ActiveCampaign Review: Best Automation Solution

Revolutionize Your Email Campaigns with ActiveCampaign – Discover How It Can Help You Succeed!

In this ActiveCampaign review, we will dig into all the features and benefits of this popular marketing automation tool.

ActiveCampaign is one of the top email marketing platforms, offering users a wealth of features and options to help them create powerful campaigns that drive conversions.

In addition to email marketing, ActiveCampaign also provides features such as customer relationship management (CRM), lead scoring, customer segmentation, and automated workflows.

With all of these features, ActiveCampaign is one of the best marketing automation solutions for any business.

In this review, we’ll explore how to set up and use ActiveCampaign’s features.

We’ll also discuss its user interface, customer support options, and pricing plans so that you can decide if it’s the right tool for your business needs.

This is a screenshot of how many people rated it 5 stars on G2.

Review Highlight

Before we begin the review let’s do a quick highlight of what is ActiveCampaign and what it can help in your business.

What is ActiveCampaign?

It allows businesses to send professionally designed emails to their leads and customers with ease.

ActiveCampaign is a powerful and flexible email marketing solution that businesses of all sizes love because it’s simple to use, accurate, and feature-rich.

ActiveCampaign is an automation builder which you could create automated workflows by triggering tags in one of ActiveCampaign features.

Below, I’ll summarize some of the key features:

• Leverages automation to maximize ROI
• Super easy to use drag and drop builder
• Powerful CRM software included with lead management, sales follow-up, marketing automation, email campaigns reports
• Convert more traffic into more leads with the landing pages builder
• Making complex business processes simple.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Advance email marketing platform
• Easy to use interface. Strong automation system. Email Service Provider.
• Provides a variety of automation features that will fit the needs of your company.
• Variety of third-party deep integration (Clickfunnels Included) and auto-responder alternatives.
• Landing page builder
• Support Team is excellent.

Negatives:

• Too many features may be bit confusing for new users to digest.
• There is currently no free version of this software available.

Pricing

4 payment plans. The following is a description of each one:

• Lite
• Plus
• Professional
• Enterprise
• Customize plan

Remark: Plans differ from how many contacts or subscribers you have. The pricing for 500 or fewer contact lists is shown below.

Lite	Plus	Professional and Enterprise
Marketing Automation	Website Personalization	Custom Reporting
Email Marketing	Predictive Sending	Custom Mailserver Domain
Unlimited Email Sending	Predictive Content	Custom Domain
Drag & Drop Email Builder	Marketing Attribution	Free Design Services
125+ Email Templates	Split Automations	Unlimited Email Design Testing
Send Newsletters	Attribution Reporting	Social Data Enrichment
Subscription Forms	Site Messages
Segmentation
Site and Event Tracking
Campaign and Automation Reporting
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

Lite	Plus	Professional and Enterprise
Import leads	Win Probability	Custom Reporting
Sales Emails	Conversion Reporting	Contact Enrichment
Lead Capture Forms	Split Automations
Segmented Outreach
CRM with Sales Automation
Lead Scoring
Sync Inbox with CRM
Mobile CRM App
SMS Prospect Nurturing
Task Reporting

Lite	Plus	Professional and Enterprise
Customer Newsletter	Split Automations	Custom Reporting
Customer Analytics	Personalized Product Experiences	Contact Enrichment
Sales CRM Sync	Conversion Reporting
SMS Service Followup	In-App Messaging
Deal Assignment
Customer Success Pipelines
Account Management
Customer Health Scoring

Lite	Plus	Professional	Enterprise
Up to 3 users	Up to 25 Users	Up to 50 Users	Unlimited Users
Import Contacts	Advanced Mobile Reporting	Dedicated Onboarding Specialist	Onboarding and training for custom product functionality
Chat and Email Support	Custom User Permissions	CXA Strategy Consultation and access to quarterly business reviews	Phone Support
Unlimited access to online resources library	Advanced Integrations with Leading E-commerce Applications Such as Shopify and BigCommerce	1:1 trainings	Customize Your Application URL (for Application Access)
Mobile Contact Management & Marketing Access			Customized Branding within Application
Integrate to Over 870 CXA Partners			HIPAA Support
500+ Automation Recipes
Unlimited Inactive Contacts
APIs, Webhooks, and Developer Tools

Now that you know how much it will cost, let’s look at the features and see which one is best for you.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampaign is one of the most popular email marketing services available, with wide-ranging plans, features, and pricing structures that are designed to meet the needs of teams at any size.

