What is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign CRM began nearly 20 years ago to help companies coordinate email marketing, CRM, and campaign management. It is a thoughtful tool that integrates many of its competitors` best tech while avoiding their pitfalls. You get a marketing platform that feels lightyears ahead of most CRMs and incorporates advanced AI into your marketing processes. The software also serves customer service and sales so that you can orchestrate a better customer experience across all departments. Ease of Use ActiveCampaign CRM offers something of a mixed bag when it comes to ease of use.

Their primary shortcoming is a cluttered dashboard. Many users report feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of tools and options. However, the CRM does offer a free, monthly, 1-to-1 video call with one of their experts to ensure you get the most out of the software. While there`s a bit of a learning curve, all of ActiveCampaign`s tools are designed to make your life much easier. For example, there are over 500 automation templates to choose from! If you`ve tried creating an automation in Salesforce, you`ll be relieved to get your hands on an entire library of prebuilt automations.

If you prefer to create your own landing pages, automations, and mass emails, ActiveCampaign CRM incorporates drag-and-drop tools into almost every facet of the software. You`ll have your next campaign up and running in moments. Customization Options ActiveCampaign CRM is designed to help you work efficiently with templates and prebuilt workflows. If you prefer creating everything from scratch, you may find a lack of custom fonts and the like. As far as building a target audience, you can create custom tags to segment your audience in any way you want.

Then, reach out to them using custom automations. For further flexibility, use the API integrations to create even more complex custom workflows. Custom field options are somewhat limited and do not always integrate well with other tools, like workflows and email merges. Custom reports are also limited to the most expensive subscription tiers. Ultimately, to finetune ActiveCampaign CRM, you may require a little coding or integration with reporting apps.

Marketing Automation

PCMag rates ActiveCampaign CRM as one of the best marketing automation tools on the market.  If you`ve considered using HubSpot`s marketing Hub, or Salesforce`s Pardot, this is a great alternative. While not as complex as the two industry giants, it comes close for a fraction of the price. ActiveCampaign CRM can generate hundreds of dynamic customer experiences based on AI and machine learning. The use of artificial intelligence means your campaign strategy gets smarter over time--without you having to lift a finger. The library of automation templates is unrivaled. With hundreds of automation “recipes,” there`s something for everyone, no matter how unique your business model is. The cut-and-paste tool also lets you lift the aspects of an automation you like while cutting out unnecessary steps.

Finally, you can set up automation goals. When one of your prospects performs the desired action--for example, signing up for a demo, ActiveCampaign can automatically terminate the automation or route them to a new one. The software creates a dynamic process for customers and respects where they are in the customer journey. AI Machine learning crunches all your company data so you can make data-driven decisions. For example, ActiveCampaign CRM uses AI to score leads and direct you to your best prospects.

It can tell you the best time to launch a campaign or make a sales call. It can even orchestrate your automations around customer sentiment. ActiveCampaign`s AI can identify a happy customer vs. an unhappy one, then send an appropriate response--automatically. For example, it could automatically task a customer service rep with a support call after detecting a frustrated tone.

Sales Automation

The software can automate your top-of-funnel activity so that sales reps spend more time closing deals and nurturing loyal clientele. Appointment scheduling, welcome emails, lead scoring, and more can be handled via automation. You don`t even have to kill time setting them up--hundreds of business process automations await you in their template library.

ActiveCampaign CRM can also track your prospects and notify the team when they need to take action. For example, AI can analyze purchase intent, site visits, and engagement, then send an alert that it`s time to reach out to the prospect. And because it integrates with over 800 other apps, AI can also scan data from social media, events, telephony, accounting, and hundreds more. Your team gets a nuanced, intelligent view of every customer before you even make contact. eCommerce If you integrate the CRM with ActiveCampaign Deep Data, you get an eCommerce dashboard.

This makes it a snap to link your marketing campaigns to actual sales. The platform offers seamless integration with Shopify, Woo Commerce, BigCommerce, and Square. You can load metrics from your eCommerce store as though these third-party apps were a part of the CRM. Analytics and Reporting Though custom reports are limited, you still get a tremendous amount of insight from ActiveCampaign CRM. The attributions feature allows you to see all the touchpoints a prospect went through and exactly when and where they converted. You can also get sales performance, campaign performance, and eCommerce reports.