In this ActiveCampaign review, we’ll explore some of the most important, interesting, and exciting facets of this platform. But, first things first – what is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign refers to itself as a customer experience automation platform. This means that it encompasses a wide and diverse range of functionalities: marketing automation, email marketing, and CRM (customer relationship management).
The company was launched in 2003, so you could say it's pretty experienced and highly successful, considering that even after so many years, it’s still at the top of the list of marketing and automation companies. This is highly encouraging for anyone searching for the perfect automation solution for their business. But, let’s not talk in generalities anymore. Instead, let’s dive into the ins and outs of ActiveCampaign.
Features
ActiveCampaign offers many tools to help companies with their B2C (business-to-consumer), B2B (business-to-business), and e-commerce ventures.
Since it’s a customer experience automation platform, it goes without saying that ActiveCampaign includes email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM functionalities out of the box. The only caveat is that the built-in CRM is not available to users who subscribe to the lowest-tier Lite plan.
From all those amazing features the platform offers, we’d single out the following:
- Free email templates
- A drag-and-drop email designer
- Ability to create emails with customized dynamic content
- Entire automated workflows
- Autoresponders
- Sales automation
- Detailed analytics
- SMS sending
- Landing pages
- Split testing
- Ease of use
Each of these features as well as those that we haven’t even mentioned deserve special attention and analysis. However, here we’ll give our full attention only to one immensely interesting and important side of ActiveCampaign: machine learning.
Machine Learning and Automation on ActiveCampaign
Machine learning is essentially the use of a group of algorithms to process massive datasets.
One of its objectives is to find patterns in the data that’ll allow us to gain better insights into whatever it is that we’re investigating – whether it’s the housing market, the relationship between fossil fuels and pollution, or users’ online behavior.
Another thing that machine learning (ML) helps with are important areas like diagnostic medicine, banking, sentiment analysis, and, of course, gaming. :)
The best and probably most defining part is that ML algorithms are self-learning, meaning that they can learn from data on their own, independent of external human intervention. Longer exposure to increasing amounts of data results in improved performance and higher accuracy.
What Does Machine Learning Do on ActiveCampaign?
ML enables ActiveCampaign to help customers achieve their goals in an extremely efficient way. Basically, it turns data and statistics into insights that tell a story about your business. Through its different tools, ActiveCampaign puts those insights into practice. You’ll understand what you need to do and how to do it to increase conversions and build a better relationship with clients.
It’s a win-win situation for business owners and customers alike, that much is true; but let’s see how ML actually impacts the tools on offer.
Predictive Sending
Predictive sending of emails is one of ActiveCampaign’s automation tools powered by ML. When you use predictive sending, an ML system analyzes your contacts’ so-called habitual open time. This is the time when a particular user opens and checks their emails.
The result of the analysis is a recommended send time and the objective is to help you achieve higher conversion rates. Thanks to the analysis, you can send an email during a time window when it’s most likely for a user to open it and convert. The best thing about this is that the sending is automated.
As the name suggests (to a certain extent), predictive sending is based on scientific prediction. This is in sharp contrast to the colloquial connotation of prediction, which is often more closely associated with guessing than with science. Predictive sending on ActiveCampaign is firmly based on statistical methods – not assumptions or speculations.
Since an ML system never stops learning and improving itself, it’s almost inevitable that predictive sending will eventually translate into increased conversions.
Predictive Content
Predictive content is an ActiveCampaign tool that makes use of a natural language processing ML model. It works by letting you create multiple variants of the same email (you can use a maximum of five), select your target contacts, and send the email variant with the most relevant content to each.
Among other variables, the ActiveCampaign ML system uses clickstream data to make inferences about your contacts and, based on data analysis, establish which email variant would be the most appropriate to send.
The result is personalized email content in accordance with your contact’s profile. The objective is the same as with predictive sending: more conversions.
Last but not least, this tool is called predictive content because it makes data-driven predictions to send the best content to a particular contact.
Win Probability
Win probability is yet another ActiveCampaign tool that relies on ML. Basically, it answers what the odds are that a particular lead converts. It factors in and measures numerous variables to come to a viable answer to this question. Just like the previous two tools, the results are essentially data-driven predictions. It’s data science in action.
This tool allows you to understand what to do and what not to do to close more deals. You’ll know when the sales department should take over a lead instead of the marketing department, which leads are most likely to convert and are worth your time and efforts, when you need to proceed with automation, which cases require a personal touch, and much more.
Sentiment Awareness
With the rapid development of new technologies and ML, the sky’s the limit to what a platform like ActiveCampaign can do for its customers.
As an illustration, an interesting article published in November 2020 on the ActiveCampaign official blog states that at the time, different departments inside the company were working on adding ''sentiment awareness to customer relationships and automated workflows.''
A feature like this can help you learn whether a user’s reaction indicates positive or negative feelings in their communication with you. You can use these invaluable insights to build a better relationship with your audience by understanding your leads’ reactions and learning how to react suitably.
How Much Does ActiveCampaign Cost?
Considering that price is one of the most important factors when making an investment decision, we’ll explore the ActiveCampaign pricing plans and see what users think about the platform’s pricing.
Pricing Plans
ActiveCampaign offers four pricing plans: Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise. You can choose between monthly and yearly billing, and as you might expect, a yearly subscription includes a discount. If you want a foretaste of the platform before you make a final decision, you can take advantage of the 14-day free trial.
