Have you ever thought of this question as a marketer or business owner?

How can bloggers and affiliate marketers send regular emails to subscribers, promote products/services to thousands of people while still being able to spend so much time on their businesses?

Many of these companies don’t have employees or freelancers.

So, how?

The answer is in three words: email marketing automation.

Email automation allows you to create fully automated businesses that take care of themselves while you’re away.

It sounds amazing, right?

ActiveCampaign has steadily risen to the top in automation and email marketing over the past few years.

In this review, we’ll take a deeper look at the features and pricing plans of this product, as well as how it can improve your email marketing strategies.

Let’s get started!

What is ActiveCampaign? 

ActiveCampaign was founded in 2003 and has more than 130,000 users. It also employs 750 people worldwide. This SaaS-based marketing platform has been a huge help to small and medium-sized companies to automate a wide range of marketing processes in order to grow their businesses.

Many people think ActiveCampaign is a simple email service provider. It offers a holistic approach to email lead generation through four core functions.

•  Email Marketing
•  Marketing Automation
•  Sales and CRM
• Messaging

The platform has grown from an email marketing service provider to become an all-in-one marketing platform over the years. ActiveCampaign is a key player in E-commerce. You should be able to evaluate it in depth.

What does it look like?

It’s worth giving it a try.

What are its core characteristics?

Let’s see what the next sections have to say!

Key features of ActiveCampaign

Email segmentation

As an online business, we assume that your target market may be quite large and include a variety of demographics. This could complicate the lead nurturing process. It is not a good idea to send the same email to all prospects. You could lose a significant chunk of your leads.

ActiveCampaign offers an in-depth email segmentation tool to help with this problem. You can break down your entire list and segment it based on many criteria, including email opens, contact details, geographic location, and so forth. You can also segment users based on the page they were referred to or the opt-in box that they used to sign up to your list.

This feature is only available if your blog uses content upgrades and you want to provide a personalized experience for subscribers you have gained from different posts.

Once you have a system in place for assigning tags and creating audience segments, it is possible to launch separate campaigns and automation sequences.

Marketing automation

ActiveCampaign’s primary selling point is marketing automation.

ActiveCampaign recognizes that businesses have different marketing needs and therefore cannot provide a single-size-fits all automation solution. Instead, ActiveCampaign offers an automation builder that allows you to customize your enter automation process according to your goals and objectives.

You might be thinking, “It must seem complicated.” Well, no, don’t worry! It’s as simple as clicking, dragging and dropping various automation rules until you get your final workflow.

The automation section can be accessed from the main dashboard of your account. You can either use predefined sequences that are compatible with your goals, or you can create your own automation sequences.

ActiveCampaign allows you to create condition-based sequencing that follows set conditions by using a drag and drop automation tool. You can, for example, create a sequence which is activated 1 day after subscribers don’t open your email campaigns.

Automation maps make it easy to visualize user journeys and allow you to add triggers and conditions to personalize your email marketing campaigns. It is possible to create complex sequences that are long and follow many different conditions.

CRM data can include behavioral and social data

Personalization is the cornerstone of customer relationship management. Marketing professionals believe personalization is a key ingredient in building relationships with leads.

Personalization and subsequent targeting are based primarily on personal information. Customers rarely provide complete customer data.

ActiveCampaign handles all the work. You’ll have multiple insights into your leads’ social and behavioral data through ActiveCampaign CRM.

• Age and interests
• Localization
• Social feeds
• Site activity and interactions from the past

This is a great tool for improving your complex automation workflow.

Chat and messaging via live chat

ActiveCampaign’s Live Chat Conversations feature allows you to engage website visitors and convert them into customers and subscribers. This feature is unfortunately not available for users on the Plus and Lite plans.

Here’s how it works.

Live Chat is a way for visitors to your website to get in touch with you. You can interact with them, ask what they are searching for, and then ask them to send you more detail.

ActiveCampaign creates a user profile for them, adds them on your email list, activates any automation sequences you have created for them, and shares their email address via chat. These users can be contacted via SMS or push notifications.

You only need to add the code below to enable chat conversations. After you have added the code, the chat window will be displayed at the bottom of your website. The chat configuration area in your dashboard can be customized to brand the chat window and match your site’s design.

This amazing feature allows you to not only build an active email list, but also send targeted content to your website visitors in order to maximize engagement.

ActiveCampaign is easy to use

ActiveCampaign’s initial signup is simple. It only requires basic information (business name, email address and name) as well as a few questions to guide you to the right level of service. You are then taken to the UI.

