ActiveCampaign For Email Automation: A Review

ActiveCampaign is one of the main frontrunners in the email marketing and automation industry. This marketing tool was founded back in 2003, and since then, the service has acquired over 100,000 customers.

There are many email marketing platforms on the market at the moment, but what makes ActiveCampaign stand out is its focus on automation.

Email marketing is supposed to be a quick and effective way to reach a larger customer base, but many of the tools currently available lack the automation to achieve this level of efficiency. Earlier this year, ActiveCampaign announced that the automated emails provided by the service have saved its customers over 38 million hours in 2021!

But is ActiveCampaign really the best email marketing platform out there for automation? That’s the question we’re going to answer in this article.

This review of ActiveCampaign will cover all the information you need to decide whether ActiveCampaign is the best tool for you and your business. Because the service is mostly known for its automated features, email automation will be the primary focus of the review.

A Summary Of ActiveCampaign

There are many layers to the service that ActiveCampaign provides. The different elements of ActiveCampaign’s marketing tool come together to help you, as a business owner, to bring in more customers, target the right demographics for sales, and achieve greater success overall.

First and foremost, ActiveCampaign is an email marketing platform. This means that its primary function is to help create and send out newsletters via email to your customers. Crucially, unlike many similar services, ActiveCampaign’s emails are automated, drastically cutting down the amount of work you need to do.

However, ActiveCampaign’s usefulness doesn’t stop there. The platform also features a website-building tool so that you can improve your brand’s online presence, including the ability to send messages to your customers based on their interactions with your site.

In addition to this, ActiveCampaign offers CRM tools. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and this is a crucial aspect of successful email marketing because it allows you to analyze and interpret the data provided by analytics reports and apply the findings in targeted communications.

It’s also important to note that ActiveCampaign differentiates itself from other combined email marketing and CRM tools by offering email services as its primary service, with CRM as a complementary tool. Most combined services are CRM-focused and offer email marketing as an extension of this.

ActiveCampaign’s Main Features

As we specified earlier, our review of ActiveCampaign is going to be primarily focused on its automation. 

However, ActiveCampaign offers plenty of exciting and useful features, so we’re going to discuss all the most important ones in this section.

Site Layout 

Before we get more specific in terms of features, it’s important to discuss the layout and user-friendliness of any email marketing platform. After all, a complicated and unintuitive user interface will effectively cancel out the benefits of automation in terms of time and effort. 

Luckily, ActiveCampaign has one of the best site and app builds of any email marketing service. 

The products, services, and features offered by ActiveCampaign are all easily accessible via the menus, which are organized in terms of needs, industries, and resources. 

When it comes to using ActiveCampaign, the drag and drop technology makes organizing your assets effortless. 

If you’re worried about getting the hang of the system, ActiveCampaign also provides a ‘Getting Started’ tool that will walk you through the set-up process. 

Newsletter Editor 

The newsletter editing tools available through ActiveCampaign will definitely help to engage your customers. 

ActiveCampaign’s website provides more than 125 templates, all of which are professional and modern-looking. Because email is a less popular method of communication, many email marketing services unfortunately have quite outdated templates. ActiveCampaign, however, keeps up with the times. 

There’s quite a range of template types to choose from, so finding one that suits your business or brand should not be too difficult. This is especially true given that you can easily edit and customize the templates according to your needs and preferences. 

If you sign up for the ActiveCampaign Plus plan (more on this later), you can get a customized email template for free!

Automation 

Here’s where ActiveCampaign really starts to shine as a service. In addition to offering flexible, customizable, and professional email construction tools, ActiveCampaign provides the best level of automation we’ve ever seen from an email marketing platform – and that’s saying something. 

ActiveCampaign uses a flowchart system through which you can automate your email delivery. This flowchart is easy to follow, even if email marketing is completely new to you.

Whether you want to organize follow-up email campaigns or even combine several conditions for better-targeted marketing, the automation tools at ActiveCampaign will help you get the job done in no time.

Alternatively, you can save even more time by simply using ActiveCampaign’s ready-made templates. Once you’re feeling confident in sending out automated emails, you can even build an automation flowchart system yourself, based entirely around your own business. 

Deliverability Rates 

It’s all very well having incredible automation tools at your disposal, but if none of your emails ever make it to their destination, none of it will be worth it. 

Thankfully, ActiveCampaign also scores highly on deliverability rates. 

Email deliverability can be assessed through deliverability tests, and the results for ActiveCampaign are truly impressive. 

While emails from some marketing services struggle to reach their intended inboxes, especially with big email providers like Yahoo and AOL, ActiveCampaign has no trouble getting your automated emails to where they need to go. 

Emails sent via ActiveCampaign are rarely filtered as junk or spam, but we’ll get into this in more detail a little later. 

