You’re struggling to pick the right email marketing platform to buy… Wondering if ActiveCampaign is The One for your business… You’re in the right place!
This blog is for business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs who want to nail their email marketing game by choosing the right tech to do automation, integration and effective emails.
Email marketing & automation expert Kay Peacey explores why ActiveCampaign might be the right pick for your email marketing tech – or might not be. Uncover what makes ActiveCampaign special, who should use it, and how to get the best value to save time, reduce stress, and sell more.
This is an honest breakdown so you can assess whether you’re a great fit for ActiveCampaign to get a big ROI, or whether you should look at a different email marketing platform that would suit your needs better right now.
So you can finally stop Googling on MailChimp vs ActiveCampaign, Kit vs ActiveCampaign, MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign, Keap vs ActiveCampaign, Kajabi vs ActiveCampaign etc.
Phew!
Follow these steps to find out if ActiveCampaign is best for you:
Watch to learn if ActiveCampaign is right for you (and why) – 13 mins
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Why ActiveCampaign Stands Out
ActiveCampaign isn’t just another email marketing tool. It’s a beast of automation and integration that makes your marketing life a dream.
Let’s break down the five main points that set ActiveCampaign apart.
Learn how ActiveCampaign Stores Information for You
ActiveCampaign goes way beyond letting you store the name and email address of your Contacts.
And it does a lot of watching, recording and storing information and data without you lifting a finger.
5 ways ActiveCampaign data storage is better than other email marketing platforms
Sure – ActiveCampaign has Subscriber Lists like other email marketing tools – but it also has extra flexible ways to organise, sort and find contacts using things you know about them
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- Unlimited Custom Fields
Stash anything you know – short text, paragraphs, dates (omg date fields are SO useful!) numbers, currency, radio buttons, checkboxes and more - Unlimited Tags
So easy to work with, tags help you quickly find and do stuff with groups of contacts - Contact Activity Tracking
This is all done for you – ActiveCampaign watches what Contacts do, like filling in forms, visiting website pages, clicking a link – and stores it for you, always! - Accounts for B2B
If you have multiple contacts who belong to a single organisation, the Accounts features let you work with them as a group and store info about the company - Deals & Pipelines CRM
Deals fields let you store detailed info for multiple things related to a single contact. You got dog owners with five dogs? No problem – store the dogs as Deals! Or use it for sales pipelines.
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See how ActiveCampaign can help you send better Emails
Obviously, all the email marketing tech tools can send emails.
But ActiveCampaign takes emailing to a whole new level, making it easy, fast, and reliable to get the right email delivered to the right inbox at the right time.
3 ways ActiveCampaign email stands our from other email marketing platforms
- Email Deliverability
Boring but important – you need your emails to stay out of spam and reach the inbox. ActiveCampaign is a top performer in independent email deliverability testing, year after year - Interactive Email Designs
With the Conditional Content feature, you can show or hide content based on custom fields, tags, and contact activity, taking personalisation way beyond just putting their name in the Subject Line, with an easy to use drag and drop email designer (even a design idiot like Kay can make great looking emails in it!) - Powerful Segmentation
Create super-targeted email sends based on that rich contact information – you can build Segments to pull out the exact people you want to send your email to. And Segmentation runs at the moment the email sends, so it is always bang up to date (fancy word for this: dynamic segmentation)
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Discover how ActiveCampaign can Automate (almost) Everything
Where ActiveCampaign truly shines against the tough competition in email marketing platforms is its almost unlimited scope to automate time-consuming, annoying, repetitive, boring tasks that need to be done at any hour of the day or night.
ActiveCampaign Automations are flexible, fun, and liberating, whether you’ve never automated anything before or you’re a seasoned pro.
Three ways ActiveCampaign Automations are better than other email marketing platforms
- Unlimited Automations
Build as many Automations as you like. Have ActiveCampaign start them when a contact does something (Trigger) or when you choose (Manual), or even when some other tech tool tells it to run (Integration) - Custom Path for every Contact
Control what happens, when, based on user information like tags, forms, email activity and more. Set waits, goals, if/else splits, and a world of other possible journeys. The flexibility is mind-blowing, and allows you to create the experience you choose - Huge selection of Automation Actions and Settings
The range of action steps and settings available in Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans is big – like, really big! You’ll have to take a look, because I’m not listing them here!
It’s runs from a basic wait here for one hour, all the way to a fancy wait here for max three days but skip ahead to that spot if you clicked this link in that email and purchased a discounted product last week.
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Learn how ActiveCampaign’s Integrations help your business run better
Integration is just a fancy word for this:
Make it so that this tech tool talks to that other tech tool without me needing to do anything.
Think of it like Join-The-Dots for tech tools.
ActiveCampaign is hands down the best email marketing automation platform for integration with the other tech tools you already use, or will want to use one day.
Unlike some of the competitor email marketing platforms, ActiveCampaign plays nicely with other tech, so you can connect things quickly and easily, then crack on with something else – hooray for that!
Integrated tech tools get on with sharing information back and forth without you doing anything, freeing you up to do other things, and making fewer mistakes too!
