Are you looking for the best email marketing
automation tool?
Are you wondering if ActiveCampaign is the
right tool for your business?
You’ve arrived at the right place. In this blog, I’ll go through every feature of ActiveCampaign and help you decide if it’s the best marketing automation option for your business.
That being said, I recommend reading to the end to learn about its advantages, disadvantages, and what its users think of it.
What
exactly is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation tool
that also includes a customer relationship management system.
You can use the drag-and-drop builder to design automated campaigns that respond to various criteria, compose and update emails based on your prospects’ decisions, and nurture potential leads.
ActiveCampaign promises to be the finest platform for automating the customer experience. With its diverse set of skills, it may assist you in gaining a competitive advantage in terms of client loyalty.
I will give a brief overview of the features
(listed below) that this fantastic tool provides to the marketers before we
start the detailed analysis of ActiveCampaign.
Marketing via emailAutomated marketingCRM stands for Customer
Relationship Management (deals and leads)Tracking on-siteSMS and on-site chatReportingIntegrations
Having said that, let’s take a closer look at
each feature to determine if ActiveCampaign is the perfect automation solution
for your sales and marketing team.
ActiveCampaign
Review: Features
In this part, I’ll go over all of the
features and functions that ActiveCampaign has to offer.
Let’s start with its most important feature:
marketing automation.
Marketing
Automation
ActiveCampaign is
renowned for its high level of marketing automation.
Automating is made easy with the visual automation builder. Creating a workflow
is as simple as dragging and dropping the elements, and all changes are
automatically saved.
Alt text:
ActiveCampaign visual automation builder
Based on your
preferences, you can add multiple triggers as you can see in the above image.
Clicking the ‘+’ icon on the automation flow window gives users the option of
adding emails to that flow.
The personalization of
email marketing is another element that will give it life. ActiveCampaign’s
ability to insert dynamic content and personalization into your email copy
achieves this.
ActiveCampaign’s
automation capabilities give you more than you could ever imagine. With it, you
can build automation so easily with the selection of automation templates
already available:
The follow-up sequenceRe-sell and UpsellBoost referral trafficCollaborative teamwork
Plus many more…
Alt text: ActiveCampaign Automation template
Email
deliverability
In order to gain
success from email marketing campaigns, email deliverability is a major
concern. By using ActiveCampaign’s spam-checking functionality, you can easily
ensure your emails make it to the inbox of your subscribers.
Make sure your emails
are error-free and legitimate by keeping an eye on spam checks.
Our email delivery rate
is one of the highest in the industry, ensuring that your emails reach the
widest possible audience in their main inbox (not in spam or promotional tabs).
Marketing Via Email
[1] ActiveCampaign offers six types of email
campaigns to choose from. The different campaigns that are offered by it are as
follows:
StandardAutomatedAutoResponderSplit TestingRSS TriggeredDate
based
Using the flexible drag-and-drop email editor,
you can design the perfect email body in a matter of minutes.
In addition, you can hide and reveal specific
content blocks on mobile devices for improved navigation and design.
With ActiveCampaign, you can create
beautifully designed email templates and place blocks, so you can customize
them with a plethora of components. Furthermore, it is possible to adjust font
and icon size.
In addition, you can build and reuse templates
for future campaigns. Email campaigns can be designed much more efficiently
with ActiveCampaign.
CRM
and Sales Automation
It includes all the features necessary to
build a perfect sales pipeline, as ActiveCampaign’s CRM takes care of them all.
As your sales team is alerted as soon as a new
contact is captured, new tasks are created, the deal’s status is updated, and
nurture leads are automatically managed.
Automation of the sales funnel and
segmentation of results are both available. Furthermore, your sales team can
also receive updates when the time is right for them to follow up.
By using this, you can track the performance
of team members and assign tasks to them manually or by automating it. All
important data is at your fingertips and enables team cohesion.
Lead scoring and win probability is another
useful feature provided by ActiveCampaign.
In order to determine whether they will become
a long-lasting customer, the win probability uses machine learning to determine
the chances of them converting into one.
In the next section, I will explain lead
scoring in detail since it’s an integral part of marketing automation.