CRM Tools 

We’ve mentioned that ActiveCampaign is also a CRM tool, helping you to organize your customer base and manage your relationship with your subscribers. 

The reason why ActiveCampaign’s list management tools are superior to most other email marketing platforms is because of the high levels of automation. 

ActiveCampaign’s email automation is based on information regarding customer interactions. This data is pulled from a variety of sources, which we’ll detail more extensively in our ‘Analytics Reports’ section (see below). 

What this means is that before your emails can be sent out, your contacts are automatically organized into lists based on types and levels of interaction. This takes a lot of time and effort out of the equation on your end and means that your customers will be more likely to open and interact with your emails since they’ll be more relevant. 

Analytics Reports 

ActiveCampaign’s analytics reporting system is superior to the vast majority of the competition. 

There’s very little left to be desired when it comes to ActiveCampaign’s data analyses because they cover just about everything you could need to know about your subscriber engagement. 

ActiveCampaign offers some more advanced, sophisticated data analysis tools, including geo-tracking and click-maps. 

With that being said, ActiveCampaign’s reporting does suffer slightly, not in terms of what information is included, but in terms of access to this information. 

Unfortunately, customizing your reports is something you’ll only be able to do if you sign up for the Enterprise plan (see ‘Pricing and Plans’). 

Additionally, you can only access Ecommerce reporting on specific plans, so if you want a certain type of report going into your journey with ActiveCampaign, it’s very important to choose the right plan. 

Integration 

ActiveCampaign partners with a wide range of apps, meaning that integration is easy and versatile. 

Some of the main apps that can be integrated with ActiveCampaign are Shopify, ClickFunnels, Salesforce, Zapier, and Facebook. 

However, there are many more apps in partnership with ActiveCampaign, and new ones are being added all the time. Recently, ActiveCampaign has added Uncanny Automation for CRM and adTorch for analytics, amongst others. 

Website Personalization

Let’s not forget about ActiveCampaign’s website builder! 

These days, building your online presence as a brand or business involves more than email communication. You also need to have a professional, user-friendly website – which, incidentally, can also be used as a method of communicating with your customers!

The Web Personalization tool that makes up part of ActiveCampaign’s services allows you to build your website in a way that shows each individual customer the content that is most relevant to them, based on the information pulled by the automation system. 

Showing each customer what they are most likely to be looking for will ensure that all your site visitors have the most positive, user-friendly experience possible. If your site is sales-based, you’re also likely to make more sales if you can show your customers what they want straight away. 

ActiveCampaign will also provide you with useful tips on what kinds of content (including images and messaging) lead to higher conversion rates, giving you a foundation of knowledge to enhance your engagement in the future. 

However, it’s important to note that this feature is only included in the Plus plan, so if you want to use ActiveCampaign to work on your website customization, you’ll need to pay more. 

Account Accessibility 

Some email marketing tools offer different levels of access when it comes to account management and ownership. 

While this is a desirable feature for many business owners operating with certain business structures, it can also make accessing and using your account more complicated if your team doesn’t operate according to clearly defined levels. 

Instead, ActiveCampaign allows you to organize account access into groups, each with their own flexible permissions. This is backed up by 2-factor authentication for security purposes. 

Customer Service  

The customer service and support provided by ActiveCampaign is user-friendly and efficient, so if you have an issue, your work will never have to come to a standstill for long. 

Customer support is available in 5 languages, and the main avenue for support is the live chat function, which you can access no matter what plan you’re signed up for. 

ActiveCampaign also has a support center with an extensive knowledge base. Using this tool, it’s very easy to find the answer to most questions and common issues that may come up when using the platform. 

When you sign up to ActiveCampaign, you can also access the training center and learn from both 1-on-1 sessions and webinars.

Pricing And Plans 

ActiveCampaign is a versatile tool that caters to various industries. Therefore, it offers 4 different plans so that you can choose the one that is most relevant to your business. 

The most basic plan offered by ActiveCampaign is the Lite plan, which starts at $11 if you have 500 subscribers or less. The price of the Lite plan goes up incrementally according to how many subscribers you have, going all the way up to $714 per month if your contacts reach 100,000. 

At the next level up, there is the Plus plan, which starts at $63 per month for 500 subscribers and includes more features, such as the website personalization tool and other features such as predictive content and sending. 

ActiveCampaign’s most popular plan is the Professional plan, which starts at $194 monthly. At this level, you can access customizable analytics reports and free design services.

Finally, there’s the Enterprise plan, which is the most expensive, starting at $336 per month. This is the all-inclusive plan through which you can access any of ActiveCampaign’s services and enjoy some additional perks. 

Once you reach a certain number of contacts, you also have the option to work with an advisor to customize your own plan. 

