BenchmarkONE

Allows a small marketing outfit to punch above its weight and focus follow-on efforts on the more high-valued prospects.

We previously had three systems holding three separate sets of data: Zoho CRM, Membrain, and MailChimp. Now that our data is all together, we're already starting to make it work for us, instead of us working with it. As we're further into the program as well, and we've executed some campaigns and targeted emails, we're getting to know our database. The tag feature is amazing, and helps to give a more real-time picture of where our prospects are at, whether they've been browsing the website, what pages they've visted (and multiple times), etc.

Lead tracking, prioritization, campaigns, nurturing

Getting into Hatchbuck is like beginning a new craft and gradually building on your tool set. It has been a year since we signed up, and our business' marketing activities have matured through a mix of Hatchbuck's offerings and our own strategy development. Hatchbuck absolutely does its part in building a firm relationship between our sales team and our customers.

Importing contacts is a snap. Users can match default columns/fields with columns in imported CSVs, merge contacts with possible matches, manually check the results, and assign tags to the entire import list'even on existing matches. The contact management experience is tailor-fit to your contact database thanks to Hatchbuck's fantastic tagging system. Using custom fields and dozens of tags with a simple "is/is not in tag" and "and/or" tag-linking filter gives you so much control over your entire database.

The VERY user-friendly UI is set up so that beginners can dive into the database and learn the outs and ins through regular use. I found my way around Hatchbuck in just about a day, which would definitely benefit a small business looking for an easy start. I would follow their support team to the ends of the earth. Hatchbuck is backed by a genuinely attentive support team that trained me and later cleared up an enormous importing disaster with more patience and attention I would find in any other support line.

As far as I can see, Hatchbuck plots only Opens and Clicks on the results page for every campaign. It would be so helpful to see Opens, Bounces, Clicks, Unsubscribes, and Complaints as timelines on the same chart area. Hatchbuck's bounce results page allows you to export just the first 1,000 bounce records. However you filter it (by sender, etc.) you will still get 1,000 records. One of our imports had 2,000 bounces and I had to export at least 8 different column-filtered sheets, stick them in a spreadsheet, remove duplicates...

Managing the database can be tricky, but I hope Hatchbuck's development team can introduce a few fixes like mass-editing a default contact field for multiple contacts and automatically tagging contacts as bounces.

The cons definitely counter some of the pros, but in all fairness, our company's email marketing needs can be a little demanding. Hatchbuck and our marketing team have come to work together very well, and I am immensely thankful that I opted for the Live Demo a year ago.