Email marketing is the single most effective and inexpensive way to engage with your audience. But what email service should you use? The answer may not be as simple as you think! For example, sending emails to a mass audience might be best suited for Infusionsoft, while targeted emails are better suited for ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign and Infusionsoft are two of the frontrunners when it comes to a reliable, automated email marketing platform for your online business.
The two services offer everything you need to run a successful email marketing campaign.
In this guide, we compare ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft so you can make an informed decision on which email service provider is right for your business.
The main difference between the two platforms involves their targeting options and segmentation capabilities. Infusionsoft users have access to more advanced features such as automated A/B testing and data harvesting tools that help increase engagement rates with your audience members.
This makes it a better alternative for e-commerce businesses that want maximum control over how they reach their customers via email marketing campaigns without having to pay extra for complex or expensive software solutions.
ActiveCampaign does have its own A/B testing feature, but at the same time, it lacks advanced segmentation capabilities like Infusionsoft. The main advantage of ActiveCampaign is that it's a complete email marketing solution with extra tools and features to help your users engage more effectively with their audiences.
The two services we're discussing in this article primarily differ in how they deliver emails via autoresponders or transactional emails to subscribers who have opted-in for them (as opposed to being sent directly from an individual user). In addition, both platforms offer much more functionality than just email marketing solutions.
Autoresponders are a very popular way for companies to communicate with their customers and build relationships through automated campaigns that update subscribers on the latest news from your business or organization. Because of this, ActiveCampaign offers some unique features over its competitors in terms of autoresponders:
1) Priority Scheduling - set up an autoresponder campaign as early as possible within Active Campaign so you can hit any emails at particular times throughout the week. This is useful for companies that want to communicate with their customers via email more often and at times when they're likely to be online (for example, sending out an automated newsletter on a Friday afternoon).
2) Once-Off Email - the ability to send a single message multiple times so you can provide your customers with additional information or even make them feel special by providing discounts or new offers as part of your email campaigns.
For instance: if you were selling health products, this could mean sending individualized emails once per month reminding subscribers about upcoming sales and promotions. Or maybe there's a new sale on one of your products, and you can send a single email to everyone who has purchased those particular items at the same time.
3) Email Templates - basic design templates that allow you to build emails from scratch without having any knowledge about HTML or CSS. This is very useful for companies with little technical expertise as it allows them to quickly develop complex emails without needing an in-depth understanding of HTML.
Active Campaign also offers pre-built popular templates such as sales pitches, thank you letters, welcome messages, etc., which help save time and effort by providing users with a ready-to-use template to get started.
4) Importing Campaigns - a very useful feature that allows you to import your existing lists from other email marketing platforms such as Mailchimp, AWeber, and Constant Contact into Active Campaign's autoresponder system in order to save time on creating new campaigns and managing subscribers more easily.
This is especially helpful for companies that have been using one of these services for a long period of time and would like the flexibility of having their own unique autoresponders without needing any technical knowledge about HTML or CSS at all (although it does still require a basic knowledge of HTML).
5) Automation - this is one feature that I think can make the most significant difference in terms of email marketing performance and results.
If you're currently managing your subscribers manually via lists on Mailchimp, AWeber or Constant Contact, then it's highly recommended to take advantage of Active Campaign's automation features as they give you the ability to automate everything from creating new subscribers, sending welcome messages and follow up emails to setting up autoresponders (autoresponders), delivering reminders when certain dates are reached and much more by allowing users create their own email sequences without having to worry about maintaining lists and following up on subscribers manually.
It's extremely time-consuming, especially if you have a high volume of subscribers, but the automation features make it possible for companies of all sizes to experience significantly higher email click rates compared with those who are not using any kind of automation at all.
6) Custom Fields - Active Campaign allows users to create custom fields that are used by their clients as another means through which they can segment their marketing campaigns according to specific criteria, including campaign type or date range (e.g., "new subscriber-only", "referral", etc.).
Infusionsoft offers some pretty good features, including:
1) Product Listing- By creating a product listing, you can create one-off products (e.g., "tickets for the Justin Bieber concert on March 15") or add multiple listings to your site all at once easily and with little time commitment.
2) Country Selection- This feature allows users to pick from different countries when sending emails in order to tailor each CampaignCampaign as they best see fit without having to worry about managing separate lists based on country individually.
