Are you currently searching for the optimal email marketing and automation tool that fits your business needs?
Look no further, as I have just the right solution for you.
What is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign is a comprehensive marketing platform designed to provide complete sales, marketing, email, and analytics solutions to businesses. With its powerful features, it enables businesses to scale smoothly, while being incredibly user-friendly, enabling access to everyone, including individuals with no prior experience.
However, with all the hype surrounding ActiveCampaign, you may be wondering if it's worth the investment. If that is so, then you have arrived at the appropriate location. This ActiveCampaign review provides a fair assessment of the platform, including its features, benefits, and more, to assist you in deciding whether this is the appropriate marketing automation software for your needs.
By the end of this review, you'll have a clear understanding of what ActiveCampaign has to offer, and you might even be tempted to check out the free trial, ultimately becoming not just a customer but an advocate for this excellent marketing automation tool.
Does ActiveCampaign live up to its hype?
Yes. ActiveCampaign is an exceptional marketing software that offers remarkable automation features. It provides small businesses with every necessary tool for email, automation, sales, and CRM, and the best part is that it comes at a significantly lower cost than most of its competitors.
It assists you with:
- Automating workflows to increase efficiency and save time
- Enhancing customer relationships through CRM functionality
- Managing e-commerce to generate more revenue
- Streamlining sales processes and enabling sales automation
- Facilitating email marketing to nurture leads and deliver targeted messages to specific subscribers
- Facilitating communication across social media, email, messaging, chat, and text to help you connect with your target audience on their preferred channels
ActiveCampaign is a robust platform that boasts 500+ automations, 870+ integrations, and a plethora of templates, making it an incredibly powerful tool.
However, to provide a balanced assessment, it is essential to note that ActiveCampaign may not be the best choice for beginners. With an abundance of features, it can be overwhelming, and the learning curve is steep, although this is often the case with advanced marketing tools.
That said, if you have the resources, including time and money, ActiveCampaign is an excellent option for taking your marketing efforts to the next level.
For whom is ActiveCampaign suitable?
Although ActiveCampaign is primarily designed for email marketing, it also offers valuable automation and CRM capabilities. Consequently, this versatile platform can be utilized by virtually any marketer.
Get ActiveCampaign if you’re:
- A seasoned and tech-savvy marketer
- In search of automation capabilities to streamline and automate the sales funnel
- An entrepreneur in need of an integrated sales and marketing platform
- A company seeking an all-encompassing solution with comprehensive marketing functionalities
If you are a company that falls into the following category, ActiveCampaign may not be the best fit for you:
- Just beginning an online business venture or delving into digital marketing
- Operating on a restricted budget
- A small business in search of straightforward email marketing functionalities, such as newsletters. ActiveCampaign may not be the most cost-effective option, as it offers numerous features that you may not use but still have to pay for
Review of ActiveCampaign Features
Alright, now that the introduction is complete, let's delve into the heart of the matter. We will examine some of ActiveCampaign's most impressive premium features and explore how they can elevate your marketing tactics to new heights.
Are you prepared to commence?
Newsletter Editor
ActiveCampaign boasts a vast array of templates that cater to all industries, customer demographics, and topics, enabling you to create compelling newsletters.
Its drag-and-drop email editor comes with numerous pre-designed content blocks that are easy to add to your emails. Unlike MailChimp, ActiveCampaign is user-friendly and doesn't come with frustrating glitches. This reliability is why it's always my go-to recommendation.
Moreover, ActiveCampaign offers various customization options such as section placement, color schemes, and content, allowing you to personalize your newsletters.
You can also include CTAs, success metrics, images, videos, social links, buttons, and more to tailor your newsletters to your niche.
Conditional Content and Newsletter Personalization
I love how ActiveCampaign makes it easy to personalize emails using a subscriber's name, address, and phone number. However, what really impresses me are the conditional display tags. This feature allows you to display or conceal specific sections of your email depending on the recipient.
This means you can personalize the content for each subscriber according to their interests, location, or stage in the customer journey.
And there's more! You can even add or remove details from a subscriber's profile when they meet specific conditions, thanks to ActiveCampaign's powerful email segmentation capabilities. This helps you send targeted emails and convert more effectively.
