ActiveCampaign is a US based newsletter tool with approximately more than 90,000 active users around the world. This software is proven to handle a huge database in an efficient way. This software has made many improvements since the past few years that met our expectations with great features and integration, plus superb friendly support team that make this tool look like an email solution powerhouse. We will review ActiveCampaign within this article based entirely on our editor’s opinion and experience.
Brief Summary:
ActiveCampaign has everything that a marketer needs to achieve their newsletter promotion campaign. The starting price is $15 per month with a package of 500 users, if you need a more advanced feature like the built-in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and detailed statistics for lead scoring, you can sign up for a higher price plan at $70 per month.
The core feature of ActiveCampaign is its automation system which allows you to send out a series of emails to your clients based on myriad conditions. We called this a high-end level of autoresponder. CRM is included in the professional plan and above, which allows you to add notes to your list of contacts, set up appointments and send direct messages to your customer by automation. Furthermore, this feature also allows you to send a direct message to users who have recently visited your website in order to optimize the user experience.
ActiveCampaign is the software that works on the approach to targeting the right customer by creating meaningful connections with your clients.
The dashboard is your control panel interface that you need to manage your subscribers list and keep track of the data. The navigation and layout of the dashboard can be quite complicated at first, but once you get used to it, it can be easy to function with ease.
Even more with feature like email types that you can use based on your activity like classic newsletter, SMS via phone, auto-responder, including A/B testing, RSS triggered, holiday season, etc.
Pro:
Automation Integration
Easy to implement, it has the most advanced functionality compared to Getresponse, not only powerful but easy to use as well.
Data Report
The reporting includes tracking of click-map, geographical, email opening and link clicks. Tracking sales is also included but on a higher plan, it supports ex. Shopify, Woocommerce, Bigcommerce, Magneto, etc.
Deliverability Rate
What has impressed us the most is its deliverability rate. We have been disappointed with other emailing tools but ActiveCampaign has proved to have the most efficiency in delivery and this makes this software to be the perfect email solution without worrying where it would go.
Free Migration between platform
If you are using a different newsletter tool now and considered to sign-up with ActiveCampaign and move your entire or partial list there, they can migrate your account for free.
Cons:
If you are looking for a simple email solution software, then ActiveCampaign is not for you. It has a complicated user interface and takes some time to master. Aweber would be a great option for its simplicity without advanced features.
Is ActiveCampaign the right email marketing tool for you?
Recommendation For:
If you are running a huge database of clients, seeking for a high-ends automated newsletter system and a corporate enterprise. ActiveCampaign can handle the difficult email communication tasks for you with their CRM built-in, data field segmentation, subscriber follow-up and dynamic message content functions.
As mentioned, the CRM built-in is designed for your sales team to easily manage and communicate with your customers. The system includes information like the social data and lead score to follow up your potential clients.
Apart from merely sending out email, ActiveCampaign even has superior multi-channel promotional features that no other email solution companies can beat. The system allows you to create and send personalized SMS to potential clients who have visited your website. If you are an advertiser, this software also helps you how you want to display the advertisement to your audience on Facebook Ad. With all the advanced and smart features, it proved that ActiveCampaign is an absolute email marketing solution for individual entrepreneurs to large corporations.
ActiveCampaign is Not For:
If you need a simple and easy to use newsletter tool just to send a simple email with a plain or simple template ActiveCampaign can be difficult to implement software that needs some time to understand and requires your attention to regularly maintain and optimize your email campaign. You can check out Aweber, which has the simplest operating interface.
ActiveCampaign isn’t the most cost-effective software out there. If you need a simple feature like automated for email sequence without advanced capability add-on option, then this tool is for you. You can check out other options like MailerLite or Getresponse for a better price and simple to use otherwise you will be paying for the extras that you may not be using.
If you are a freebie, this tool doesn’t offer free service. But you can try their free trial.
Additional Features
- Bounce Management - Remove inactive subscriber
- Free list migration From other platform
- Unlimited Storage
- Support SPF and DKIM
- Shopify, Paypal, Facebook, WordPress etc Integration
- Security For Different Level Access
- 40 email templates
- Landing Page Editor
Feature Rating
ActiveCampaign is working hard to make it user-friendly. The dashboard can be overwhelmed for new users. It has the knowledge base for starters to learn how to use it efficiently with video demonstration and detailed explanation.
The message creation surface is quick in response with Google-Doc looking styles. The message will be autosave online that you won’t have to worry if you forget to save. Creating tables and columns can be painstaking. It takes time to learn how to compose and design the way you want it to be.
This is our editor’s favorite! Especially as a marketer, it allows you to customize the template, design and email to the specific group of your users based on certain conditions. Not many other softwares offer this feature.
ActiveCampaign has 40 design templates. All are responsive. It isn’t a lot but you can create your own template as well.
This is the most powerful feature of ActiveCampaign that no other tool can beat. You can either start your automation email sequence from scratch or use create-for-you in the system to run your campaign. You can easily edit each of the groups to send out based on certain conditions with ease. There is no other tool that makes it so simple as this one.
The list is easy to manage and group them together without being overwhelmed. You can create multiple groups like dividing to potential or purchased customers to send different kinds of messages.
It tracks everything and puts it into a nice report for you. As for ecommerce with sales report, it is available on Shopify, BigCommerce and Woocommerce.
Based on our experience, the deliverability rate is top-notch compared to other services. It peace our mind that the emails which are automatically sent on schedule are being delivered to our clients inbox and not spam. We have tested with Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook and other service providers that worked out quite satisfied.
This part can be a bit vague as we still don’t understand it deeply. Every email service provider has different criteria as to what causes the email to categorize as ‘Spam’ or ‘White List’. ActiveCampaign offers a testing service for spam at the cost of $1 per test.
Availabe in 15 languages
If your subscriber causes a 3 times bounce rate based on the time that he/she viewed the email you had sent. The system will put the user into an exclusion list automatically.
ActiveCampaign has a superior live support team that you can quickly engage into a live chat with one of their team. They are very helpful and friendly.
ActiveCampaign Price Plan
Summary
ActiveCampaign email marketing tool has become our favorite after testing. It offers everything that a marketer will need to promote the product and service. The tracking report offers insight of every aspect of your user activities from opening email, link clicks to sales. Even though it is a better choice of newsletter tool, there is still room for tweaking such as the message editor panel that can cause pain if you compose a complicated email layout. It can be niggling.
The support team is very helpful and friendly. You can easily search into their knowledge based with higher relevant results that you are searching for. It almost answers things that you need. If you sign up for the professional plan, you will get one-on-one training with one of their members and get to train on a webinar as well.
ActiveCampaign is an absolute all-in-one email marketing solution which offers affordable prices, the price is dependent on the number of users. The investment can be worthwhile, however there are still options out there if you want an almost identical feature but with a lower price tag. You may want to check out Getresponse or MailLite.