VerticalResponse Reviews

On top of creating email campaigns, VerticalResponse also comes with the necessary tools to convert leads into new subscribers. You can create landing pages, build web forms, and schedule Facebook or Twitter posts without leaving the platform. By providing user-friendly (if somewhat limiting) builders, creating landing pages and web forms is a breeze even for people who don’t know much about coding or design. Unfortunately, the features don’t go much further than that. There are a few extras that can be added by integrating third-party software, but the platform leaves out important features like SMS campaigns.

Like its features, VerticalResponse’s template offer is quite limited. There are only 18 pre-built newsletter templates that you can play with and they’re not the best looking. Things don’t get better with the web form builder either. Not only are the themes quite old-fashioned, but you can’t tweak the design much as the platform only allows you to change the text font and the fields to be filled in by the subscriber. Fortunately, the landing pages’ templates are a different story. Although the number is also quite limited, the 15 pre-built themes available are more modern and much nicer to look at.

Of course, you can always build newsletters or landing pages from scratch. The option to use HTML to do so is only available with the former, but both share the same intuitive drag-and-drop builder. It doesn’t provide much freedom to come up with your designs, though, as you can only use the pre-configured content layouts.

Surprisingly, creating new segments on VerticalResponse is quite straightforward. Due to the software’s simplistic nature, you can segment your contact lists in four easy steps. There are various conditions to choose from, including behavioral ones, and since the software allows you to add multiple layers as well exclusions, you can come up with complex segments effortlessly.

VerticalResponse already comes with various pre-configured custom fields, but you can also create your own. However, this is another example where VerticalResponse’s basic nature backfires. Most email marketing services offer various types of data entries for creating custom fields. For example, if you want to add birthdate as a custom field, you select the data type as a date to ensure no other values are accepted. Because VerticalResponse only accepts text strings, this cannot be achieved and that can create a variety of issues. Since the software can’t validate the data you import or what users type while filling web forms, it’s just a matter of time until you face a problem when trying to segment or manage your contact list.

VerticalResponse’s A/B testing capabilities are nothing to die for either. You can only send two different versions with distinct subject lines and that’s it. On the other hand, the reports provided are more comprehensive as the software even includes heat maps to help you understand what readers do when they open your newsletter.

Considering VerticalResponse’s lackluster offer, you would think that the company goes above and beyond to provide plenty of third-party integrations. Sadly, that’s not the case and VerticalResponse offers just over 30 plugins. While on the surface this may seem like it’s enough, considering the number of essential services you need to link with your email marketing account, you’ll notice that this number isn’t sufficient. For example, VerticalResponse integrates with CRM software, but unless you use SalesForce, Zoho, or Nimble, you’re out of luck. The same goes for ecommerce where VerticalResponse only integrates with Magento and Bigcommerce. Thankfully, VerticalResponse provides its API for anyone who wants to create custom integrations.

VerticalResponse’s pricing is straightforward, as there are only three subscriptions you can get: Basic, Pro, and Pro+. Moreover, you can also pay as you go, purchase emails in batches, and there are specific subscriptions for high-volume senders that have more than 40,000 subscribers.

As the name implies, the Basic subscription provides a simpler version of what already is a quite plain piece of software. For as low as $9.35 per month with yearly payments, you can have up to 500 subscribers, send an unlimited number of newsletters or transactional emails, and create landing pages as you please. However, to actually automate your marketing efforts, run A/B tests, and have access to the analytics dashboard, a Pro plan is necessary.

The Pro+ subscription is reserved for customers looking for someone to manage their email marketing strategy. For as low as $166,60 per month, VerticalResponse allocates an expert to your account who, every month, will create one promotional email, one newsletter, eight Facebook posts, and compile insightful reports.