In today's digital space, email inboxes are more jam-packed than ever. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. And in such a ruthless business climate, the success of your email marketing campaign desperately hinges on the delivery of your emails at the perfect moment. That's why you need a dedicated email marketing platform that allows you to track your emails and also understand the target recipients.
One such platform is Seventh Sense. It is not a household name like MailChimp but there is a chance you might have heard of it. If not, that's okay. In this review, we will start with a quick introduction and explore its prominent features, pros and cons, pricing, and more as we go along. Without further ado, let's get started!
What is Seventh Sense?
Seventh Sense is an email marketing platform running on artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize your email campaigns for better engagement and results. This tool is particularly known for its seamless integration with marketing behemoths Marketo and HubSpot. So, it is an excellent option for businesses using these two platforms for email marketing.
Hundreds of leading companies around the world use Seventh Sense. Let's take a look at some of the salient features that make it so appealing to these businesses.
Email Delivery Optimization
Thanks to its AI algorithm, Seventh Sense can optimize the timing as well as the frequency of your emails. It can predict the optimal moment to deliver an email to each contact on your list, which means that your emails land in the recipients’ inboxes when they are most likely to open them. Also, sending emails at optimal times boosts your chances of bypassing all those spam filters.
When it comes to email marketing, it is easy to overwhelm your subscriber base with too many emails and lead to unnecessary fatigue. Seventh Sense is designed to help you avoid it, thus, yielding higher open rates and click-through rates.
By strategically sending emails and getting them opened, Seventh Sense helps build your sender reputation with email providers like Gmail and Outlook. This can improve overall email deliverability for all your future campaigns.
Split Test Automation
This feature within Seventh Sense is designed to help you with A/B and multivariate testing. With AI-based automation, it essentially eliminates the need for manual work required to set up such tests. You don't have to create any spreadsheets or assign randomized numbers to manage various variations in your workflow.
Also, setting up and running multiple variations at the same time allows you to see which ones perform best with your target audience. On top of that, Seventh Sense’s algorithm relies on huge chunks of data, taking all the guesswork out of the process and helping you make decisions based on concrete data and results.
Deliverability Audit
Seventh Sense analyzes your email campaigns and identifies potential roadblocks that might be obstructing their delivery to recipients’ inboxes. The beauty of this feature is that it is absolutely free, regardless of whether you are on a paid plan.
A deliverability audit detects issues with the deliverability of your emails and gives you actionable insights and recommendations to fix them. This makes this tool a valuable asset for ensuring your email campaigns reach your target audience and maximize their impact.
Email Throttling
This feature controls the rate at which emails are sent from within Seventh Sense. Here is how it works-
When you send a large email campaign, all the recipients might receive it at once. This can overload inboxes and trigger spam filters. Throttling paces out the delivery, sending emails in smaller batches over a set timeframe. By controlling the email flow, throttling reduces the risk of your emails being flagged as spam. This helps maintain a good sender reputation with email providers like Gmail and improves overall deliverability.
Throttling gives you more control over your email campaigns. You can pause campaigns mid-stream to make some tweaks or spread out the delivery to avoid overwhelming your own customer service or sales teams.
ROI Calculation
Having a sense of how much return you are getting on your spending is key for any successful marketing campaign. Well, Seventh Sense calculates key metrics such as the total cost of your email marketing program, average cost per subscriber, and return on investment. This gives you a clear picture of how much money you're spending on email marketing and how much revenue it's generating.
Also, the platform generates personalized reports based on your data, giving you a clear and concise overview of your email marketing ROI. This makes it easier to track progress and make informed decisions.
HubSpot and Marketo Integrations
Seventh Sense integrates with both HubSpot and Marketo, offering an AI-powered boost to your email marketing efforts.
It offers support for send time optimization, email throttling, frequency optimization, and more. However, it is worth noting that Seventh Sense's current version does not support integration with Marketo's latest version.
Pricing
If you want to buy a paid Seventh Sense plan, it is best you have some clarity about what platform you intend to use it with, Marketo or HubSpot. This is because Seventh Sense offers separate pricing for both platforms.
The HubSpot Business plan costs $80/month (billed annually). You can also buy an Enterprise plan with custom features and pricing. For Marketo, on the other hand, the Business plan costs $450/month (also billed annually). There is also an Enterprise plan available for purchase with custom features and pricing.
Pros and Cons
Pros-
Free features: split test automation and deliverability audit
AI-powered send-time optimization
Email throttling
Seamless HubSpot integration
Cons-
A learning curve
Too much dependence on AI
Limited Marketo integration
Expensive Marketo plans
Final Verdict
Overall, Seventh Sense is a compelling solution for email campaign optimization if you are a HubSpot or Marketo user. Being AI-powered, it takes manual work out but too much dependence on AI can sometimes backfire, especially when accuracy is the concern. It offers excellent integration and pricing for HubSpot, which is not the case with Marketo. Another concern is the potentially complex user interface which can be rather daunting for beginners.
Although Seventh Sense offers some free features for all users such as split test automation and deliverability audit, it can be quite expensive if you are looking to use it with Marketo. Besides, there is no free trial. So, if you are flirting with the idea of purchasing a plan, do take the above factors into consideration before making any commitments.