Act-On's interface offers more functionality and flexibility. Simple to use requires no coding knowledge to use or navigate. It provides pre-built templates for automated programs that can be customized to meet our specific lead generation requirements. The drag-and-drop, list segmentation, and lead scoring options make the user-friendly interface appealing. It is possible to incorporate integrations. Our company uses this software both as an administrator and as a user. Switching between HTML and visual views is straightforward. With the integration of our CRM with our instance, we can create dynamically populated segments that are used to populate our automation. It is beautiful to download our data into more specific and affluent reporting tailored to our requirements. We could also create a proactive pipeline development program using MS Dynamics. It enables us to learn more about how our customers use our content (or not) to identify high-quality prospects.
Pros
The templates are easy to use and set up campaigns.
It's simple to use, and the email editor features a drag-and-drop interface.
It's easy to set up a drip campaign or a series of scheduled emails.
It has the flexibility of having a variety of scheduling options and the use of user experience automation.
Cons
A more straightforward UI and faster loading times are needed.
User direct communication within the platform would be fantastic.
There are a few areas where the functionality could be improved.
Likelihood to Recommend
Act-On simplifies the creation of landing pages, web forms, email campaigns, and other types of marketing automation. Designing a customer journey using the workflow builder (a nurturing flow) is possible. It is used in various ways and in a variety of contexts. Tactical's knowledgeable support team helped us unlock Act-On's potential for complex integrations and marketing campaigns. In some areas, it would be beneficial to improve functionality.
Through Act-On, we can keep in touch with potential customers and customers, track their progress, and actively participate. Solve marketing performance issues by helping us create successful email campaigns. Setting up the workflow is very simple, and the logic is very reasonable. Thanks to Act-On, we could solve marketing problems and improve our activities, which is excellent.
Pros
Act-On is very useful for creating, managing, and sending effective marketing campaigns.
The use of landing pages has attracted many potential customers.
The reporting function is integrated and is easy to access and understand.
The landing page allows you to customize the page for any activity or reason you need.
Its reporting helps to understand audience engagement.
Cons
This is a program that meets all requirements, our performance has no problems, and all results are positive.
Likelihood to Recommend
I recommend Act-On to users and companies that want to increase interaction with customers. You can divide them into different categories and focus on the specific goals of each type. It's easy to set up and various campaigns; you can use a custom landing page. When you need help, Act-On's customer service is excellent, fast, and comprehensive.
Act-On has helped us grow our brand in a variety of ways. With Act-On, we are able to deliver extremely account-based and customizable experiences to help our clients and prospects go through the journey we want them to. From internal marketing newsletters to external automated drip campaigns, Act-On has been essential to our success.
Pros
The automation builder is extremely easy to use. Mapping out the customer journey is so important when planning behavioral-based campaigns. With Act-Ons user friendly UX, it's simple to create.
Their customer support is outstanding! Via chat, through email, or with our Account Rep, Act-On goes above and beyond to ensure my problems get addressed and fixed quickly.
Forms are incredibly easy to create and embed into our landing pages and website.
Cons
Their customer service chat feature would be helpful to be available during all working hours from west coast to east coast.
Likelihood to Recommend
We are a small marketing team looking to grow our business and provide excellent customer journeys. Act-On addressed all of our small business needs when we were a company of less than 100 and then grew with us as we merged with other companies and continued to grow quickly. I don't know where Act-On wouldn't be appropriate.
Act-On has been used by our marketing team to help us manage our email marketing, automation, and lead scoring efforts to improve the efficiency of our marketing campaigns. The software allows us to set up campaigns to segment our prospective customers, current customers, and closed-lost deals to help us build, retain, and try to reengage our database.
Pros
Easy to use. The UX is simple and you can easily navigate the program.
Marketing automation.
Customer service/help has been amazing with all of our questions.
Cons
Our server went out several times when we were in the renewal period.
Lead scoring constantly broke.
It's not as robust as other competitors.
Likelihood to Recommend
I like Act-On and I think it's a good program for someone that is starting out in email marketing or has some experience with it. I feel like this is the intermediate solution for email marketing. It's great for setting up simple email marketing/automation campaigns with basic reporting needs. If you want super customizable or really advanced list features, you'll want to look at a different tool.
VU
Verified User
Strategist in Marketing (Marketing and Advertising company, 201-500 employees)
I have used Act-On at both the agency level and currently at the individual business level. Act-On is used by our sales and marketing teams.
Pros
Account Based Management ABM.
Marketing Automation.
Email Marketing.
Customer Service.
Cons
Text messaging capability.
Likelihood to Recommend
One of the best features of Act-On is that their sales features and marketing automation data is available on a sales dashboard without needing a company to use a connected CRM. This is unique for ABM and MAP software. Our company selected Act-On over Marketo because of this differentiator. We are in the process of converting to a new CRM, but until that is ready we still have access to the activity and lead scores of each salesperson's leads. Act-On is particularly suited to a business that has salespeople with assigned leads or territories.
I used Act-On internally to help nurture prospects through to SQL status for a marketing agency. It helped with to transition the leads with its robust insight generated and extraordinary comms.
Pros
More robust insights than other MAPs.
Customer Service always on point.
A better drip overall.
Cons
Price. Act-On is a FANTASTIC transition from MailChimp and the like, however, the price is a real jump. I did successfully transition a few freelance clients into users but the price didn't sit well at this early in the game. Maybe consider leveraging a super-entry-tier?
Likelihood to Recommend
Small (when afforded) to Medium sized entities in any industry (I've leveraged it in plenty).
