ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation software which promises to do everything for your business. In this activecampaign review, we will look at ActiveCampaign's pricing, features and alternatives as well as provide some tips for whether it is worth using.
ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation software that helps you create content and activities to be sent out to your contacts. The programs help you reach them and keep them engaged with your brand on social media, blogs and more.
ActiveCampaign is often lauded for its features such as the "recipient scheduler" which allows you to specify when a subscriber should receive emails from your company.
In this activecampaign review we will look at the features, pricing and alternatives, so that you make the right choice when it comes to getting marketing automation software for your business.
ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation software designed to help businesses manage their entire customer lifecycle.
It has many features for email, social and lead management but can also connect with other systems including Salesforce, Google Analytics as well as 3rd party applications like Marketo or Hubspot.
The ActiveCampaign platform includes several tools that are aimed at different stages of the sales cycle: from pre-sales through to post-sale (or even after you've closed a sale).
The main tool in this area is Lead Management which allows users to create contact records for leads who have visited your website, downloaded a PDF, contacted you via email or social media.
Users can then create follow up emails based on these contacts and even track the effectiveness of their campaigns using analytics tools like Google Analytics.
In addition to Lead Management, ActiveCampaign also offers other marketing automation features such as Email Marketing, Social Media Automation (with Facebook Connect) and Contacts/Leads management which allows users to use third party applications including Salesforce or Marketo for lead management tasks.
It is possible to connect with other systems through an API but this requires that your system has been integrated into the platform already – it is not possible to integrate ActiveCampaign into a new system.
Active Campaign has four pricing plans to choose from: lite, plus, professional and enterprise.
The lite plan costs $9/month and is billed annually, the plus plan costs $49/ month and is also billed monthly, the professional plan costs $149/ month and is great for medium size businesses and finally the enterprise plan costs $259/ month and is great for large businesses. You can see all of the details on their pricing page here.
Active Campaign has over 100 features and tools including marketing automation, email marketing software and lead management systems.
Some of its most popular features include automated email campaigns such as smart follow up sequences, automated email templates, A/B testing and segmentation. Here is an overview of some of the more popular features in ActiveCampaign:
1. Automated follow up sequences – Create automated emails that can be sent out after certain events occur in your subscribers' lives such as joining or unsubscribing from your list.
2. Automated email marketing software – Send automated emails based on triggers such as a lead's name and email address. This can be used for things like sending out newsletters or seasonal promotions.
3. Segmentation – Segment your list by various criteria including: location, industry, company size etc. You can then use this information in the creation of targeted marketing campaigns that are more likely to increase conversions and sales.
4. A/B testing – Test different versions of an email campaign with real subscribers (or "test" them) before going live with any changes or updates so you always have control over how your messages look and feel when they reach your subscribers.
5. Lead management – Manage and organize leads in many different ways including: adding them to a database, assigning emails based on lead status, sending welcome emails etc. You can also create custom fields for each subscriber so they are more accurately tracked
6. Email templates – Design email messages that will be sent out automatically by Active Campaign (such as newsletters or seasonal promotions) without having to manually write the content yourself.
These work with any type of recipient depending on what kind of message it is such as an opt-in form or newsletter subscription confirmation page. The main benefit of this is that you can save time by not having to write the same message over and over again
7. Lead scoring – Score leads based on a variety of criteria such as: age, gender, location etc.
This information will then be used in your email campaigns when sending out future emails to make sure they are targeted correctly so it's important that these scores are accurate if you want results.
8. Campaign tracking – Track different aspects of each campaign including open rates, click-throughs etc.
You can also create custom metrics for any event or conversion rate from within Active Campaign. This information will then be available in your email marketing reports so you can see how well each campaign is performing.
9. Campaign tagging – Assign different tags to campaigns such as "holiday", "promotion" etc. This way it's easy for subscribers to identify which emails are related and more importantly, opt-in or sign up for them directly from within their inbox without having to go through the hassle of searching for a new address every time they receive an email.
This also makes it easier if your newsletters have multiple content areas that may need separate messages sent out at different times (such as seasonal promotions and new product launches).
Active Campaign has a lot of pros and cons. Here's what I consider to be the most important ones:
Active Campaign is one of, if not THE best email marketing software on the market. It does everything that you need it to do without any hassle or limitations (such as complex list segmentation).
The price will probably shock you at first but once you start using Active campaign, your money will go very far because there are so many features included in the basic package which can make it extremely cost effective for large scale businesses with thousands upon thousands of subscribers.
You also get a lot of support if you need it, which is always a plus.
Cons:
Active Campaign has some limitations compared to other email marketing software such as Aweber and MailChimp . For example, there are no templates or premade emails that you can use in Active campaign (although they do offer them for free).
You also have very limited customization options when compared to other tools like Aweber and MailChimp.
In addition the list segmentation capabilities aren't quite as good but I personally don't think this is a big issue because most people just want to send out an email to their list and not segment them or do any other fancy stuff.
There are a number of alternatives to Active Campaign. Some of the most popular ones include:
1. Aweber – This is one of the oldest email marketing tools on the market and has been around for many years.
It's very robust, flexible and powerful with lots more capabilities than what we've covered in this post (such as sending out emails based on subscriber lists) but it does have its limitations when compared to Active Campaign which is why I wouldn't recommend using Aweber if you want something that can be used by beginners or people who aren't comfortable programming code.
2. MailChimp – MailChimp is another email marketing tool that's been around for many years and has a very large user base.
It also offers similar features to Active Campaign such as tracking, tagging etc but it does have some limitations compared to Active Campaign which I'll cover in the next section.
3. Constant Contact – This one is probably the most widely used third party email marketing software on the market.
It's incredibly flexible with lots of different tools and capabilities (such as custom forms) making it an ideal solution for people who want something more advanced than what you get from basic mail merge functionality or simple list segmentation.
What I like about Active Campaign is that it's easy to use, doesn't require a huge amount of technical knowledge or budget and offers plenty of flexibility over how you want your emails to look (as well as the ability to create multiple templates).
In addition, they offer excellent support which means that if something goes wrong there will be someone on hand who can help fix things quickly while also providing you with guidance on what works best for your business. Another great thing about Active campaign is their pricing structure.
They offer a free trial plan which gives you the basics such as sending out emails and setting up autoresponders but there are also plans that let you send more than one email per day or week (with costs depending on how many), add tracking to your campaigns, track opens and clicks, use Google Analytics integration with Active Campaign so if someone does click through from an email then they'll be able to see where they came from within Google analytics...and much more!
Another great thing about Active campaign is the fact that it's extremely easy to use and setup which means that you can get up and running very quickly.
As a result, your email marketing will be off the ground in no time flat while also providing you with plenty of control over how things are going as well as reporting on them so you know exactly what works best for your business (and what doesn't).
Active campaign also offers some really cool features such as the ability to schedule your emails, segment lists and track opens. This means that you can send out a series of emails over time (or at specific times) without having to worry about sending them all on one day or week.
As I mentioned above Active Campaign does have its limitations compared to other tools so if you're looking for more than just an email marketing tool then it's probably not going to be what you need.
However, if this is all you are after then there isn't much competition in terms of free options because most people using email marketing tools are using them in conjunction with other tools such as social media platforms and web analytics.
If you're looking to connect with contacts across your entire revenue operations (Leads, Prospects, Existing, and Churned Clients) Cliently would be a great way to engage at scale.
Sometimes multiple tools can leave blind spots in who's engaging, how they're engaging, and when to engage, this is where Cliently could benefit you the most.
