Has your current Email Service Provider lived up to all of its promises? When it comes to email automation solutions, marketers frequently adopt the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, accepting subpar platforms that fail to meet their needs and prevent them from achieving the success their email campaigns are capable of.
Given the complexity of navigating the competitive landscape of lifecycle marketing platforms, marketers often find it a daunting task to identify the optimal solution for their needs that enables them to achieve their business goals.
Let’s dive into some frequent challenges we hear about—and if you’re having a similar experience, then it may be time to upgrade to the future of lifecycle marketing. Amidst the sea of promises, it’s crucial to figure out which platform truly delivers on its commitments. We’ll also walk through Adestra’s unparalleled strengths, empowering email-driven organizations to achieve remarkable results and ROI from their email programs.
1. User Experience & Customisability
No matter your role, having a responsive, user-friendly platform is essential to efficiently create beautifully designed emails. Furthermore, the email experience must be pleasant for your recipients, adaptable for mobile views, for example. Having creative control of email template designs that align with your brand offers flexibility in customisations.
Many of our competitors have clunky interfaces making it difficult to use specific features, while also not rendering well on mobile devices, affecting the user experience. Additionally, frequent complaints about template designs being limited and not customisable, as well as appearing outdated are also often quoted as challenges.
At Adestra, we understand the importance of customisation because one size does not fit all in email marketing. Unlike some competitors with rigid templates and limited customisation options, Adestra offers a wide range of design flexibility. Taking advantage of our easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, users have the freedom to create emails that truly reflect their brand identity and messaging.
2. Automation Workflow Capabilities
Automation is a game-changer in email marketing, but many other platforms have limitations when it comes to creating complex workflows. Lots of other ESPs on the market have complicated workflow builders, where difficulties arise in creating and managing complex campaign structures due to the platform being less than intuitive. Users also often find the automation features to be limited in scope, lacking advanced functionalities offered by competitors.
Adestra stands out with its robust automation capabilities that allow users to build intricate workflows tailored to their subscribers’ specific needs. From welcome series to nurture campaigns and beyond, Adestra’s automation tools streamline processes and drive results.
3. Segmentation & Personalisation Capabilities
Typical challenges faced in the email automation solution market lies with basic segmentation offerings by our competitors, resulting in the inability to target specific audience segments effectively. Precise audience targeting is limited, leading to the inability to personalise content.
Personalisation is key to successful email marketing, creating content that resonates with customers, building strong relationships, fostering loyalty, and driving business objectives.
With Adestra, marketers can create highly targeted segments based on a wide range of criteria, including demographics, behavior, engagement levels, and more. This granular approach allows for personalised and relevant communication with each recipient, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
4. Deliverability
Navigating the changing world of email, it is becoming more and more difficult to get into your audience’s inbox. Many ESPs on the market have inconsistent deliverability rates where users’ emails are being flagged as spam and not reaching the inbox at all.
Adestra provides comprehensive solutions to ensure emails reach the inbox, offering deliverability workshops from our Upland Deliverability Centre of Excellence to show you how to improve the deliverability of your campaigns.
With advanced deliverability tools including inbox placement testing, custom IP addresses, and proactive monitoring, Adestra helps teams maximize deliverability rates and avoid the dreaded spam folder.
5. Downtime and Bugs
When selecting an ESP, one critical yet often overlooked factor is the provider’s downtime rate. Ensuring uninterrupted email communication is paramount, especially when executing time-sensitive marketing campaigns. Marketers frequently encounter challenges with unstable platforms that experience frequent malfunctions, compromising campaign efficacy and timely delivery.
Adestra, on the other hand, prides itself on maintaining a 99% uptime. This level of reliability is essential to prevent disruptions and maintain the continuity of your email marketing efforts.
6. Customer Support
The journey from onboarding to proficient utilization of an Email Service Provider (ESP) is pivotal for campaign success. When it comes to customer support, many competitors offer generic onboarding processes that lack depth, leaving clients to navigate complexities without adequate guidance. Furthermore, slow response times exacerbate issues, hindering operational efficiency and causing unnecessary frustration.
At Adestra, our support team is highly trained and dedicated to helping customers succeed. Whether it’s troubleshooting technical issues, providing strategic guidance, or offering personalized training sessions, they go above and beyond to ensure that our clients have the assistance they need every step of the way. Our team also holds workshops and offers expert guidance on how to get the most out of the product features to make your email campaigns stand out in the inbox.
7. Integration Capabilities
Limited integration options are a common hurdle for marketers, restricting their ability to create cohesive campaigns. This leads to manual work and a lack of seamless data transfer between systems. Some competing ESPs even charge extra fees for integrations that would seem standard.
Adestra stands out with its extensive integrations with top marketing tools, CRMs, and e-commerce platforms, including Zapier, Litmus, Google Analytics, Salesforce, and more. By connecting customer data and triggering emails based on user actions, Adestra empowers marketers to maximize their marketing stack’s potential and deliver consistent experiences across touchpoints, making it a comprehensive solution.
8. Pricing
Many of our competitors have a lack of transparent pricing structures that can be confusing. What may initially seem like the most cost-effective platform may later include hidden charges and extra fees for customisations or advanced features. Some ESPs are more suited for small-medium sized businesses and once your email sends grow, they become more costly.
At Adestra we like our pricing models to be as easy to understand as possible and never charge for more advanced features. Furthermore, our solution is built for enterprise-sized, email orientated organisations that utilise email to drive revenue.
Next Steps
In the dynamic landscape of email and lifecycle marketing, choosing the right platform for your business is pivotal to achieving success. When considering the common challenges experienced with competing ESPs, Adestra’s competitive edge shines through. These strengths set Adestra apart as a versatile solution for modern marketers.
If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of your email marketing strategy and experience remarkable results, request a demo of Adestra today.