CleverReach Pros and Cons of the Newsletter Software

The tool has a neat and tidy layout with lots of help buttons offering explanations in a flash.

The editor is based on a drag-and-drop system that is fairly decent for the most part. Having said that, there is definitely room for improvement. For instance, there is no “Undo” feature that applies to the editor as a whole. One thing that can be confusing is the parallel use of ‘pt’, ’em’ and ‘px’ for font sizes. This may cost you some extra time when you’re formatting text.

There is a convenient if/then/else editor for dynamic text blocks like salutations. You can even target individual content blocks to specific segments of your user base. This way you are able to fully customize the content of your newsletters.

Individual and regular campaigns, autoresponders, A/B split testing, RSS campaigns, and follow-up campaigns.

There are around 60 ready-made template designs that are also responsive (“Design Templates” category). On top of these, you can also take your pick from several basic templates that you can use to put together your own designs (“Responsive” category).

You can set up workflows using the THEA automation center, although these are sadly still separate from the standard campaigns. However, there are plenty of features, such as tagging and follow-up campaigns, and purchases can be incorporated into these workflows.

There are a number of different options for importing lists and it is easy to divide them into segments.

The editor for forms used to register and unsubscribe is straightforward. There is the option of double opt-in. If you’re on the Free or Prepaid plan, you’ll have to put up with a CleverReach advertising button if you don’t host your own forms.

CleverReach has clearly invested in this area in recent years, scoring in the mid-nineties in our latest deliverability tests.

Here you get everything you could ever wish for, including geographic and email client analysis. Google Analytics tracking strings are generated automatically. If you have an online store, you can monitor conversions and sales too.

Available in English, German, Spanish, Dutch, French and Italian. Sending works with UTF-8 coding, which is compatible with any language of your choice.

Tests are run to determine the risk of being caught by the main spam filters. There is also the option of testing how emails are displayed by standard email clients (via Litmus). Both of these tests incur a charge.

Recipients are deactivated automatically after the third hard bounce.

Import and export facilities are provided.

The Free plan comes with 5 MB. Storage space of 1 GB is provided for users with monthly plans and prepaid usage.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM are supported. Compliance with GDPR is also guaranteed and the company is a member of the Certified Senders Alliance (CSA).

You can use your own (sub-)domain name for tracking links and you can set the sender email address as you wish.

Various users of CleverReach can be assigned different access rights. There is also an agency solution that allows you to grant access to customers or individual departments (within a larger enterprise).

Zapier, WordPress, Shopify, Salesforce, Sage, SugarCRM, and many more. APIs are another option available.

Landing pages have to be created externally.

Ticket system and knowledge base: We found the level of email support offered during our tests to be reasonable.