Email types
ActiveCampaign offers a variety of email types, including broadcast emails to send offers to your entire list, triggered emails to respond to specific customer actions, and targeted emails for segmented groups.
What sets ActiveCampaign apart is the ease with which these emails can be designed using their customizable templates. You can easily create a distinctive and captivating email to send to your subscribers by editing a template with just a few clicks.
Email Templates
ActiveCampaign offers an extensive selection of email newsletter templates, with over 250 options to choose from. This gives B2Bs, B2Cs, and e-commerce platforms a wide range of choices to personalize their message and connect with their audience better through targeted segmentation.
The templates come in HTML designs, which are easy to edit and create informative content for your customers. Moreover, they are all responsive, ensuring fast and proper email loading. However, it's important to note that ActiveCampaign doesn't support right-to-left (RTL) languages like Arabic, Urdu, and Hebrew.
Additionally, not all templates allow for font customization, so it's essential to keep this in mind when selecting a template.
Email Automation
Let me be clear: ActiveCampaign is an exceptional automation tool, and one of the most user-friendly marketing automation builders on the market.
With its drag-and-drop automation builder, you can create automated workflows in just minutes, automating everything from analytics and text messages to social media channelization and performance reports.
When compared to its main competitor, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign outshines it in terms of advanced marketing automation features. This platform is particularly effective at bringing leads into your sales pipeline and converting them into paying customers.
But what really sets ActiveCampaign apart is its ability to take automation to the next level. You can create multiple automated journeys and fit them into one cohesive map, navigating each workflow and seeing how they connect with one another.
ActiveCampaign sets itself apart from other automation tools by offering the ability to automate communication via SMS messages and website messages in addition to emails. This is a powerful feature that can enhance your customer engagement and experience. However, it's important to note that this feature is only available in the upgraded plans of ActiveCampaign.
Automation Library
If you don't have the time to build automated workflows from scratch, don't worry. ActiveCampaign has you covered. With over 600 automation templates available, you can easily automate various tasks for your business, such as abandoned cart notifications and follow-up emails.
The automation library is designed to enhance your marketing and sales campaigns, allowing you to concentrate on more important aspects of your business without worrying about sending the right emails to the right subscribers at the right time.
Automation Goals
Wouldn't it be great if you could measure the impact of your automation and identify which ones are driving remarkable results? Well, with ActiveCampaign's goal tracking feature, you can do that and much more.
It provides deep insights into the performance of your marketing campaigns, allowing you to monitor and measure the progression of your automations and enhance the productivity of your business.
For example, when certain contacts in your email list achieve specific goals, such as completing a purchase or signing up for a course, they are automatically moved to a new segment in your database. This enables you to personalize your follow-up messages and offer relevant upsell or cross-sell opportunities based on their actions.
By using goal tracking, you can easily identify which contacts are moving through your sales funnel and where others are dropping off. This allows you to fine-tune your marketing strategy and discover new automation opportunities that can further optimize your business performance.
Email Automation Split Testing
ActiveCampaign makes split testing easier compared to other platforms.
At a time, you can split test up to 5 aspects of an email:
- Subject line
- Sender name
- Content
- Images
- CTAs
By providing comprehensive data on each variable, ActiveCampaign enables you to identify the most effective email for a specific marketing campaign. This allows you to assess which email generates more clicks, opens, and conversions.
As a result, this feature helps to enhance email designs and optimize marketing strategies.
Subscriber Management
ActiveCampaign simplifies managing email addresses in your marketing campaigns, whether merging, segmenting, updating, or deleting subscribers.
With the ability to import contacts from .CSV files, this automated tool extracts data from the files. You can use different management options like Single Contact View, to search for specific contacts and manage various fields to address essential contact details. By viewing recent subscriber activity, you can make quick decisions that boost sales.
Additionally, advanced contact search features like merging and deleting enable you to focus on relevant subscribers that impact your bottom line. This feature streamlines the management of email addresses and allows you to concentrate on the crucial aspects of your campaigns.
Opt-in Form Builder
ActiveCampaign offers an intuitive form-building feature that is both simple and effective. With this tool, you can effortlessly collect valuable subscriber information and grow your contact list. The form builder is user-friendly, and it allows you to customize fields for your forms.
