What is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign is a cloud-based marketing automation platform designed to help businesses automate their marketing, sales, and customer support processes. The platform offers a range of features such as email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, customer messaging, and sales engagement automation to help businesses engage with their customers, nurture leads, and grow their operations.
Source ActiveCampaign.com
History of ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign was founded in 2003 by Jason VandeBoom. Initially, the company focused on providing email marketing services to small businesses. However, as the company grew, it expanded its product offerings to include marketing automation, CRM, and customer messaging. In 2016, ActiveCampaign received $20 million in funding from Silversmith Capital Partners, which helped the company to accelerate its growth and expand its offerings. Today, ActiveCampaign is used by over 145,000 businesses worldwide and has a team of over 850 employees.
ActiveCampaign Screenshots
Companies using ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is used by businesses of all sizes and industries. Some examples of companies that use ActiveCampaign include:
- Birchbox – a beauty subscription service that uses ActiveCampaign to automate its marketing campaigns and improve customer engagement.
- RocketReach – a sales prospecting tool that uses ActiveCampaign to automate its lead generation and lead nurturing processes.
- Wunderlist – a productivity app that uses ActiveCampaign to automate its onboarding and customer support processes.
- Wanderlust – a travel company that uses ActiveCampaign to automate its email marketing and customer segmentation.
ActiveCampaign Interface and Use
ActiveCampaign has a very modern and intuitive interface that makes it easy for businesses to create and manage their marketing campaigns, and automate contact management. The platform is divided into several sections, including Contacts, Campaigns, Automation, Deals, Reports, and Websites.
- Contacts are where you can manage all your customer data including lists and segments, and manage your tags, fields, scoring, exclusions, and more.
- Campaigns section includes everything you need to start creating beautiful and engaging email content for your audience. ActiveCampaign has a great drag-and-drop designer editor to use to help you craft your email templates unless you prefer building it from scratch using their HTML editor instead.
- Automations are where the fun begins; you can create complex workflows to automate all your marketing and sales processes. Start from scratch or choose from à prebuilt templates.
- Deals- Beyond Email campaigns and automation, ActiveCampaign offers a robust CRM solution to help you manage your sales pipeline and track the progress of your deals.
- Website section is where you can create and manage all your forms to acquire new subscribers
- Reports provide a wealth of information about campaigns and automation performance, client trends, predictive analytics, and insights to make more informed decisions when A/B testing your campaign or bringing it to scale.
ActiveCampaign Key Features
- Email Marketing: ActiveCampaign provides a robust set of tools to create and send professional-looking emails, newsletters, and other marketing materials. The platform offers drag-and-drop email templates, advanced email personalization, and A/B testing to help businesses create effective email campaigns.
- Marketing Automation: ActiveCampaign marketing automation feature allows you to automate all your marketing and sales processes. With this feature, you can create complex workflows to manage contacts, nurture leads, segment customers, and send triggered campaigns based on specific actions or behaviors. This is one of the best marketing automation tools in the market.
- Sales Automation: ActiveCampaign sales automation feature allows you to automate all your sales processes. This feature includes lead scoring, lead management, pipeline management, and deal tracking, enabling businesses to manage sales and marketing operations more efficiently.
- CRM: ActiveCampaign CRM feature allows you to manage customer data, track customer interactions, and create custom fields and tags to segment your audience. This feature also includes lead and contact management, deal tracking, and reporting.
- Customer Messaging: ActiveCampaign customer messaging feature allows you to communicate with your customers via email, SMS, and social media. This feature includes automated chatbots, SMS marketing, and Facebook custom audiences.
- Site Tracking: ActiveCampaign site tracking feature allows you to track customer behavior on their website. With this feature, businesses can segment customers based on their website behavior and send targeted campaigns.
- Machine Learning: ActiveCampaign machine learning feature allows you to predict customer behavior and create personalized marketing campaigns. With this feature, businesses can create customer clusters, personalize content, and send targeted campaigns based on predicted customer behavior.
Zoom in: ActiveCampaign Marketing Automation tools and Email Management
With ActiveCampaign, you will have full capability to manage all your email marketing campaigns and newsletter in one place using the drag-and-drop email designer.
- Broadcasts Emails
- Triggered Emails
- Targeted Emails
- Email Autoresponders
- Transactional Emails
- Scheduled Emails
On the Marketing automation tool side, ActiveCampaign offers one of the best marketing automation tools to help you create advanced automated tasks and sales funnel and take your Drip campaigns, Follow-ups, Abandon Carts, and all other flows to the next level.
The plus: ActiveCampaign automation allows you to manage your entire sales process, and monitor deals, and marketing tasks in one place. Build automation goals and event tracking, and leverage dynamic content to personalize automation based on custom fields, tags, and customers’ preferences. Building automated workflows has never been that easy!
ActiveCampaign Integrations
ActiveCampaign integrates with many integrations to streamline your workflows, e-commerce management, tracking and analytics, and more. Over 900 apps and integrations such as CMS, CRM, Analytics, and Databases make it very easy for users to sync their data across multiple platforms, automate their workflows, and streamline their marketing efforts. Top integrations include Salesforce, Shopify, WordPress, Postmark, Google Analytics, Zapier, WooCommerce, Facebook, Asana, and Call Rail. ActiveCampaign has its own native apps, including a mobile app for iOS and Android devices, a Chrome extension, and a Gmail extension. Whenever you are, there will be a way to manage your campaigns, track results and performance, or build a new email campaign from scratch on the go.
