Vertical Response Review

Vertical Response Conclusion

Vertical Response received 21 out of 25 stars. They have excellent Customer Support and Email Creation tools. They also offer a large amount of picture hosting space for your emails. Vertical Response scored well on Email Deliverability because they have a real person checking your email before it is sent out, though they do not have an automatic tool that scans it for spam. They also offer the ability to create an A/B test campaign.

VerticalResponse: Email Creation

Vertical Response received 5 out of 5 stars for Email Creation. They allow you 25MB of image hosting space for your emails, as compared to our Industry Benchmark of 5-10MB. In addition, you can edit your custom images once you put them on the email. Vertical Response offers over 700 pre-designed templates. These templates are flexible, as long as you select a “fully editable” template from the list, in which case you can change the entire design. On these “fully editable” templates, you can edit or replace the images, and you are allowed up to three columns on the email. The non editable templates, however, are rather limited as the name suggests. They also offer a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor wich enables you to easily edit your email newsletter while seeing what it will look like to your readers. You can drag and drop both images and content blocks in your email. Additionally, Vertical Response offers Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn integration options for your newsletters.

VerticalResponse: Contact Management

Vertical Response received 3 out of 5 stars for Contact Management. Users have the option of importing contacts for their campaign from Excel and Outlook as a CSV file, as well as Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail email accounts. You are not able to cut and paste contacts, though. Contact Management is easy for the most part, though they do not allow you to export a clean list (i.e. bounces and unsubscribes removed). Vertical Response also does not offer an autoresponder, which is a standard welcome message sent to new subscribers to confirm their signup. They do automatically remove unsubscribers from your email list but not bounces, though they are clearly marked and easy to delete (it works much like an email inbox).

VerticalResponse: Email Deliverability

Vertical response received 4 out of 5 stars for Email Deliverability. In our tests, 100% of the emails got through to the proper addresses (minus the ones that we designed to bounce). Before you send out your email, a real person checks it to ensure that you meet spam guidelines. They do not, however, offer an automatic spam checking tool that scans your email for popular spam words or subject lines. Your email will be sent immediately after it is proofed by someone when you select “send immediately.” Proofing took between two and five minutes for our test.

VerticalResponse: Analyzing Reports

Vertical Response received 5 out of 5 stars for Analyzing Reports. Reports display opens, forwards, number of clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and top performing links. In our test, we found that the reports  accurately reflected user actions. Reports are displayed in graphs, and you can receive them in an email or export them in a spreadsheet. The only list that you cannot export is a clean one (without bounces or unsubscribes). Vertical Response also allows you to create an A/B test campaign. This is important because A/B testing allows you to test certain variables that may affect the effectiveness of your email campaign, such as time of day sent, day of the week, subject lines, or the “from” line. They also offer Google Analytics integration with their reports.

VerticalResponse: Customer Support

Vertical Response received 4 out of 5 stars for Customer Support. They offer phone, live chat, and email support from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT Monday through Friday, and also offer email support from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT on weekends. Customer support was very knowledgeable and friendly. There was one instance where live chat was down for an hour, but besides that, customer support (phone, live chat, and email) was extremely responsive and detailed with their answers. They also offer text and video tutorials and vast FAQ section.

VerticalResponse: Pricing

Vertical Response offers a 30-day free trial. Their pricing is both contact and email based, meaning you can pay by number of contacts you have or by the number of emails you send per month. For 500 contacts it costs $10 per month, and for 2000 contacts it costs $28 per month, among other plans. Their pay-as-you-go plan costs $7.50 for 500 emails, $15 for 1000 emails, and $26 for 2000 emails.