Moreover, you can choose from a range of responsive form types, including standard forms, floating bars, floating boxes, and modal popups. ActiveCampaign also seamlessly integrates with other form-building applications like POWr Form Builder, which elevates your list-building efforts with user-friendly and intuitive forms.
Spam Testing
With ActiveCampaign's spam testing features, you can test which emails may be marked as spam by your subscribers' email providers. This allows you to make adjustments and improve your email deliverability. The testing process is thorough, and the reporting is detailed, making it easier for businesses to refine their email marketing strategies.
Email Previews
Would you like to preview your email or newsletter before it lands in your subscribers' inboxes?
With ActiveCampaign, you can preview your messages and make any necessary last-minute changes to graphics, text, or other elements before sending them to your target audience. This feature is particularly useful for corporate B2B services, as an unprofessional email design could potentially lead to lost customers.
Test Emails
ActiveCampaign is at the forefront of automation tools with its email split testing features that allow you to test emails in an automation sequence. This feature enables you to easily refine your strategies and verify their performance through split testing.
With detailed metrics like opens, clicks, and buys, you can determine which email generates the best results. This is a great way to gather insights into the email performance of your marketing techniques. You can even test subject lines and find the best-performing one.
By tweaking various email features until optimal results are achieved, you can continually refine your marketing strategies. This puts you ahead of the competition, giving you an edge by using ActiveCampaign.
Bounce Management
ActiveCampaign utilizes Bounce codes to track the number and types of bounces.
These codes differentiate between hard and soft bounces, which may result from various factors such as invalid email accounts, undeliverable email addresses, and undefined mailbox statuses.
By analyzing this data, you can easily manage and update your contact list, ensuring a more efficient and targeted system.
Blacklisting
ActiveCampaign has introduced double opt-in features to ensure that your emails do not land in the subscriber's blacklist. With this feature, you only send emails to recipients who are genuinely interested in your services and products.
Additionally, it features the MXToolbox checker tool, which informs you whether your email address is blocked or not. This ensures that your emails reach your target audience and helps maintain your sender reputation.
Deal Pipelines
I really appreciate this feature of ActiveCampaign.
Managing deal pipelines is crucial for any online business, and ActiveCampaign makes it easy to map the stages of your customer's journey, from awareness to purchase, and monitor your open deals to capitalize on every sales opportunity.
What I find especially useful is the way it simplifies lead tracking, streamlines sales processes, forecasts revenue streams, and aligns sales stages with your overall marketing strategy.
What sets ActiveCampaign apart is the ability to create an unlimited number of deal pipelines for different audience segments, products, or services. Additionally, you can assign deals to different salespeople on your team based on the value or location of the leads.
But what really makes ActiveCampaign stand out is the “win probability” feature, which assesses the likelihood of winning or losing a deal based on the actions a lead takes.
Tasks
ActiveCampaign offers a task management feature that enables users to monitor their team's progress and goals using calendar tools. This feature ensures that everything is completed on time and contributes to the growth of sales and improved conversion rates.
Appointments
ActiveCampaign offers automated tools and scheduling services for booking appointments, making it a valuable tool for service-based businesses such as medical and consultancy fields. This feature enables you to set up appointments with customers and streamline the appointment booking process.
Direct Messages
To achieve success, it's crucial to connect with your target audience wherever they are. Whether it's through online chat or direct messaging, you need to engage and communicate with them on-the-go.
With ActiveCampaign's automated SMS marketing feature, you can easily reach out to your contacts by sending follow-up messages or notifying company representatives at the most suitable time for your business. This integration with automation workflows enables you to create a more efficient and effective marketing strategy.
Conversations
ActiveCampaign's Conversations feature is a comprehensive tool suite that boosts customer support and team efficiency. It allows you to effortlessly handle and store messages for future reference. Additionally, you can integrate chatbot automations, obtain contact information, merge chat data with contacts, sort conversations, and perform various other functions.
Reporting and Analytics
Gone are the days of guessing what resonates with your audience the most.
ActiveCampaign’s analytics lets you see which emails and marketing campaigns perform best, so you can optimize for success. With campaign summaries and customizable reports, you'll get a comprehensive view of each campaign, from opens to page visits to conversions and beyond.
