Pinpointe B2B Email Marketing - Independent Analyst Review by Eval Source
| Features: | BB2B Email Marketing, Behavioral targeting, Advanced Segmenting, Google Analytics integration, Sync with Salesforce.com, Multi-variant testing |
|---|---|
| Industry: | Non Specific |
| Customers: | Small and Medium Business as well as large enterprises |
| Geography: | USA, Canada, Australia, Europe & UK |
| Languages: | English |
| Cost: | Starting at 42US$ / 30 days money back |
Review Methodology
This review constitutes an analysis based on a product demonstration and software review by qualified system software experts at Eval-Source. The demonstration Eval-Source received from the vendor was based on its own custom vendor script, designed to validate and/or disprove vendors’ claims. The script was specifically prepared to identify functionalities and form an impartial analysis and software review for an e-mail marketing system.
Business Problems Addressed
In today’s business world, technology has changed the way companies market their products and services and adapting to new strategies has become a primary task for marketing teams. The popularity of social media, professional networks, media channels and viral websites has provided companies with a new marketing outlet upon which to capitalize. A company’s products and services usually dictate which marketing outlets to use, but there is one consistent type of marketing tool that translates to practically any company selling products or services. This marketing tool is e-mail campaigns. Companies have been using this form of marketing for years to generate leads and ultimately drive revenue. Large organizations find it quite easy to refer to their existing customer base for e-mail campaigns intended to cross sell or introduce a new product or service. For small to medium sized companies, e-mail campaigning is a significant part of their marketing strategy. Whether your organization is small, medium or large, successful e-mail campaigning can be a challenging process to master.
With various routes to market, companies must now figure out how they can effectively reach their specific target market, create demand, drive awareness and execute successful campaigns that generate sales revenue. This is not an easy task. Simply sending e-mails to a contact list does not automatically deliver the expected results. Companies must be more creative with their content, and monitor the success of a campaign so it can be refined and essentially re-delivered. In terms of content, prospects demand information that addresses their needs, in the clearest and most efficient way possible. With all the information the average prospect receives in one day, your company’s message needs to stand out. Once the e-mail campaign has been sent, measuring its success by turnover is not the only way to analyze the campaign. Companies need more calls to action and a clear understanding of the analytics of the campaigns. Marketing automation has become a major challenge for marketing teams.
Organizations, independent consultants and service firms are networking with more business partners and contractors in order to accomplish tasks and execute projects. Working with several contractors and business partners creates a network of micro workers that must be managed in order for projects to be successful from start to finish. Challenges in collaboration, productivity, execution, financial management and overall management of projects are common obstacles that organizations and independent consultants face. Client interaction must also be managed in order to deliver a successful and effective project. All of these aspects must run coherently and be streamlined in order to manage projects to optimum efficiency.
Pinpointe is a cloud based email-marketing software launched in 2008 that addresses the aforementioned business challenges and more. Pinpointe provides business-to-business marketers with the tools to execute e-mail campaigns along with the analytics to improve success. In this profile we will examine Pinpointe software in the areas of business problems addressed, target market, pricing model, functionality and technical attributes. We will take a deep dive into how Pinpointe software can be beneficial for business-to-business marketers and marketing teams.
Target Market
For marketing teams and marketers within a company, the job of delivering qualified leads to the sales team is an ongoing task. Internet, social and viral marketing have made e-mail campaigns more complicated and created new dynamics within the role of the marketer.
Pinpointe software is a unique cloud tool that caters to a specific group of professionals within an organization, the business-to-business marketer or the marketing team. Pinpointe software focuses on rich content creation and marketing automation. The Pinpointe software is not industry or vertical specific, but can cater to any marketing team. The top verticals that use this tool are technology (all), financial services and on-line education.
The top verticals that use this tool are
- Technology firms(all)
- Financial services firm
- on-line education
Pricing Model
Pinpointe offers three flexible payment options for organizations based on email sending needs: by number of emails sent, number of contacts and pay-as-you-go pricing. A prepayment for six months includes a 10% monthly discount. Pinpointe is a genuine business-based tool in the sense that it does not permit the use of purchased lists or sell email lists; its customer base is for permissions-based email marketing only. If a quarterly commitment is made, a 15% discount will apply to the monthly subscription fee.
