dotdigital Engagement Cloud Software

Easy to navigate and create campaigns. Wish it worked better with magento 2.

We were able to send out more emails due to the easy use of the software. Wish other things were improved.

Pros

easy to use. makes it simple for a person who is not very technical to send emails. support is good but only if the same tech person helps you out, seems like if they are not well informed it takes forever to get the help you need. at first our plan was well structured for our needs at the moment however as you grow it seems to be way more difficult to upgrade without having to more then triple your costs. they do not cap your images, so you can add as many images and files sizes you want. other companies like bronto charge you for extra space to upload images. this can be a problem since one day you will have to go into your image archive and delete old images that were used in past emails. so if a customer has your email in the inbox and you delete your images it will display a broken link. campaign reporting is another cool feature but it seems like the company still doesn't really have a good accurate reporting as google analytics so its kinda pointless to have reporting in their platform if they do not have accurate reporting. if you are looking for a platform like this, I suggest you get a plan that allows room for growth. for promoters that like using emojis in their subject lines, this company does offer a good amount of different icons. AB testing is really easy to implement as well. Switching and managing multiple accounts is also easy to use. their mobile features are cool, but are not always coded to adjust to where things don't break or look odd in the emails.

Cons

the platform does not do a good job notifying you if your emails are failing or if data is failing to be collected from orders or customers. Can go months without knowing if something is not working.

Good email marketing platform for a reasonable price

Dotmailer helped us send much more effective marketing campaign emails. Audience segmentation is easier than before. We're now sending personalized triggered campaigns to customers. Our transactional emails are now templated and much easier to update. Emails view better on mobile devices. Company was overall pleasant to work with through onboarding process.

Pros

Full-featured email platform at a cost lower than most competitors.

UI is straightforward and functional, relatively fast. I don't have much trouble finding what I'm looking for.

Onboarding, knowledge base, and technical support meant I learned the platform pretty quickly. Technical support has always replied quickly and is usually helpful.

Program builder for triggered emails is easy to use, and powerful.

Segmentation tool works well.

Able to template and send all our transactional emails at no additional cost.

Cons

Reporting could be improved. We can't figure out how to link to our Google Analytics account.

Easyeditor for emails is OK. Would prefer something more robust with more even more features.

Sometimes pages load slow through the UI.

Excellent Email Automation for Magento

If you are looking for a simple to use email automation system with Magento, it is probably one of the top choice. However if you are handy and like to create your own logic and unique segmentation from your email interaction, it may not be sophisticated enough.

Pros

It works well if you are using Magento as your e-commerce platform. It is easy to use and the integration logic with Magento is very simple to execute. The package also comes with survey forms, SMS and ability to create landing pages.

If you are new to email automation, this system may be a good start to get you familiar with logics and scheduling.

Cons

The integration is nice to setup, however it may slow down the overall system. If you like to run various dynamic values, the system may give up (you will receive email from the admin if "your campaign has been cancelled"). The issue is there is no warning when you setup the logic if it may cause issue. It just happens when you set the schedule and let it runs.

Another issue is the survey form only allows you to send the acknowledgment to 1 email address only.

Lastly the system integration to other platform is not as fluid as to Magento . It claims if it works with Salesforce, Shopify etc. However they are limited on data integration and capabilities.

Overall, I personally enjoy Dotmailer's interface and functionalities. I think it is easy to use.

Pros

- Dotmailer's drag and drop functions
- Segments are easy to use
- Easy Landing Page editing
- Easy survey creation
- Speed has increased since I started using it nearly 2 years ago
- Customer support is fantastic

Cons

- There are many bugs. Many times when editing text from the design interface, the text spacing will be thrown off.
- I also strongly dislike the new 18one release. The percentages are not rounded unless you compare them with another campaign. I think that the number of emails delivered should be under the number of emails sent. Soft bounces and hard bounces are not as easy to find. When you click "view more" under any field in the "At a glance" menu, it just takes you to a list of people which I don't think is very useful.
- Landing page reporting tab doesn't really show you any report, just number of views
- I personally would like to see a functionality where you could see test send history so you can see who has been a sent a test and when they were sent.

Brilliant mailing platform.

Pros

I like the Dotmailer support team , they were very helpful while we first began using this solution and they have been helpful at every step during these past few months.As a sales and marketing specialist ; I was able to reference the Dotmailer support team approach to my team ,as an example of how to provide effective product support to users.
I have got very little knowledge of html and I have been able to use this solution to create newsletters still ,all thanks to their easy editor which removes the need to leverage on a programming background to get work done. I must admit though ,that for my marketing colleagues who have got a better programming knowledge ; they create better newsletter templates than I do.
It has an high email delivery ratio and we are able to monitor the number of recipients who opened our newsletter emails.

Cons

Dotmailer pricing is on the high side when compared with substitute products.However , with the amount of quality support we have gotten so far ; it does not matter ,as far as it keeps getting the job done for us.

