Recommend Email Marketing Tools

@Ryan Hinz:

We currently are using Luminate Online for email marketing. We are interested in finding a more modern email marketing tool that is more user friendly. We are a complex organization with over 15 different brands. We need to store data in custom fields and use reusables/parameters to generate the emails (which we currently do in Luminate). What Luminate really lacks is behavioral marketing/drip campaigns. Also, the new email authoring tool in Luminate will not work for our multiple brand world. Let me know if you can recommend any email tools! thanks.

While I do not have details, I just wanted to point out that Blackbaud announced a partnership with Constant Contact at the Blackbaud conference a couple of months ago. This is from a blog post:

Blackbaud unveiled its vision for the future of nonprofit communications and how it will seamlessly connect organizations with donors through a unified product experience, including a strategic partnership with Constant Contact to deliver a joint digital marketing solution, that will provide organizations with insight into how their donors and constituents are interacting with them on every digital medium –– not just when they give, but at every single touchpoint in between.

I have no idea when it will become available, but is something to keep an eye on.

@Ryan Hinz I would also recommend that you look at MailChimp and the various integration options that exist for it. I've heard lots of positive feedback from the communications side of using MailChimp and I know of at least three reputable integrations between it and RE (Chimpegration, Omatic and SmartTHING).