The first two pricing options are subscription based according to either emails sent or number of contacts, while the third pay-as-you-go option allows organizations to buy credits and use them as required. The pay-as-you-go option allows credits to be rolled over and is ideal for organizations that have sporadic or inconsistent use of emails sent per month. The more credits purchased at one time results in lower costs per email.
The following breakdown represents a quick pricing structure of the 4 editions and the main features within each edition. A more detailed matrix of features and functions can be found in figure 2.
All three plans include the following features:
- Immediate account verification and set-up within 10 minutes. Applications are reviewed to protect privacy and avoid spammers.
- Ability to collect an unlimited number of subscribers, organize your lists and create virtually unlimited drip-marketing (auto responder) campaigns.
- Support via email, live chat, unlimited access to the Pinpointe knowledgebase, on-demand training videos and blog.
- No contracts, hosting fees, setup costs or termination fees.
Three pricing options available for Pinpointe are shown below. Figure 1 refers to the number of emails sent per month, Figure 2 represents the number of contacts per month and Figure 3 represents the pay-as-you-go pricing.
Figure 1. Emails sent per month
Figure 2. Number of contacts pricing
Figure 3. Pay-as-you-go pricing
For companies that require additional assistance in creation of email templates, custom design, uploading of lists, formatting etc. Pinpointe offers additional premium services as outlined below.
Total Cost of Ownership
For SaaS based applications, total cost of ownership is calculated differently from on-premise. In our analysis, we have identified 11 items that should be included when calculating the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a Cloud-based solution. This provides the starting point for determining the TCO over the application lifecycle and provides the basis for the calculation of ROI. In a SaaS based offering, these items are usually included and if not, organizations should inquire as to how they are priced in addition to the monthly subscription fee. Most of the components for a SaaS/Cloud solution are included within the monthly subscription fee or pricing model. This list represents the most common components that compose a SaaS or Cloud solution.
Are these components included the SaaS subscription?
|
|
SaaS Checklist
In order to fully understand SaaS and Cloud-based solutions, Eval-Source has created a checklist that businesses should apply when engaging a SaaS or Cloud vendor. The components of this checklist cover the Cloud delivery model and provide details that may require further investigation. This checklist serves as a starting point for SaaS/Cloud basics that the organization should bear in mind before choosing a SaaS/Cloud solution.
| Tenancy—multi or single |
Multi-tenancy |
|---|---|
| Cloud structure—public or private |
Public - All Cloud data hosted in Pinpointe data centers |
| Subscription terms |
Monthly, emails sent, contacts sent, Pay-as-you-go |
| Data center—online or offline |
Online |
| Data security standards by vertical | 256 SSL bit encryption site wide on all logged in pages |
| Business continuity/data recovery |
Yes |
| Hardware Maintenance Encryption type |
256 SSL bit encryption site wide on all logged in pages |
| Version release schedule |
When new features are available. Patches and updates pushed live when complete |
| Current version released |
|
| Session management |
Yes |
| Application level security |
Yes |
| User limits | Up to 250 concurrent users in the Enterprise Edition |
| Offer data migration services |
Yes |
| Offer free trials/sandbox testing | Yes, there is a fifteen-day trial. Trial can be extended by request |
| Setup fee (admin fee) |
No |
| Application customizable by user |
Y. Pinpointe is “white labelled” so there is no software branding, just your own company information |
| Application customizable by vendor |
N/A |
| Charge for additional space |
N/A |
Solution Analysis
Functional Areas
Pinpointe is a business-to-business marketing tool, although several Pinpointe customers use the application for B2C purposes. Pinpointe offers two editions of their service: a Professional Edition and an Enterprise Edition. Its marketing email platform enables organizations to improve target market focus through segmentation and nurture leads generated through marketing campaigns, thereby increasing the quality of the leads provided to sales teams. An organization’s entire email marketing initiative can be outsourced and supported using the Pinpointe platform. A few main uses for Pinpointe include lead generation tools, message amplification and automated email marketing capabilities.