The company organizes their plans based on your subscriber count.

Plans begin at $9 per month for up to 500 contacts and unlimited emails.

At each subscriber level, you can upgrade to a Plus plan which adds several features including customer relationship management (CRM), a custom domain, and custom branding.

There’s also an enterprise plan that includes a dedicated account representative and more if this sounds like the plan for you.

ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial that does not require a credit card.

Once you enter your company name and email address, the next step is to set up a password and select the service you’re looking for- email marketing, CRM, sales automation. 

Next, choose the number of contacts you have and whether or not you need help setting it up.

All plans include unlimited emails, their plans range up to 100k contacts; if you need more, they can make a custom plan for you.

You can save 15 percent off the monthly cost by paying annually.

Email Marketing

Using ActiveCampaign, marketers can create drip campaigns with just a few clicks of the mouse.

There are six types of email types that you can choose from, including standard, automated, RSS feed triggered campaigns, split testing, date based and autoresponder.

In order to send an email to a specific list of contacts, you first need to create a list.

Lists can be created by picking an email address from your account or by adding any new email address into your account.

You then select contacts for that particular list by using site tracking or event tracking on your website.

For example, if you want to send an e-mail only to those who visit a certain page on your website, you can use ActiveCampaign’s event tracking feature.

You can also target customers from different geographic location.

Email templates in ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing software that offers a drag and drop editor, conditional blocks, segmentation and more.

You can choose from many templates when composing your emails and they all look professional.

The email editor isn’t the slickest but it gets the job done. You can change whatever you want from fonts to background colors to line heights and more.

When sending out newsletters, I utilize basic layouts and a specific format. You may use saved emails as templates and reuse them over time.

One of my favorite features about this service is conditional blocks, where you can add tags to your subscribers based on what actions they took or their profile information.

For instance, if someone clicked on a link in one of our marketing campaigns, we would tag them with “Clicked link.”

We use quizzes to segment people into lists, then add tags based on what answers they gave. This allows us to create one email that works for everyone no matter their specific situation.

Within the email builder there are many options like conditional blocks (with tags) and personalization (adding subscribers’ name, company name, etc.)

Every feature is worthless without reliable deliverability and despite some naysayers, Activecampaign scores high across the board.

ActiveCampaign Marketing automation

I use and recommend ActiveCampaign because it has a robust set of tools to help you accomplish your marketing goals.

There are three main screens you interact with in ActiveCampaign:  

1. The automations tab where you can see all of your automations and create new ones,
2. The manage messages tab where you can view, edit, and delete all the messages associated with an automated campaign,
3. and the automations map tab that give’s you an overview of how each automation interacts with other ones.

When creating a new automation, there are dozens of pre-built Active Campaign automation templates to choose from based on goal (e.g., abandoned cart follow-up from your ecommerce system tracking).

The builder lets you customize automations in lots of ways to get it just right, including emailing people and adding conditions, split automation, goals etc.

When setting up your automation, there are a lot of options available via the “+” icon.

You can add emails or conditions by clicking on the “+”, a menu opens up giving you options based on sending an email, different conditions (split automation, end automation, goals etc.), contact actions (subscribe to a list, unsubscribe, add a tag etc.), salesforce and CX apps.

ActiveCampaign Automation Example

It’s never been easier to set up which makes ActiveCampaign a good option for anyone with a busy schedule.

If you’re too busy to head online all day then with our new design you’re able to schedule in time for your workflow when you’re not working.

There are hundreds of pre-built automations that can be used out of the box – for example if someone fills out a form and joins your mailing list.

You send them emails on a monthly basis to keep them updated about the market, new features or goods, and blog articles.

If they don’t submit a contact form on the services page within one hour, an email is sent out that asks them if they’d like to schedule a call.

Depending on their actions, the automation ends and starts a different one or tags the person as interested or it continues by notifying a relevant team member to reach out to the person.

All of the automation happens behind the scenes and can be set up using simple conditional logic.

If you’re a more advanced marketers, you can use ActiveCampaign PRO with event tracking, tagging system, scoring and much more to improve the customer experience. 