As a new user of the Dotmailer software, I quickly found that it is user-friendly and robust .

I was quickly able to build my skill in creation of emails, reach a wider audience, and push relevant content to the email list.

Pros

I enjoy the drag-and-drop campaign builder and segmentation that are offered, I find that our organization can go back regularly to templates and rebuild similarly styled emails. I also find that Dotmailer helps us reach our audience in the most sophisticated way through Programs that are uniquely tailored to the email subscriber.

Cons

I would like for there to be a few tweaks to the address book and segment functionality. I feel in some ways the system requires you to choose one or the other, when I'd like to be able to use a segment vs. an address book. I also would like it to be easier to select campaigns in the segment builder-- i.e. pin selected campaigns at the top.

It's only as powerful as your ability to use it

Originally, we thought it was terrible. We wanted to quit and felt it was too expensive. Oddly - and by accident - we found where all of these people were signing up to subscribe to our newsletter and we didn't know it. We are small and reliant on one person to know how to do those things and it was eye opening for us. As soon as we figured out what was going on, both my husband and I began to play with it a little more and enjoyed coming up with campaigns and ideas. The power is really knowing the ins and outs of the application.

Pros

For us (small online retailer), we love the ability to craft targeted emails based on what the customer is buying or is sitting in their cart. We were also able to use it to ask customers for business and product reviews.

Cons

I would like the Segment creation to be a little more intuitive. If I want to send a targeted group of customers an email to remind them to review, the field you use is confusing and you can just say - pick x group who purchased 7 days ago, you have to do something like 7 days but exclude those 6 days or fewer. I was also using last purchase date as suggested by support but when I spoke to our account manager it was a completely different field.

Best Emailing Software

Pros

The ease of use. Setting up the design of emails is super easy compared to other softwares I've used. When I used Bronto Iwould have to set up the template using code. But on dotmailer I can easily drag and drop photos and text wherever I please and can quickly adjust colors, boarders, and spacing. It also has unique dynamic content options allowing you to pull things from your site and display them on the email. My favorite dynamic content feature is how you are able to have images/text change depending on who is opening the email. I often would send out offers with domestic only shipping and a separate one for international shipping, but using dotmailer I can have these both in the same email but depending on where I customer is located they see the offer relevant to them.

Cons

The only thing I dislike about Dotmailer is that when sending an email to a specific group of contacts you are unable to choose another group of contacts to exclude from the send. (So overlapping contacts won't receive an email)

Create great-looking responsive emails without knowing CSS/HTML

Pros

Don't know CSS? HTML a little rusty? No problem. The email editor in dotmailer will let you create gorgeous, personalized, responsive emails with an easy drag-and-drop interface. I should qualify all of this by saying that we purchased the Silver package for custom email template first, and developed all future emails and templates from that starting point.
Favorite feature: the ability to save sections of any email and then drag and drop them into future emails. Other things you will love: robust reporting, highly visual interface for automation workflows and quick and simple personalization.
If you primarily need a tool for email (including automation), I don't think you will find a better platform.

Cons

At the time we were using it, you really needed to integrate with your own CRM. The built in CRM features were primarily useful for personalizing user info tokens like name and company. If you wanted to personalize based on the last page the user "liked," you were out of luck. It's possible that's changed.
Customer service was a little spotty at times.

Works great for my marketing team!

This is the end all be all of email campaign management for my medium sized company. We use Dot Digital every single day to track our new leads and put them through our nurture cycle. I can whole heartedly say that without this platform my marketing team would be lost. If you are looking for a way to manage your address books and email campaigns this is where you should stop your search.

Pros

The ability to track your email campaigns
Super easy to use overall
Ranking leads by email engagement has been critical to our business
The ability to export the lists to Excell make marketing meetings a breeze
Really great for managing address books and targeting segments

Cons

When you export the data to excel it exports the file to a .csv by default and in this scenario it is possible that you will lose data more often than if the file were exported as .xls file. However, this seems like a very simple fix and may simply be dependent upon user preference and the software your company works with outside of Dot Digital.

Comprehensive feature set, great upgrade from Chimp!

Magento integration, segmentation and advanced subscriber targeting.

Pros

The Magento integration is terrific, you can really give your subscribers email offers tailored to their interests. That's such a crucial part of email marketing. The added bonus of the surveys and module/opt-in forms are amazing for a product in this price range. Listrak is charging one of my clients 20k/yr extra for some of the features baked into Dotmailer. I'll be moving them over to DM soon.

Cons

Once in a while I have some integration issues or glitches but support has been very responsive. Most of the common featureset works flawlessly.

A MUST BUY SOFTWARE!

The landing page builder makes it really easy to build nicely designed landing pages that helps our lead generation campaigns. We are utilizing DotMailer to market to the emails we gather at events which we were unable to reach before.

