data and make the right decisions; SharpSpring brings all the data to one platform. It makes work more enjoyable that we can create a single campaign with a list of contacts, email templates, unique forms, dynamic pages, trackable media, automation, and analytics in one spot. Not to mention, once we create this base campaign and all its numerous pieces, I can then quickly use all the parts as a template to do another or a third, and so on. Making it very efficient over time. SharpSpring has a lot of features, but I am thrilled with our CRM, email marketing, ads, funnels, all in one location. All this and the support team have been top-notch every step of the way. I also like to learn myself, which they provide via courses, updated videos, and documents that my team and I can reference.

Nachteile:

Interface and design consistency are my two significant cons for this platform. Like most, once you know the platform and its interface, you can be very successful. No difference here except that the design process between creating emails, pages, and forms all have their unique process. I believe it would improve user efficiency if the page and email creator, for instance, had a standard procedure and the same layout of tools. The platform has a lot of features with more coming, so you have to know where all the pieces are between the settings, marketing, and sales menu layout.

Sharp Spring - A great email marketing tool and more!

Kommentare: SharpSpring is a complete email marketing tool that we use to reach out to clients and market to new leads. We use the automation tools to create drip campaigns and re-marketing campaigns for potential leads. We also use the page builder to build simple landing pages and sales funnels. The contact manager has the ability to mange our list of 30,000+ without any extra costs. It used by both our sales teams and client care teams to help the business grow. As a marketer I use SharpSpring to create campaigns that convert to sales and retention.

Vorteile:

SharpSpring is a great tool for small to mid range companies looking to build email marketing campaigns. It has great templates which allow you to create emails that look great and are functional sales tools. There are also great automation tools for drip campaigns and re-targeting.

Nachteile:

The visual email builder can be finicky at times, resulting in editing directly in the code. If you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable formatting HTML code it can be overwhelming. Also, the social media tools are weak. It would be nice if I could schedule and post content directly from SharpSpring.

Sophisticated yet easy-to-use platform

Kommentare: I am using SharpSpring across my entire client bases to generate and nurture leads, manage website inquiries and analytics and monitor and post across social media channels.

Vorteile:

While the functionality is extremely powerful, SharpSpring itself is easy-to-use. Like any software, there is an initial training period where you have to get comfortable with the platform, but I found it pretty intuitive, especially after participating in the on-boarding training classes. The best thing about the software is the results it's generating for my clients. Our email marketing campaigns have been extraordinarily successful and the reporting functionality makes it easy to demonstrate these results to our clients.

Nachteile:

I've been very satisfied with the software and don't have any complaints. One wish-list item would be for SharpSpring to integrate with survey tools so I could seamlessly administer campaigns requesting customer feedback.

A lucrative alternative to other marketing automation platforms.

Kommentare: We use SharpSpring in two ways: to help generate and manage our leads to aid in our company business development efforts and to sell/offer the service to our clients to help them do the same. Currently, our digital marketers, account executives and business development teammates use the platform. SharpSpring helps us keep a close eye on where prospects are in their purchase journey.

Vorteile:

The pricing model is favorable. We were able to onboard 2-3 clients almost immediately as compared to really struggling trying to sell HubSpot. The sightline on data and our sales pipeline is good and shows us that we are seeing value (however, our company needs to do more on our end to really leverage the tool).

Nachteile:

We haven't found a use for the content calendar function, compared to other methods we use. Lead scoring could be improved.

My Secret Weapon

Kommentare: I love this product so much that I take it with me from role to role -- and it is always the legacy that I leave behind. It allows me to make a huge impact in a short period of time.

Vorteile:

For several years now, SharpSpring has been my secret weapon. I work largely with educational, startup, and nonprofit ventures - so we are always resource constrained. SharpSpring's platform allows me to leverage a small (or solo) shop into something of competitive size, then scale up as we grow. And it doesn't break the bank. When you're working with a skeletal or non-existent team, the ease of use and customer support become critical: SharpSpring always "wows" me on this. Plus, the automation lets me optimize the resources I have while the intelligence tools keep me from wasting time on projects with low ROI. SharpSpring delivers the functionality that gets me noticed by the higher ups. (In one role, we doubled all major KPIs within a year's time.) I couldn't do my job without it!

