Oracle Responsys Reviews & Product Details

I can do almost anything at a large scale. I can engineer new solutions by any means needed such as creating form webhooks, filters, logic, automated programs, AB testing, personalization Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The thing I dislike the most by far, is the My Oracle Support service. They rarely provide actionable\understandable solutions. If you have an issue that has to do with some more advanced operations, you're completely on your own and at the mercy of Oracle Responsys docs (which aren't all 100% up to date). Sadly, sometimes this is the case with simple issues. Also, they tend to just close tickets without waiting for your approval.

Native integrations with other apps hardly exist. We have to find creative ways to integrate with other products (which is possible if you know your way around the software).

If not for their support services, I'd rate the product 9/10. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the Program feature the best as it allows me set up and automate multiple email campaigns. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I dislike the Oracle Support team as they are slow to respond, always in completely different time zones, and usually require a ton of information to answer even the simplest question. Also, you can't really ask the support team if you're doing something the best possible way. Oracle Support rarely gives a straightforward answer or resolution to tickets in my experience. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

DATA MODEL

Responsys offers a relational database structure, very useful to store all the information you need.

There are basically 3 categories of tables:

- the main Contacts List, where you tipically store static information about your users (email, name, country...)

- Profile Extension Tables (PETs), where you store additional information related to the aforementioned users, in a 1:1 relation. Tipically, you use them to store more dynamic information, like marketing preferences

- Supplemental Tables, where you can store information both in a 1:N relation with the Contact List, or even without any relation. The classic example is a catalog table, where you store all the data about your products

In Responsys, you can use the classic Filters or even SQL views, to extract data from these tables, for example to create a specific audience.

You can set up and schedule jobs to import/export data from/to the external FTP server provided to you when you activate a Responsys account.

CAMPAIGN CREATION

The campaign editor offers a great functionality called "dynamic content regions", that means you can create only one campaign, but personalize the content based on some list field (for example, 1 campaign with 10 languages, instead of having to create 10 different campaigns).

AUTOMATIONS

The automation (which are called Programs) editor is a very easy-to-use drag and drop canvas, with a large variety of switches, timers and conditions to be matched in order to proceed along one path or another. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The integration process with the ecommerce is a bit tricky, and you will definitely need a skilled developer.

Moreover, if you have both an Oracle Responsys account and an Oracle Commerce Cloud ecommerce, you will need a third billable Oracle prodcut to integrate them and take advantage of the possibility to have all the orders/products data synced. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I love about this software are the tools available within Eloqua that allow us to direct our messages to the correct market segments, and ensures that we can delete the email addresses that have already received a marketing message from us on a given day and that They have unsubscribed through subscription management. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I can say with confidence that there is nothing that upsets or bothers me about this software Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Responsys account services are great, as we leverage many other OMC products such as BlueKai. Without our account team, it'd be quite impossible to wrangle all of the moving parts together. Downtimes are rare and rarely affect Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The UI is not intuitive. We have an internal teams building out emails and some things can slip through the cracks due to an interface remnicscent of Windows 95. Furthermore, implementing new add-ons can be a drawn out process from contract negotiation to execution since Oracle acquires new features and products then integrate them to the Responsys platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Responsys is able to build out complex triggered automations and utilize personalization and conditional content. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The folder system, the difficult to use interface, the bugs and non-intuitive nature of the product.The push tool seems archaic. The interface could definitely use an update. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emial integration from template to dynamic value is done very nicely Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It own predefined functions are negative point Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It has so many features, you never stop learning. From triggered reports to creating programs to the proofing feature, it’s a machine. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

A lot of errors with the push messaging feature. You’d think they can update it better with newer apps and website to keep up with the SDK developers keep producing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the ability to use dynamic content. It is pretty simple and straight forward. My favorite thing in the last year has been the split screen message designer. I can see my code and how the email renders all in one screen. I also think that the programs section is pretty simple to set up with nodes. The throw and catch feature was a nice, relatively-recent addition Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

sending push notifications! I basically have to duplicate my work since i need to create test PET, filters, programs just for internal employees to test things. There is no proof launch I can just send myself. I also find forms to be very confusing and not straight forward. I also do not like that when you do a filter count, it gives you an estimation and then you have to get the real count afterward. The estimations vary wildly from +/- 80% to a few percentage points. I wish there was a way to just count the filter fully from the beginning. Lastly, In the link tracking tables and for checking where a campaigns content is buried, I wish the link and content stream appeared for more than about 2-3 seconds when I hover over it to get a preview Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like how robust the system is to be able to identify our audience needs, as well as the new campaign message platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The difficulty in finding images within the hosted content (folders would be ideal). Also, the lack of support from Oracle Support and having to message solely through that platform. Maybe could use ZenDesk and allow your users to have those conversations via email? I also wish the support team would be a bit more supportive - I end up solving most issues myself rather than wasting time explaining my situation in various ways. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like how much easier it is to see all the responses from my team! Before we were using google sheets and it was a nightmare. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Could be nice to have a better mobile experience, seems a bit focused on the web. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that responsys has so many capabilities and different avenues to get end results. I know there are many other things that I still have the opportunity to learn Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

