Email List Building Through ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign Founded in 2003, It is one of the most reasonable and feature-packed email marketing services provider for small and large business . It has over 100,000 active users and benefited from its various advanced tools designed for testing, sales, CRM management, lead generation and more.

Main Pro's and Con's​

Main pro's​

• Very affordable considering all the stuff you get
• Best automation features of all the tools we've tested
• Visual automation builder (easy to use): Setting up automations works really well with ActiveCampaign's visual workflow builder; tons of automation triggers and actions
• Drag-and-drop email editor makes it easy to create nice looking emails
• Split testing: Best split testing in automations of all ESP's
• Form builder: Excellent builder for forms, emails and automations
• Good support: The live chat support and email support is really quick and helpful.
• Great segmentation & targeting features: ActiveCampaign has the ability to heavily segment your contacts and target only the specific ones you want to talk to.
• Create & Share templates: ActiveCampaign set up an automations marketplace where you can copy and paste automated sequences & email templates (really cool!)
• Integrations: ActiveCampaign is integrated with every major app.
• Reporting: Decent tracking + reporting functionality
• Cool advanced feature 1: Auto-detect time zone of subscribers based on IP address
• Cool advanced feature 2: Unlimited custom fields
• Cool advanced feature 3: Very good conditional logic in emails
• Free account migration service if you want to switch to them

Main con's​

• The interface can be a bit slow to navigate
• Slight learning curve for beginners (but nothing you can't handle)
• The form builder is very limited on the lower plan
• Not many pre-designed email templates
• ActiveCampaign is a CRM and tag-based email service. However, if you want to send a campaign broad vast you still need to use a list. You can't send it to people with a tag across multiple lists. The workaround is that you create 1 master list with all your contacts as a base list, and create a segment of people with a certain tag who are on that list. Then it gets a lot easier.

CRM​

A key element of any email marketing platform is CRM. It walks on a thin and sharp line of traditional and a sales tracking platform. Each automation is working on actions taken, time spent on deed, emails, stages, website browsing history and more.

For example, you can set up a fully-automated process of welcome emails, birthday emails, trigger campaigns and sales follow-ups from a specific action. Here are a few more key capabilities of ActiveCampaign’s CRM tools:

Automate the life cycle: Adjust contact data, move contacts and send specific follow up campaigns triggered by actions such as site visits, emails (both sent and received). There’s even the option to trigger actions based on SMS interactions.

Automation & Workflows​

There are dozens of automations available through ActiveCampaign, there’s also the ability to import custom automations and a wide range of categories to choose from when selecting automations to add to your campaign.

You can reach the ‘Automations’ section through the top of the main dashboard. Once there, find categories ranging from:

• Automate Sales Team (Automatically notify sales representatives once new leads arrive and when older ones are nearing the end of the funnel).
• Managing Customer Relationships (Send automated thank you emails after a purchase is made).
• Increase Traffic (Notify subscribers of new blog posts).
• Lots More

This includes, but is not limited to triggering a specific campaign when someone:

• Submits a form (In which case you can set up an automation that sends an email to users after submitting a form, a ‘thank you’ email of sorts).
• Is added to a subscribers lists (Send custom automated follow-ups tailored toward the specific reason the visitor has signed up to become a subscriber).
• Unsubscribes from a list (When a subscriber unsubscribes to a list, send a follow-up email confirming they are unsubscribed).

Autoresponder​

Set up autoresponders. For instance, if someone makes a purchase, you can implement an automated thank-you or upsale email.

Workflows for eCommerce​

Among the standout automations is the abandoned cart reminder, an extremely relevant integration capable of automatically sending email reminders to those who have abandoned their cart. You can customize the timing and frequency in which customers receive emails, as well as the style of the email received.

Workflows for Sales​

There are also integrations for automating your sales team — especially for things such as the sales pipeline and lead scoring.

Take actions such as setting up an automatic lead-scoring process so you don’t have to manually enter points for everyone who earns them.

Bottom Line​

Since ActiveCampaign is full of features, it may seem overwhelming at first. However, after playing with the email platform for a short period of time, you’ll get the hang of it. Because of this, ActiveCampaign is perfect for marketers hoping to grow their email marketing capabilities beyond their existing customer-base.
ActiveCampaign also hits the mark for serious marketers looking to scale their email marketing activity via automation and efficient workflows.
Whilst the email marketing platform does not offer phone support (unless you are on an Enterprise Plan), ActiveCampaign does provide quality online support in the form of live chat and friendly email support. If you should need either, we’re confident your issues will be resolved quickly and professionally.
Lastly, to highlight a final feature (or set of features, rather), one of the best elements of the email marketing platform is that it offers tremendous reporting capabilities. For marketers who are results-driven, click-maps, geo-tracking and page visit insights ensure their email targeting is more than spot-on.

 

[Planet408]

That was so detailed. Kudos to you and thank you for taking out time to come up with this long article. Building a good email list is something most business people fail to do. Even those who do it are not mostly consistent with it. Following the the listed pros and cons here, one could actually know what and how to start it.

 

[askanand]

You don’t have to worry about your customers having a poor experience like this, thanks to the ActiveCampaign Conversations mobile app. This app comes in handy when you’re on the go because you’re able to get real time notifications of new messages from email, live chat, or Facebook Messenger.