Nachteile:

Marketing Intelligence software is complex and the learning curve can be challenging, even with great support. Also, not everything in SharpSpring is where I expect it to be - I often use the chat support function to find tools. Oh, and if you are West Coast, start your SharpSpring projects early as chat support wanes after 3pm Pacific due to the company being headquartered in Florida.

Best ROI for Small Medium Sized Business

Kommentare: We are one of the earliest SharpSpring agencies and users. We selected SharpSpring for its price/performance for SMB companies. We have worked extensively with HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot and others - but for small businesses, it is hard to beat the full-stack solution and feature set in SharpSpring.

Vorteile:

Complete integrated tech stack for marketing and sales that includes the core functionality a business needs to execute full-funnel marketing and sales campaigns and manage the sales pipeline.

Nachteile:

SmartMail provides 1:1 direct IMAP email, but it would be nice if there was a sales-driven email automation feature for low volume 1:1 emails to prospects.

Great Marketing Automation Software Alternative for Agencies

Kommentare: The onboarding experience was easy and helpful. They helped convert our old database into ready to import SharpSpring csv. Once we were onboarded the team helped us implement other features. As previously stated, their live chat and support is so far unmatched by any other CRM tool i've used.

Vorteile:

The software is easy to use and is constantly being updated with new features. Within our first year of using the tool, at least 4 new features were rolled out, all of which were useful. Their live support is great. They are thorough and they followup. There have been several instances where the team has followed up after the fact to check in and see if additional support was needed

Nachteile:

I would love more training. The videos are good and useful, but would love more virtual webinars or if being a partner allowed for more 1-on-1 type training. I also wish some of the CRM fields had more customization instead of being default/standard.

Used as point solution with all the potential of an enterprise platform

Kommentare: The interaction with customers has improved a lot since we started using SharpSpring's marketing automation, we have a better vision of the various client profiles that we've interaction with, and we've been able to focus on every single one of them with a more mindful approach. The chatbot helped to get more leads because we discovered that visitors feel more open to sharing their lead information with a more dynamic tool than a form per example.

Vorteile:

It has a lot of features and they keep adding new ones. From only one platform I'm able to keep track of my client's websites, create the forms, and manage the submissions, leads can schedule meetings with specialists without having to wait (or to interact with another human being) and I can keep track of everything with the help of the Life of the Lead. The automations available are a big deal as well, everybody in the team is aware of their responsibilities and the platform helps them never forget to follow-up.

Nachteile:

The email builder could use some improvements, maybe something more intuitive, more templates, more flexibility while making changes. Also, de contact manager is still kinda coarse, should work more like a database and not only as a display, it could be more flexible. And allow to bulk-import contacts with no emails could be huge.

Great Value, Functionality, and Support

Kommentare: SharpSpring allowed us to enter the email marketing services market in a way that was easy and scalable. Their support is one of the best I've seen in a software company. We have enjoyed the relationship and appreciate the robust capabilities of the platform.

Vorteile:

We manage a wide range of clients using SharpSpring, and you can not beat the cost and functionality delivered in a mid-high level automation platform - one that continues to evolve and grow.

Nachteile:

We have really had no complaints with SharpSpring over the past 5 years we have been using it for ourselves and our clients.

SharpSpring as our CRM

Kommentare: SharpSpring listens to its clients and provides an easy to use CRM. When I have a question, they have the answer! I enjoy my CRM experience with SharpSpring.

Vorteile:

SharpSpring is extremely user friendly. It allows for automation through the entire sales funnel. From its Social Media capabilities to its impactful email marketing feature, SharpSpring improves our productivity from management to rep usage!

Nachteile:

In doing research, there was supposed to be an automatic integration with Qwilr. We have found that is not the case.

Sharpspring is the best marketing automation tool for little, medium and big business.

Kommentare: Overall Sharpspring is the best marketing automation and CRM software I used so far. It outperforms any other software I know and worked.

Vorteile:

Sharpspring has an easy interface and do a great integration between marketing automation and CRM, helping these teams to work without any gaps, fully integrated. Reports are very easy to generate and personalize.

Nachteile:

The Email designer and Landing Pages Designer is not the ideal yet, is a little difficult to use. Other problem is the incapacity to separate invoices and charges to my clients in Brasil. I need to receive from my clients separately and pay for all Sharpspring licences.