For instance, I discovered that most of my subscribers open my newsletters on Friday night. By adjusting the delivery day and time, I boosted my open rate by 3X.
If you want even more in-depth insights, Custom Reports is an excellent feature, but it's only available with the Enterprise plan.
Deliverability Testing
Deliverability testing is crucial to ensure that your email marketing strategies are effective. ActiveCampaign offers several tools to improve your email deliverability, such as sending emails from a verified domain, creating messages that don't trigger spam filters, and using predictive sending.
These tools help ensure that your emails are delivered on time and reach your subscribers' inbox, allowing you to manage your email marketing campaigns more efficiently.
Segmentation
ActiveCampaign's robust segmentation features enable you to target subscribers who are interested in your emails. By analyzing behavior, the platform creates segments to prevent sending irrelevant messages to subscribers. You can segment your audience based on various parameters such as industry type, website visits, location, job function, and more.
This personalized approach adds a human touch to your emails, making them more effective in converting readers into buyers. Ultimately, this means more clicks, sales, and revenue for your business.
Reliable Follow-up Emails
ActiveCampaign provides automated solutions for follow-up emails that can be sent to people who have visited or purchased from your online store. This is critical in retaining customers, and ActiveCampaign ensures that these emails are delivered seamlessly and on time.
Inbuilt CRM Functionality
ActiveCampaign's built-in CRM tool ensures that you never miss out on potential leads or visitors. Any leads you generate through any platform are automatically updated in the CRM, guaranteeing that you always have up-to-date contact details.
With powerful automation backing the CRM feature, you don't have to put in much effort. You can easily view a lead's history or get a comprehensive view of your entire sales pipeline from a single place. What sets ActiveCampaign apart from other CRMs on the market, such as Zoho and Salesforce, is their integrated and automated CRM, which allows you to monitor leads and close more deals.
Lead Scoring Made Easy
Having the ability to score leads is a must-have feature for any successful business. This is because it allows you to prioritize your leads and focus your efforts on the most promising ones. With ActiveCampaign's lead scoring feature, you can easily identify which leads are most valuable to your business by simply looking at their scores.
ActiveCampaign's lead scoring capabilities can be a game-changer for your marketing campaigns. You can set up rules that assign points based on specific actions or inactions, and then adjust those scores based on certain conditions.
By leveraging critical information such as lead quality and win probability (which I'll discuss more later), I was able to engage with my most important leads at the right time with the right message. As a result, fewer leads slipped through the sales funnel and I saw a significant improvement in revenue.
Social Data
Harnessing the power of social media is critical to business success, and ActiveCampaign helps you tap into this potential by using social data to expand your reach through email marketing. With this tool, you can create reward campaigns that incentivize users to share your posts on social platforms, effectively multiplying your reach and engagement.
Multi-Channel Marketing
ActiveCampaign offers more than just email marketing. With its multichannel capabilities, you can design and execute marketing campaigns through various channels, including social media, SMS, and more. This allows you to engage with your customers on a personal level and convert more leads into loyal buyers.
Landing Page Editor
ActiveCampaign's landing page editor offers an easy-to-use interface where you can create visually appealing and effective landing pages for your visitors. With its drag-and-drop design, even non-tech-savvy users can design landing pages with ease.
What sets ActiveCampaign's landing page editor apart is its advanced analytics and testing capabilities, which can help you increase web traffic and sales. By analyzing data and testing different variations of your landing page, you can identify which elements work best and optimize your pages for better results. You can check out our Top Landing Page Builder that may help you increase your conversion rates.
DNS Authentication
Are you tired of your emails always ending up in the spam folder?
ActiveCampaign offers the ability to monitor your DNS records for email authentication. Although this may not be required for many accounts, it is an extra security measure that can improve your company's email performance.
Custom Domains
Having a custom domain alias can be a valuable asset for your website. By setting up a custom domain, you can establish your own unique brand identity and increase your domain authority, which is a rating that reflects how well your website is performing on search engines. With a custom domain, you can ensure that your website is easily recognizable and memorable, which can help to attract more visitors and boost your online presence. Click here to learn more about domains and why does it matter.