At the moment, ActiveCampaign has a one-time limited offer of 25% off the cost of your plan for 3 months. There is no free trial available for ActiveCampaign, so don’t miss out on this deal while it lasts!

Advantages And Disadvantages 

As you can probably already tell, our impression of ActiveCampaign is largely a positive one. In fact, it’s definitely one of the best email marketing and CRM services out there, particularly when it comes to automation. 

With that being said, Active Campaign has its pros and cons, just like any other marketing tool. 

Pros

• Advanced automation. It should come as no surprise at this point that our favorite thing about ActiveCampaign is its automation. By automatically organizing your contacts according to data collection and sending out emails relevant to customer engagement, ActiveCampaign proves itself as a highly effective email marketing and CRM tool. 
• Impressive deliverability. The test results for ActiveCampaign’s deliverability are reassuring and demonstrate that this is a reliable marketing tool. 
• Detailed analytics. Although ActiveCampaign only allows report personalization through certain plans, the specificity of the analytics reports is great for understanding and improving your customer engagement.

Cons

• No free trial. With marketing services, it’s always good to be able to try before you buy. However, you can’t do this with ActiveCampaign because there’s no initial free trial. 
• Restricted access to web and report personalization. You can only access the website personalization tool and customized reports if you pay extra for the Plus or Professional plans. 
• Not the most beginner-friendly. The user interface for ActiveCampaign is good and the customer support services ensure that new users can learn the ropes. However, because this is an advanced system of automation, beginners may find themselves feeling a little overwhelmed at first.

Alternative Services 

Just because ActiveCampaign is an excellent service doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider the other potential alternatives! Depending on your business and goals, you might find that one of ActiveCampaign’s competitors is better suited to your needs. 

Sendinblue 

ActiveCampaign is quite an affordable platform considering the advanced features that it provides. But if you don’t need all of these features, there are even more budget-friendly services available that might meet your needs for a more affordable price. 

Sendinblue is our top recommendation if you like the sound of ActiveCampaign but want to save some money. It has several advanced features (although the automation is not quite as impressive) and is one of the most affordable options available. 

MailerLite 

MailerLite is also a viable alternative to ActiveCampaign. Like Sendinblue, it’s one of the best choices in terms of value for money, and even includes a free plan that allows you to use a lot of the features. 

We’d recommend MailerLite over ActiveCampaign if you feel that ActiveCampaign might be too complex a system for you since MailerLite is much easier to use. 

GetResponse 

GetResponse is a popular alternative to many of the biggest email marketing platforms because it offers fairly advanced tools (including automation) while remaining easy to navigate in over 20 different languages.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is There An ActiveCampaign App?

ActiveCampaign is most often used via the website, but there is also a well-designed app that you can use to monitor and manage your account wherever you are.

The ActiveCampaign app can be downloaded on iOS and Android devices, including tablets and smartphones.

Does ActiveCampaign Offer Landing Pages?

Yes, part of ActiveCampaign’s website customization service includes landing pages.

A landing page is a marketing tool designed to get more customers to subscribe to your newsletter. This is done through an online form that pops up on your website and includes a call to action.

The information included in the form will contribute to your data reports, which you can then use to better organize and target your contacts.

Is ActiveCampaign Good For CRM?

ActiveCampaign is one of the best email marketing tools to use for CRM because its high level of automation makes organizing your contact lists and sending out the most relevant emails much easier.

However, it’s important to remember that ActiveCampaign is an email marketing tool first and a CRM platform second.

What Can I Use ActiveCampaign For?

You can use ActiveCampaign for a huge range of marketing endeavors, from organizing automated email campaigns to personalizing the way your website appears to individual customers.

More tools and features are available through the more advanced plans, so you can use ActiveCampaign for more purposes on the Professional plan than the Lite plan.

Can I Cancel My Subscription To ActiveCampaign?

In most cases, canceling your ActiveCampaign subscription is easy as long as you’re the designated Primary Admin.

You should be able to access the Billing and Upgrade page on the website, press ‘update’, then ‘cancel your account and future billing’, and then, finally, ‘cancel my account’.

If your account has an appointed Success Manager, you’ll need to contact them before you can cancel your subscription.

Final Thoughts

If you’re interested in signing up for an email marketing service with high levels of automation and excellent CRM, ActiveCampaign is the platform for you!

Using ActiveCampaign, you can personalize your marketing experience both for yourself and for your customers. Automated emails and list organization will save you a lot of time, while customizable templates, reports, and web pages all help to boost engagement.

ActiveCampaign is one of the best combined automated email marketing and CRM tools in the industry.

With that being said, there’s no free trial and some of the plans can get quite expensive if you have a lot of subscribers, so if you’re not 100% sure or don’t need such advanced tools, you may want to check out some of the alternative services listed above.

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