Are you looking for a tool that helps you automate marketing tasks? Active Campaign is a great choice. This software allows you to create automated emails, landing pages, social media posts, and much more. Active Campaign has been around since 2003 and was originally designed for small businesses. Today, it’s considered one of the top email automation tools on the market. Active Campaign lets you build personalized campaigns and send them automatically to prospects or customers. It also offers advanced features such as split testing, segmentation, workflow management, and reporting.
There are a lot of great customer experience automation (CXA) solutions on the market today, like ActiveCampaign, Marketo, Hubspot, and Campaign Monitor to name just a few.
ActiveCampaign, in particular, is often highlighted as one of the best marketing automation tools due to its powerful and user-friendly features, including customizable workflows, pre-built templates, and integration capabilities that facilitate both marketing and sales automation.
What exactly is a Customer Experience Automation platform and how can it help you?
This ActiveCampaign review will answer these questions and more.
Dive deep into this ActiveCampaign review and learn why it’s great for startups and advanced marketers alike.
What is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign is a comprehensive email marketing platform designed to help businesses manage their digital marketing efforts with ease. It offers a robust suite of features, including advanced automation capabilities, contact management, and sales automation tools.
These features enable businesses to streamline their marketing processes, improve their overall performance, and achieve better results from their digital marketing campaigns. Whether you’re looking to automate repetitive tasks, manage your contacts more effectively, or enhance your sales processes, ActiveCampaign provides the tools you need to succeed.
What is Customer Experience Automation (CXA)?
Definition according to ActiveCampaign: Customer Experience Automation accelerates business growth with automated 1:1 communications that connect across all channels and through the entire customer lifecycle.
Active Campaign Main Features
If you’re looking for software that gets the job done and is easy to use, ActiveCampaign is a great choice. From marketing automation tools to real-time triggers, validations & workflows, you can do it all with ActiveCampaign.
You get a clean admin interface and a mobile app for on the go management which makes this software very user friendly.
Here are the four main features in ActiveCampaign:
Firstly, Personalized email marketing campaigns using dynamic content, email segmentation, and messaging
Secondly, powerful Marketing automation and contact management
At number three on the list is A Smart CRM to automate sales, lead scoring, and calculate win probability. Use landing page feature to generate more leads
And lastly, Customer support using website messaging (Chat), SMS, and engagement tracking.
Additionally, more advanced features cater to experienced users, enhancing their campaigns through advanced automation tools and analytics.
Customer Experience Automation
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ActiveCampaign is not just about email marketing
The ActiveCampaign team keeps adding new features to improve their service offering.
Advanced Reporting to find opportunities for growth.
Integrated forms to collect prospect contact information and start automations.
Site tracking to understand how people are using your website.
Migration services are free from your current service provider.
Email segmentation to help you send the right messages, at the right time to the right prospects and customers alike.
Automation Goals can be customized so you measure your campaign performance against those goals.
CRM mobile App gives you access to your ActiveCampaign platform so you can update your deals on the go.
ActiveCampaign Pricing Plans
ActiveCampaign has four pricing plans, they are as follows:
Lite ($9/month),
Unlimited ($49/month),
Professional ($99/month) and
Enterprise ($499/month).
The starter plan has features like email marketing and marketing automation. In addition to lite features, the higher plans add features like the ActiveCampaign CRM, landing pages and lead scoring.
Most of how the pricing is structured is influenced by the number of contacts you will be working. They also offer a 25% discount on yearly plans. Features are further differentiated by the type of business getting the solution. For example
B2B
B2C
Ecommerce
A Closer Look at key ActiveCampaign features
As I mentioned before, ActiveCampaign offers four main solutions,
Email Marketing
Marketing Automation
Customer Relationship management (CRM)
Service and Support (Messaging SMS & Chat)
1. Email Marketing
A lot of people come to ActiveCampaign for their email marketing services. But once they start using it, they stay for the rest of platform. Email marketing can be individual emails and campaigns.
