ActiveCampaign Review 2021 – Why We Use It For Email Marketing In Our Business And Our Clients
Tim Fitzpatrick
MSP & B2B Professional Service Firm Marketing Consultant/Advisor | Fractional CMO | Build and manage your marketing engine to get where you want to go faster. | Remove Your Revenue Roadblocks
When it comes to email marketing software, you have many different choices. In this ActiveCampaign review, I'm going to share why we chose to use it for our business and our clients.
I'm not going to tell you it's the end all be all of email marketing software...that doesn't exist. Having said that, it's an amazing tool should you choose to use it.
Let's dig into it...
The Pros And Cons Of ActiveCampaign As An Email Marketing Tool
As of this writing, ActiveCampaign has over 130,000+ customers. They've been in this game for a long time and are well versed in what works and what doesn't.
Before using ActiveCampaign in our own business, we used Mailchimp and Mailerlite. Both of them worked well, and I don't have anything bad to say about them. Mailerlite has a phenomenal free plan if you are just getting started and don't have a huge budget.
We switched to ActiveCampaing for several reasons. Let's dig into what we like about it.
The Pros Of ActiveCampaign
Let's start with the pros.
1. Awesome Resources To Help You Get Started
ActiveCampaign has a ton of resources to help you get started. They've got step by step instructions for every part of the software.
Do you want a checklist to help you get started? They've got it. How about a tour of the platform? They've got that too. You need 1-on-1 help from an ActiveCampaing expert? You guessed it, they've got that also.
You get the point. They've covered all the bases to make sure you are successful.
2. User Friendliness, With Excellent Features, And Reliability
There's always a bit of a learning curve with new software, but it didn't take us long to get going with ActiveCampaign.
The interface is pretty straight forward and intuitive to use.
3. Pricing Plans To Fit Any Budget
Pricing starts at just $15 per month and goes up from there. For the value and return email marketing offers your business, this is a steal.
Here's a glance at their current pricing for 500 contacts. To hone in on the right plan for you, just visit their pricing page. It's super easy to use.
4. Excellent Drag?and?drop Builder
There are plenty of predesigned email templates for you to already use. Should you choose to create your own, the drag-and-drop builder in ActiveCampaign makes it pretty easy.
5. Real-time Analytics
With ActiveCampaign, you can keep tabs on your email marketing campaigns to quickly identify the strengths and weaknesses.
If you want to see the numbers for your contacts, campaigns, and automations, it's all there. You can quickly and easily get a pulse on all your email marketing activities.
6. Extensive Automation Capability
The email autoresponder capability in ActiveCampaign is extensive. We always recommend keeping your email marketing as simple as possible. Still, if you want to get sophisticated with your automations, you have that capability with the platform.
7. Integrations Galore
ActiveCampaign integrates with all kinds of other tools you may already be using - webinar software, CRM, Google Analytics, accounting software, scheduling, etc.
If you have specific tools you already use and want to make sure ActiveCampaign will work for you, just check out their apps marketplace.
8. Great Deliverability
Your email messages won't have an impact on your business if they don't get delivered. ActiveCampaign consistently ranks highly when it comes to getting your email messages into the inbox.
The Cons Of ActiveCampaign
Now here are some cons of using ActiveCampaign as your email marketing tool.
1.No Free Starter Plan
Some of ActiveCampaign's competitors have free plans that make it very easy to try them before buying. ActiveCampaign does have a free trial but no ongoing free plan.
If this is an essential item for you, I'd recommend you check out Mailchimp or Mailerlite.
2. Extensive Capabilities In The Platform
You can get very sophisticated with ActiveCampaign. This can be a blessing and a curse.
If all you are doing with your email marketing software is sending out a monthly newsletter or something simple like that, ActiveCampaign has way more features than you need, and it may not be the best fit.
3. Not The Best CRM
We love the email marketing and marketing automation features within ActiveCampaign, but their CRM is not our favorite. If you are looking for an all-in-one solution that integrates your email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM, then I don't think ActiveCampaign is going to be the best fit.
How Does ActiveCampaign Compare To Competitors?
Want to know how ActiveCampaign compares to your current email marketing platform? Here are some in-depth comparisons of some of their most popular competitors.
- ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp
- ActiveCampaign vs Hubspot
- ActiveCampaign vs Keap
- ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit
- ActiveCampaign vs Aweber
ActiveCampaign's Best Features
The features within ActiveCampaign are too numerous to list in this article, but here are some of our favorite features.
Targeted Emails
In ActiveCampaign, you can group your contacts into segments based on almost any factor. With segments, you can make sure the most relevant messages reach each of your contacts. Super cool!
Email Autoresponders
Your autoresponder will do the heavy lifting for you. Whether it's a customer onboarding sequence or delivering a lead magnet opt-in, in ActiveCampaign, you can set up any autoresponder you can think of.
Triggered Emails
You can set email messages to be sent when certain triggers happen. For example, when people visit your website or engage with a specific email. This allows you to send email messages when contacts are most interested.
Website Tracking
Site tracking gives you visibility to what products, services, and information your contacts are most interested in on your website.
Armed with this kind of information, you can follow up with the most relevant messaging to convert more leads into customers.
Split Testing
How can you get better and better results with your marketing? Testing.
ActiveCampaign has some excellent split testing capabilities. You can test email subject lines, email content, from information, images, and calls to action to help you identify what's working and what's not.
And that's why ActiveCampaign is our top choice when it comes to email marketing!
Looking for a few more resources? Check these out...
Recommended ActiveCampaign Resources
So what do you think about this article? Are you ready to give ActiveCampaign a shot?
Leave a comment below, and let's chat.
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Header image courtesy of JumpStory.
About the Author Tim Fitzpatrick
Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Marketing. At Rialto Marketing, we help service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. We do this by creating and implementing a plan to communicate the right message to the right people. Marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the RIGHT plan.
HubSpot CRM Implementation Specialist | Onboarding | Training | Client Management
3 年Hi Tim Fitzpatrick read this article with interest. I'm currently researching CRM alternatives to replace HubSpot. By the sounds of it, it is great for email marketing but not as a CRM. Have you got any other CRM recommendations. Have you used Freshworks at all?