Last Updated on December 8, 2023 by Ewen Finser
Here we go again. Yet another email marketing service. But, here’s the exciting thing- it’s a bit different compared to the likes of MailChimp, and this Market Hero review gives you all the details.
I bet you’re here because you know just how critical emails are when it comes to digital marketing. Ok, of course, it might not have the audience reach of social media marketing, or the ability to generate traffic like SEO. But, it sure has an exceptional touch when you need to convert leads.
In fact, going by the impressive ROI rates businesses have been reporting lately, I’d say email marketing is the king of conversion. No doubt about it. Otherwise, what else would you call an engagement channel with an average return of $32 for every dollar spent?
Marketers vs Business Owners
Seasoned marketers understand that the ROI concept very well. They’ve been leveraging tools like ActiveCampaign or MailChimp to drive sales through email automation.
And that’s not all. There’s a huge variety of email automation solutions that marketers are currently adopting. They particularly prefer the dominant ones that offer dynamically advanced approaches to email campaigns.
Fair enough. But, come to think of it, such a framework presents a new set of challenges. Not to marketers though. But rather, to small business owners.
You see, eCommerce merchants are not built like digital marketers. They typically don’t have the tech skills and professional experience required for full-scale campaigns with advanced tools.
And in case you’d suggest training, here are the facts- e-commerce merchants simply don’t have the patience to learn all that. Because who’ll be left to run their businesses?
Now, that pretty much sums up why Market Hero has been generating a lot of buzzes lately. While the bulk of email marketing tools are seemingly developed for marketers, Market Hero was built by a business owner for business owners.
And if you haven’t heard about him yet, the name is Alex Becker. He’s a renowned e-commerce merchant who happens to be an online marketing expert. This has won him a lot of recognition in the digital business space for his smart marketing approaches, like the all-new Market Hero software.
But then again, fame comes with a fair amount of criticism. There are a couple of people who, instead, feel that Market Hero may have missed the mark. Could they be right after all?
That’s precisely what we wanted to find out. We signed up for the service, and we took the time to analyze every single feature offered by Market Hero.
The whole process took us months. But, it was all worthwhile and here’s the full tale – the good, the bad, and the ugly of Market Hero. By the end of this Market Hero review, therefore, you’ll have all the insights you need to make an informed judgment.
So, does Market Hero have what it takes?
Market Hero Review – Overview
Alex Becker is a serial entrepreneur who, by now, has found a host of successful online businesses. Some of them have even grown to become 7-figure companies, largely due to his increasingly effective digital marketing methods.
From his online courses, you can tell Becker knows his stuff very well. He has mastered the art of capitalizing on auto-messaging tools to engage leads, and consequently convert them progressively.
In fact, it is through his experience with various tools that he identified one major issue that business owners predominantly face in email marketing.
Now, to understand the whole thing, let’s start from the top.
The ultimate goal of marketing is sparking growth. And growth, when you come to think of it, is all about numbers. You’d want to know the value each lead is adding to your business, vis-à-vis their corresponding acquisition cost.
Fair enough. But, how can you possibly figure this out from an email marketing solution?
Well, apparently, the bulk of email marketing software is incapable of that. Their analytics tend to focus mostly on campaign outcomes.
This greatly inconvenienced Alex Becker as he built his businesses. To get relevant insights about his leads’ long term values, Becker noticed that he had to redesign his conversion funnels, change his cart framework, and combine several software solutions. In short, email marketing tools alone proved to be unreliable in tracking ROI as well as the subsequent growth.
So, he developed an email marketing system that addresses such challenges and subsequently helps businesses build their campaigns on lead value insights. And that’s how Market Hero came into being in 2015.
Well, barely four years have passed, and Market Hero is already creating ripples in the digital commerce environment. It’s widely recognized as a revenue-centric email auto-responder with a powerful analytics framework. Business owners continue to take advantage of this to not only track growth but also launch insight-driven campaigns.
According to Market Hero, the software attempts to achieve all that through a straightforward system. It reportedly offers a much-simplified approach, which is considerably different compared to the complex email automation processes we’ve seen on other platforms.
All in all, Market Hero can be described as a system that combines email marketing with actionable revenue metrics, deep analytics, and automation, without compromising its overall simplicity.
Market Hero Review – Target Users
In all fairness, Market Hero should interest anyone who’s seeking to set up a stable e-commerce business. It can help you create a list of contacts to target in your email campaigns, expand the corresponding list of leads, run automated campaigns to convert leads to customers, plus track the consequent revenue numbers over the long haul.
Going by indicators, Market Hero admittedly doesn’t sound like a regular email marketing tool. Don’t get me wrong though. Although business owners are the principal target users here, Market Hero can still be leveraged by marketers and salespeople.