A lot of the platform isn't intuitive. There are weird errors that happen: such as not being able to preview an email if you have an additional space. Or, requiring two columns for email address when uploading a PET table. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like the best is that I can send millions of emails within minutes, everything is reliable and works great. The filters, the HTMLs, the SQL etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I dislike is the fact that I cant send a proof for specific users. Sometimes I want to double check how a specific user would see my email but unfortunately I am not able to do that. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The platform is easy to use and promote. It also has the flexibility to support advanced solutions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The assumption that every marketer is at the orchestration level to work with the advance product features and integrations. Develop more white papers and case studies and make the Top Liners community more robust. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We find Reponsys to be much more user friendly than some of the competitors. There are so many great ways to set up programs and tie emails together with SMS that we find very valuable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Support can be lacking. I feel as though they use a canned list of responses and don't actually take into account what the customer has decribed in the ticket. We also manage 13 brands and having to log in and out of Responsys is a huge pain and waste of time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Responsys is a really complete platform in terms of technology and integration. The best functionality regarding the power of customization and automating is the connect jobs that allows the client to input data in the platform ecosystem. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Many of the features are not default, so we have to either buy or ask Oracle to unlock them in the platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Focused product, with most weight to use in B2C Easy to use, but customized setup within the various customers will create transition problems. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Not so much a dislike, but there are more user friendly tools. Another point is the certification of experts: there is really no understandable reason to do this every year than money, which start to become a major issue in cost, while competitors offer free refresh courses with certifications which are of longer duration. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like most utilizing Responsys is the RPL capabilities. Though so much to still learn I like the fact that I am not limited to what rules I can create. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is a bigger learning curve to use the tool however that is also what makes it a great tool. Some things could also be a bit buggy and when being replicated by a Support Tech it is hard for them to pinpoint the issue, Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Usability, flexibility, programs are the highlights for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Event data is not exposed in platform, not a good view of activities for a single customer Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Very complete in terms of use of data e lifecycle building. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is not user friendilly, demands a few tecnical skills wich implies in barriers to teams among comapnies. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Robust platform able to deploy large number of emails in a short period of time. Program builder is a great tool that allows us to create smart, highly targeted programs to our customers and prospects. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Application is not overly user friendly, takes a fair amount of tech expertise to use. Reporting capabilities out of the box are lacking. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ease of use and building campaigns throughout Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

has a longer learning curve for figuring out how to use Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The number of different features and the functionality that Responsys provides for our marketing and transactional email campaigns. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Because of the complexity of Responsys, it frequently has long load times. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ability to develop custom data driven emails was very powerful. The solution allowed us to create thousands of unique emails sent multiple times per week to over 2M email list members. Also, the behavioral reporting, A/B testing, and custom fields provided a platform for optimizing each send. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I haven't used the product in a few years but at the time was very disappointed in the lack of interfaces for this solution. Not being able to integrate with a CRM solution, including the Oracle Marketing CRM solutions, was a serious detraction. Additionally, the REST API did not use standard authentication. So developing an interface in Zapier or other connection tools was impossible. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The fact that as a marketer, I have the ability to create 3 different types of databases to hold customer info and I have full access to that data at any time is invaluable. "Set Data" and "Get Data" are very underutilized features of this tool where marketers can update any of those databases automatically based on consumer actions. Salesforce, YesMail, and other platforms either don't give access to databases to the marketing team, or they don't have any databases. This causes marketing teams to be dependent upon a Business Intelligence team to build lists, etc. and most of your time is spent putting together campaigns instead of automating and analyzing. The most important key to this platform and making it successful is getting data into the system, and in what database you place it in. Make sure you pay attention to the functionality of all three databases and you're mapping data accordingly. This will make or break the product. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are quirks to this platform, as would be expected of any enterprise solution. RPL is a language that can be used to program emails. However, Responsys doesn't tell you that RPL cannot be used in Forms to submit data until you reach out to Support and they give you the programming language you'll need. Why an issue like this exists is unexplainable and can be very frustrating when building. Also, the training for this product is very underwhelming. You can go to a 3rd party like Shaw + Scott, and it won't make any difference. This is the main reason the product is so misunderstood. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.