This is especially useful if you send campaigns across many different territories globally because it makes it possible for single campaigns to be sent out across many different locations at once.
3) Listing Views- This feature allows users to create, edit and design pages based on their product listings (e.g., "out of stock items", "discounts", etc.) similar to that found in sites such as eBay or Amazon where products are displayed with images and the like for customers who wish to purchase them directly from your site when using those platforms.
4) Search Filters And Search Engines- A massive benefit offered by Infusionsoft is its ability for users to create their own custom search filters and perform searches on product listings based on any criteria they want.
It would allow users to easily optimize the pages of their site as well as filter out products that do not meet certain requirements or need to be removed from a list in order for other items to appear when performing organic SEO related lists such as "newest reviews".
5) Mailing List Management- With Infusionsoft, it is possible for users to manage multiple mailing lists at once using the same platform without having to worry about managing separate lists for each one individually. This makes it a very powerful tool for users who wish to segment their mailing list using different criteria such as geographic location, company size, product type etc.
6) Another feature allows users to easily connect with other customers through email so they can communicate with them directly and in real-time while offering an easy way of returning useful feedback on products that have been purchased by the user, which helps your site rank better organically online.
A/B testing. This refers to the practice of running two versions of a page, or versioning (for example, one for desktop and another for mobile browsers), in order to test which converts better.
The same is true with email marketing campaigns as well; you can use A/B tests within your Infusionsoft account without any additional software installed on your site by creating two different messages that will be sent out at the same time via emails to different sets of customers: one set receives the standard message while another set receives a special-offer message.
You can then analyze these results to see which CampaignCampaign converts better and improve your next email marketing campaign.
Active CampaignCampaign has a great customer service team, available 24/7 via phone or live chat to answer all of your questions; Infusionsoft's support is only accessible by submitting an online ticket through the help center (which can be accessed by clicking "Support" in the footer).
Active CampaignCampaign has a customer support team available 24/7 via email and phone.
Infusionsoft does not have any program that offers live chat or phone call support for its customers; users must use the online ticket system to contact Infusionsoft's technical staff by submitting an issue report.
Customer Service Hours of Operation & Support Policy
InfusionSoft is open Monday through Friday from 8am-5pm CST, excluding US Federal Holidays (or 02:00 Eastern Time), where it is closed between these hours. Any other time during the day can be requested upon request only.
Infusionsoft provides for limited reporting and automation features with the free version (if you want more advanced capabilities, this is where ActiveCampaign shines).
For example, in addition to basic campaign analytics like clicks/conversions and email opens/clicks, they provide activity streams that show all of your leads' activities over time via similar reports as those provided by Google Analytics or other third-party tools such as Kissmetrics.
This makes it easier to understand trends within your sales funnel while giving extra information on a campaign's effectiveness.
Additionally, Infusionsoft allows for basic integrations to key third party applications like MailChimp and Constant Contact via API keys provided with the free version of their software; this is more helpful than it appears since many companies find that they need to integrate multiple tools in order to make things work effectively.
On top of all these features, there are other advanced features such as multi-step forms (which can be easily automated) or dynamic lead lists, which allow you greater control over your campaigns by incorporating a company's preferred contact methods into an email sequence.
Active CampaignCampaign shines in terms of the advanced features it provides, but Infusionsoft does have a lot of useful options for free.
In conclusion, Active Campaign is best for companies that need more sophisticated campaigns and integrations, whereas Infusionsoft is best suited to businesses with smaller marketing needs that don't require advanced integration capabilities or reporting tools.
ActiveCampaign is best known for its ability to automate email marketing so that it can be set up and run with minimal overhead. They have an extensive library of scripts that allow you to create your own emails without having direct access to the code behind them, meaning that all changes are made by Active Campaign instead of being customized directly on a page or in the developers' interface.
ActiveCampaign, as mentioned above, is primarily a tool for automating email marketing. This can be beneficial in cases where you have multiple campaigns (or even just one) which are being run at the same time but need to be run via different sets of automation in order to ensure that they're not conflicting or appearing too similar.
This advanced functionality allows companies with numerous campaign features such as pre-populated forms and dynamic lead lists, amongst other things, so that it's easier than ever before to engage customers on many levels simultaneously while maintaining control over your messaging and ensuring consistency across all channels.
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.