But, all things considered, it’s seemingly best suited for merchants who are already running established businesses. They get to use Market Hero to trigger growth and keep tabs on the subsequent revenue metrics.
Market Hero Review – Main Features
Ease of use
Market Hero is not just about lead generation and email promotions. It goes above and beyond typical email campaigns to help you build your business. In short, therefore, while other tools fundamentally deal with sending email messages, Market Hero attempts to make your campaigns worthwhile through deep analytics.
That said, let’s not forget one thing. That Market Hero was developed with a simplistic approach to address the difficulties associated with modern autoresponders.
And indeed, this is evident as soon as you log into Market Hero’s dashboard. In addition to an intuitive interface, it comes with a neat, minimalistic layout plus clear, understandable functionalities.
You don’t need to be experienced to use Market Hero. Basic marketing knowledge should be enough to get things up and running. The tools here allow you to systematically organize lead information, customize emails as well as automation workflows, and then monitor key revenue parameters.
Now, if you’re looking to build a contact base, Market Hero offers you customizable opt-in boxes. Then as the list grows, you could group the leads accordingly, before targeting specific audiences using sequence builders. And while you’re at it, you may want to embed buttons onto your emails for action triggers.
The email customization process itself occurs through an email builder. You get a couple of templates to begin with, followed by a straightforward visual design process. Market Hero allows you to tweak various elements to achieve attractive custom layouts on all your emails.
Setting up the subsequent automation workflows, however, might not be that simple at first. But, fortunately, it gets easier with time thanks to Market Hero’s drag and drops functionality. Simply use the stream function to visually define the entire automation structure.
Holistic Approach to Email Marketing
Although we’ve mentioned revenue analytics as to the main focus here, it’s not the only thing Market Hero is good at. It attempts to provide every major functionality you’d expect from an email marketing software. And so, you can think of Market Hero as “a one-stop-shop for email marketing”.
Why?
Well, for one, it designs much more than just emails. You can use it to build your own landing pages and opt-in boxes as well. With such a setup, you should be able to direct your leads from their emails, and then seamlessly channel them through a complete funnel for better conversion chances.
To establish a link between emails and the conversion pages, Market Hero allows you to take advantage of its lead boxes. They are simply custom boxes with clickable links for accelerating your conversion process.
Speaking of which, the conversion procedure is substantially easier when you personalize your emails. And to help you with that, Market Hero supports lead segmentation. You get to group your contacts by placing tags on their names, based on the applicable parameters.
Interestingly, it turns out you can take things further. Market Hero goes beyond emails and landing pages into the territory of social media. It offers you the privilege of hunting for more leads via Facebook Ads, as well as engaging your contacts further through Messenger.
These functions don’t come by default though. You have to embed them from the Integrations menu on your dashboard. And when you’re done, Market Hero’s Facebook Ad Manager will prove to be handy for cost-effective paid advertising. The secret here is simply running ads whose costs for each acquired lead is dwarfed by your average customer value.
Facebook aside, it just so happens that Market Hero has built a couple more helpful integrations. One particularly notable one is ClickFunnels, which comes in handy for optimizing sales and marketing funnels. Then we have LeadPages if you’d like to build striking landing pages for your site.
The most outstanding integration, however, has got to be Zapier because it serves as a portal to hundreds of other apps. Sadly, not all of them are bound to work well with Market Hero.
You’ll also notice that Market Hero’s default integration options are rather few. Let’s hope they’ll be expanding them soon, for a much more comprehensive marketing platform.
Lead Management
The term “leads”, when you come to think of it, is not standard for every marketing tool. The numerous software solutions we’ve reviewed so far use it for varying stages along the conversion funnel.
Take, for instance, CRM tools. Many of them begin the funnel with contacts at the top, who later qualify and become leads as the continue sailing through the conversion funnel.
Market Hero, however, chooses a rather one-dimensional approach. Contacts, subscribers, plus leads are one and the same thing. That means you can expect a very simple and straightforward lead management process.
Now, as you’re starting off, Market Hero gives you the option of either entering your leads’ details manually or simply importing them in bulk via CSV.
And while you’re at it, you might want to add relevant tags to every single lead. You’ll need them for segmentation and personalization when you start rolling out your email campaign.
Once you’re done adding leads to the system, you should be able to access the corresponding contact list through the All Leads tab. But, don’t get too excited. You don’t get a comprehensive profile page for each lead. Instead, Market Hero displays a basic list with your leads’ names, email addresses, entry dates, and purchase history.
Well, some users might enjoy working with such a minimalistic layout. Fair enough. But, let’s face it. Market Hero has taken the concept of simplicity a bit too far here. A few more info fields for each contact wouldn’t hurt.