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Four ways ActiveCampaign Integrations are better than other email marketing platforms
- ActiveCampaign connects with more than 900 Tech Tools
Integrations are a priority for ActiveCampaign, so whatever you need to hook up to, you can (almost) always get it done - Direct integrations that don’t cost anything extra
Payment gateways, e-commerce, contracts, quizzes, SMS, chat bots and more – there’s a huge range of direct no-cost integrations to choose from. You can push data in from other tech, or have ActiveCampaign go fetch it from them, easy, fast and reliable - Zapier, Make, or Webhooks to duct-tape it if there isn’t a direct integration (yet)
No direct integration? No problem – ActiveCampaign has easy setup to go via third party tools to get data in, or out, plus flexible webhooks - Super-tight integration with major tech tools
ActiveCampaign’s integrations with Slack, Google Sheets, Calendly, Stripe, PayPal and more are ridiculously easy to set up – literally 2 mins and you’re done. The time you can save with this could pay for ActiveCampaign all on its own. - Use Integrations inside ActiveCampaign Automations
You can make something happen in an integrated tech tool with a simple step, right when you need it to, in any automation. And you can have your automations respond when something happened in that other tech too!
You can see integrations in action, step by step, in our free Accelerated ActiveCampaign mini-course – a perfect match to have Kay Peacey as your guide for the free two week trial period for ActiveCampaign.
Get our FREE Accelerated ActiveCampaign training now
Find out how ActiveCampaign Scales with Your Business
ActiveCampaign can grow with you, from a small but mighty one-person outfit all the way to a global enterprise.
Why does platform scalability matter?
Because if you run out of road in your email & automation platform you have to either stop growing (bad idea) or migrate. Migration costs in time, money and stress, so you don’t want to be doing it more often than is really necessary.
Four ways ActiveCampaign can scale up to grow with your business
- Four ActiveCampaign Plan Levels
Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise - Optional Addons for CRM
Get the full Sales CRM addon, or just the Pipelines - Contact Limits from 1k to millions
Pay for just the space you need and expand or contract easily - Extra User logins as your team grows
Add people who need access to work with you and spread the load
All these options mean that ActiveCampaign’s pricing and plans can feel overwhelming, so head to our blog on ActiveCampaign Pricing & Plans to make sure you don’t pay more than you need to.
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Pros and Cons of the ActiveCampaign email marketing automation platform
Here’s the TL:DR for you on the ups and downs of ActiveCampaign, to help you know if ActiveCampaign is the right tech tool for you.
Five Pros of ActiveCampaign as an Email Marketing Platform
- Store unlimited rich data and leverage it easily
- Deliver super-relevant emails to the right person at the right time
- Save time and reduce errors with unlimited automations
- Easily integrate with almost 1000 other tech tools
- Scale up or down to match what you need as you grow & change
Try ActiveCampaign now with a two week free trial
You can see ActiveCampaign in action, step by step, in our free Accelerated ActiveCampaign mini-course – a perfect match to have Kay Peacey as your guide during the free two week trial period for ActiveCampaign.
Get our FREE Accelerated ActiveCampaign training now
Five Cons of ActiveCampaign as an Email Marketing Platform
- Overpowered if used only for very basic email sending
- Steeper learning curve compared to less flexible platforms like Kit
- Higher cost than entry level platforms like Mailchimp or MailerLite
- Fewer qualified experts & training options compared to other platforms
- Unlimited scope of automations can lead to overwhelm and low confidence
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FAQ: Is ActiveCampaign the Best Email Marketing Platform for Your Business?
ActiveCampaign is perfect if you want to lean in to email marketing to drive revenue, smooth out processes (customer facing and internal), automate more of the boring repetitive things, and have all your tech tools talking to each other.
What type of business gets the best value from ActiveCampaign for email marketing automation?
Businesses who get very high Return on Investment (ROI) from ActiveCampaign have these characteristics:
- Wants to know a lot of detail on customers and leads
- Plans and sends high quality personalised email regularly
- Needs flexible automation to get things done reliably on autopilot
- Requires seamless robust integration with other tech tools
- Actively seeks to grow audience and revenue through email marketing
Try ActiveCampaign now with a two week free trial
What type of business does NOT get the best value from ActiveCampaign for email marketing automation?
Businesses who typically do not get a high ROI from ActiveCampaign have these characteristics:
- Does not use segmentation to personalise customer experience
- Sends irregular blast emails with basic customisation per contact
- Does not intend, or does not have time, to learn how to work the tech
- Has a very limited budget (or no budget) and is not growing
- Prefers manual processes strongly, or has a highly tech-averse team
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What Email Marketing Platform is best if ActiveCampaign is not a good fit?
If your email needs are basic or budget is tight, simpler options like Mailchimp or Mailerlite will likely be better.
If you mostly want the email sending part, and not so much the automation and integrations, Kit may be a better fit.
Learn more about our ActiveCampaign Academy membership
Fast, effective training & support for ActiveCampaign users everywhere
Get more help to build revenue and grow your business with ActiveCampaign
Kay Peacey created the ActiveCampaign Academy to meet this exact need, whatever size your business, and whichever ActiveCampaign plan you choose.
She’s an expert teacher, and a globally recognised expert on ActiveCampaign with a seat on their Customer Advisory Board.
Come on in to the ActiveCampaign Academy, and you’ll have Kay Peacey to guide you every step of the way to high ROI and big confident growth with ActiveCampaign.
Learn more about our ActiveCampaign Academy membership
Fast, effective training & support for ActiveCampaign users everywhere