Its flexible platform allows email design, newsletter creation, analytic tools to maximize and further focus responses, subscriber management, advanced tracking, reporting analytics and includes integration with Google Analytics, website integration, email deliverability options, surveys, dynamic content, service and support.
The Enterprise Edition includes the functions listed above and adds dedicated email infrastructure, the ability to “white label” messages, multiple user accounts, reputation management administration, dedicated phone support and technical resources, subscriber management, increased scalability to manage up to 20 million contact with custom fields, an integrated XML API and specific user profile settings. The Enterprise Edition offers support for up to 200 concurrent users logins and dedicated IPs/infrastructure.
In the new media workspace where consumers expect to have emails displayed as to their preference the Pinpointe application automatically creates a “multi-part” email upon sending. This allows the user to select either an HTML email or a text email that is more suitable for portable devices. This option maximizes email campaign effectiveness by not having to duplicate work for mobile and traditional campaigns. Another feature that can make your campaigns viral is being able to embed links for video within an email campaign. Having an embedded link reduces the user fatigue and navigation time thereby making campaigns more effective.
The advanced analytics that is a standard component of the Pinpointe platform enables organizations to analyze their campaign results and adjust the settings for delivery until suitable response rates are achieved. Testing can easily be incorporated as there are no restrictions as to how the emails can be changed. This is especially effective for split A-B testing and behavioural targeting. The split A/B testing can be used to diagnose specific email flaws, troubleshoot ineffective campaigns and determine visitor behaviour and priorities. Having this resource available to understand user behaviour will lead to better open rates, more click-thrus, more website traffic and ultimately more conversions.
The market space of enterprise email-marketing automation is very fragmented and by combining several useful automation features and functions Pinpointe’s framework offers a complete set of tools for unifying marketing automation tasks and simplifying email marketing.
The next two figures briefly outline the main features/functions in the Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition.
Figure 4. Professional Edition – Main Feature/Function Outline
The Enterprise Edition of Pinpointe offers all the same features/functions as the Professional Edition with the addition of the following features. The Enterprise Edition is best suited for organizations that send from 250 000 to 10 million + emails a month.
Figure 5. Enterprise Edition Feature/Function Outline
Pinpointe software offers its customers a highly customizable, automated email-marketing platform that includes split-testing, drip-marketing campaigns, dynamic content, spam checker, campaign management tools and advanced segmentation analytics. The Enterprise Edition is scalable to support up to 250 concurrent users and offers a dedicated IP virtualization infrastructure, which further secures the platform and your company data. The dedicated Account Manager and additional phone support sustains the higher volume of transactional data created and additional account users.
The WYSIWYG editor facilitates easy email template creation similar to that of the MS Office design interface. To engage customers, Pinpointe offers best of breed pre-created email templates as part of the SaaS subscription. Within short order, Pinpointe will also offer many more attractive email marketing templates so that organizations can easily customize their message, look and save time in email template creation. This means organizations can reduce the time to create customized templates, which translates into a shorter time span to launch their email-marketing campaigns. For global companies, international character sets may be used to customize the language of the emails for marketing campaigns.
Pinpointe’s registration form tool enables you to add a subscription form on your website. Your site visitors can sign up for your email list and their addresses are automatically imported in to your Pinpointe account. This facilitates building your email list.
Technical Specifications
Quick Glance Specifications
| Web browser optimization |
Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox |
|---|---|
| APIs provided |
Yes |
| Security practice included |
Business continuity, Redundancy |
As an enterprise email-marketing platform, Pinpointe offers integration options that will simplify integration for companies with an existing ERP or other software. Data can be downloaded/uploaded in Excel and/or CSV formats. Email templates can be imported/exported in HTML directly. MS Outlook contacts can also be imported to Pinpointe via CSV file downloads.
