I started using needls to drive qualified leads over the Christmas period. As it boasted to be the most effective way to advertise on FB and IG, and marketing materials state that needls will create "high converting ads", my expectations were understandably high. I'd already managed to drive a few sales on FB myself, and it was a time of heightened purchasing, so should have been like adding rocket fuel to a flame.
The concept is sound. Serve ads to warm leads. So, someone posts about needing a new suit, needls serves up ads for suits, and bish bash bosh, you've got yourself a sale.
Great. Sadly though, it's unrealistic.
After a week or so of seeing no return on ad spend, and only having used part of the first week's budget, I decided to try and optimise the needls campaign, with advice from a needls support rep.
Instead of optimising the campaign, needls begun blasting through the budget, still delivering precisely 0 conversions. I left it to run anyway. After all, it's machine learning, perhaps it just needed to learn. As the end of the budget drew near, and with no sales to speak of, I decided enough was enough.
Unfortunately, when I tried to stop the future billing, needls begun developing bugs, and decided to not allow me to update any settings. I attempted to contact support, though they too had stopped responding - perhaps understandable over the christmas/ new year period. A few days passed, and I became unable to connect to the platform's chat support altogether.
After being charged the full budget for another month, and a $100 "platform fee", I have now finally been able to pause the campaign, but have had no word from the needls support team.
While the concept is good, there are too many bugs, too much ambiguity in the data, and too little support.
Avoid.
UPDATED 11th January 2018: Needls support team have now cancelled the account and issued a refund for platform fees and unused budget.
Pros:
Good UI. Easy to set up.
Cons:
Very buggy. Often fails to update campaigns and billing. Data is ambiguous. Support is not responsive. Avoid.
Deveo
I started using needls to drive qualified leads over the Christmas period. As it boasted to be the most effective way to advertise on FB and IG, and marketing materials state that needls will create "high converting ads", my expectations were understandably high. I'd already managed to drive a few sales on FB myself, and it was a time of heightened purchasing, so should have been like adding rocket fuel to a flame.
The concept is sound. Serve ads to warm leads. So, someone posts about needing a new suit, needls serves up ads for suits, and bish bash bosh, you've got yourself a sale.
Great. Sadly though, it's unrealistic.
After a week or so of seeing no return on ad spend, and only having used part of the first week's budget, I decided to try and optimise the needls campaign, with advice from a needls support rep.
Instead of optimising the campaign, needls begun blasting through the budget, still delivering precisely 0 conversions. I left it to run anyway. After all, it's machine learning, perhaps it just needed to learn. As the end of the budget drew near, and with no sales to speak of, I decided enough was enough.
Unfortunately, when I tried to stop the future billing, needls begun developing bugs, and decided to not allow me to update any settings. I attempted to contact support, though they too had stopped responding - perhaps understandable over the christmas/ new year period. A few days passed, and I became unable to connect to the platform's chat support altogether.
After being charged the full budget for another month, and a $100 "platform fee", I have now finally been able to pause the campaign, but have had no word from the needls support team.
While the concept is good, there are too many bugs, too much ambiguity in the data, and too little support.
Avoid.
UPDATED 11th January 2018: Needls support team have now cancelled the account and issued a refund for platform fees and unused budget.
Pros:Good UI. Easy to set up.
Cons:Very buggy. Often fails to update campaigns and billing. Data is ambiguous. Support is not responsive. Avoid.