The Quest to find a Superior Automation Platform Begins

Two years ago we made the decision to implement Marketing Automation (MA) for Durkan Group.

We had already integrated with some MA platforms on behalf of our clients, and it was time to do a full implementation for ourselves. After checking out HubSpot & Infusionsoft (the two, often-referred-to, industry leaders in MA)  in detail we were really impressed with both platforms for different reasons.

While Infusionsoft boasted an intuitive drag-and-drop visualization tool for workflows we immediately began leaning towards HubSpot as it had such a strong focus on content strategy and providing content that partners could leverage. They also appeared at the surface to be the growing leader in marketing automation software.

While they had so much going for them, I found the following to be red flags for us:

• Proprietary CMS: While there are tools to integrate with WordPress, HubSpot pushes customers to use their CMS for landing pages, forms, and content creation. The first testimonial from their FAQ page comparing the platform to WordPress says, “Now you can have that robust CMS that you had with WordPress, and actually integrate it with your tools in HubSpot. For us it was a game changer.” I saw this as a negative as we would be shackling ourselves to HubSpot – for all intents and purposes. While I understand the importance of partnering with providers I had no real interest in turning my site, landing pages and forms over to their platform. I want those elements to be in an open source environment (WordPress) and not dependent on a vendor. Again, there are likely ways around this with integration tools so this wasn’t the biggest red flag. The biggest was…
• Pricing: HubSpot is pricey. I have no doubt the price can be easily justified, for some, if leveraged properly. Leveraging it properly though, takes a good deal of effort and isn’t something that’s just done overnight.  I was not only looking at this as a solution for Durkan Group but also for clients down the road. With our relatively small list of 2,000 clients we would be paying roughly $1,300/month  not including $2,000 for setup. I thought of the contact list sizes of clients that are ideal candidates for marketing automation and felt $2,400+/month would be too much for those with 10k+ contact lists. At this price point there wasn’t much room for us to incorporate add-on services and support.
• Agency Relationship Model: There is a lot to marketing automation and most of my clients don’t have the bandwidth or expertise to take it on themselves – that’s why we are here for them. We are trusted advisers to our clients when it comes to technology. I’m not as interested in becoming a cheerleader for a product as I am in providing a solution. As we see it, the HubSpot model has them inserting themselves between us and our clients.

SharpSpring Enters the Mix

In the early stages of my HubSpot evaluation, SharpSpring came into the mix.

My partner Jon had received an email from SharpSpring suggesting that he try their ‘Magic Trick.’ Jon clicked the link and was presented a screen that asked him to choose a suit and number – 1 of 16 combinations. He chose the Jack of Diamonds and low and behold we had an email showing him his card selection. Nothing crazy about this but, I thought it was a clever way to show the power and potential of marketing automation to a non-technical person.

I went through their site; saw that they were based in Florida and had some really smart people with solid cred. From there, I contacted them and the demo was scheduled. We ran through screens with Jeremy who was very capable and was able to take us through a solid demo and answer our many questions. I really liked what I saw; the pricing was very friendly although we did have to make a year commitment and put up an on-boarding fee.

The yearly commitment has since changed but we got a great deal. A deal that gave us our own personal account and the ability to add up to five client accounts – all at a very reasonable price. In fact, it was a fraction of what it would cost just for us to be on HubSpot. The whole pricing and structure of the plan was extremely agency-friendly. On top of the account pack that came included, we had the ability to whitelabel the platform right out of the box.

Great! No-brainer, right? Not quite, as SharpSpring raised a couple of red flags of its own:

• New Company: At this point SharpSpring was roughly 6 months old. Would these guys be around in a year? The optimist in me said, “They’ve seen all the others and they have made something better, we are on a low floor of something that is going to be great.” At the same time you could see the company was in its infancy. Whether or not we wanted to be a customer of a young, growing company was a tough question to answer.
• References: It took a good while to get references and the ones I spoke to seemed like solid agencies but they didn’t have much to tell me. “We think it’s great but we haven’t done much with it.”, said one.

These were pretty big red flags but I decided to pull the trigger and go with SharpSpring. Despite the cons there were plenty of reasons to go forward with the decision: they had a great reseller model, they were super agency-friendly (and just plain ol’ friendly) but, most of all, what sold me was…

The Software

I always got a kick out of the “No Software” marketing campaigns from SalesForce.com.

Obviously it has worked well for them but I never understood it. What do consumers think it runs on? It’s all about software, that’s what the whole platform is based on, it’s just a different model to what we’ve traditionally understood as software in the past. SharpSpring won me over with its intelligent user interface. About 5 minutes into the demo, I thought, “I can see myself using this everyday. It’s intuitive; great software.” From the get-go, everything seemed to be in the right place: easy to navigate, logical structure, etc.

Now it’s a year later from initially implementing SharpSpring and…

Between SharpSpring vs HubSpot, We Made the Right Choice!

I could go on and on about how SharpSpring has great support, is agency friendly, runs regular partner webinars, and so on…

This is all true, but lets get back to the software. I was right! It was something I could see myself using everyday. I do and I love it.

VisitorID is a great feature. I check it regularly to see what my known contacts are doing on the site. I am able to easily take a subset of my anonymous traffic and see what companies are looking at us as a potential partner. I can easily find key contacts of the company with SharpSpring’s nifty lookups. If the company is legit and is clearly in need of our services I reach out. This has already resulted in the acquisition of a handful of solid clients thus far. Clients I would have not had or would have had to spend lots of time digging through Analytics to find. Not so in SharpSpring. I see them easily and learn more about them even though it’s anonymous traffic.

While we really need to step up the number of workflows we have, I love the ones we do. When users of our site reach out to us they are introduced to the Durkan Group through a nicely branded, personalized workflow. I love the sales pipeline. It’s easy for me to create opportunities and see everything along with the stage it’s in, potential revenue, and more.

I love that I have it integrated with Google Analytics and AdWords and that I can easily access data and reports from these services.

I love the emails, they are a snap to create tight looking responsive emails. When someone enters the sales process I send all emails through SharpSpring via a number of premade templates, I then send the contact a “Smart Email”, a nicely branded email that I then customize and include whatever relevant links I wish. I then see them opening and interacting.

I love the “Life of the Lead” tab which is essentially a timeline of every touch the user has had with your emails and the site.

I love that my clients love SharpSpring.

I love that it’s so easy to implement it for clients. I love the fact that they can easily step into this platform without being completely overwhelmed or feeling forced to make it a massive project to implement. Simply adding the code to a site and only starting with emails and VisitorID is a snap and the benefit client’s receive immediately is well worth the cost at it’s price point. I haven’t even scratched the surface of so many other capabilities SharpSpring offers.

No platform is perfect. Initially we noticed some bugs but, by and large, they have been resolved and while we have wishlists of changes we might like, it’s on us to communicate them because SharpSpring has proven highly responsive to us with any issues.

I love SharpSpring!

There, I said it!

It’s Nice to see the big boys taking notice.

Apparently I am not alone in my love of SharpSpring.

I have a growing list of clients that love it. Apparently HubSpot loves SharpSpring too. Check out SharpSpring CEO Rick Carlson’s latest blog for the details.

HubSpot is taking notice of SharpSpring and for good reason. We regularly perform integration for clients that have already chosen a given marketing automation platform. Some of these platforms are far more expensive than HubSpot, like more than 10x the cost of SharpSpring. We often scratch our heads as we view them as inferior to SharpSpring when it comes to software, functionality, ease of use, ease of integration.

It’s nice to take a gamble on a small player and see it pay off!