All direct mail from one place? No thanks!

The major selling point of the service called Vertical Response is that you can do all your direct response mail - online and off - from one service. So, although I've been happily using Amazing Mail for print postcards, and Constant Contact for email newsletters, I thought I'd give Vertical Response a spin. Who knew, maybe I don't really have to have three different contact databases after all!

Initially, there were a few features of VR that I liked - for example, on their postcards, you can type and edit text right on the front of the card, over top of your image. But as I got further along, I found myself unimpressed. At first glance, I was happy to see the entire back of the card was available for a message but when I realized how poorly the margins were set, it seemed like a mistake from a design standpoint. Plus, the back of the postcard would only take text - and I like to put my logo and mailing address on the reverse as a graphic. I wasn't able to set the font on the back either.

Compared to Amazing Mail, the entire proofing/customization process for the VR postcards felt clumsy and confusing. At one point, I realized I had to back pedal in the process and rerun the proof so I could get a code to access the PDF of what it would look like. I really disliked the PDF process, and wondered why they made it so complex to proof a document. Amazing Mail is really "what you see is what you get" without the added hoops to jump. Then, on placing the order for my trial card, I kept getting a message that the date needed to be in the future - I finally figured out it was defaulting to 2002! Ugh!

Still curious, I went on to see how the newsletter feature worked and that seemed okay - plenty of generic templates to choose from, but not nearly as flexible as Constant Contact.

The big question I had was whether I could append mailing lists and combine multiple lists. This is the bugaboo for so many small businesses - managing databases. We end up with records in Outlook or another customer management system, importi../../../../css/ng_and_exporting_from_online_databases__trying_to_map_fields_so_it_all_works_together._And_usually__it.css's a major pain in the rear. Well, sad to say, it's no easier with Vertical Response. I really needed to maintain the categorization I have in my main database and to get it into the VR system meant all sorts of futzing around, exporting in segments, mapping and scrubbing fields. No thanks - an hour into it, I threw in the towel. I remembered that I really did like Constant Contact and Amazing Mail independently doing what they do best.

So, my conclusion is that for a new business, without pre-existing direct mail solutions or maybe not even a database of any sort, I imagine it would be attractive to use a service that does both in one place. And if you were not already spoiled by an existing service, those little gotcha's probably wouldn't hurt as much. Unfortunately, I don't think I will be using or recommending Vertical Response after all.