Zoho Campaigns

"ZOHO Campaigns manages 8,000 person newsletter"

Comments: The team at ZOHO Campaigns have been very responsive to any questions. I also like that once you build up a list you can manage the list in Campaigns. Overall been very easy software to use on a daily basis.

Pros: I use ZOHO Campaigns to send out a daily 8,000 person newsletter. I have used ZOHO Campaigns for nearly 10 years for my newsletter. What I like is the ability to cut and paste HTML content into a template and create the newsletter in a couple of minutes.

Cons: I would like there to be more subscriber reports in ZOHO Campaigns. Perhaps could be a way we could customize the subscriber reports a little better.

"Powerful email marketing campaign management"

Comments: Zoho Campaigns is a powerful email marketing manager that tends not to get the same kind of exposure as the better-known autoresponders and martech products, but it should definitely be on the radar of any SME planning to run their own email marketing in-house. Zoho Campaigns will need a lot of configuration initially (as would any similar product) to get your branding, workflows and compliance details set up, but once configured it would be possible to delegate a lot of the day to day running to non-technical staff. Zoho has done a lot of work on GDPR compliance, can handle consent campaigns and self-serve subscription preferences well. Zoho Campaigns can be used as a stand-alone product, but is also included in their Zoho One suite offering which is fantastic value for micro businesses if you want to take a different route from the Microsoft Office 365/G Suite mainstream. The integration with If you are just sending out the odd newsletter to a small list, you probably don't want something that has the sophisticated options that Zoho Campaigns offers. However, if you are a business looking to manage, test and optimise your email marketing or if you are planning to take your email marketing in-house from an agency - and you have the knowledge and experience to be able to configure it - Zoho Campaigns could be a good solution.

Pros: - integration with G Suite and Zoho CRM
- nice analytics dashboard
- A/B Testing
- Personalised content
- Includes features normally only found in much more expensive martech products
- Good solution for handling GDPR compliance
- Easy to configure sign-up forms on web pages, e.g. in Wordpress

Cons: - Lots of options to configure; expect to spend quite a bit of time getting this setup initially
- Some newsletter templates not brilliant, so expect to spend some time getting the look and feel you want
- Interface not always as intuitive as it could be

"A power tool... when it's working properly"

Comments: Overall, the experience has been good, but it's taken a lot of work to get to this point. Admittedly, we may be stretching the system a bit more than the average user, but we're not doing anything groundbreaking. I've had to (through testing and trial-and-error) get everything working myself because often times the first-tier of support doesn't understand the software that well. Second-tier support has almost always been extremely helpful, but you're usually stuck waiting a couple days to hear back from them.

Pros: We're using workflows in Campaigns to send automated messages based on customer data, and have created quite the intricate web of workflows over the last year. While it's taken some trial-and-error to get things where we want, we have a 12-week long program that runs without any user input, allowing us to focus on elements of the program that DO require our attention. One of the main reasons we went with Zoho Campaigns (and CRM) was the monthly cost compared to other options.

Cons: There are occasional times when the workflows fail to run properly, and this causes me MAJOR headaches. For example, I have a weekly workflow that starts on Tuesday morning with an email, then sends another email on Friday, and finishes with a move to the "next week" workflow the following Tuesday. If the system hiccups and "misses" the window for that Friday email, the user sits in the workflow until NEXT Friday, and does not move on to the next week as they should. As a result, I've had to build failsafes into my workflows that allow me to manually force folks into our out of weeks (ugh!).

"I feel like I'm a beta tester."

Comments: Clunky, slow and an overall terrible user experience. From a distance, it looks shiny with a ton of functionality. But when you actually start using it, you'll see a myiad of small aesthetics that don't look right (loading bar doesn't extend full width, loading dots are blurred) and the loading times are among the slowest for any software I've ever used. Now all of those things are OK, because functionality is what matters the most, right? This would be true if the functionality of the platform actually worked as intended. We've run into issues like: -Duplicating a workflow gets stuck and never duplicates. The bug required Zoho team to fix it on their side which took 3-5 business days.
-Changing a font color for an HTML email doesn't work. You'll see the updated font color in the HTML code, and in the email preview you will see the font color you want. But when you send the email, the font color is almost always wrong.
-Their simple condition filter in their workflow component didn't work originally. I had to speak to their engineering team twice to show them the problem, and then they fixed it 5 days later. The list goes on and on. I wish this program just worked and I didn't have to write this review. The one good thing about this software is that their customer service team is very responsive, and they normally fix the problems. But again, I feel like I'm a beta tester working with them through all of these bugs. I don't recommend this software to anyone.

Pros: Campains has a lot of features out of the box and is a very affordable option for startups looking for an email solution.

Cons: This entire platform is riddled with bugs, quirks, and errors that make your job so much harder. When things don't work, you normally assume you're doing it wrong with most software. Not with Zoho Campaigns. When things don't work, it's most likely broken on their side. 3 months into using this software every day, and we've already reported 3 different instances where their software was not working as intended. If I was getting this software for free, that would be OK. But since we're paying hundreds of dollars each month to use it, this is not acceptable.

"Good for emailing customer subscription list"

Pros: The strongest point is integration with Zoko CRM. It gives a better way to mass email subscribed customers than using the CRM mass email. The free account is comparable with competitors like MailChimp.

Cons: The user interface is clunky in places and buggy in others, and generally frustrating until you learn its quirks.