Pros And Cons Of ActiveCampaign And Why It’s My Favourite Email Marketing Platform

My favourite email marketing platform right now has got to be ActiveCampaign. There are a number of reasons why, but the primary one is that it is so much more than just an email marketing provider. So if you’re in the market, here’s my honest ActiveCampaign review.

I use it to automate lots of things, from e-commerce customer experience and sales, through to administration. And of course, email marketing, course delivery, customer onboarding, and general newsletters.

I have tried a lot (like, a lot!) of these platforms in my work, and ActiveCampaign is one of the most powerful and user-friendly ones I have experienced so far.

I’ll tell you all the reasons I love this platform; but don’t worry, to play fair I’ll also point out the cons that may tip your decision when it comes to choosing an email marketing platform.

Pros of ActiveCampaign:

• Drag-and-drop: Need I say more? But I will. It’s an easy build system for forms and newsletters with bulk-editing capabilities. Oh, and it’s auto-optimised for mobile. Brilliant.
• Pre-made templates: not a savvy designer? Not to worry, AC has your back! Choose from a range of pre-made templates that you can edit and personalise as you see fit.
• Segmenting: Segment your lists to easily see at a glance what people have signed up for. This allows you to contact leads knowing exactly what they’ve been looking at. Extra handy if you activate the Gmail extension so you can see a contact profile on leads and customers who have contacted you via email. Cool!
• Tag or segment your lists by activity: link clicks, page visits or post-event behaviour from any list!
• Time-savers: The Plus Plan allows for some really cool time-saving automations and integrations, making the tech side of your business easier than ever before. Facebook Ads Audiences, abandoned cart automations, and conversation messenger app for your website, just to name a few!
• Integrations: Integrates with loads of other apps via Zapier or Integromat to automate and connect data between your business operations. For example, using the CRM/Deals part of ActiveCampaign, if you close a deal you can send a Zap to automatically set up an Asana board for that client, and even set up the first onboarding tasks!
• Website tracking: Auto-engage with potential clients through website tracking. If a contact visits a particular page on your website multiple times but doesn’t convert, you can send an email to them to set up a call, a list of FAQs, or even a reminder that their cart will soon expire!
• CRM included: Use the CRM/Deals to track progress of leads through your funnel, so you can focus efforts on the areas most people get stuck.

Cons of ActiveCampaign:

• Basic opt-in forms: Some basic CSS coding may be required to make opt-in forms look better on your website
• Keep an eye on list size: Cost jumps up quickly based on list size, so it’s important to clear your list regularly of people who aren’t interested or fail to convert over time (you can personalise Clean-Up Automations to do this for you!)
• Requires planning on your part in terms of naming structure and folder set-up for it to be effective and easy to navigate as your business expands. Taking the time to do this early on is the best way to avoid frustration later.
• No nested sequences: Can’t build multiple sequences within one campaign, like you can with Infusionsoft. The upside of this is that you don’t lose track of where that one sequence you’re looking for disappeared to. . .
• Reports require a bit of digging to get to, but are otherwise easy to use.
• Team management: Adding non-admin team members so they can only access the sequences you choose can be a bit fiddly and time-consuming.
• Media library loads in alphabetical order, rather than date added. This makes it difficult when you have lots of content, especially if some are out-of-date. It means more work to manually delete what you no longer need.
• Requires Zapier for a number of integrations, but is hugely useful, with a ton of integrations, if you are comfortable with Zaps.

Bottom Line

As someone who works with email marketing platforms on a very regular basis, I believe the pros still far outweigh the cons of this system. I find ActiveCampaign easy to use, simple to navigate and an absolute gem when it comes to automation and integration.

By implementing a few simple steps in the planning stages, ActiveCampaign can become a huge asset to your business. Its main purpose is in email marketing, but as this list shows, it can do so much more. You can find where your leads are getting stuck, market directly to groups with different browsing habits, and set up some really impressive campaigns completely pain-free.

With the drag-and-drop builder, plus features that allow you to save component parts to re-use in later campaigns, this system simply couldn’t be easier to use. Not to mention you’ll completely avoid the often arduous task of optimising your pages for mobile — AC takes care of that automatically!

Do yourself and your business a favour and give ActiveCampaign a trial run. See just how much pressure it can take off your client journey, onboarding and marketing process:

Note: This post includes affiliate links which means that if you make a purchase, we will receive a small thank you commission at no additional cost to you. This does not impact our reviews and comparisons — we only recommend tools we have used extensively and love!

Originally published at https://www.optimiseandgrowonline.com.au on January 9, 2020.