VerticalResponse

With VerticalResponse I was able to go from a spreadsheet of member names and email addresses to send my first e-newsletter in less than an hour. Easy to use templates guide content creation and offers flexible scheduling options that include social media posting. List management lets subscribers opt in and out without manual intervention and includes tools to build landing pages and links for subscription. Simple reporting is included in the free system and shows delivery/open rates. Advanced reporting allows a deeper dive into the analytics of your mail campaigns.

I sometimes wish the content blocks used to build the e-newsletter were a little more configurable - such as allowing more free movement of images and better font management - but the system makes clean looking e-newsletter that are actually opened and read!

For beginner, it is easy to use. Fast and has plenty templates that you can use.
It has few integrations with free CMS. API is great.
Free with limited user. Few email providers will block their email blast.

The limited user are so little.
The integration needs improvement. Lack of automatization and reports. No apps for the phones, so you must do it in your computer.
Support is not helpful and less attentive, maybe because I am using free edition.

For the money, it gets the job done. We use VR to send out corporate newsletters and special offers a half dozen times a year.

I think the interface is lacking and really hasn’t been vastly improved since 2008 when I started using it. Basically, I’ve built my own HTML templates outside of VR and I just change copy and pictures as I need to and avoid using VRs WYSIWYG editor. Their editor and stock templates really aren’t very good.

I enjoy the newest feature of about 4 years that allows the email to be responsive. This feature allows my gym members to access the newsletter from their cell phone or tablet.

I also enjoy the pre-made templates that are easy to for me to plug into and allows me to upload photos and websites.

A lot of my emails end up going to the gym members spam. I have to pay per email and this is unnecessary waste of money for me.

There should be an easy way to upload my emails to vertical response as a file instead of entering each new member.

This tool was very easy to use when we were starting out our email journey. The list upload process and email creation was simple. The software also allowed us to track performance, which contributed to other email tactics to test. It was also relatively inexpensive.

At no fault of the product, our needs grew out of the tool, so we upgraded to a marketing automation platform.