10 of the Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives for Smart Brands

Email marketing is an evergreen trend leveraged by brands to boost engagement and generate leads. According to marketers, emails deliver the highest ROI among all channels. As a result, email marketing software systems such as ActiveCampaign have a loyal fanbase.

Image via Campaign Monitor

ActiveCampaign is undoubtedly the most popular email marketing platform. Marketers love its intuitive dashboard, drag-and-drop campaign builder, and sales and CRM integration.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

• 21 of the Best Web Conferencing and Online Meeting Tools for 2020
• 7 of the Best Optimizely Alternatives You Need to Know in 2020

Before we delve into the topic of ActiveCampaign alternatives, let’s understand why ActiveCampaign is the preferred choice of millions.

Here are the standout features of this software solution:

• Campaign automation flowchart for every client’s unique needs
• Email funnels to convert prospects into customers
• Visually-stunning, personalized emails
• Email segmentation and dynamic content

These basic features can help you roll out your email marketing campaigns in no time. But to leverage ActiveCampaign’s advanced features, you’ll need to buy the Enterprise license at a steep cost. SMBs operating on a tight marketing budget may prefer to use one of the many ActiveCampaign alternatives, available at lower prices.

To help you make an informed decision, we’ve compiled a list of 10 of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives below. Here we go.

ActiveCampaign Alternatives #1: HubSpot

HubSpot is a great software solution for enterprises of all scales and scopes. Apart from mechanizing your email workflows, you can also automate your sales, marketing, and services systems.

A free CRM underlies all of the processes in HubSpot. You can get insights into your contacts, prospects, and customers from one window. Talk about a one-stop destination.

Here are the highlights of HubSpot’s email marketing solution:

• Dozens of professional-looking email templates
• Personalized subject lines and content to ensure high open and click-through rates
• A/B testing to identify productive email campaigns
• Salesforce integration that helps analyze each email’s effectiveness
• Lifetime free subscription that includes contact insights and email conversion analytics

HubSpot scores over ActiveCampaigns due to its affordable business model. Its free edition bundles up email marketing with ad management, live chat, and reporting dashboards. The paid packs range from $35 to $2,240 per month. Read our HubSpot review for more details.

Image via HubSpot 

ActiveCampaign Alternatives #2: Exponea

Exponea is a Customer Data Platform (CDP) that utilizes AI to give businesses a holistic picture of their customers and targets.

It extracts customer data from online and offline sources, centralizes it, and restructures it so that you get valuable insights about your customers. Then, it helps you develop appealing email content and helps you target it to contacts at the right time, in the right form.

These are some of Exponea’s standout features:

• Cloud-powered to host voluminous contact diaries, on-premise and on-the-fly
• Smart delivery of emails in each contact’s optimal time (derived by complex machine learning (ML) algorithms based on stored interaction records)
• Drag-and-drop editor to craft beautiful emails
• Advanced HTML editor to plugin premade codes
• Easy-to-understand dashboard to monitor email performance

If you want intelligent analytics along with email campaign execution, get Exponea CDXP. Get in touch with the sales team for prices.

Image via Exponea

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

• 9 of the Most Efficient ZoomInfo Alternatives & Competitors

ActiveCampaign Alternatives #3: Marketo

Marketo is miles ahead of their competitors owing to its robust strategic partnerships and innovation. It’s a tool made by marketers and aligned with modern marketing trends.

Its super-friendly interface lets you launch email campaigns in minutes. Roll out entire campaigns on the move without technical support or programmer intervention.

Here are some of Marketo’s key capabilities:

• Detailed contact profiling using intelligent forms
• Manual and automated testing of email workflows
• Deep integration with top CRMs to arm your sales and customer service departments
• Triggered emails for every progressive interaction of a prospect with your website or landing page
• A proactive customer feedback cell that strives to fine-tune the platform for better performance

Marketo’s email marketing bundle includes a landing page creator, template gallery, marketing campaign calendar, and SEO for emails. Contact the sales team for pricing information.

Image via Marketo

ActiveCampaign Alternatives #4: iContact PRO

iContact PRO beats competitors for its free registration feature and simplistic email editor. You also get to build beautiful landing pages with appropriately-placed CTAs and easy navigation architecture.

Have a look at the best features of this software:

• Coding-free email creation
• A/B testing on sample contacts and scientific evaluation of test results
• Complete automation of routine emails, such as welcome emails
• Creation and hosting of CTA-loaded landing pages for better conversion
• A rich repository of stock images and templates for your emails
• Photo editing tools to transform media content in emails

You can buy the base and pro plans of iContact PRO software for $27.20 and $54.40 per month. The pro plan gives additional tools for creating landing pages and re-engagement email automation.

Image via iContact

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

• 9 of the Best SurveyMonkey Alternatives That You Need to Try

ActiveCampaign Alternatives #5: Salesforce Email Studio

Salesforce is a sophisticated platform for launching and automating email marketing campaigns. You can opt for simple workflows to send your pre-built emails, or choose smart sending of personalized content to contacts.

By importing data from your CRM and user behavior analytics, Salesforce builds a detailed contact persona. Then, it helps you craft emails that will help convert skeptical prospects into confident customers of your brand.

Here are the winning features of Salesforce:

• Responsive design tools to help you create emails from any device
• Flexibility to use HTML, drag-and-drop editor, or tailored scripting languages
• Customizable templates conceived by the best-in-industry designers
• Scalable campaigns at affordable rates

Subscribe to Salesforce Marketing Cloud to get email marketing, phone messaging, automation tools, campaign manager, journey builder, and smart analytics. Contact the sales team for a free quote.

Image via Salesforce

ActiveCampaign Alternatives #6: Mailchimp

Another great ActiveCampaign alternative is Mailchimp. The email builder has a content studio where you can upload your email content, templates, and media files.

Its super-friendly editor lets you pick and drop components into your email with ease. Like most marketing automation software, Mailchimp has real-time analytics to report your campaign performance.

Continue reading this article on Shane Barker's blog.