Marg PersistIQ

the concept of drip campaigns and analytics - though that is no unique to PersistIQ

The platform is not very intuitive compares to others, functionalities "hidden" where you would not expect them. Worst of all was the customer service which could not assist with the simplest of issues, i.e send me a csv file of my campaign data, as they had several server failures when I tried to download the files myself. I still have not got that data, so will have to go through hundreds of rows manually to note who opted out of my previous campaigns and what emails bounced. The absolute opposite of productivity and in total a massive waste of valuable time for me and the team.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Response from Pouyan Salehi of PersistIQ

Hi Cordula,

We value every customer and I’m very sorry to hear about your experience. You have access to the data from your campaigns and the ability to download that data at any time. In fact, you can download data from campaigns, the main prospect table, reporting, templates and more.

I reviewed the support emails and it looks like the challenge was with downloading the file from the link our system generates. As you know, our engineering team tried to replicate the issue but couldn’t - it was working as expected for them and for other customers.

Perhaps it may have been due to the email client or browser you were using? This article describes how the issue may be a limitation of outlook https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1931195-issue-opening-excel-documents-via-shared-link-from-outlook-office-for-mac-2016

I see that our team emailed the actual data file to you. Did you not receive it? If not, please let me know and we will email it to you again.

Separately, our engineering team offered to schedule a phone call with you on two occasions to better understand the issue, but they never heard back.

Again, we care about your and every customer’s experience and will do what it takes to make the situation right.

The offer to schedule a call is always on the table and we are willing to help in any way we can! Or please email me directly at any time (my first name at persistiq dot com).

Nothing. There is nothing good in my experience with this tool or team that I can say that I like.

I hope I have enough characters for this.

There is an extreme lack of communication/help from the Persist team as well. When you chat or email them, you usually get an "away" message or a "be back in 3 hours". In sales, you can't wait that long to get an answer. There needs to be 24/7 help.

Speaking to their support team is like pulling teeth. I had to ask the same question 5 times to get an answer.....which still made no sense.

The CEO does not care about the people using his "solution" all he cares about is money. He had complained that he was wasting time and money trying to "help" us. He did not care to make things right. Once the contract is signed and you encounter issues, they ignore you!

On top of the unprofessional and unhelpful customer service, this company and CEO provides, the platform is not user-friendly or as robust as they claim.

They sold to us saying that the SFDC integration was seamless, which it wasn't and they didn't even confirm that we had the correct version to do so.

Campaigns are such a struggle to use. Our people would schedule campaigns and then it would not send at the time schedule to send. It doesn't consider the weekends, so if you have a 3-day delay from the first stage of the campaign to the second, it will do this over the weekend which negatively effects the times on your campaign. It does have a pause feature on the campaigns, yet it still processes to the next stage over the weekend too so no way I can see so far to stop it.

Huge problems with deliverability/volume limits when trying to run a large campaign.

Incorrect tracking -- If you open an email in the outbox, it will notify you saying that the recipient had opened it. In the platform, bounced emails track as if they were opened as well. Just to name a few.

You cannot add images to templates without pulling your hair out.

No calendar functionality, what so ever.

UI is terrible and you need to click and click and click to get what you need.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

It's pretty cheap compared to other tools. The integrations with Zapier are definitely helpful.

The interface is lacking. It's not super clear when campaigns are active and it's not great for managing different profiles on campaigns.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

I like that the program keeps the sales person on a timeline. You can set instructions for when the emails / calls should be done which is great. Reminders keep you on track.

I dislike the fact that a lot of the features are confusing. There is an extreme lack of communication / help from the Persist team as well. When you chat or email them, you usually get an "away" message or a "be back in 3 hours". In sales, you can't wait that long to get an answer. There needs to be 24/7 help.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

For the cost, PersistIQ is a great option for small teams with simple sales/marketing initiatives. It is an incredibly simple platform, great for small teams with few needs. Works well for a simple SaaS sale.

Reporting was confusing, and layout/design options were sorely limited. When trying to pull together marketing efforts with landing pages that would track with google analytics, we had several problems with persist hyperlinks.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Response from Kate Paliakova of PersistIQ

Hi Conor,

Thanks for the feedback - we always love hearing from customers. We’re happy to hear that you found PersistIQ easy to use!

In regards to the note about marketing, PersistIQ is primarily for proactive/outbound sales efforts to targeted accounts where personalization is important. Most of our customers use PersistIQ in conjunction with a marketing automation system (landing pages, lead capture, company communication, etc…) and a CRM (pipeline management). Also, PersistIQ is not the best fit for “spray and pray” as the platform is built to empower targeted and personalized sales communication.

We are constantly building new features to expand the functionality of the system and introducing new integrations to streamline workflows with other systems.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Kate Paliakova, Head of Customer Success at PersistIQ