Anyone found a solution you like for email drip campaigns that interfaces with data into Pipedrive?

Mark McDavid

We tried Outfunnel and love the statistics, but it has too many limitations. You can't reorder emails in your sequence after it is set up, and Outfunnel is causing too many undeliverable emails (to people we already work with and frequently email, so they are emails that do not normally bounce for us) and so they suggested we try Mailchimp and plug Outfunnel into that. But we don't like Mailchimp overall and really do not want to have to pay for two separate services (Outfunnel + Mailchimp) to get the job done. 

Looking for one service for emails and stats that feeds automatically into Pipedrive. Have a demo call booked with ActiveCampaign next. Appreciate any options or advice for platforms to send drip/sequence email campaigns alongside capturing lead score related data (clicks, website visits, etc.) that shows up in Pipedrive?

Brad Krause_13404

We are in the process of testing out Mailigen which is owned by pipedrive. 

Mark McDavid

Thanks, Brad. We are too, but the CSR I spoke with today wasn't sure it is an option to have the emails look like a personal email (instead of html). We've liked how with Outfunnel it is like sending an email within Pipedrive, it looks like a personal "real" email. 

Just ruled out Klenty for anyone who stumbles on this thread down the line - they can't re-order emails within the cadence either (same pitfall as Outfunnel). Currently testing ActiveCampaign and Mailigen. Fingers crossed.

Minhaz Moosa

@Mark McDavid This is something we are currently struggling with also,

We have tried Mailchimp / OutFunnel /Autopilot and all are clunky at best.

We are using two sperate options within pipedrive at the moment,

1. LEADS - using Labels and Workflow Automation - not sure if this is meant to be used like this but it does work, reports are non existant and can't send another email based on any actions taken
2. Nuture Campaign to Deals - Using Deal Stages and Workflow Automation - again same limitations as above

@Mike van der Valk @Inês Batata any plans for pipedrive to release something that can help us out?

Andrus Purde

Hey Mark, Andrus here, one of the co-founders of Outfunnel.

Firstly, sorry to disappoint you here with deliverability! While we constantly monitor and optimise email placement on our end and maintain (or exceed) the industry average 80-90% deliverability rate, it can be lower for certain domains where the recipient servers are using restrictive policies (ie servers that use customized settings, geo-block certain countries etc.). It seems that in your case we weren't able to provide a workable option at the moment but just wanted to let you know that we are looking into more advanced email deliverability options that would be able to also solve this type of use case in the future.

That said, if you do end up opting for ActiveCampaign and want to get the email engagement data synced over to Pipedrive, feel free to reach out to me and I am sure we can work out a suitable pricing for you (ActiveCampaign doesn’t natively sync email engagement to Pipedrive but we’re releasing a connector in Outfunnel shortly that helps with that)

And while the deliverability might already be a deal breaker I’ve still pinged our product team about email reordering and they mentioned that they’ve planned in functionality for Q2 that enables users to add emails in-between existing sequence emails. Would that solve the pain point about sequence creation for you or is reordering a must?

Mark McDavid

Hi Andrus,

Thanks for your message. We really wanted Outfunnel to work for us, as we liked your statistics and the customer service members of your team who we've interacted with (Maarja and Markus) have been really great to work with, everyone seems to truly enjoy their job and are ready to help in any way they can. Unfortunately the need to be able to reorder emails within a sequence is essential for our work flow. We're in the healthcare/physical therapy space, and regulations are constantly shifting (for example, the public health emergency update this week just allowed for Telehealth to continue through the end of the year), so we'd normally want to add that to our sequence earlier so new additions to our list get that update earlier in their sequence (instead of sending a one-time single email campaign). If Outfunnel adds the ability to reorder emails within a sequence down the line, please let us know. That would definitely make a difference in our decision.

One thing we really like about Outfunnel that we aren't experiencing in ActiveCampaign is that the Outfunnel design editor for a basic email really does make it look like a real, personal email is being sent. We still include an unsubscribe link at the bottom in Outfunnel to help our list deliverability (to flush out people who don't want to receive our emails anymore so they don't get marked as spam), but we are able to make that unsubscribe link in Outfunnel go to our own unsubscribe landing page. Versus with ActiveCampaign, it requires our full address at the bottom and a link to their own Unsusbscribe landing page. Also the "look" of the standard format (non-html) email in Outfunnel is very good and almost on par with Pipedrive and Gmail itself. Only thing I'd change in that is we'd love to be able to fully outline at different levels (using indent) within bullet points, like in Pipedrive and/or Gmail: 

Gmail example of outline with indented bullets.

We understand that no provider is perfect, and Outfunnel delivers on many points that are important to us. Unfortunately aside from the deliverability, right now the ability to re-order sequences is driving our exploration of other options. But in the end, if ActiveCampaign and Mailigen have the same deliverability issues we've encountered, then we will stick with Outfunnel due to that great plain email editor you have. Right now they are both making us have to use a basic html template, and the look just isn't the same to make it look like we are sending out personal messages.

Thanks again. 

Mike van der Valk

Minhaz Moosa said:

@Mark McDavid This is something we are currently struggling with also,

We have tried Mailchimp / OutFunnel /Autopilot and all are clunky at best.

We are using two sperate options within pipedrive at the moment,

1. LEADS - using Labels and Workflow Automation - not sure if this is meant to be used like this but it does work, reports are non existant and can't send another email based on any actions taken
2. Nuture Campaign to Deals - Using Deal Stages and Workflow Automation - again same limitations as above

@Mike van der Valk @Inês Batata any plans for pipedrive to release something that can help us out?

@Minhaz Moosa I don't have too many details at the moment, but stay tuned because we're cooking up something cool in the marketing area that will work seamless in Pipedrive