Lead
Scoring
Lead scoring in ActiveCampaign empowers
marketing and sales teams to identify the most likely prospects by assigning
points for interactions with contacts.
Lead scoring in ActiveCampaign can be broken
down into two types: Deal scoring and Contact scoring.
Using Deal Scores in sales pipelines, it is
possible to assign a numerical value to open deals. A deal’s nurture level
gives a salesperson an idea of how pressing a deal is, so he or she can
prioritize it for follow-up and closure.
This is different from Contact Scores, which
are assigned to email contacts such as subscribers and downloaders of
resources. In order to determine the most qualified leads, marketers should
identify the most engaged contacts.
There are many different factors that can be
used to assign points and create specific rules in ActiveCampaign such as page
views, purchases, download of resources, opening of emails, and links clicked.
Analytics
and Reporting
Campaign performance can be analyzed and
optimized with ActiveCampaign’s numerous reporting options.
In addition to campaigns, automated reports,
goal reports, deal reports, etc., it offers a wide range of reports.
Your automation is listed under the Report
tab, along with the number of people who have interacted with it and how many
have completed it.
Additionally, it shows open rates by day and
hour. This allows you to adjust the time-frequency of emails according to your
goal of achieving maximum ROI.
Furthermore, all your deals can be filtered by
a variety of criteria, including status, value, pipeline type, duration, etc.
You can also create custom reports based on
trends in automation engagement and forecasted close dates, as well as build a
high-level data-driven strategy with the tool.
Advanced
Contact Segmentation
Leads, prospects, and customers need a
differentiated experience throughout their journey, and segmentation plays a
fundamental role in doing so.
When you use segments, you have the
opportunity to send the right message to the right group of people at the right
time.
By using data that is already in the database,
you can create segments out of anything in ActiveCampaign. Following are some
examples of how segments can be created using data:
Contact
information: E-mail address,
first name, last name, full name, phone number, organization, date and time of
subscription, IP address, tag, and total conversion value.Custom
fields in forms: Whenever you
add new custom fields.Based
on actions & inaction of Contacts: Contacts who have clicked the link, have not clicked the
link, have opened, have not opened an email, have shared socially, have
forwarded, have not forwarded, have replied to email, have not replied, are in
the list, are not on the list, and are subscribed via subscription form.Based
on geographical locations:
The country, the state, the city, and the zip code.Based
on site & event data: Visiting,
not visiting, was referred from, visiting device, total page views, and total
site views.Based
on deal attributes: Has a
deal status, has a deal in the stage, has a deal value, has a deal assigned to,
has total number of deals, has total number of open deals, has total number of lost
deals, has total number of won deals, and has deal title.Based on Attributes: Has source, has medium, does not have medium, has
campaign, does not have campaign, has term, does not have term, has content,
and does not have content.
Furthermore, ActiveCampaign allows you to use
logic gates like ‘AND’ and ‘OR’, or multi-dimensional conditions to segment
your list more deeply and precisely.
Segment builder is a unique feature of
ActiveCampaign given that it is available across all platforms. Within the
automation builder, the contact page, and the email campaign page, segments can
be created.
By using ActiveCampaign, you can create any
segment based on the information you already have. The best part is that there
is no limit to the number of segments you can create.
I have included a quick glimpse of the segment
builder within the automation builder:
Alt Text: ActiveCampaign segment builder
automation
Pricing
plans
In ActiveCampaign, you have the option to
choose from 4 pricing plans: Lite, Plus, Professional, or Enterprise.