Interestingly, despite its limited lead data points, Market Hero goes ahead and provides a filtering tool. If you’re dealing with a large number of leads, you can easily zero-in on specific individuals by running searches based on parameters such as status, tags, email addresses, and names.
All things considered, it seems Market Hero’s lead management area maintains a fairly decent balance between simplicity and functionality. It might feel restricted alright, but I guess that’s unavoidable when you want that level of ease when it comes to usability.
Email Design
As we’ve established already, Market Hero offers an email design tool. But, you won’t see any “Email Builder” or “Email Designer” on the menu bar. Not even “Compose”. Instead, Market Hero comes with a “Broadcast” function for managing the email design and editing process.
Now, when you click on it, the system directs you to the email set up area. So, hit the “Get Started” button to begin the process of building yourself a custom email.
But, before you start designing the layout, Market Hero will request for the recipients’ particulars. You can go ahead and specify your target segment plus the corresponding contact details.
Make no mistake though. If you happen to ignore the segment field, Market Hero will ultimately send the email to all your leads. So, you need to be very specific about your target audience.
Moving forward, Market Hero will then get you started on the design process. And the first thing here is template selection.
Ok, this is where we take a step back to assess the whole framework accordingly. That said, it’s commendable that Market Hero avails pre-designed email templates to make the design process much easier. Certainly, a much-needed headstart to save you the trouble of creating your email layouts from scratch.
But, here’s the caveat. Market Hero isn’t very generous when it comes to email templates. Despite its four-year history, the software has so far developed only 7 templates. And that, in other words, means your options are pretty limited.
On the bright side, however, at least the templates come with fairly decent designs. Not the prettiest we’ve seen, but they are acceptable. You can comfortably use them on different types of emails. Plus, they can be customized to create a unique outlook.
Well, the customization process itself occurs on Market Hero’s drag and drop email editor. This is where you put your design skills to use as you tweak various appearance options.
And admittedly, the design process shouldn’t take you long. The drag and drop system here is not only simple but also pleasantly smooth and responsive. You get to edit elements by basically clicking on them and defining their respective properties.
If you need to change the message, for instance, just click directly on the text element and type your stuff. You can then proceed to customize your text’s appearance through the floating bar. It supports tweaks such as font style, color, font size, and more.
But, surprisingly, while the editor freely accommodates images, you won’t be able to resize them. Quite an inconvenient limitation, especially when you consider the huge impact images typically have on the overall layout design.
And it gets worse. The saddest bit about Market Hero’s email editor is this- it significantly restricts your customization capabilities. The combined number elements you’re allowed to edit here doesn’t go beyond 6. And that’s a very limited figure, considering the numerous layout components that emails characteristically contain.
So, in short, although we applause Market Hero for its pleasantly simple approach to email designing, let’s be honest about one thing. You won’t be able to customize your emails extensively. And that otherwise means Market Hero’s email editor is best suited for users who’d be comfortable with basic layout designs.
Automation Workflows
Market hero’s autoresponder is usually managed from the Streams section of the menu bar. The first thing you’ll notice about it right off the bat is its neat visual workflow builder.
Now, building automation workflows here entails not only defining your autoresponder email sequences and their target recipients but also managing actions as well as delays.
From that description alone, you can bet the whole automation process might not sound simple as you start off. And the workflow interface could seem even more intimidating, especially if you’ve never built one before.
Well, in all fairness, everyone gets the jitters while they begin working on automation workflows. But, you’ll come to realize that it gets easier with time. Much easier to be precise, thanks to the structured drag and drop functionality offered by Market Hero.
The fundamental objective here is creating a graphical representation of your entire autoresponse framework. In short, you’re supposed to connect every single entity involved to form a systematic all-inclusive illustration of steps, complete with their distinct graphics. Trigger sequences and tags are particularly critical because they end up being the core foundation of your automation protocol.
That said, you might want to keep a close eye on the product tags. Market Hero uses them to analyze the average lead value, consequently helping you establish the maximum amount you can spend per lead without compromising your profits.
In essence, a well-developed Market Hero workflow should provide insights about the cost of each activity in real-time. And with that, you can easily assess your ROI ahead of time, as well as make informed decisions regarding your lead engagement and conversion processes.
All in all, Market Hero’s workflow management framework is way simpler compared to what typically find on other email marketing tools out there. Combine that with the lead values plus ROI variables it supports, and you have yourself an undeniably exceptional workflow tool.
Tracking and Reporting
By now, it’s evident that Market Hero has invested heavily in metric tracking, analytics, and insight reporting. You’re bound to get all the core granular reporting features for email marketing, as well as a few handy extras to help you make informed decisions about your business growth.