ActiveCampaign is one of the big names in email marketing, and for good reason. Not only does the software offer a large variety of features, it also offers a friendly user interface. It has everything you need to easily grow your contact list, send targeted email campaigns, and increase conversions.
When working on running an email marketing campaign, you have a choice from six different types of campaigns
Standard
Automated
RSS triggered
Split testing
Date based
Autoresponders
Once you have the type of email campaign, you just pick the right mailing list to send the campaign to. Individual campaigns get an opportunity when site tracking identifies an individual who has visited some pages on the site or had taken action on the website.
The email can be specific to specific group or a specific individual as long as the message is suited for that action.
The email builder has readymade templates you can pick from when designing your email. You can easily use their drag and drop feature tool to customize your email design.
You can make changes to your fonts, colors and more. Conditional blocks allow you to create and tag your subscribers so you can make their email specific to them based on the subscription, and/ or based on the action they have taken on your website.
Personalized emails help convert sales more frequently. For instance, a simple gesture of referring to your subscriber by name can go a long way in building stronger relationships.
The best part, ActiveCampaign deliverability ranks high.
Customer Experience Automation
Get started in minutes with a 14-day free trial and see how it works for your business!
2. Email Marketing Automation
ActiveCampaign ranks with the top marketing automation software. When it comes to creating great customer experiences you can’t do everything yourself. This is why a tool like ActiveCampaign works in your favor to automate the small details that you would otherwise have missed.
But, what can you automate with ActiveCampaign marketing automation? The first and most important is data collection.
You can automate, tracking contact engagement, Analytics and performance reporting and customer engagement.
Let’s look at this scenario…
Someone fill out a form to subscribe to your mailing list. As promised you keep them engaged with your valuable content, sending those updates, blog posts and more.
One day the contact clicks one of the links shared visits the blog then in the process a service page. All this activity is being tracked because you have site tracking setup. When they visit this service page, it triggers an email sequence for the product or service.
With when thy end the session, the automated message/ email is sent to the prospect. For example, an email with subject line “Did you find what you were looking for”
The contact can either respond or not respond. If they don’t respond the sequence continues and if they do, depending on their response the automation can end or continue, or one of the members of the sales team is notified of the lead for them to get in contact.
When you have set up the automated email sequence, it now becomes a qualifying sequence for all you prospects. This ways your sales team receives and deals with only sales qualified leads.
3. The ActiveCampaign CRM
A CRM is always at the center of managing customer relationships and crafting great customer experiences. For this reason, ActiveCampaign has a CRM to set the contact management process in the right rails.
With the ActiveCampaign CRM you can manage deals, tasks, appointments, and lead scoring.
Lead scoring with ActiveCampaign works well for you because you can do it manually, or automatically. Sales teams can use this tools to focus on more qualified leads or simply leads that are closer to making a purchase.
The automatic lead scoring setting allows you to get a notification when a lead has reached a certain score based on their engagement with your content, or emails.
Also, the CRM gives you great tools to work with and integrate into your whole customer experience. The one a lot of customers very much appreciate is messaging which includes
Text messages and SMS
Onsite chat and conversations
Facebook ads integration.
ActiveCampaign use its machine learning and AI capabilities in several parts of the platform to understand user engagement. All in all, you will be able to send the right email, to the right person at the right time.
ActiveCampaign machine learning can predict which content is right for who.
4. Integrations
A marketing automation platform like ActiveCampaign helps your business run more smoothly at every stage of growth. While you can use it to automate sales and marketing processes, it’s flexible enough for everything from customer service to HR processes.
And when you integrate other tools into your ActiveCampaign account using Zapier or the open API, the possibilities are endless.
You can intergrate ActiveCampaign with some of your most poplar apps including
Facebook
WordPress
Zapier
Google Analytics
Shopify
Click funnels
Unbounce
Salesforce
WooCommerce and more
The third part apps include everything from accounting, lead generation, analytics, CMS, CRM, and more.