Each plan is outlined below:
Lite $9/ Month Billed Yearly The price is determined by the number of contacts. Features • 500 people to Contact • Marketing Automation • Email Marketing • Unlimited Email Sending • Drag & Drop Email Builder • 125+ Email Templates • Send Newsletters • Subscription Forms • Segmentation • Site and Event Tracking • Campaign and Automation Reporting • Import leads • Sales Emails • Lead Capture Forms • Segmented Outreach • Customer Newsletter • Customer Analytics • Up to 3 users • Import Contacts • Chat and Email Support • Mobile CRM & Marketing Access • Integrate to Over 850 CXA Partners • 500+ Automation Recipes • Unlimited inactive Contacts • APIs, Webhooks, and Developer Tools Plus $49/Month Billed Yearly The price is determined by the number of contacts Features • 500 people to Contact • Everything from Lite plan, plus • Landing Pages • 50+ Landing Page Templates • Facebook Custom Audiences • Contact Scoring • SMS Marketing • Automations Map • Conditional Content • Advanced Performance Reporting • Custom Branded Forms and Landing Pages • CRM with Sales Automation • Lead Scoring • Sync Inbox with CRM • Mobile CRM App • SMS Prospect Nurturing • Task Reporting • Sales CRM Sync • SMS Service Follow up • Deal Assignment • Customer Success Pipelines • Account Management • Customer Health Scoring Professional $129/Month Billed Yearly The price is determined by the number of contacts Features • 500 people to Contact • Everything from Plus plan, plus • Website Personalization • Predictive Sending • Predictive Content • Marketing Attribution • Split Automations • Attribution Reporting • Site Messages • Win Probability • Conversion Reporting • Split Automations • Split Automations • Personalized Product Experiences • Conversion Reporting • In-App Messaging • Up to 50 Users • 1:1 Onboarding Support • Three 1:1 Trainings Per Month Enterprise $229/Month Billed Yearly The price is determined by the number of contacts Features • 500 people to Contact • Includes Everything from Professional plan, plus • Custom Reporting • Custom Mail server Domain • Custom Domain • Free Design Services • Unlimited Email Design Testing • Social Data Enrichment • Custom Reporting • Contact Enrichment • Custom Reporting • Contact Enrichment
Pros
and cons of ActiveCampaign
As a whole, ActiveCampaign is a superb piece of software
with only a few small flaws. With its easy-to-use user interface, it is one of
the best tools for building automation campaigns.
PROS
User-friendly –
ActiveCampaign was the first platform to offer visual marketing automation. If
you join ActiveCampaign, one of the things you’ll notice immediately is how
intuitive and well-designed it is. Unlike most marketing automation tools, this
one requires no training to understand.Affordable –
ActiveCampaign offers marketing automation pricing that is very affordable for
small businesses who do not want to pay thousands of dollars per year. With no
upfront costs, their pricing begins at just $9/month.ZAPIER
INTEGRATION – With their Zapier integration, ActiveCampaign is connected to
over 2,000 tools. You can integrate ActiveCampaign with many tools; however
certain integrations are only accessible if you subscribe to Zapier.Automation
split testing – With this feature, you can compare multiple emails rather
than only single emails (which is what most marketing automation tools allow
you to do).Machine learning – ActiveCampaign provides
ML-driven features, including predictive sending, predictive content, and
predictive win probabilities, that help you automate even more of your
marketing and sales process.
CONS
CRM – ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation system is
especially powerful due to its built-in CRM system. However, this CRM is not as good as standalone platforms like
PipeDrive or Salesforce – though we consider activities automation in
ActiveCampaign a reasonable trade-off.Reporting – ActiveCampaign’s reports are quite comprehensive and
can provide insights on sales/goals conversions, but they are often cluttered
and complex to navigate.
Conclusion
The key to ActiveCampaign is that it offers almost everything
you need within a newsletter marketing tool, and it does so very well. Insights
into almost every aspect of reporting are available, such as page visits,
geo-tracking, openers, e-commerce, and more. A bit lacking is the newsletter
editor, which does not provide an experience as slick as other programs. There
are also a few niggling features (such as revision history) that could be
improved.
Friendly, helpful, and quick is what you can expect from the
support. Messages are sent via email and chat, and have a very personal touch.
In a high percentage of cases, the knowledge base returns relevant results when
searched. In addition to one-on-one training and webinars, their ‘Plus’ plan
gives you access to helpful information.
One of the best choices you could make if you want a
comprehensive newsletter marketing tool is ActiveCampaign. In comparison to
their automation, other tools’ versions pale in comparison. The effort
requires some time and a bit of money, but the rewards will be worth it for
your business.
If you want to learn more about ActiveCampaign while reading this blog, you can sign up for a 14-day trial by clicking the link below.
https://in.pcmag.com/e-mail/37054/the-best-email-marketing-software-for-2020