The reporting function itself begins from the primary dashboard. Once you log in, you’ll be able to view brief statistics on your core email parameters.
More specifically, Market Hero hits you with figures on sent emails, click-through rates, complaints, unsubscribes, email opens, and email clicks. These are derived directly from the Streams and Finance sections of the system.
In case you’d like to keep tabs on your day to day performance, Market Hero reserves the far right sidebar on the dashboard for daily analytics. You can even go back to numbers recorded on previous days.
Now, for more detailed reports, you can always click on the Finance option positioned on the menu bar. It goes above and beyond marketing metrics to reveal a rich array of insights about your product sales.
And that’s not all. You get the privilege to switch between Facebook and email streams to follow up on their respective product variables. So, of course, you should be able to evaluate as well as compare product metrics across varying timelines.
Ok, hang on a minute now. Considering Market Hero is essentially an email marketing tool, how accurate are these sales analytics?
Well, Market Hero has an impressively dynamic tracking tool that covers both marketing and sales numbers. But, let’s face it. This software is fundamentally a marketing solution without shopping cart capabilities.
Consequently, you can bet its product reporting can’t possibly match up to what you’d get from a dedicated shopping cart. The reports are shallow, and some of their statistics might not be completely accurate. You won’t even be able to generate basic sales details like recurring payments, refunds, expenses, etc.
- 1,000 leads – $19 per month or $194 per year.
That said, the one area with extremely valuable insights is Stream. You get to leverage Market Hero for tracking not only your leads’ purchasing behaviors but also their average lead value. Such insights come in handy for calculating your email marketing ROI, as well as forecasting future growth.
Market Hero Review – Pricing
Going by its pricing schedule, it seems Market Hero doesn’t limit its features at all. You get all the functionalities regardless of your pricing plan- live chat support, email and funnel split testing, full training, URL-based tracking and triggers, sales and behavior-based automation, opt-in builder, Facebook audience syncing, automated sales metrics, monthly webinar and training, customer segmentation, customer LTV analytics, complete Facebook Messenger suite, email builder, you name it.
Market Hero, instead, chooses to base its pricing model on the volume of leads per user. The lowest allowance here is 1,000 leads, followed by 3,000, and then 7,500. Beyond that, the numbers continue expanding sequentially, with 100,000 being the highest number of contacts you can possibly have on a standard plan.
It doesn’t end there though. It’s possible to extend further with the Enterprise package. At this point, however, Market Hero doesn’t quote a standard price because the package itself is flexible. Each user gets their own custom volume allowance along with a special quote.
Now, in case you were hoping to get a free package, here’s the bad news. Market Hero doesn’t offer a permanently free option like MailChimp. But, on a brighter note, you can create a free trial account to give the service a try.
Otherwise, the only other money-saving option you have is proceeding with annual billing instead of paying for the service on a monthly basis. This alone translates to 15% savings on all the pricing plans.
Here are the 9 different pricing options available on Market Hero:
- 1,000 leads – $19 per month or $194 per year.
- 3,000 leads – $49 per month or $499 per year.
- 7,500 leads – $99 per month or $1,010 per year.
- 10,000 leads – $129 per month or $1, 316 per year.
- 25,000 leads – $299 per month or $3,050 per year.
- 50,000 leads – $549 per month or $5,600 per year.
- 75,000 leads – $800 per month or $8,160 per year.
- 100,000 leads – $950 per month or $9,690 per year.
- Enterprise – Custom quote
Market Hero Pros and Cons
Market Hero Pros
- Full time live chat support all year round.
- Supports affiliate links.
- Guarantees excellent deliverability of your emails.
- Solid tracking of all the key email marketing metrics.
- Accurate lead value insights.
- Simple and straightforward lead management.
- Offers Facebook Messenger automation.
- Avails visual automation workflows.
- Comes with a full on-boarding procedure.
- Easy to use the system.
Market Hero Cons
- Incomprehensive knowledge base.
- Doesn’t offer a landing page builder by default.
- Has built very limited integrations.
- The email template options are only 7.
- The automation capabilities are dynamic.
- Doesn’t offer a permanently free package.
The Bottom Line
It turns out Market Hero wasn’t kidding about providing full email automation capabilities accompanied by solid lead value insights. Just what you’d need to run automated campaigns while keeping tabs on the corresponding ROI parameters. And, as an extra, you even get to leverage Facebook Messenger for increased lead engagement.
Overall, Market Hero is indeed a simple revenue-centric autoresponder that business owners should be able to adapt easily. But, we can also agree that it’s still in its infancy and might need a couple of improvements here and there. So, while they work on that, we’ll continue keeping an eye on Market Hero and we’ll be sure to update you on new developments.
Now, over to you. What do you think about combining revenue analytics with email automation? Hit or miss?
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