ActiveCampaign integrations are a great way to expand the functionality of your account. There are 3 ways to integrate with ActiveCampaign:
Zapier: Zapier is a web based application that “zaps” pieces of information from one app to another. It can be used to connect with CRMs, Email Marketing platforms, Helpdesks, and lots more.
API: ActiveCampaign has a powerful API that allows you to add new contacts, update contact information, and move them between lists and campaigns, and more. You can find documentation on the API here.
App Studio: ActiveCampaign has an app ecosystem. Anyone can create their own integration and make it available for use by other customers in the Marketplace. This can be done using the App Studio.
5. Customer Service and Support
ActiveCampaign has a service and support solution. Here you can get insight on what your customers are using the content for and how well they are using it. While users have access to live chat and email support, it is important to note the absence of phone support, which some customers may find limiting. However, the available support options are fast, friendly, and knowledgeable.
You can tailor your customer service to be more personal using ActiveCampaign tools like Chat, and more. This is because it gives you the ability to track your customer’s behavior so you can tailor support specific to them.
You can also anticipate bad customer experiences and prevent them from happening looking at the lead scores. Additionally, you can assist customers from anywhere and anyhow beyond even your traditional support systems.
Customer Experience Automation
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6. Advanced Features
ActiveCampaign offers a range of advanced features that set it apart from other email marketing platforms. These include:
Advanced Automation Capabilities: ActiveCampaign’s automation features allow businesses to create complex workflows and automate repetitive tasks, saving time and ensuring consistency in their marketing efforts.
Contact Management: With ActiveCampaign’s contact management features, businesses can efficiently manage their contacts and segment their email lists based on various criteria, ensuring that the right messages reach the right audience.
Sales Automation: ActiveCampaign’s sales automation tools help businesses automate their sales processes, improving conversion rates and making it easier to manage leads and deals.
Advanced Analytics: The platform’s analytics features provide detailed insights into email marketing campaigns, helping businesses optimize their performance and make data-driven decisions.
These advanced features make ActiveCampaign a powerful tool for businesses looking to enhance their email marketing campaigns and overall digital marketing strategy.
Ease of Use
ActiveCampaign is designed to be user-friendly and accessible, even for businesses with limited technical expertise. The platform offers a range of features that simplify the process of creating and managing email marketing campaigns, including:
Drag-and-Drop Email Builder: ActiveCampaign’s email builder allows businesses to create professional-looking emails without needing to know how to code. The intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to design and customize emails to match your brand.
Pre-Built Templates: ActiveCampaign offers a variety of pre-built templates that businesses can use to quickly create their email marketing campaigns. These templates are designed to be visually appealing and effective, helping you get started with minimal effort.
Intuitive Interface: The platform’s interface is designed to be intuitive and easy to navigate, making it simple for businesses to find the features they need and manage their campaigns efficiently.
These user-friendly features make ActiveCampaign an excellent choice for businesses looking to streamline their email marketing efforts.
Security and Compliance
ActiveCampaign takes security and compliance seriously, offering a range of features to help businesses protect their data and comply with relevant regulations. These include:
Data Encryption: ActiveCampaign encrypts all data transmitted between the platform and its users, ensuring that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access.
Compliance with GDPR and CCPA: ActiveCampaign is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), providing businesses with the assurance that they can use the platform in accordance with these important regulations.
Regular Security Audits: ActiveCampaign conducts regular security audits to ensure that the platform remains secure and up-to-date, helping to protect against potential threats and vulnerabilities.
These security and compliance features make ActiveCampaign a reliable choice for businesses that prioritize data protection and regulatory compliance.
Benefits of using ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a great tool for small businesses and marketers who want to do basic marketing automation, email marketing, and sales CRM. And, with ActiveCampaign, you can do this without the complexity of some of the larger tools like HubSpot or Keap.
ActiveCampaign is a good value if you are looking to get started with marketing automation, but don’t have a lot of contacts in your database. ActiveCampaign’s pricing is based on the number of contacts in your database, so it goes up as you grow.