Great for an agency, but trying to get clients involved is next to impossible.

Kommentare: We joined the SS family mainly as a means of sending automated drip marketing emails on behalf of our clients, which it does well. We also like being able to see the life of every individual lead directly within the program. It lets us know where our strongest leads lie and where we need to do better. All in all, it gets the job done despite the interface headaches we frequently encounter.

Vorteile:

There are a lot of features. Almost too many, actually. I can't imagine a company that could possibly use all of them successfully. Regardless, it's nice to know the option is there if a situation arises in which a certain feature becomes useful. My favorite function/feature has to be the lead tracking system. I love being able to see every interaction each lead has with my client's business. The automated actions on top of that in response to customer interaction is the main reason we use the software. It makes drip email campaigns a breeze. I like that it tracks conversions as well (although you have to set it up to do so which isn't necessarily the easiest process ever). All in all, though, it does the job we need it to do.

Nachteile:

The SharpSpring system is VERY non-intuitive for non-marketers (and heck, even for marketers sometimes). There are just too many ways you can screw up and have to start an email, action, or workflow completely over again. We have several clients who we act as their entire marketing department for and trying to get their sales representatives to use the system the way it's intended is next to impossible. They just don't understand it or even it's purpose, even after we've done training after training after training with them. We've even had SS support do training directly with them, to no avail. I ended up creating my OWN versions of step-by-step tutorials for our clients just to make things easier to understand. The other major drawback is it's way too easy to get "blacklisted" (aka hit spamtraps and honeypots), which I realize is a problem with email marketing in general, but SS doesn't have enough safeguards in place for preventing this type of situation. We have one client who likes to import their email lists in from an on-site wifi sign-on system, which inevitably leads to poor list quality regardless of how many safeguards (email weed-out) parameters we put in place ourselves. Getting on SS's blacklist is pretty much the worst thing that can happen because you still have to pay for the service even though you can't use it until your un-blacklisted, which can take a while. Lastly, their email-design interface is terrible and trick to navigate.

An Invaluable Tool, Though Not Perfect

Kommentare: We've been using SharpSpring for nearly a year at our agency, and have used almost every feature of it (SalesForce integration, automated workflows, API for custom reporting, full-on CRM, etc.). We love SharpSpring. In fact, in the past few months, SharpSpring has been responsible for helping us close nearly one million dollars in new business. As a B2B tool, the fact that we can see what businesses are browsing our site and reach out to them even if they don't submit a form is invaluable, and worth 10x cost. Every client we bring in gets put on the platform, and it's an indispensible part to growing their business. We are able to verify leads which instills confidence in our reporting, but also helps us evaluate the quality of leads and ROI through lead scoring and campaign assignments. We've used SharpSpring as white-labeled companion and even migrated some clients over to use it as their CRM. It's extremely versatile. SharpSpring's breadth of tools means you could be using it for a year and still not have used some of its features to the fullest of their ability (Dynamic Emails, Dynamic Web Content), and that's great... but it is also the cause of some frustration, as they sometimes rush out products to tout they have a new product, but that product will still feel very "beta" in nature. When dynamic landing pages were introduced we tried to use it for two weeks, and there was a bug that would wipe out whatever changes you made. We eventually abandoned using that tool, but came back several months later and it worked as it should have. The flip side of this is that SharpSpring is constantly working to improve. It is not a platform that rests on its laurels. You can also submit a feature or improvement to their team directly. Anytime we have had an issue, Customer Support has been great. Their agents have resolved our numerous issues quickly, whether its answering a quick implementation question or testing bugs for a larger issue. Overall, SharpSpring has been an integral tool to both our agency's growth but our clients' growth. And, though new tools sometimes feel buggy, we can easily overlook it due to the value it provides us.

Vorteile:

Being able to leverage anonymous web user data to create actionable insights way before they fill a form out is invaluable. For an agency/B2B company, it is the most reliable new lead generator of any tool out there.

Nachteile:

New features roll out and feel like they should still be in beta. It has a few quirks like a lack of global date range filter that don't necessarily hinder reporting/analysis but are a slight inconvenience.

