Sailthru Review 2021

Sailthru in a nutshell

What is Sailthru?

Sailthru was founded in 2008 and grew into a respected email marketing tool that comes with many great features. Thanks to high-quality elements such as their drag-and-drop journey builder and dynamic segmentation you can truly build email marketing campaigns that will make a difference in your relationships with customers.

There is only one thing that I don’t really feel comfortable with regarding Sailthru, and that’s the secrecy around their pricing. I’ve been unable to track down any pricing or fee structure, which means I cannot really say if this platform is worth what you’ll put into it.

With that said, it’s still a great tool worth considering. So stick around as I introduce you to Sailthru and all its features.

Sailthru Pros & Cons

PROS

1: Personalization: Sailthru is admired for its personalization, which is really the company’s specialization. Thanks to the design of this platform, you will be given many opportunities for making your content and campaigns more personal.

2: Smart Strategies Feature: The Smart Strategies feature gives users all they’d need to increase conversion rates. All relevant data is collected and analyzed after which it’s presented to users in an easy-to-understand manner.

3: User-Friendly: everything about Sailthru has been perfected to be as user-friendly as possible. Users don’t need to spend a lot of time getting to know the platform before they can really start using it.

4: Detailed Analytics: the best way to get personalization right is to have lots of data to work with, and that’s exactly how Sailthru works. It offers a great amount of analytics to analyze every detail of the emails you’ve sent. You are able to view hard and soft bounce rates, clicks, spam, open rates, CTR, opt-outs, and more.

CONS

1: Poor Customer Service: it is unclear why such a good tool would have customer service that leaves so much to be desired. Many customers have complained that their experience with Sailthru’s customer service has been anything but satisfactory. Hopefully, this is something that will change in the near future.

2: Lack of Social Media Integration: users have felt that Sailthru would be even closer to perfect if it offered integration with more social media platforms. Currently, it does integrate Facebook, so perhaps the developers of Sailthru are working on adding more platforms soon.

Who is Sailthru Good For?

•       You want: great personalization for your email marketing campaigns. Sailthru will definitely come through for your business if you need to make real connections with your audience through personalized content.
•       You need: In-depth analytics to form a solid foundation for good marketing planning.
•       You’re not: particularly tech-savvy but need a good email marketing tool with many features. Sailthru is easy to use but still powerful.

Sailthru Isn’t Recommended For:

•       Companies that: primarily want to work with social media platforms. Perhaps this will change in the future, but for now, social media doesn’t really seem like a focus for Sailthru.
•       Strict budgets: if your company is on a tight business or doesn’t have loads of freedom with money, Sailthru might not be a good option, at least at face value. Since finding information about their pricing isn’t as straightforward, it’s not as easy to make a quick budget and plan for using it.

Sailthru Pricing

Pricing with Sailthru isn’t straight forward, and there’s no suggested minimum, or even benchmark figure. The website states that the price is based on how many users you have in your system. This could be good or bad, depending on your business type, but either way, there’s no indication of what this price will be.

Unfortunately, data on Sailthru’s pricing is limited. You can request a demo and find out more if you wish to, though.

Cancellation/Refund Policy

Sailthru offers no refunds under any circumstances.

Sailthru Features

Sailthru offers users many great features that are beneficial to email marketing. I’ll tell you a bit more about them now so you’ll have a better understanding of what to expect when using this tool.

·       Dashboard

Rating:  5/5

Sailthru’s performance dashboard is considered by many users to be one of their most exciting and best features. It collects all your data and presents it in an attractive and easy-to-understand way.

You can use the information gathered by Sailthru to compare your campaigns and methods and find better solutions that will have improved results.

Because of how well the dashboard is designed, you don’t have to fish around for your data or go through multiple data presentations for an overall appraisal of your campaigns.

·       Retention Analytics Tool

Rating:  4/5

With this feature, you can see just how many customers you were able to retain during your campaigns. The data is presented per campaign and is highly detailed.

You will learn which platform was the most effective in getting and keeping your customers so you can build more marketing strategies focused on it.

This is a tool that plays a key role in effective marketing and isn’t on offer from many similar tools. It’s definitely one of my favorite Sailthru features.

·       Automated Personalization

Rating:  4.4/5

Sailthru is all about personalization, and it’s this feature and focus that makes it such a good marketing solution.

Thanks to Sailthru’s automated personalization, you can edit and personalize every aspect of your campaigns.

As a result, you will enjoy higher conversion rates and improved engagement. You can build campaigns that will have more value to your company and your customers.

·       Reporting

Rating:  4/5

Sailthru certainly doesn’t have to take a step back when compared to other similar tools and analytics. It has Sightlines, a predictive intelligence tool that is built into the Sailthry platform.

With this tool, data can be captured over time and you can use it to keep better track of your campaigns and their success. You can also easily monitor customer lifetime value.

The campaign reports offered by Sailthru lets you examine your campaign performances at a glance.

·       Sailthru Integrations

Rating:  2.5/5

Sailthru has made sure that you can integrate many apps and software for more flexibility and productivity. You can work with Google Adwords if you want to, as well as other Google products such as Google Tag Manager and Gmail.