ActiveCampaign CRM

The ActiveCampaign Lead Scoring is a machine learning engine that calculates win probability for leads.

It can analyze data from leads, e-mails, contacts, and social media posts in order to determine the best time to reach out to potential clients.

The ActiveCampaign sales CRM provides its users with features like lead scoring in order to help them contact potential clients at just the right time, before they forget about you completely.

It also allows users to integrate third-party applications including Gmail in order to provide them with access to sales reports, send follow-up emails automatically, and assign tasks.

You can score your contacts based on specific criteria you set up or let ActiveCampaign do the work for you by using their machine learning engine.

If the score gets high enough, the lead is ready to purchase, so you can send them an email with special offers.

If not, then you have one more chance to make the sale.

Scoring leads lets you determine how likely it is that they will purchase your product, so you can send them an email with special offers if their score gets high enough. If not, then you have one more chance to make the sale.

Sales CRM features like lead scoring are essential for success because there’s always the possibility that someone will become your client.

It can be tough to keep track of important details, like whether or not they are ready to buy, but with a tool like ActiveCampaign CRM you will always be prepared.

Messaging, SMS and Chat

ActiveCampaign is one of the few marketing automation platforms that offer all the tools to communicate with your customers.

It’s not enough to just provide a way for customers to contact you; sometimes they want to contact you in other ways.

ActiveCampaign offers SMS messages, on-site chats, and Facebook ads campaigns.

Want to increase sales?

Send an SMS message about a limited time or seasonal promotion.

Sick of hearing from customers that haven’t used their coupon?

Send them a text message if they haven’t redeemed it within 30 days of receiving it.

Don’t want people to miss urgent messages because they’re out of the office?

Put them on auto-reply when they turn off chat and schedule messages for times when they’re likely to be back.

Remember, SMS messages are for business not personal use.

Don’t abuse the service by spamming your contacts with random messages about whatever you want.

ActiveCampaign can also help you retarget people on Facebook audiences based on their interactions with your website or blog posts.

No more guessing how to optimize your ad spend.

Let ActiveCampaign automate it for you.

All this functionality is just scratching the surface of what turns a regular marketing automation platform into an all-in-one messaging solution.

Machine Learning & AI – the smart stuff

Working to communicate with your customers in an engaging manner is important.

ActiveCampaign has helped to do this by including machine learning into their CRM and email marketing features.

The CRM uses machine learning to help you focus on the right deals that will close.

This saves time, effort, and money for your business.

For email marketing programs, there are two aspects it is useful- predictive sending and predictive content.

You can use machine learning for both of these parts of your marketing program;

Firstly by analyzing the interactions of each customer to determine when they are best reached via email;

Secondly by using predictive content to determine which customers would be best suited for which message.

ActiveCampaign’s machine learning and natural language processing helps determine who the best recipient is. Early reviews of their machine learning capabilities are positive.

ActiveCampaign Integrations

Shopify, Bigcommerce and Woocommerce are e-commerce software that integrate with ActiveCampaign.

This includes more than just the surface of contact information.

You can provide extra data, tags, and other fields to the contact’s record.

To top it off, you can get purchase history through these integrations as well.

ActiveCampaign integrates with many popular software like Facebook or Google analytics.

There are over 100 integrations in all so they’re divided into categories such as online course software or CRMs; to name a few.

Customer Support

Most companies see a steady decline in customer support as they grow in size, but this is not the case with ActiveCampaign.

Previously it only had email customer service and a knowledge base to self-help with any problems you might be experiencing, but now it also has webinars, live chat support and YouTube tutorials.

The tutorials are short but informative, and the reps seem knowledgeable and ready to help.

I have had personal experiences with them that leave me giving them an 8 out of 10 for their support.

Our Verdict

ActiveCampaign is a powerful email and marketing automation tool for businesses across industries, B2C, and B2B.

We recommend ActiveCampaign to people who are ready to take their efforts to the next level with marketing automation tools or those that have some experience in email marketing.

It’s not for marketers looking only want send simple newsletters because it offers too many features they won’t use – if you fall into this category I would check out MailChimp instead.

If you feel like your business could benefit from using Active Campaign we think our 14 day free trial offer will be up your alley!

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