Today, in the world of digital marketing, the competition for a client is intensifying every day. That’s why effective communication with potential buyers is becoming a key success factor for many companies.
The ActiveCampaign service is a powerful tool for automating marketing activities on the Internet, which has functionality that allows you to precisely influence the target audience through e-mail, SMS, social networks, and other tools.
We decided to review ActiveCampaign, its pros and cons, so that you can evaluate this multipurpose tool and see if it suits your specific business needs.
What is ActiveCampaign?
The ActiveCampaign marketing platform is one of the best solutions for advertisers, entrepreneurs and business owners today. The service combines functions for automating advertising campaigns on different sites and a convenient CRM system for storing customer and sales data.
ActiveCampaign can also be synced with Shopify, WordPress and other e-commerce tools and more. With built-in reporting, you can track the effectiveness of connected advertising campaigns and increase their ROI.
In addition, the built-in CRM system allows the team to manage sales, track customer interactions and work with leads coming from advertising. Also, from a convenient interface, you can send emails – greetings for new users, payment reminders for existing customers, and much more.
The ActiveCampaign email marketing platform has a lot of advantages and unique features compared to its competitors:
Deep automation. The platform allows you to create complex automation chains, managing interactions with customers at every stage of the sales funnel, from brand awareness to after-sales service.
Versatility. In addition to email campaigns, thanks to the service, you can use other sales channels – SMS mailings, social networks, etc. This allows you to contact the client in a way convenient for him and increase the number of touches with the brand.
Embedded CRM system. ActiveCampaign is a real swiss knife in the world of automation that provides not only marketing tools, but also a platform to help you effectively manage customer interactions and keep track of orders.
Extensive opportunities for integration. You can connect many third-party services and popular business tools that simplify the workflow and increase team productivity.
Automated reporting. The system generates reports automatically, which helps to simplify the process of analyzing the results obtained from marketing activity and quickly make decisions based on the data presented. This way you can track conversion, CTR, bounce rate and other metrics.
Multichannel attribution. By using built-in functions, you can determine exactly which traffic channel or set of channels produced the most efficient results. This makes it possible to optimize the distribution of the advertising budget.
Are there any downsides to the ActiveCampaign tool?
Like any other tool, ActiveCampaign has its drawbacks:
Difficult to master. Due to the large number of features presented, it will be difficult for a new user to understand the full functionality of the platform.
Price. Although the tariff line includes several plans for different budgets, the service is not cheap and may not be suitable for small startups.
Limited functionality on cheap plans. So, trigger-based email automation, AI tools, CRM and multichannel attribution are only available in expensive packages.
Reduced features in the mobile app. The full set of platform features is available only in the web version, which may not be very convenient for those who often work from a smartphone.
ActiveCampaign service features overview
ActiveCampaign provides a huge opportunity to optimize your marketing campaigns, maintain your customer base and improve overall business performance. Let’s see how you can get the most out of using it.
Mailing automation
With built-in tools, you can create automatic mailings based on certain conditions and triggers. For example, the user viewed a certain page on the site or clicked on a link in an email, updated contact information, and so on. This event can be timed to send an e-mail via ActiveCampaign.
Other advertising tools can be included in such automated chains. For example, you can bind the sending of an SMS message or a Push notification to a specific event.
Email Remarketing
This strategy is about re-engaging with users who have already taken some action on your website or emails.
The advertiser can set up a trigger mailing for those users who have added the product to the cart but have not completed the purchase. Scenarios can be very different, the key factor here is that sending an email is activated in response to certain user actions.
With the help of the internal functionality of the platform, you can personalize such emails by including a title by name, offers based on previous purchases or pages viewed, and much more. All this takes the effectiveness of remarketing campaigns to a new level.
Email Builder
With ActiveCampaign’s intuitive builder, you can create professional-looking emails without the need for layout or design skills.
Elements can be added to or removed from an email using the drag-and-drop interface. You can also change the size of blocks, visual design – text color, fonts, and much more.
You can also choose one of the ready-made letter templates in the internal library of the service. The range of templates covers a wide range of topics and industries, making it easy to find the right option for a particular occasion.
In addition, the designer has a preview function, thanks to which you can visualize how the letter will be displayed on devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. You can also send a test message to make sure everything looks as intended on the user’s display.
Personalization of mailing lists
Message personalization helps increase user engagement and improve conversions. Using the capabilities of the platform, you can, for example, change the content of the email depending on the demographics, behavior and interests of each user.