Pros

The interface design is clean and organized making it easy to find what you're looking for. Dotmailer s extremely flexible, it allows creating complex layouts on emails without sacrificing client cross-compatibility too much. The best feature offered by Dotmailer is Email Automation Programs. My organization was able to set up a Welcome email series for different people. The easy editor makes creating emails fun. Great customer service from support. the cost is extremely fair and the account managers are really great.

Cons

Would like to be able to choose a group to send to while at the same time choosing another group to not send to so that any overlapping emails would not get the email. Other than this, NONE. A MUST BUY!

Easy to Use Editor, Endless Custom Targeting Options

Pros

I love the Easy Editor. That is where I work the most creating the visual aspects of the campaign so this is really important to me. Moving things around is very intuitive and yet allows for complex designs. I love that I can create personal building blocks, so that I can duplicate a design from one campaign to the next without having to redo everything. It makes your own content reusable.

Cons

The revenue reporting is buried in the reports. In other email software, it's right up there with opens, clicks, etc. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many people opened my email if I can't see how much revenue the campaign made. Other email software shows revenue much better.

Plays well with Magento 2 and is relatively inexpensive but lacks bells & whistles other ESPs have

for basic blast campaigns it works fine and integrates pretty easily with Magento.

Pros

Integrates well with Magento 2, relatively straightforward workflow tool and WYSIWIG email editing. Creating custom segments is fairly straightforward too.

Cons

Needs better personalization options. Lacks machine learning for customer segments & LTV tools which other ESPs like Listrak and Emarsys have. Very poor implementation of time-of-day optimization feature -- you still can't schedule an optimized send in advance which makes the feature essentially useless in practice.

We love Dotmailer. It's easy to use, cost-effective, and has the features that benefit our company.

Pros

List segmentation and data gathering make it easy for us to target the people who are most likely to buy. The development team works hard to continuously improve the platform, so there are lots of new features with each release, so it feels like it's never getting stagnant or underperforming from other platforms on the market.

Cons

My only disappointment was in onboarding we weren't brought up to speed on best practices in "warming up" our list, so we destroyed our sender reputation, had to start over, and still probably didn't do it quite right. Intense training upfront on this subject would be most helpful to new users.

Very pleasent

Pros

easy to use email design feature. I can design and personalize my emails without the support of a creative department.

Cons

testing features. I would like to perform a 50/50 split on the entire mailing effort. Dotmailer only has an A/B test split up to a certain percentage, then the winning effort is sent to remainder of list. I know there are ways around this but they are not convenient. Give an option to split 100% of the entire list.

Have not used to the full extent, but full of capabilities

Pros

The most used function of dotmailer for our organization currently is the automation. Using Facebook primarily for leads, it is nice that we can link up these systems to hit leads in their email right when we get them. We are going to start using dotmailer for newsletters and such, but this requires a little more learning on their site which I have just not had time to do yet. I do like designing emails in dotmailer, and once you have a basic format, it is pretty seamless.

Cons

It does take a little time to learn. We originally got dotmailer because it was recommend by a consultant we were working with. We are no longer working with this consultant, so the system was passed onto me. Since I was not working with it in the beginning, there was a learners curve in adjusting to a new email system. I have not yet set up our website leads to automatically go into the dotmailer system as it seems like this can be a process that might take a little more time. I wish dotmailer paired a little easier with CRMs and other sites, such as word press, just to save a little time.

Good software spoilt by arrogant company attitude

Dotmailer used to be great software, leading the way with WYSIWYG editors and simple automation and segmentation tools. Over the past 2-3 years, others have caught up and overtaken Dotmailer. Their response is to focus on large companies with big budgets, as a result of which they have priced themselves out of the market for smaller businesses. When dealing with anyone except tech support, the attitude is often extremely arrogant and unhelpful. There's other software available that does the same thing, with better support.

Pros

Easy to use, intuitive interface
Great features - although many of these are very expensive add-ons
Automation
Superb technical support

Cons

Unhelpful and incompetent client managers
Very expensive compared to similar products
Lack of interest in SMEs
Unwillingness to write connectors to other software packages

I've been a DotMailer user for years, and have found this system to be one of the most reliable.

Pros

Ease of use, and reliability. I like the automation features. Support is readily available. Well priced.

Cons

I'd like an easier way to resubscribe people from the unsubscribed list. We have people forget they unsubscribed, and getting them back into the system is a lot of work. Also, we're having issues on how emails look when we forward them. The formatting gets all wonky.

Great

Increase in orders

Pros

Flexibility, ease of use. Drag and drop editor makes it easy to get new people up and running with making email content for us. Program builder is pretty sick also.

Cons

Currently? I want the WebInsights record to track the ID of the products viewed, and give me a DM variable to get with an Magento2 EDC link soooo i can send dynamic browser abandonment emails like the big boys. Trying to come with with a hacky way to do this... but keep running into road blocks.