ActiveCampaign’s screen seems overwhelming at first glance. The top menu has eight options. You’ll also find subcategories within each option that offer more options. This is a sign of how well-designed ActiveCampaign can be, but it can sometimes feel overwhelming.

Its dashboard can be customized. You can drag each window to a different place on the screen, or close them all altogether. Click on these windows to access the entire feature.

Before you can send a campaign, you will need to create a list. You will need to fill out a pop-up to identify the list and the URL. Also, you’ll need to remind your contacts why they are on this list.

There are many options for creating lists on the platform. These include copying and pasting, importing CSV files, and import contacts from any of 94 sources, including popular ones like Salesforce and Google. ActiveCampaign allows you to export your contact list as a CSV file.

The platform also offers Lead Scoring, which is a unique feature. This feature allows sales teams to target specific contacts by setting their “rules”, and then assigning a cumulative value to those who meet these criteria. These rules could include geographic areas and rates of response. This will give you an indication of who is being reached effectively and who is being ignored.

ActiveCampaign security features

ActiveCampaign provides top-notch security measures. ActiveCampaign has security systems that protect your information and those of your customers.

ActiveCampaign GDPR compliant. Enterprise users can also use it HIPAA-compliant. ActiveCampaign integrates data security in its development process. It also uses internal tools to scan code, and infrastructure. ActiveCampaign also has an internal “Red Team” that acts as white hat hackers and tests the software’s security.

Your data is also protected by its information storage methods. Data redundancy is used to ensure that you always have backups and data access via password control, multifactor authentication and keys. You can also protect your data with single-tenancy classification. This means that each user’s information is kept separately, and that each user is protected by vulnerability scanning and application firewalling.

ActiveCampaign emails use TLS (Transport Layer Security encryption) to protect them and indicate to your customers that they are safe to open.

ActiveCampaign add-ons and integrations

ActiveCampaign is the best option in this section because it offers a wide range of integrations and addons. These integrations are crucial for email marketing platforms that use ActiveCampaign to transfer customer data to and from your online shop to your email marketing system.

Some common integrations include:

E-commerce:

• Magento
• Shopify
• WooCommerce
• BigCommerce
• PrestaShop

Payment Processing

• PayPal
• Stripe
• Square

Accounting:

• Zoho Invoices
• QuickBooks Online
• Xero

ActiveCampaign is also compatible with Zapier, which opens up hundreds of additional integrations. It also has a RESTful API that allows you to create custom connections to third party software.

ActiveCampaign pricing plans

ActiveCampaign charges you according to the size and number of contacts in your list. You will have access to more advanced features, support, and the tiers that are more expensive will be more accessible.

ActiveCampaign users with large contact lists will need to set up a custom pricing model. The service level you have signed up for will determine the threshold at which custom pricing is required. Surprisingly though, custom pricing is required at higher levels (such Enterprise Plans) to be negotiated with 25,000 contacts. However, lower-level plans don’t require custom pricing negotiations until you have 50,000 contacts.

Here are the four pricing options for ActiveCampaign:

ActiveCampaign: Starting at $9/month

• Supports up 3 users
• Newsletters
• Email marketing
• Unlimited sending
• Marketing automation
• Chat support and email support

ActiveCampaign PLUS Plan starts at $49/month, which includes everything in the Lite Plan plus:

• Supports up 25 users
• Domain branding and custom branding
• Permissions for custom users
• SMS marketing
• Integration of deep data
• Contact and lead scoring
• CRM and sales automation

ActiveCampaign Professional Plan starts at $129/month, which includes everything in the Plus Plan.

• Supports up 50 users
• Site messaging
• Attribution
• Training one-on-one

ActiveCampaign Enterprise Plan starts at $229/month, which includes everything in the Professional Plan plus:

• Supports unlimited users
• Social data free
• Free design services
• Onboarding in depth
• Custom mail server domain
• Representative for your account
• SLA for Uptime
• Telephone support

These prices are for annual subscriptions. The monthly plan is significantly more expensive. We recommend that you start with the month-to month plan. If ActiveCampaign proves to be the right solution for your company, you can sign up for the year-long subscription in order to enjoy the discounted rates.

You can also give the software a free 14-day trial. The best part is that you don’t need to submit credit card information.

ActiveCampaign customer support

ActiveCampaign, like many cloud-based software solutions, offers different levels of support depending on your payment plan.

