What is Vertical Response?
Vertical Response is an email marketing platform that offers a reasonably priced entry to email marketing for small businesses. It offers a simple-to-use solution with moderate features for organizations wishing to automate emails, manage marketing campaigns, and use a landing page builder with templates. You can even create surveys for your subscriber list as an optional add-on. Building the emails and landing pages uses a simple drag and drop function and offers a wide variety of templates.
Founded in 1915, Deluxe Corporation owns the VerticalResponse platform, having acquired it in 2013. Deluxe Corporation specializes in payments and business technology with 6,500 employees, annual revenues of $2.8 billion, and headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The VerticalResponse platform fits nicely with Deluxe’s other acquisitions, providing digital marketing, operations, brand marketing, and payments products. The company also supports web-hosting, online printing, and a reality television show for small businesses.
VerticalResponse’s core email features comprise contact list management, email and HTML editors, automated emails, and basic reporting and analytics. Users speak highly of the number and quality of the customizable and mobile-optimized templates available. An interesting option is the purchase of test kit credits to allow the preview of emails on over 50 different platforms. You gain access to an image library, and Facebook and Twitter sharing comes as standard. You also get unlimited landing pages and customizable pop-up forms.
The higher tier plan offers a few extras, including advanced reporting capabilities. Another interesting feature is the ability to review your delivery rates, which is a useful way to see the efficiency with which VerticalResponse manages its business. The top email marketing providers regularly get delivery rates above 80% and well into the 90% range. Those less well-managed drop well below 70%. If you’re paying for a service, you want to be sure it’s getting to its intended recipient! The higher payment tier also offers A/B subject line testing, allowing you to finetune your open rate.
Vertical Response
What popular features do you get with Vertical Response?
- 60-day free trial
- Ease of use
- Customizable pop-up forms
- Test kit for pre-sending checks
- Social sharing capability
- SEO optimization tools
- Marketing automation
- Surveys for business insights
- Powerful WYSIWYG landing page builder
- Rapid responses from customer support
Customer Support is available at Vertical Response
Customers are generally happy with their customer support, citing a quick response time to queries. Given that you can’t talk to anyone at VerticalResponse over the phone for support, it’s good their email and chat response is so rapid. You can access support via live chat and email if you have a paid plan, while those on the 60-day free trial can only access help through email. However, a phone number is supplied for general inquiries, as is a separate email address. VerticalResponse offers a blog, FAQ section, video tutorials, and a learning center for self-paced learning and self-help.
What kind of business is Vertical Response ideal for?
VerticalResponse is ideal for single-person businesses through to medium-sized companies, particularly if they are not hugely tech-savvy and need ease of use and some hand-holding. However, making things easy to use implies some rigidity in what you can do, so companies with technical nous may find that aspect constraining. Larger companies will also need to model their costs because while VerticalResponse pricing is competitive at the lower tiers, the price increases rapidly the more subscribers you have.
Pros and Cons
- CAN SPAM Compliance
- Customer survey design and management
- Free 60-day trial
- A/B Testing
- Extensive customization options
- Simple interface
- Easy to use
- Advanced reporting
- Customizable pop-ups
- Powerful landing page builder
- No phone support
- Higher plans get pricey
- No mobile apps
- No RSS for email
People like you also researched
Here are some products we think might be a good fit based on what people like you viewed.
Constant Contact
- All features on a single platform
- Easy to use, and time-saving
- Over three hundred pre-designed email templates
- Quick drag-and-drop email editor
Benchmark
- A free email marketing software starter plan is available
- No credit card required
- Payment options–PayPal, check, wire transfer, credit card
- HTML code editor for those who want to do their own coding
Active Campaign
- A/B split testing
- Automation rules
- Customizable templates and branding
- Excellent customer support
How much does Vertical Response cost?
*based on information provided by the vendor. Actual cost may vary.
VerticalResponse offers two methods of subscribing to their platform, a monthly subscription or a pay-as-you-go option. The monthly option offers a choice of a Basic plan and a Pro plan. As we’ve stated, the Pro plan gets you access to all in the Basic plan plus advanced reporting capabilities, a delivery rate review feature, and A/B subject line testing.
The pricing structure for the monthly plan uses eight levels based on the number of contacts or email addresses in your account. Whichever price level you’re in, you are entitled to send unlimited emails. The eight levels follow:
| List Size | Monthly Price |
|---|---|
| < 500 | $11 |
| 501 – 1,000 | $22 |
| 1,001 – 2,500 | $33 |
| 2,501 – 5,000 | $55 |
| 5,001 – 10,000 | $83 |
| 10,001 – 25,000 | $160 |
| 25,001 – 40,000 | $250 |
| Over 40,000 | Quote |
There does not appear to be an option to gain a discount for paying annually like other platforms.
The Pay-As-You-Go option allows you to avoid a monthly charge by buying email credits. Obviously, the more you buy, the better the price per email.
| Email Credits | One-time Charge |
|---|---|
| < 300 | $7.50 |
| 1,000 | $25 |
| 2,00 | $45 |
| 5,000 | $90 |
| 7500 | $135 |
| 10,000 | $175 |
| 25,000 | $300 |
| 50,000 | $500 |
| 75,000 | $675 |
| 200,000 | $1,500 |
| 375,000 | $2,813 |
| 500,000 | $3,750 |
| Over 500,000 | Quote |
Final thoughts...
VerticalResponse has done a great job of making its interface easy to use and simplifying its email and landing page builder. If there’s one consistent feedback from users, it’s the ease with which they can drag and drop blocks to create professional-looking emails and pages. We particularly like the additional ability to create and send surveys to your email list.
If we have any niggles, it’s the complicated pricing structure. Still, the pay-as-you-go option might be perfect for a small business with irregular cash flows wanting stricter spending control and not wishing to commit to a regular monthly payment. We also note that the lack of phone support, mobile apps, and RSS for email might be a turn-off for some.
Those issues aside, the pricing at the lower tiers of the paid plan is competitive, and the high degree of customization is impressive. We feel that if you’re not a technical wizard but wish to automate and manage your email marketing and social media campaigns, VerticalResponse is a good solution, and we recommend it.