Act-On was being used by marketing to support sales. It was purchased and implemented to facilitate email marketing, landing page design/development, and database organization--amongst other things. Marketing campaigns were to be run and reported on out of Act-On so that we could prove ROI for our marketing efforts. It was integrated with our CRM (Netsuite). 3-5 people at the most would be working inside of the platform, to run between 2-3 marketing campaigns per month.
Pros
Folder structure for list management and marketing assets/campaigns are easy to use. It was easy to keep things organized.
Email testing was accurate and straightforward.
Existing templates to build landing page and emails from were responsive out of the box.
Cons
Building email and landing page templates are difficult, the drag and drop builder is not straightforward, and requires coding knowledge
The workflow tool is cumbersome and not as intuitive as I'd expect a best in class marketing software's to be
Domain connections and domain management functionality made it difficult to manage multiple company domains and subdomains for pages
Likelihood to Recommend
Act-On is well suited for your business if you have a lot of contacts and are averse to the pay by the contact model of competing marketing automation software. Act-On charges by emails sent, not by how many contacts are in the database, so it makes it a great place to store everything, even if you aren't engaging with some of those contacts.
We use the Act-On Software to create a number of things to support the content we create, such as eBooks, case studies, infographics, etc. We primarily use Act-On to support email nurture campaign creation processes, create forms and landing pages.
Pros
User-friendly interface.
A reliable and good place to house ample assets.
Lets salespeople and marketers connect to generate a better lead gen process.
Cons
Social media connections are lacking.
The form submission process can be hokey.
Customer service support to fix issues that need to be resolved ASAP are not always available.
Likelihood to Recommend
Act-On is great, especially for those focused on an inbound marketing strategy. I would recommend Act-On to anyone using a CRM, first of all, and who wants to boost brand awareness, build credibility in their industry, have a safe place to store content, and more. Overall, I'm pleased with the user interface and resources provided to me that make it easier to use.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Marketing (Information Technology and Services company, 51-200 employees)
I use Act-On as both my email engagement platform and for website analytics. It allows me to both connect with potential clients through email campaigns, social shares, and landing pages and asses visitors interaction with my website at a granular level. I can get activity reports and alerts based on user behaviors and also confirm that clients received electronic deliverables.
Pros
Page View tracking - to see where website visitors are going.
Email campaign stats - to track who is receiving, opening, and clicking through.
Automated programs - to manage lists, send reports and analyze behavior.
Cons
I wish there was integration with more 3rd party CRMs.
Pricing is significant.
Likelihood to Recommend
For anyone who has a generous audience, this platform really is great for obtaining valuable information about how and when your audience interacts with virtually all aspects of your website. If your audience is small then I am unsure as to whether the cost is worth it. I will say that the information is addictive.
As an agency, we use Act-On to manage all our clients' marketing automation efforts. And that covers a lot of ground: web and social tracking, form submissions, content downloads, list management, lead scoring, landing pages reporting and, of course, email programs. The Act-On ecosystem is solid and each of the pieces complements each other well enough to create a marketing automation whole if that makes sense. So your emails "know" who visited what landing page and your forms "know" if this person has downloaded other content. This connected system allows you to build complex marketing campaigns, all within the Act-On system.
That said, we use for all of the above. Mileage varies from client to client, but we certainly use every part of Act-On. We will build our client landing pages in Act-On, we house our email templates in Act-On, we upload marketing content to Act-On -- I'm in it all the time! In fact, I have it open in one of my browser tabs as I am writing this review.
Overall, it is a solid marketing automation platform. Act-On manages lists, segments, email programs, and sync's with SalesForce very well, but in some areas like landing page design and reporting it falls short.
Pros
List Management. Act-On has some powerful segmentation tools that complement the automated programs very well. Act-On lets you really slice and dice your lists however you see fit. Connected to Salesforce, Act-On becomes super-charged.
Automated Programs. You can then take your targeted segments and create robust automated programs that can be tailored into specific tracks for your targeted audience.
Webinar Programs. If you use GotoWebinar or WebEx, managing the webinar is a breeze. Act-On will handle the invitations, registrations, reminders and post-event follow-up for you. It works really well.
Cons
Landing Page Design. The drag and drop builder is OK. But it feels very limited for someone who has a good knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. Inevitably, there will be something that you simply can't do in Act-On that you could do in a standard web design environment.
No Server Side Scripts. There isn't any way to retrieve data in your lists and add it to a landing page. Basically, you can't use any data stored in an Act-On list and add it to a landing page.
It's limited. There is simply some data you can't pull from Act-On and into a 3rd Party Reporting app.
Likelihood to Recommend
Act-On is great for companies who have multiple people managing marketing and sales programs. Each person will get their own log in and access to certain (or all) areas of the software. Alerts can be created when prospects reach certain stages of programs which means marketers don't need to constantly monitor lead scores or anything like that. Also, designers can log in and create landing pages, copywriters can login in and upload content and managers can login and build programs. There's no stepping on each other's work either. Team management is very good. Act-On is also great if you have multiple customer profiles. Act-On allows you to create programs designed to capture many leads across your customer profile.
Act-On would be overkill for the small B2C client. A small business that uses email to manage newsletters and product announcements will find Act-On to be much, much more than they need. Act-On can certainly do these things but so can MailChimp at a much lower price point. There would be many features in Act-On that this client simply would never use.
If your company uses a custom CRM, Act-On won't be the best fit. I imagine you would need to hire a developer (or commit an in-house developer) to a large project of integrating your CRM with Act-On. Otherwise, you'll be importing and exporting list data on a regular basis.