Pinpointe is easily integrated to Google Analytics and Google Calendar. This leverages the power of Google Analytics and is added to the Pinpointe conversion reporting to provide real business intelligence with which to monitor your email campaigns. Changes can easily be made to adjust to non-responsive drip-campaigns or split-testing initiatives by utilizing the analytics provided by Google and Pinpointe. A code addition synchronizes contacts from Salesforce.com. By synchronizing contacts from the SFDC CRM, a predetermined contact list can kick-start your email-marketing automation endeavour.
Pinpointe can be synced to MS Outlook contacts as well as Salesforce.com contacts, thereby reducing list creation time and enabling you to start marketing faster. You will be able to create beautiful html campaigns by simply pasting your content into wizard driven templates. Co HTML and text email cater to mobile or browser specific requirements. In the near future, Pinpointe will add several hundred new, attractive, tried and tested email-marketing templates for your convenience and expediency.
As part of their technical support Pinpointe offers an extensive library for an FAQ knowledgebase and other email marketing resources including whitepapers of best practices, research and educational webinars to further ensure success so that you capitalize on the rich user friendly interface.
Conclusion
The need for e-mail campaigns is a necessity for any companies marketing strategy. It has proven to be the way to reach target markets, create demand, and ultimately drive revenue into a company. With Pinpoint software the method of e-mail marketing is now streamlined into a process with rich content and the ability to measure a campaigns success. With behavioural targeting, Pinpointe can acquire information from prospects which can be used to refine future campaigns. Pinpointe has taken tasks big and small of the e-mail marketing process and automated them through their tool making this job easier for marketers and marketing teams.
Is it for you ?
With over 5000 organizations and a 95% retention rate, encompassing many different industries and company types Pinpointe’s email-marketing automation platform delivers the necessary tools for organizations to capitalize on a SaaS delivered marketing solution. Pinpointe’s customers are Business-to-Business (“B2B”) Enterprises ranging from Fortune 1000 companies to venture-backed start-up companies such as software, technology, medical, financial services, media government organizations and many more.
Because it is a cloud based software, it can be used as a standalone tool for marketing teams. Depending on your email requirements Pinpointe has several different pricing options an enterprise Edition and a Professional Edition. There are also further price categorizations depending on if you use a number of contacts or you calculate your spending on the amount of emails you send out, both are available.
Why should you consider it ?
Pinpointe does not sell email lists but their service can facilitate building contacts through the use of the analytics, split- testing, newsletter features within their application. Overall, Pinpointe is an enterprise level marketing tool that can quickly automate manual functions and simplify the necessary work that these marketing functions create. A simple platform through it WYSIWYG editor lowers administration time for companies, thereby reducing costs and increasing ROI.
If you are a software vendor and interested in learning more about an independent analyst review for your application, please click here to contact us.
About GetApp.com
http://www.getapp.comGetApp.com is a business software app store for buyers of enterprise applications. It offers a simple way for buyers to compare and evaluate applications and a low cost channel for providers to be found online. Software buyers come to GetApp.com for the convenience of researching enterprise applications in one place. Application providers come to GetApp.com to reach out to a worldwide audience of active buyers, receive qualified traffic to their website and sales leads relevant to their target markets. GetApp.com also operates AppDoubler, a software partner network dedicated to Cloud applications, where vendors offer affiliate opportunities to re-selling partners. Please visit www.getapp.com and www.appdoubler.com for more information.
About Eval-Source
http://www.eval-source.comEval-source is a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic consulting services for organizations to achieve success in their IT initiatives. Our Tru-Eval selection system allows organizations to avoid IT failure, receive more ROI in technology spend, reduce project life-cycle lengths and provide accurate results to make the best decision for your company. Included within our strategic consulting practice are cloud computing services, cloud evaluation services and business process optimization. Whether you have an existing system that is not performing up to par or need advice on a cloud computing strategy Eval-source can provide the necessary direction for your IT initiatives. Our leading‐edge selection and business process optimization services make your life easier to acquire enterprise software and achieve greater technology success from impartial third party analysts.