I have used Sugar for its contact and leads database extensively and its great! We have a client who is looking at developing an inhouse email campaign app and we are in the process of looking at Sugar to see if its email (mass mailing, newsletter) campaign module is a worthwhile choice.
Any experience with this and how does it compare to the paid services like Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, Jangomail, etc.)?
Answers
Add AnswerHave used Campaign Monitor and it rocks!! It costs money but it is intuitive, simple to setup/use and a lot of support. Also, the pre-packaged templates are beautiful.
It gives your mailers a very professional feel and gives you the great usage, conversion data that you can react to.
SugarCRM on the other hand, is not an email marketing tool - that's just one of its capabilities and not its main focus either. It is "free" but that depends on how you quantify it.
I wouldn't blindly go with SugarCRM just because it is free - instead - run a very similar campaigns with each tool - maybe split your first couple of campaigns across the 2 services (CM and Sugar) and see the quality of the results - that will help you make a more informed decision on how to move forward.
If you're already using SugarCRM in your organization then you might want to also look at Salesforce.com - they have some great add-ons (email campaign incl.) + I think they might even allow you to integrate with Campaign Monitor and some of the other services out there.
Thanks guys! this is very useful. I'd also like to see if anyone has successfully used SugarCRM and Campaign Monitor - i.e. used SugarCRM to track leads and registered users and then export that information to Campaign Monitor and collate the info back into Sugar for reporting purposes?
Sounds complicated but the idea is to leverage the best of both Sugar & Campaign Monitor/Constant Contact in a relatively seamless fashion.
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