ActiveCampaign Pros & Cons
As with any ESP, CRM tools, and online platforms, there are pros and cons to consider with ActiveCampaign; our verdict:
Pros:
- Wide range of Email Automation Features
- Advanced Personalization
- Access to Free Tools
- Very Modern Interface
- Large Marketplaces of Apps and Integrations
- Affordable Pricing
Cons:
- No Free Plans
- Learning Curve
- Limited Email Design Options
- Limited Reporting
- Limited Support
Migrating to ActiveCampaign
Migrate to ActiveCampaign for free. When you switch, we’ll import your contacts, remake your automation, recreate your forms, and rebuild your email templates. Import your subscriber lists, CRM data, email templates, and automation to ActiveCampaign for free.
ActiveCampaign has a free Expert Migration service that will make it easy to move to the platform from your current email marketing or marketing automation provider. Experts will help with:
- Importing your lists, contacts, deals, accounts, custom fields, and tags. ActiveCampaign offers several import options, including CSV, TXT, and Excel files. You can also import data from third-party apps and services, such as Salesforce or HubSpot.
- Helping you set up integrations
- Recreating opt-in forms and landing pages
- Recreating your automation workflows
- Recreating email templates
Migrating to ActiveCampaign can take some time, but with careful planning and execution and the support of their experts, you can ensure a smooth transition to this powerful marketing automation software.
Most common ESP migration to ActiveCampaign: Mailchimp, Aweber, GetResponse, ConstantContact, and Campaign Monitor.
Learn more about ActiveCampaign migration
ActiveCampaign Plans & Pricing
Active Campaign offers several plans to help you get started and grow your email audience and CRM & Sales Automation. There is a plan for every stage of your business: Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise. Plans and pricing vary based on the number of contacts (aka unique email addresses) and access to functionalities. Below is a summary table of pricing tiers for each plan and for a yearly subscription:
| # of contacts | Lite | Plus | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 – 1,000 | $29 per month | $49 per month | Custom Price | |
| 1,000-2,500 | $49 per month | $99 per month | $149 per month | |
| 2,500 – 5,000 | $79 per month | $149 per month | $209 per month | |
| 5,000 – 10,000 | $139 per month | $229 per month | $339 per month | |
| 10,000 -25,000 | $229 per month | $379 per month | $549 per month | |
| 25,000 – 50,000 | $389 per month | $559 per month | $809 per month | |
| 50,000+ | Custom Price | Custom Price | Custom Price |
- ActiveCampaign has a 14-day trial period for up to 100 contacts for you to explore all email and marketing automation features and decide whether or not it is a good fit for your online business.
- LITE plan is an affordable option to get started for bloggers and solopreneurs to manage your forms and email campaigns and automation in no time. This plan is limited if you need to build more conditional content and personalization, or if you want to connect with your customers and subscribers via SMS. In this case, we recommend the PLUS plan with access to more landing pages, custom audiences, modal forms, and conditional events to use for your email and automation experiences.
- If you plan to test split automation, need to access predictive sending and advanced analytics, and manage text messages, the PROFESSIONAL plan is definitely the best option for you in the long term.
- Any PROFESSIONAL or ENTERPRISE plan offers to setup up Single Sign-On (SSO) for the platform. Critical for agencies or e-commerce brands with strict data and security protocols.
- If you need a reliable marketing platform to also support your entire sales process, ActiveCampaing CRM and Sales Engagement plans are very complete. Pricing for this specific solution starts at $19 per month, for yearly engagement.
ActiveCampaign Alternatives
ActiveCampaign best alternatives and other platforms are MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Hubspot;
- Mailchimp offers more support and is easier to get in hand to manage all your email campaigns and automation. Better if you are looking for a simpler interface.
- Constant Contact option is a bit more affordable platform for email marketing with very flexible email creation and designer tools.
- On the Sales engagement automation & CRM side, if you are looking to prioritize marketing automation and CRM pipelines, HubSpot interface is more user-friendly and easier to navigate. Platform pricing is comparable.
ActiveCampaign FAQs
How to Contact ActiveCampaign Support?
There are several ways to get in touch with support or get your questions answered;
- submit a request whether you already have an account or not.
- Use their live chat, training, knowledge base, and support center to find the resource you need.
- request a demo with their sales team.
- Contact them at +1(800) 357 -0402.
What API methods does ActiveCampaign support?
ActiveCampaign supports many API methods and functionalities. It is recommended to use the RESTful version 3 of their API to get the most out of it. To use ActiveCampaign API with a 3rd party application, click on your settings menu under the “developer” option to get your API key.
What is ActiveCampaign Affiliate?
ActiveCampaign Affiliate offers to earn an average of $1,350 per referral, earning 20-30% recurring commission. This an occasion to build passive income while referring your clients and followers to the top features the platform has to offer and how it can help businesses grow and scale their businesses with email marketing and powerful automation.
Become an ActiveCampaign Affiliate
Final verdict
ActiveCampaign is a powerful email marketing software and marketing automation designed primarily for small to mid-sized businesses, entrepreneurs, and e-commerce. The platform allows users to create complex automation and workflows to build and grow their customers and subscribers while putting their email campaigns on auto-pilot. The platform may be more suited for you if you are a more advanced user and can easily work your way around flows, campaigns, contact details, detailed insights, and all the features ActiveCampaign has to offer.
ActiveCampaign pricing is competitive, with email marketing plans starting at $29 per month, and offers a free trial so users can test the platform before committing to a subscription.
The major plus of ActiveCamapign is its extensive integrations with a variety of third-party tools and services, including popular e-commerce platforms, landing page builders, and CRM software, making it easy for businesses to connect and streamline their workflows and customer relationships.
If you are really serious about building marketing workflows and need complex automation and dynamic content capabilities to nurture your website visitors and take your automated campaigns to the next step, ActiveCamapign is probably the best option out there for you.
