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REVIEW: Vertical Response’s eNewsletter Wizard

 the good stuff

• Easy to use. Its limited formatting options in the wizard actually help make the template editor very intuitive.
  
  
• Fast spellcheck. It may sound silly, but some html enewsletter tools have cumbersome spellcheckers. I also liked that the suggested spelling for ‘GuruGal’ came up as ‘Gurgles’ – which is silly and made me laugh, so points for you Vertical Response!
  
  
• Flexible template creation options. Offers more ways to customize templates than some competitors (wizard, create html, freeform).
  
  
• WYSIWYG format menu scrolls with screen. The what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) formatting options (font type, size, bold, italic, etc.) are in a floating menu (versus embedded at the top of the WYSIWYG screen).
  
  This means as you scroll down to edit lower parts of the enewsletter screen, the formatting tools move with it – a real timesaver not having to scroll back up with each edit.
  
  
• Lots of resources. The VR website is a bevy of emarketing tips and how-to’s for using the tool – articles, webinars, blogs, etc.
  
  
• Well-reviewed by industry peers. Vertical Response is a winner of the prestigious 2011 Stevie Awards, among several other awards.
  
  

• Auto-generates text-only. Most email/enewsletter template tools do this because not all recipients have their mail inboxes set to html messages. Text-only is ideal for recipients using Gmail (a lot of IT folks prefer text-based email) and for reading via smartphones or tablets.
  

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  the not so good stuff
  

• Very limited color choices for text in the wizard online editor. If you want to add text (e.g., a caption) that’s not part of set ‘headings,’ ‘subheadings’ or ‘body text,’ you have to choose from a mini-dropdown of a few colors, versus custom PMS colors.
  
  
• Template designs are so-so. Most are the top-heavy, boxy designs with big headers and big color blocks. I prefer more open, white space (minimalist) designs that play up the social media links, small photos and the content. The design I chose for this issue of The GEC Project was the closest I could find to that.
  
  
• Inflexible templates in wizard. The preset templates within the easy to use wizard don’t always let you replace images to completely customize your template.
  
  For example, I found a kinda cool template that was for an eyeglass business – it had a photo gallery effect embedded in the design. If I’d been able to replace those photos of glasses, I could have created thumbnails of this newsletter saved as different design versions.
  
  
• Borders and spacing. I would like this enewsletter better if it didn’t have a border. But, the VR wizard doesn’t have an option (that I could find) to go borderless.
  
  As well, I switched the template's top two boxes. Originally, the template had the image placeholder on the left and the header text on the right. If you notice, my header text is way too close to the left border edge because that was originally an image box. The VR wizard doesn’t enable you to adjust the border padding.
  
  
• Can’t edit html within each text box. In fact, you can’t edit html from anywhere in the VR wizard (that I could find). For those with basic html skills, the ability to tweak minor formatting issues (e.g., breaks, bullets, italics…) can make a real difference in how the design appears in a browser and inside an email.
  
  
• No ‘undo’ arrow in the content editor. This is a BIG deal for me. But, ctrl z worked for text, just not for images.
  
  
• Adds a second apostrophe to contractions. When I returned the next day to edit my draft of this enewsletter, most (but not all) contractions had an extra apostrophe. For example: can’t became can”t. At first, I thought it was my mistake until I noticed that all contractions had this issue.
  
  This was a huge problem. I would fix it and save and those extra apostrophes kept creeping back! In one case, the wizard added three apostrophes to one word. So, if you notice extra apostrophes in this issue, I didn’t do it!
  
  
• Can’t change the width of the text blocks. There is no way to drag borders or hard-change the settings. But, I realize this is why the horizontal spacing looks so good in the final product – no wiggle room for messy html code to be added by users.
  
  
• Can’t move text blocks. Using the VR wizard, you can’t move or add text blocks wherever you need to. 
  
  
• Can’t add horizontal rules or text boxes to header. To improve the look of The GEC Project title at the top of my newsletter, I wanted to add a horizontal line to separate header text. I ended up having to use an underline, which is not as smooth a line.
  
  

• Internet Explorer 9 is not supported. If I open VR in an IE9 window, a message comes up saying that my browser isn’t supported. At the time of this review, VR supports Firefox (3.5x, 3.6x, or 4.x); Safari (4.x or 5.x); Google Chrome (current version) and IE 7 and 8.
  

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