ActiveCampaign can be contacted via email and live chat by all users below the Enterprise level. Only Enterprise customers have access to dedicated account representatives and phone support. The Professional Plan also includes three one-on-1 training sessions per month. This is a significant benefit.

ActiveCampaign also offers self-help resources that you can use to get answers to your questions. Here is a list of ActiveCampaign support resources.

• Knowledgebase. Many support articles on different topics.

• Learning resources. To learn more about the platform, including email marketing, you can access videos, guides and podcasts.

• Forum for the community. Get practical assistance from other users and discuss the software.

• Blog. Blog.

• Developer portal. Developer portal.

• Directed training. Training one-on-one in 30-minute sessions

• Certified consultants. To increase your click-through rate, you can hire an ActiveCampaign consultant.

ActiveCampaign: The pros and cons

Pros:

• It is simple to use
• Plans that are affordable and feature-rich
• Step-by-step instructions for a customizable dashboard
• Powerful automation features
• Many integrations and add-ons
• Migrations are free
• Solid security features
• Diverse customer support channels

Cons:

• For beginners, it is a steep learning curve
• Quite crowded and difficult-to-navigate reports
• There are fewer templates built in than other systems
• It is impossible to create landing pages

ActiveCampaign is for whom?

ActiveCampaign has its quirks but is still a valuable addition to any marketing environment. If you meet the following criteria, ActiveCampaign may be a good option for your marketing arsenal:

• Low reputation and engagement can negatively impact your deliverability rate. You want to improve it. ActiveCampaign ranks high in terms of deliverability and can help you get a better rate if it isn’t.

• You would like to use email marketing automation and workflows for emails to be sent to your subscribers/ customers at the right time for your business.

• Email marketing is a great way to get your conversions up if your user engagement levels are low. It uses robust automation and effective lead-capturing tools.

• It can help you align your marketing and sales processes better. It will transform your sales from leads to sales.

Alternatives to ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a powerful email marketing service that combines user-friendliness and automation. It’s obvious. However, times have changed. There are many email marketing tools available, all with the same (or better) layouts and features.

We’ve compiled the best 3 software options to help you make a decision.

ActiveCampaign vs. AVADA email

ActiveCampaign is slowly being replaced by the “blue” email marketing platform. AVADA has a lot more best-in-class features than other platforms, but it also offers a lower price and scales well. It’s not clear how they do it but it is the truth. They are one of the most prominent names in the space of email marketing automation.

Why should you choose AVADA Email instead?

• It is easy to get started even if you don’t have any technical skills

• It automatically sends emails reminding customers to retrieve their carts

• It comes with beautiful and ready-to-use email templates 

• With its advanced segmentation features, you can easily send messages to the right people

• With its Exit Intent pop-ups and Spin to Win, you can easily collect leads

• Comprehensive reports make it easy to track your email performance.

• The support team is professional, friendly, and knowledgeable.

• It is much less expensive than ActiveCampaign

Another amazing feature of AVADA Email email is its free trial. This gives you the opportunity to try it out before you commit. You can also opt for the Pro Plan, which costs $9/month and offers more features.

ConvertKit vs. ActiveCampaign

ConvertKit is a tailor-made solution for bloggers and content site operators. It includes powerful automation builders as well as automation tools. All of this comes at a premium price, but it can be well worth it if your target audience is compatible.

Why choose ConvertKit?

• Even for non-techies, the workflows are simple to use and intuitive
• Templates for blog-centric emails
• Clean marketing interface
• Advanced email opt-in and exit-intent functionality

ActiveCampaign vs. GetResponse

Maybe GetResponse has the most likeness to ActiveCampaign in terms of feel and price. It offers full-scale automation as well as autoresponder logic for a lower price depending on the tier.

Why choose GetResponse

• Amazing webinar automation sequences, landing pages
• Fully functional mobile app
• Industry-leading email delivery rates
• One of the first marketing automation tools for lead-nurturing
• Real-time sales alerts

The bottom line

We are impressed with ActiveCampaign’s power-packed features as well as the flexibility it offers, as you can probably see from this review.

With its core email marketing automation features, and drag & dropping mapping tool, marketers can turn their dreams into reality in just a few clicks. Its founders and team are also very proud of the fact that it can be used to create fully automated businesses.

It is not perfect, and it has many areas that need improvement, but they are making progress, so there’s no reason for us to doubt it.

This concludes the ActiveCampaign Review. We are here to help if you have any questions. We would love to hear from you!