Other integrations include Magento, WordPress, Persado, Inkit, Digioh, Shopify, and mParticle.

However, the integration of social media platforms is still rather lacking because only Facebook (and by extension Instagram) is supported.

·       Easy to Use

Rating:  4/5

Sailthru doesn’t require you to have coding knowledge or any serious tech-savviness to make the most of what it’s got to play with. You can use the data feeds and all other features with ease.

Wherever possible, everything has been automated so much that your marketing team will find it a breeze to build email campaigns.

Navigating Sailthru is pretty straightforward and the interface keeps things as simple as needed — it is a very user-friendly platform.

The design interface is a little less intuitive than with competitors, but you still won't need any prior experience.

Drag and Drop Interface

The Email Composer has a feature to casually organize your emails’ appearances

Landing page creator 

The creation of a landing page is a little more effort than emails, but there are blog posts to give you advice

Email templates 

You can choose from a number of templates, or even design your own, but that’ll require some coding experience

Sign up forms within newsletter tool (opt in-opt out process)

 You can use JavaScript API or HTML to create signup forms

·       Testing

Rating 4/5

Sailthru offers users A/B testing to help them determine which strategies work best for their target audiences. You can easily and quickly set up a few tests in campaigns and see how your subscribers react so you can give them exactly what they want.

Creating Email Campaigns and Managing

You can use the following features to control your various campaigns.

Emails sent/opened and links clicked

The data that proves which links are clicked and by who is permanently stored on your account

Deliverability rate and delivery by time zone (spam)

You can monitor and change your delivery times according to current successes

Creating and importing email lists

One downside to this service is that you have to enter all contacts manually

Split tests and A/B tests

Choose up to five test segments to perfect your emails

Personalization

You can personalize a number of aspects, but Sailthru will automatically store data on any user who’s engaged with your content and will personalize mail accordingly

Reporting and Analysis

You’re provided with robust reporting on your audience and user activity.

Engagement reports (Email open rate and CR tracking)

The analytics overview shows you how many of your emails are being read

Segmentation 

There are some auto-segment options, or you can group contacts manually

Social media tracking

Clicks on your social media widgets are monitored and reported

ROI analysis 

By inputting your expenditure, you can quickly calculate your current ROI

Sailthru Integrations

A fair number of addons are supported.

API integrations

Sailthru API allows you to interact programmatically with various features

Integrations with these platforms: Ecommerce, Shopify, Magento, Bigcommerce and Woocommerce 

Only Magento is currently partnered here

CRM Integrations

There are several customer relation apps, such as KickDynamic

Social Media integrations

There’s a number of integrated Facebook and Instagram applications

Apps 

Only 18 companies currently have supported apps

Plugins

The popular WordPress plugin is an option, along with a handful of others

Sailthru Automation

The advanced automation software lets you automate a number of different functions, giving you extra time to focus on new leads or developments. A unique option is that you can populate emails with user-specific terms, meaning thousands of clients can feel they’re receiving a personalized service.

Customer Service

You can call a phone line for support 24/7 on 877 812-8689, or email your query to support@sailthru.com.

Sailthru Alternatives

If you feel that Sailthru doesn’t cut it for you, don’t despair. There are many other options with really great features that might interest you. Here are three of my top choices:

SendX is not an all-in-one email marketing solution — it doesn’t combine email marketing with other channels or CRM functions. Instead, you get an all-rounded and well-designed email marketing tool.

The primary focus is on email marketing and you’ll have access to features that best make this form of marketing easy and effective.

If you’re looking for a tool that’s only for email marketing, this is one that you should definitely consider.

Hubspot is one of the best-known digital marketing solutions of 2021 and comes highly recommended. In contrast to SendX, Hubspot has many elements such as campaign automation, CRM, and email marketing.

Personalizing content and campaigns are simplified with Hubspot and it’s ideal for businesses of all sizes.

It is a bit pricey, so might not be the best solution for everyone, but the features and benefits of using Hubspot might make the price tag attached to it worth your money.

Omnisend offers users email marketing services with a focus on eCommerce. You can get a free plan, or try out the very affordable paid plans that start at as little as $16 a month.

You can do more than just email marketing with Omnisend, so if you need a multi-functional tool, this could be just the thing for you.

Conclusion

Sailthru may not be a perfect email marketing tool, but it does come very close. The high level of personalization you can enjoy in your campaigns with this software is really something to appreciate. Although pricing is a mystery and customer service has a bad reputation, you shouldn’t dismiss Sailthru as easily. Get a demo and check it out for yourself - you might just love it.

When searching for the correct service to assist you with your online marketing, Sailthru might well be the choice for you. It’ll serve you best if you’re looking to keep your current customers engaged, rather than acquiring new ones. This is due to its features for tailoring each email based on the specific user’s online interests. However, even if this is exactly what you're looking for, it’s hard to recommend a service that isn’t forthcoming with its prices.

For a similar option, try SendX. You can use this software to keep current customers engaged and entice new ones, and the price is reasonable and transparent.