In this way, you can not only individualize the content of the letter, but also its subject. You can insert a personalized appeal to the user by name in it, which, of course, will attract more attention to the newsletter.
In addition, you can divide the entire target audience into separate groups (segments) and set up a separate mailing list for each of them. Thus, each subscriber will receive a message relevant to his interests.
Dynamic Content in Email
This includes elements of the email that change depending on the specific recipient. These can be individual offers for goods and services, pictures and even the background of the letter, which can be customized based on customer data.
ActiveCampaign allows you to insert variables (client name, geographic location, etc.) directly into the body of the email, which creates the illusion of a personalized communication.
So-called “conditional blocks” are used to display dynamic content. Their content varies depending on specific tasks. So, men and women can be shown different products, and customers from different cities can see different offers.
Online Chat
You can install a chat integrated into ActiveCampaign on your site, which will allow customers to ask questions about a product or service directly on the resource pages, and the operator to instantly respond to queries directly from CRM.
Internal functionality allows you to set up automatic replies or welcome messages. This allows you to immediately respond to the user’s request and then switch it to the appropriate operator.
Also, ActiveCampaign has the ability to forward chats to colleagues and process requests together with them in real time. All chats are automatically synchronized with CRM, which allows you to track the history of interaction with customers and use this data to improve communication in the future.
Embedded CRM
Internal ActiveCampaign CRM-system helps to raise the efficiency of sales through a more convenient interaction with customers. All data is stored in one place – contact information, communication history, orders, notes and much more.
All points of contact with the client are pulled into the system – from emails and calls to meetings and messages in an online chat. Using this information, you can visualize the sales funnel, automate many tasks, and make forecasts for future sales.
Contacts inside CRM can be grouped according to different criteria, for example, according to the stage of the sales funnel at which they are located. Based on this, you can create personalized advertising campaigns and individual offers for different audience segments.
Split testing
This technique allows you to compare two or more versions of the same item within an email campaign and measure the results for each one. These can be different email subject lines, send time, design or content.
The platform provides the ability to conduct such A / B tests and control the accompanying conditions – the size of the audience, the duration of the test, and the parameters by which the winning option is determined.
Using built-in reporting, you can determine what changes help increase the percentage of open emails, as well as more conversions and clicks. Based on the received data, you can optimize the mailing and increase the overall effectiveness of the advertising campaign.
Audience data collection
The customer avatar card inside CRM contains names, email addresses, phone numbers and other data. In addition, in the system, you can see exactly what purchases he made during the cooperation. By connecting the platform synchronization with Google Analytics and Facebook, you can also combine audience data from different sources.
Interaction tracking will show whether a client opens emails, and if so, how often, whether they click on links from them, and whether they ask questions in the chat. All this will help to better understand the audience and determine the most effective marketing strategies.
Lead scoring
Lead scoring is a kind of rating system that assigns points to potential customers depending on their interaction with your brand. ActiveCampaign automatically updates scores for each contact in the system based on their activity.
You can also choose the most important criteria for which points will be calculated, depending on the specifics of your business. The resulting scores can be used for audience segmentation, ad delivery prioritization, message personalization, and more.
Landing page builder
The built-in Landing Page Builder allows you to create landing pages to redirect traffic from mailing lists and other sources. The user has a lot of ready-made templates on a variety of topics.
Any selected template can be customized at your discretion using the internal visual editor built into the platform, which works on the principle of drag-and-drop. You can change any elements of the landing page to suit your needs, delete, hide or drag blocks.
The cost of using the ActiveCampaign platform
All tariff plans in the system are divided into packages, depending on the functions they support. Thus, the “Sales” (sales) package provides for the use of only CRM without the ability to automate e-mail mailings and other marketing functions.
Let’s take a look at the 3 most popular tariffs of the ActiveCampaign platform, which are included in the “Marketing” package, which includes all the functions for automating advertising campaigns:
Plus. It costs $49 per month (when paid for a year in advance). Up to 3 people can enjoy all the benefits of the system. In addition to automation, the tariff includes tools for creating pop-up and modal forms, landing pages, integration with WooCommerce, Shopify and BigCommerce, tracking events on the site, using APIs, generating emails using artificial intelligence, and much more.
Professional. This plan costs $149/mo. when paid once a year. This includes split testing automation, integration with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, live chat, multichannel attribution, and all the tools from the Plus package.
Enterprise. This is a fully individualized tariff plan that can be customized to the needs of a particular business. Includes personalized reports, linking a separate server for sending e-mail, and many other features that may be of interest to large companies.
