IBM Marketing Cloud Review

PROS: The IBM Marketing Cloud Interface is really easy on the eyes. The software is user-friendly. With a bit of training, a majority should be well-versed in creating, sending, and measuring e-mails. Automated programs and reporting features are available for advanced users. They can easily be accessed without sacrificing on vison or power.

CONS: If you're having an issue that entails advanced info, it can be a pain to land an actual answer. Customer support has a tendency to lash out with canned answers. If you're able to reach someone who's technically inclined, they're superb!

PROS: I've dealt with a number of platforms in the past including Pardot and MailChimp. IBM is marketing automation tool that's highly dynamic. It boasts a wide range of features to help operate your marketing campaign all the way to advanced behavior marketing programs. Currently, IBM has an active community that gives users a chance to flag bugs, impart ideas, add support cases, and make functionality recommendations for development.

CONS: Currently, the tool has no integration with certain third party tools. Its inbound and landing page reporting functionality aren't as robust. Its UI can be a bit difficult for novice users. Certain admin functions and setup process tend to get confusing. The UI and functionality improved dramatically since their Engage B2B days.

PROS: It has everything automated to what you want. You set up schedules on when to send emails to a segment of your customers. You can also monitor the activities in an email you have sent using hyperlinks. Once a customer clicks or opens the email, you get notification of the same. The view is split to help you analyze data with ease. It is not only has a friendly user interface but also reliable when you want to access all your data in one place. This makes it easy for you to analyze the data and thus attain your objective effortlessly. It comes with a text mailing feature that equips you with the ability to create emails and send them to your contact list. It also allows for collaboration in your team as a user can access the email another user created or sent.

CONS: Despite all the good things I have to say about the IBM marketing cloud, it has its downfalls. When you want to paste a picture in the system, it is impossible. Also, there are a few glitches when it comes to saving your mail as sometimes it fails. Once this happens, the email is lost which means you have to go back and create a new one. The hyperlinks are also difficult to remove and editing your email on the platform can be complex. It would be great if some of these minor bugs were addressed.

PROS: This product is strong marketing automation tool and I’m using it for my clients who are in various industries. It has great platform and options that allows us to drag and drop steps like emails, lead routes and other and to change and customize the database based on the behavioral information. Our clients love this tool and they found it very helpful for lead nurturing, landing page creation and even web tracking.

CONS: The reporting options are limited when it comes to customization. I really need some features for creating automated data export from some user interface or to create some customized reports that can be easily generate daily. Also, I don’t like the A/B testing as well.

PROS: The IBM Marketing Cloud is a marketing tool utilized by my agency for a number of clients across a wide range of industries. We love how their programs work. We favor its ability to drag-and-drop steps and how it's able to make database modifications according to behavioral info. Our clients were pleasantly surprised with the userfulness of the tool. It's able to do just about everything you throw at it including internet tracking, land page building, and lead nurturing.

CONS: I don't like their reporting functionality since it's highly restricted when it comes to customizations. But they're working hard on resolving that. It'd be nice to include certain features in the mix. For instance, having the ability to make automated data export from the UI or building customizable reports to be generate daily. Their A/B testing apps aren't as current in terms of functionality.

PROS: It's a great marketing automation tool when properly used. I make use of it for sending e-mail campaigns. I also use it for tracking progress via its reporting function. It basically has everything you want for marketing automation.

CONS: It'd be nice if they have a huge library consiting of images and templates. This would be useful for those aren't capable of creating them or who lack a team to do so.

PROS: I am in marketing industry for more than 7 years, and I have used various marketing tools but as far as I can tell IBM Marketing Cloud is one of the best product in the market today, thanks to its marketing management capabilities. The ROI is amazing, it has powerful options.

CONS: I need an integration with Outlook 365. They could improve the reporting capabilities because sometimes it can be hard to export and edit into spreadsheets.

PROS: It has helped us to come of age. We have tried almost every good marketing tool out there. From HuBSpot to Eloqua, we have done it all, but none matches what the IBM marketing cloud has to offer. We can manage and monitor our marketing campaigns with ease with the help of this tool. We can now get value for the money we have spent in buying the tool. The functionality it brings to our marketing efforts, are top notch. Our team has found the best of what the tool has to offer and we can see that in the form of the accomplishments they have attained.

CONS: I do not have major problems with using the IBM marketing cloud. However, I would love to see more of the reporting functionality. Maybe in future the developers can enable the tool to integrate with Outlook 365 for better reporting. IBM marketing cloud alone does not offer the best of reporting functionality. When you want to present the results, you can export to the spreadsheets, but editing on that platform is not as easy as it should be. All in all, we are able to find our way around and achieve that objective, so maybe it is not that big of a deal.