I used to love SharpSpring (why I left)

Kommentare: Strong start, VERY disappointed with recent billing decisions and the rate increase. (Just because you want to buy a company doesn't mean I want to pay for it)

Vorteile:

SharpSpring approached me with a very interesting mailer. It was enough to get my attention and learn who they were and what they did. After they bought my crew lunch and I sat through a presentation I decided to join. The minimum monthly bought me 3 accounts plus a free one for my agency. There are a lot of features in SharpSpring and they appear to be adding more, which is nice. They represent themselves as marketing automation for agencies. They offer a lot of white labeling which is a requirement for me when working with 3rd party softwares.

Nachteile:

Late 2019 it was announced that SS would change their billing policies to require that THEY bill my clients. WAIT, WHAT? You're a whitelabeled SaaS service, why the **** would YOU bill MY clients. That's the opposite of the point. Since I haven't set up my clients in their billing interface they've locked me out of my account. And when I went to cancel they reminded me of the 30 days cancellation notice I'm required to give. OH, AND, they decided to up the rate $75/account. I'm so unhappy with where they're going as a company I can't even consider the new features that they're bringing in.

Easy to use, lots of customization and excellent support

Kommentare: We used to have a very simple automated message that sent to all inquiries - and it was the same message regardless of the inquirer or location. Now, we're able to customize the response based on who is inquiring - and the location and send them important brochures and information relative to a specific location. SharpSpring has improved our tracking --moving us from binders stuffed with papers to digital data tied to campaigns. It was a big step for our company and despite early resistance, people are really buying into it now that they are using it.

Vorteile:

The system is easy to use -from training to the online help docs (i.e., self-training) - to the excellent support team, I feel very confident when using the system and making modifications. I know if I can't figure out how to do something I want to do - I can either jump on live chat or call support and someone will happily help me figure it out.

Nachteile:

Reporting capabilities are still growing. They recently launched a new reporting dashboard with canned "custom" reports but I would like the idea to select the variables myself and run a report on my data - including my custom fields. If the fields exist, I'd like to run reports on them. I have figured out, however, that, I can export a lot into excel and create my own reports when needed.

SharpSpring is Coming Up The Ranks for Our Automation & Analytics!

Vorteile:

At first, I was hesitant to jump on board with SharpSpring as I have used the bulkier parent company software from Constant Contact and did not love... I thought this would be similar and I was already familiar with HubSpot's array of marketing automation applications; however, I was a little wrong! I still prefer HubSpot for larger, more profitable or sizable I guess I should say, companies. For my non-profit and social enterprise ventures, however, it is actually very much aligned to the effectiveness as the aforementioned competitor but for half the price. I like that I can get detailed analytics while setting up true smart content triggers for pre-existing materials in a way that makes sense and is strategic for my audience at the right time in the right way.

Nachteile:

The interface to me feels almost too simplistic as if it is dumbed down, even aesthetics wise. I am big on the look and feel of a system, especially if I'm going to be in it regularly. Also the social media capabilities and deeper, detailed analytics for lead management and creation at the top of the marketing funnel (or circulating flywheel if you're into more "modern times" industry lingo) are not up to snuff in comparison to HubSpot. But in comparison to the rest of the product market, SharpSpring is up there within the ranks!

More stable solutions exist

Kommentare: overall application works OK, however, the non operational automations (workflows that do not fire, automated lists that do not self-populate) make the use of this application frustrating and annoying. If it were up to me, I would migrate away to a more stable/solid digital marketing application... To be fair, there is no perfect software solution and as a user we must expect "odditites". Of all the software solutions we have used, SharpSpring has the most bugs and "oddities" of the lot...

Vorteile:

Easy to use Great support team - tickets are handled in a timely fashion Easy to implement Great Documentation Great for small, uncomplicated implementations - If your implementation will involve more complex requirements and/or CRM functionalities, stay away from SharpSpring CRM works Ok

Nachteile:

Automations are not always automatic - work flows sometimes do not work, expect to do manual work. List segmentations do not always populate automatically - automated lists do not alwys self populate according to their rules Custom reports are not custom (you cannot filter by custom fields, for example) Reporting in SharpSpring is very poor It is easier to export information to Excel to generate useful reports Social functionalities are very shallow