An interesting aspect of the ActiveCampaign pricing system is that it’s dynamic. What we mean by this is that your fee varies depending on the number of contacts you have. 500 contacts is the starting point. The following image shows the monthly prices at this value:
Currently, there’s a special discount on all monthly fees, but the image shows the regular prices, so you can get an idea of the standard pricing as well.
The limited-time offer applies to the yearly subscriptions as well. These are the current annual fees along with the regular annual prices:
Keep in mind that this special pricing applies only to the first three months, after which you’ll pay the regular monthly fee.
Getting back to our topic of dynamic pricing, when the number of your contacts exceeds the next threshold, which is 1,000 contacts, you pay more for the same services. The same goes for all the following thresholds (2,500; 5,000; 10,000; 25,000; 50,000; 75,000; 100,000; and 100,000+).
However, oddly enough, sometimes the increase in price does not apply across all plans. For instance, when you go above 1,000 contacts, it’s only the price of the Lite plan that changes, regardless of the type of billing (monthly or yearly). So, exactly how much you’ll pay is something you’ll have to figure out and double-check before you sign up for a specific plan.
Overall Impressions
The bulk of ActiveCampaign’s customers love the pricing system. Many users even report that pricing was the main or one of the major factors that made them choose ActiveCampaign from the get-go or migrate to this platform.
The consensus is that ActiveCampaign has just the right prices. Moreover, customers believe that this platform has great prices for what it offers, meaning that it’s good value for the money.
How cost-effective ActiveCampaign is becomes especially apparent given the offerings and pricing of their competition. According to many customers’ testimonials, one of the reasons they chose ActiveCampaign over its rivals – prominent names like Pardot, ConvertKit, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and Keap (formerly InfusionSoft) – was because it was much cheaper or more cost-effective.
On the other hand, some claim that ActiveCampaign is a bit pricey when you don’t take advantage of all the available tools, meaning that you either don’t really need everything a pricing plan includes or you’re not sure how to use it properly.
Indeed, ActiveCampaign operates in multiple areas, which makes it a bit confusing and difficult for newcomers and not very experienced users to understand the terminology and the practical application of all the features it offers. So, be wary of this when weighing for or against the platform.
In addition to this, some customers find the platform too expensive when you need to upgrade to a higher-tier plan. The latter is probably the most often heard complaint, but it’s still neither very frequent nor a serious issue.
All in all, as far as pricing is concerned, the overall impressions about the ActiveCampaign pricing are overwhelmingly favorable.
Integrations
A Profusion of Integration Possibilities
When choosing the right automation platform or, for that matter, any type of platform, integrations are a very important part of the equation. It’s almost certain that sooner or later you’ll need them. So, the question is not whether you need integrations; it’s whether the platform you choose gives you access to a robust ecosystem of integrations and how well it integrates with the big players in today’s business technology realm.
Rest assured, ActiveCampaign has a lot to offer in this area. It’s not just the number of available integrations that gives this platform an edge over its competition, even though there are over 800 apps in the ActiveCampaign apps and integrations store. The fact that ActiveCampaign integrates smoothly with other powerful and helpful apps is what takes the cake, sparing you from the headache of fixing software incompatibilities and conflicts.
There are over ten different categories of integrations, such as accounting, CRM, databases, e-commerce, forms, HR, payments, and sales. Some of the most prominent apps they include are:
- Shopify: e-commerce
- Salesforce: sales
- Jotform: forms
- Google Analytics: analytics and reporting
- Zapier: developer tools
- DropInBlog: blogging, content marketing, and lead generation
It’s worth noting that ActiveCampaign has developed a bunch of native integrations found in its apps and integrations store itself. You can see the complete list and read about them in this ActiveCampaign article.
On top of the options in the apps and integrations store, ActiveCampaign allows you to use more advanced methods of integration, such as webhooks and APIs.
How Customers View It
For a substantial number of users, as far as ActiveCampaign is concerned, the integration process with other apps goes pretty easily. However, some feel like it’s a pretty complicated process since it’s not always easy to figure out how to do things and sometimes it requires a higher level of tech-savviness.
Customer Support
On those rainy days when nothing seems to go in the right direction, ActiveCampaign can help you in multiple ways:
- Email/ticketing system: submit a request and you can expect a prompt reply.
- Live chat: available from 8 am to 11 pm CST, Monday to Thursday, and from 8 am to 6 pm CST on Friday.
- Phone: reserved only for the Enterprise plan subscribers.
- Training: webinars on topics related to automation, customer experience, business strategies, etc.
- Support center: gives you access to the ActiveCampaign Community, Forum, University, documentation, and more.
- Blog: contains a ton of helpful, informative, and interesting articles that can help you learn more about ActiveCampaign, automation, marketing, and similar subjects.
Despite a few exceptions here and there, overall, the ActiveCampaign customer support is one of the most beloved facets of the company. The staff are supportive, knowledgeable, and responsive. Customers use epithets like fabulous, through-the-roof, awesome, and fantastic to praise the service the support staff provides. In short, with the ActiveCampaign customer support taking care of the hiccups and issues you encounter on your way to greatness, you know you’re always in good hands.
Final Thoughts
In this ActiveCampaign review, we talked about multiple aspects of this platform and we saw that:
- It includes a variety of features, but machine learning utilization is probably its most important and exciting feature of all.
- It’s highly cost-effective.
- It integrates smoothly with a ton of other applications.
- It provides great customer support.
We hope that this was an informative and interesting read. We also hope that it’ll help you directly or indirectly to choose the best customer experience automation platform for your business. So, keep walking the path to business greatness and never stop learning about business-related technologies.