Account Access Management and Permissions
ActiveCampaign provides restrictions and permission-based account access to clients, which is particularly useful for accounts with multiple users. You can easily customize user permissions settings to ensure a more secure software solution for your email marketing needs.
Third Party Integrations
In my opinion, one of the biggest advantages of ActiveCampaign is that it integrates with more than 850 apps, far more than any other tool. Not only can it integrate with popular apps like Facebook, WooCommerce, Shopify, and Google Analytics, but it can also connect to virtually any software you're already using. This means you won't waste time switching to a new tool and learning how to use it. You can continue running your business as before, but better.
Mobile Responsiveness
ActiveCampaign ensures that your content and emails are displayed correctly on both desktop and mobile devices. Whether it's a device, operating system, or screen size, ActiveCampaign has it covered. All templates and landing pages are responsive and mobile-friendly. Moreover, you can also create, design, and optimize pages for mobile.
With ActiveCampaign, you have the flexibility to make various design changes, such as making a block visible or invisible in mobile view or editing page block styles, including width, border, corners, background, and inner spacing. The best part is that some edits you make in your emails will automatically change in desktop view as well.
For example, you can add text, content, change theme colors, and text styling (bold, italic, size, etc.) to make sure that your emails look great on all devices.
Performance of ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign offers a multitude of powerful features, and if you're curious about its performance and what kind of experience you can expect when using it, I'll delve into these aspects next.
Email Deliverability
ActiveCampaign offers a multitude of powerful features, and if you're curious about its performance and what kind of experience you can expect when using it, I'll delve into these aspects next.
- List hygiene: ActiveCampaign automatically manages your email lists by reviewing and removing inactive email addresses to ensure they are up to date.
- Create engaging content: Low open rates may be attributed to unengaging emails. However, ActiveCampaign's pre-built automations and re-engagement campaigns can help you create compelling content that boosts engagement.
- Offer double opt-in: By using ActiveCampaign's double opt-in feature, you can confirm that your contacts are interested in receiving your emails. This not only enhances engagement, but it also improves your sending reputation.
- Let go of unengaged contacts: Including an opt-out link in your emails can help prevent your email deliverability from being damaged by uninterested subscribers. By providing an easy way for subscribers to unsubscribe, you can maintain a healthy email list and engage only with those who are genuinely interested in your content.
- Reputable provider: ActiveCampaign delivers on its promise of excellent deliverability. By utilizing its robust email sender reputation, you too can maintain a high score.
- Ease of Use: ActiveCampaign's user-friendly interface makes it easy to navigate and use. New users can quickly get up to speed with the help of tutorials and guides. The platform provides a library of templates and a drag-and-drop editor that allows for the effortless creation and management of email and marketing automations.
Customer Support
ActiveCampaign provides diverse customer support options to cater to your needs. You can reach out to the support team via email ticket, live chat, or call the toll-free number at +1 (800) 357-0402. I've had a great experience with their team – they're responsive and amiable.
No matter which plan you're on, you can access the customer support options, including live chat. Moreover, the support team is available in multiple languages, making it easier for non-English speakers to get the help they need.
Onboarding and Training
Once you start using ActiveCampaign, you have access to an abundance of resources to assist you and improve your skills. For instance, you can:
- Explore the online knowledge base and FAQs section
- View previous training webinars offered by ActiveCampaign
- Enroll in upcoming webinars for further training
- In case you need extra help, scheduling a one-on-one meeting with the support team to resolve any queries or concerns regarding the platform is easy. Nonetheless, this feature is exclusive to ‘Plus' plan users.
Language Support
ActiveCampaign provides full support for several languages including English, French, Spanish, German, Czech, Dutch, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian. The platform also offers partial support for Danish, Finnish, Simplified Chinese, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
Migrating to ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign makes migrating to their platform simple and free with the help of their Expert Migration service. With this service, you can easily move your email marketing from your old platform to ActiveCampaign. The team will assist you in:
- Importing email lists, contacts, custom fields, and tags
- Recreating opt-in forms and landing pages
- Recreating automation workflows
- Recreating email templates
Data and Image Storage
ActiveCampaign offers unlimited storage for both data and images. However, images with a resolution of more than 1000 pixels will be resized to fit within the platform's parameters.