PROS: It has a beautiful user interface where you can find it easy to use. The dashboards increase the visibility of the tool as you can find what you are looking for without much effort. It also helps you to set up a schedule, time, when to send emails to a specific contact list automatically. If you want to know who read the email or opened or clicked on it, the product provides such data. It is a reliable monitoring tool, for the emails you have send to your list. With the new update, the functionality of the tool has become better and simpler.

CONS: There are some bugs you will experience with this tool. For example during the update of the system which takes place now and then. You have to be careful not to do anything during this period like setting up schedules on email to be sent to your clients. If the emails are important, then you should not plan or set them up. Luckily, we can avoid such a glitch as our account manager communicates to us prior to the update of the system which helps us to make wise plans.

PROS: It integrates well with Silverpop which allows me to conduct my marketing campaigns with ease. Such integration is not there with other like marketing tools. Due to this, it has bought better solutions, which are not only easy but result-oriented. The IBM Silverpop platform provides a flexible user experience for anyone looking to boost their marketing efforts. Also, it allow for automation, which is a plus on my part. I can set up more than 150 emails without much hustle. In short, I am getting much more than I used to, with this kind of integration.

CONS: In spite of all of the things I like about the tool, it has its shortcomings. The platform due to integration with Silverpop is complex. When customers click or open an email, it is not possible to create segments for all the clicks made. Instead, you have to create segments for every single click. This can turn out to be frustrating on my part. It would be nice I there was a universal way to create those segments for all emails opened or clicks made to the emails.

PROS: Working in the marketing industry for several years, I was exposed to Eloqua, HuBSpot, and others. So far, IBM Marketing Cloud has the marketing management and capabilites that's a lot better than its competitors. It's comes highly recommended and trumps everything else by a wide margin. It's great to see a product like it with robust capabilities. With it, my team was able to achieve a lot of incredible things.

CONS: It'd be nice to see some kind of integration with Outlook 365 sometime in the future. At times, the reporting functionality can be difficult to export and edit within spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations. That's typically not a big issue so it's a matter of playing around with it so successfully land the right results.

PROS: Once you setup the workflow you can easily manage this tool on a daily basis. I have used it in other companies and I have to say that reporting is easy if you use UTM parameters and when you associate with campaign names instead of manually adding parameters into the hyperlinks, which is time consuming process.

CONS: I cannot easily understand the support videos and support employees due to the language barrier, U have struggle in understanding them. But, this is no big deal because the software does the work.

PROS: IBM Marketing product is a tool that provides me with everything I can imagine in order to create robust marketing campaigns. It helps me to accomplish almost everything when it comes to marketing projects.

CONS: The platform is basic, and it depends on you and your team to build and create your own campaigns. Something that I don’t like is the fact that if you are not expert in building and managing campaigns daily then it would be hard for you to use this product.

PROS: I have used many other tools before IBM, and from my experience this is great dynamic marketing automation tool. It offers all the features I need so I can work on simple marketing campaign, I’m able to automate complicated marketing programs. It has active community where we share ideas, flag bugs, suggest new features.

CONS: This tool misses some important integrations with 3rd party tools. The inbound and landing page reporting options doesn’t work as they should. The interface can be complicate to navigate for newbies and some admins functions and setups are quite confusing. But on the other hand, they have really improved the interface user-experience.

PROS: The IBM Marketing Cloud has everything you can imagine in creating comprehensive marketing campaigns. The only thing limitation here is your imagination on what should be done.

CONS: On its own, the platform is blank version of canvas. It's entirely on you and your team to start creating your campaigns. If you don't own a paid staff of full-time experts in building and managing of daily campaigns, this won't be an ideal solution to begin with.

PROS: If you are looking for a marketing tool that offers better experience for your marketing efforts, then IBM marketing cloud brings that. It has a database where you can manage all your contacts regardless of the size, create emails, and send to them in bulk. With sets of automation tools, you can send those emails to segmented groups in your contact list which complements your marketing efforts. This helps with target marketing or customized email marketing where you can target customers based on their unique needs. It thus eliminates all the guess work and makes your work easier.

CONS: Although customer support is highly responsive, it is not effective. The tool experiences issues now and then, which is normal for any software. However, when we reached out to the support team of the glitch, it turned out that it was a problem they were working on but they did not inform other users on the same. It would be better if they could communicate with all the users if a problem is an open case so that they can know moving forward.