However, ActiveCampaign’s machine learning features are getting better and better every year, so if you have a clean database with good quality data about your contacts’ behavior and interactions with your company (whether it be site visits, email opens/clicks, or purchasing history), then this tool can help you improve the performance of your marketing campaigns over time.
The Downside of ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a great option for small businesses that want to make an impact with their email marketing campaigns.
But it’s not perfect. There are some potential downsides to using ActiveCampaign for your email marketing:
It’s not the cheapest option out there (only if you are looking for cheap).
The CRM is not the best when put head to head with standalone platforms like Salesforce or PipeDrive.
There is a learning curve around the advanced features if you’re new to email marketing automation.
The lite plan does not offer CRM or A/B testing
It can be difficult to navigate the reports.
Alternatives
While ActiveCampaign is a powerful email marketing platform, there are several alternatives that businesses may want to consider:
Moosend: Moosend offers advanced automation capabilities and a range of features to help businesses manage their digital marketing efforts. It is known for its user-friendly interface and affordability.
Brevo: Brevo provides a comprehensive suite of features, including advanced automation, contact management, and sales automation. It is a strong competitor to ActiveCampaign, offering robust tools for digital marketing.
Omnisend: Omnisend is a highly-regarded email marketing tool that competes with ActiveCampaign, offering advanced automation capabilities and a range of features to help businesses manage their digital marketing efforts.
MailerLite: MailerLite is an affordable and user-friendly email marketing tool that is worth considering. It offers a range of features, including advanced automation and contact management, making it a great option for small businesses.
GetResponse: GetResponse is a feature-rich email marketing platform that is a viable alternative to ActiveCampaign. It offers advanced automation capabilities and a range of features to help businesses manage their digital marketing efforts.
Each of these alternatives has its own strengths and may be better suited to different business needs. It’s important to evaluate each option carefully to determine which platform best aligns with your marketing goals and requirements.
In Summary: ActiveCampaign Review
ActiveCampaign is a great email marketing software for companies of all sizes. With the help of their team of experts, they can make sure your emails campaigns get delivered successfully. Their team of professionals will help you choose the right plan based on your needs.
With just $9 per month, you get unlimited emails sent, up to 500 contacts, and the ability to create automated campaigns.
If you’re just starting out with email marketing, then you don’t need to be an expert. Beginners should watch the onboarding videos and you’re good to go.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about ActiveCampaign
Is ActiveCampaign legit?
Yes, ActiveCampaign is a legitimate and well-established email marketing and automation platform. It is trusted by thousands of businesses worldwide for its robust features and reliable service.
What is ActiveCampaign good for?
ActiveCampaign is ideal for businesses looking to enhance their digital marketing efforts. It is particularly useful for email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and customer relationship management. It helps streamline processes, improve engagement, and boost overall marketing performance.
What is better than ActiveCampaign?
While ActiveCampaign is a powerful tool, some alternatives like HubSpot, Marketo, and Salesforce offer more comprehensive solutions, especially for larger enterprises. The best choice depends on your specific business needs and budget.
Is ActiveCampaign the same as Mailchimp?
No, ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp are different platforms. While both offer email marketing services, ActiveCampaign provides more advanced features, including marketing automation and CRM capabilities, making it suitable for businesses looking for a more integrated solution.
Does ActiveCampaign offer phone support?
ActiveCampaign primarily offers support through live chat and email. Phone support is not available, which some users may find limiting. However, the available support options are efficient and knowledgeable.
How does ActiveCampaign compare to other marketing automation tools?
ActiveCampaign is often praised for its advanced automation features, user-friendly interface, and comprehensive integration options. It is considered one of the best marketing automation tools for small to medium-sized businesses.
Can I try ActiveCampaign for free?
Yes, ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial, allowing you to explore its features and see how it fits your business needs before committing to a paid plan.
These FAQs address some common queries potential users may have about ActiveCampaign, helping them make informed decisions about whether it is the right platform for their needs.