Trial Period of Active Campaign
ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial that grants access to the Professional tier of features. During the trial period, users can test the tool with up to 100 contacts and 100 emails. Once the trial ends, users can access their accounts by subscribing to a plan.
In some cases, ActiveCampaign may grant a one-time extension of the free trial. If users feel that they need more time to understand the software, they can contact their account executive or the support team and discuss their situation.
ActiveCampaign Pricing Plan
ActiveCampaign provides four different subscription plans to choose from:
Lite
For small businesses, the Lite plan from ActiveCampaign is an excellent option as it is affordable and comes with several useful features. With the Lite plan, you can have up to three multi-user accounts, send unlimited emails, and access basic email marketing and automation tools.
However, the plan doesn't include CRM tools and channels such as SMS marketing and site messaging. Therefore, if you need these additional marketing channels, you should consider upgrading to a higher plan.
Plus
The Plus plan is a great option for businesses seeking to enhance their marketing automations and integrations. With 25 multi-user accounts, your team will have access to all the features necessary to help your business expand. In addition to all the basic features, this plan includes CRM tools, prospect tracking, lead scoring, a landing page builder, a drag-and-drop editor, SMS marketing, and other valuable features.
Professional
The Professional plan of ActiveCampaign is designed to automate your business processes. With advanced features like chatbots and machine learning technology, you can create personalized experiences for your website visitors. In addition to these high-level features, the Professional plan also provides one-on-one consultations and training to help you and up to 50 users utilize the tool effectively. This plan is best suited for medium-sized businesses.
Enterprise
If you're looking for a marketing automation tool that offers a personalized solution for your business with unlimited users, then the Enterprise plan is the way to go. This plan is designed for medium or large businesses with the budget to invest in a one-on-one service to manage their marketing tasks.
The Enterprise plan offers many customized features, including a custom domain, design services, in-depth reporting, and more. The price of each plan mentioned above depends on the number of contacts you have, ranging from 500 to more than 100,000. The pricing is highly scalable, making it perfect for small businesses as well as large ones.
All plans can be billed monthly or yearly, depending on the date you sign up for them.
ActiveCampaign Pros and Cons
Pros:
- User-friendly interface
- Wide range of integrations
- Powerful automation capabilities
- Flexible email editor with drag-and-drop functionality
- Comprehensive reporting and analytics
- Multiple customer support channels in various languages
- Expert migration service for easy onboarding
Cons:
- Steep learning curve for advanced features
- Limited visual customization options for email templates
- Higher pricing compared to some competitors
- Limited social media marketing capabilities
- Limited A/B testing options
- No free plan, only a 14-day trial
Summary
ActiveCampaign is an all-encompassing marketing automation platform that provides a range of functionalities, such as email marketing, automation workflows, CRM tools, and seamless integrations with other platforms.
One of its key strengths is its ease of use, which makes it ideal for businesses of all sizes. It offers customizable templates, drag-and-drop editing, and pre-built automations that are easy to set up and use.
Another strength is its customer support, which is available in multiple languages and offers various channels to contact their support team.
ActiveCampaign also offers a 14-day free trial period and four subscription plans that are highly scalable, making it suitable for small businesses as well as large ones.
However, one of its weaknesses is that some of its advanced features, such as machine learning technology and chatbots, are only available in the Professional and Enterprise plans.
Overall, ActiveCampaign is an excellent option for businesses that want a powerful yet user-friendly marketing automation platform with a variety of features to help them grow their business.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign is a platform for Customer Experience Automation, which means it can enhance customer experiences by integrating customer intelligence into your business. Through the use of automation, you can deliver timely and relevant actions, simplify tasks, and create more impactful customer experiences.
In what ways can ActiveCampaign benefit my business?
ActiveCampaign offers three primary features: automations, campaigns, and one-to-one emails that can benefit your business in several ways. With automations, you can create email sequences triggered by a particular action, which can help nurture contacts before and after a sale, maintain customer relationships, and more.
The campaigns feature allows you to send one-time email messages, such as newsletters, to specific segments of your email list. Additionally, the one-to-one emails feature allows for personal communication with individual contacts, improving customer relationships.
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