PROS: It's very easy to use. Its UI is really great. I love their reporting and spam analysis. I ended up bringing my company from Lyris to IBM since I found the software to be really user-friendly. Its online tutorials are super easy to follow.

CONS: I had a hard time sending a specific number of records. It'd be of great help to simply type in numerous records and not having to segment them the way the system would typically get you to do.

PROS: When I compare with other tools I have used such as MailChimp and Pardot, IBM Marketing Cloud has proven to be the better option. With its automation ability, I am able to run my marketing campaign with ease. Whether you are looking to manage a simple or complex marketing campaign, BM Marketing Cloud helps you reach your target. It has an open API which means you can interact with other users of the tool. In the process, you can share ideas, point out bugs and find solutions while you discover better and more advance functionalities the tool has to offer from other users.

CONS: Although it integrates with other tools, it is limited. Some functionalities are not found in BM Marketing Cloud, which means you have to seek from third party software to fill that gap. Since it does not integrate with some of those tools it can be a huge challenge. Also, it does not have a friendly user interface for first time users of the product. The tool is complex which means you will need training to get started. The set-up of the tool for admin purposes is also confusing which adds to the frustrations for a beginner. In spite of this, the product offers a more modern interface and functionality as compared to Engage B2B.

PROS: Silverpop is one way to know what your customers want and how you can use this to market your product. It utilizes the data and reports to give a better insight about the preferences of your customers. This product helps you to track the activities of your customers on your website where you can collect data, analyze it and generate reports. With such kind of data, you will be able to know your customers well in terms of their needs and send out personalized messages in the form of emails. With such kind of a marketing tool, you are better off in your quest.

CONS: It can sometimes be difficult to utilize some of the features of the tool. It is probably because they are not intuitive. This makes it frustrating when you want to get started on something. Luckily, you can turn to customer support for this. Also, your customer relationship manager can help you to find your way around a problem if you get stuck.

PROS: It has everything we need for effective marketing. It helps us complement our email marketing efforts as it integrates well with Silverpop plugin. Since we over rely on email marketing to communicate with our customers, we can execute this with ease. We can also use this tool to integrate our CRM and thus better contact management for our customers. This way, we can send customized messages to boost our marketing efforts. Its API equips us with the relevant tools and opportunity to get ahead in our email marketing efforts as we can monitor their performance with ease.

CONS: Although it is a great marketing tool, it has a few disadvantages. The one that gave us a lot of headache is the learning curve. The user experience is complex due to the configuration of some of the functionalities of the tool. When we were getting started, it was hectic for our team as they could not find their way around some of the features in the dashboard. The configuration did not favor us and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out where or what to do. Even though we are out of the woods, it would be better if the developers configured those features in way that the user experience is simple.

PROS: First of all, IBM is easy to use, it has great test mailing features. There is even an option for previewing the mail so you can know how it looks like on a mobile device or tablet. It has split view. There are options to merge data fields and even queries, to schedule mailing, to track those who open your emails and hyperlinks in the emails. I like that this product can be used by everyone, because it is user friendly and it has great interface.

CONS: I cannot paste pictures, the mails won’t save automatically and this means that I have to start all over again. It’s hard to move things around mailing and to remove hyperlinks.

PROS: This product is great for people who don’t have much experience in HTML, it allows us to edit email templates in easiest way. It offers the ability to filter the audience based on many criteria like: optin date. Donation amounts, location and etc.

CONS: We have problem with the program’ back up and email tests cannot go through. We cannot suppress one or small number of emails before importing them as suppression list. We cannot respond to email tests without going through few steps like choosing test lists, adding additional information.

PROS: It offers a great user experience for those who have little knowledge in HTML. This makes it simple to get started. It gives you an easy platform on which you can edit email templates with ease for your audience. Apart from that, it helps you filter based on what you are looking for. For example, if you want to access audiences at a particular location, you can filter based on location. Also, if you want to filter based on donation amounts your supporters have contributed, you can do so with ease. This makes the search effortless as you can track different audience segments and performance using the IBM marketing cloud.

CONS: In terms of functionality, I did not find anything worth mentioning. However, there was one thing which was frustrating. Whenever I tried to send email tests, they could not go through since the system was backed up now and then. This slowed down everything as I had to resend the email tests again. Also, to resend those tests, I had to go back and select the list again before I could send it which was disappointing. If there is a way to resend those emails without having to go back and select the list again, it would be better.

PROS: It eliminates all the guess work in our marketing campaigns. You can automate campaigns and target where to send the emails to. This tools empowers you to target specific contact list based on their behavior and preference in general. You do not have to wonder which message or email is for you as the tool does that for you. You can schedule when and to who the email should be sent out to at a later time, automatically. Also, it is possible to test numerous templates to see which one is the most ideal for what audience or customers.

CONS: Since we have not bought the plugins, we are finding it difficult to work with the interface. It does not look like a marketing tool but an email tool which is a bit confusing at first. Although this is not a big problem, we are finding it hard to access our data directly. Now this proves to be a problem when we want to automate campaigns as we are unable to access that data when we need it. Integration with EpIServer is not as good as it should be and thus it would be nice if it was made better.

PROS: IBM marketing allows us to manage leads in database and to email our customers fast and easy. I love its query tools because we can easily send emails to selected groups of users and it allows us to target the emails to specific audience.

CONS: It can be buggy sometimes, but its support team is highly responsive and they work on it. I believe they would improve this tool so it can run smooth.

PROS: I have to say that they have really improved this product, in the past it was made for email marketing but now it offers many other options in order to improve the email marketing and campaigns. It’s eye0catching, and the sending process is much better. This tool is powerful and I really love all its features. It’s more than just email delivery, and list management tool.

CONS: As Enterprise solution is less intuitive than other ESP tools, the email templates are not versatile, you get one template for every category like transactional, ecommerce, thank-you, welcome and other. It doesn’t offer pre-built templates with editor.

PROS: It allows us to do every kind of tracking, analytics, designing and it has many other capabilities. Great tool for marketing, managing contacts, create mailings just the way you want. You can easily change the minor design adaptions inside the dashboard, you can show draft as HTML code as well. It allows you to add hundreds of automated information. There is an option for export data to Excel and to import from CVS. To add great amount of contact has never been easier.

CONS: It can be complex and you need proper training so you can do more than basic things. Also, more than one user account is extra price for specific features. It can be difficult to manage great amount of contact data.

PROS: IBM tool offers great set of features and integration with Silverpop. As email-heavy company that relies on direct communication, this tool helps us to integrate everything into our internal and customized CRM. I love how managing contact is easy and effortlessly and it is also very easy to track the productivity of our marketing efforts.

CONS: Our team has struggles with the onboarding process. Also, the menus and descriptions cannot be comprehend easily and we cannot figure out why this product configure some functions the way it did.

PROS: IBM offers great set of features and solutions that we cannot find in our ESPs. It has automation program that allows us to setup more than 150 triggered emails in.

CONS: It doesn’t allow us to create simple pieces of customers who open our emails over period of time, we have to segment off of each link clicked in email or opens. It doesn’t offer universal segmenting options for numerous clicks and opens.

PROS: The IBM Marketing Cloud is filled with praise-worthy features. The thing we liked about it is its Silverpop integration. We're a company that uses a lot of e-mails. We heavily depend on one-on-one communication and we use IBM Marketing Cloud to integrate everything to our tailor-made CRM. Managing contacts is easier than ever. And taking a peek at our marketing efforts is effortless.

CONS: The only main downside that we saw was the lack of consideration when it comes to user experience. Our team mightily struggled during the process of onboarding. Backend descriptions and menus were initially difficult. There were a number of instances where we had to ask why IBM would end up configuring specific dashboards and functions in the first place.

PROS: It is an end to end marketing tool. You can track and analyze data from your customers to know what they want. The customization side of the tool is flexible as you can design some features on the dashboard to fit your business or marketing needs. For customized marketing campaigns, it supports email marketing and thus easy to manage contacts. It is also reliable in marketing automation, which gives your marketing efforts the needed boost. The fact that you can easily export the analysis results to excel for presentation and import contacts from CVS files, it makes your work easier.

CONS: It is a difficult tool to use if it is your first time. The time you take to get used to the tool is more and for beginners, they can really get frustrated before they get the hang of things. Training is thus required. If you have more than one user accounts, it is expensive as you have to pay more. Also, when managing many contacts, it can be difficult to manage. In our case, I was forced to export the contacts to excel in order to change them.

PROS: IBM expanded tremendously since their acquisition. The platform used to carry out e-mail marketing very well. But ever since the acquisition, the product came out with guns blazing. The product was revamped with a modern interface and the sending process improved significantly. The software is really robust.

CONS: Looking back, the software was ideal for trained employeess. But since it's catered to enterprises, it's not as intuitive compared to its competitors (in terms of e-mail functionality). E-mail templates weren't anything spectacular and they lack some versatility. You're only limited to a single template per category. But just recently, IBM failed to provide pre-installed templates for editor use.