Marketing Automation Software

4.3
12 reviews 
Made for

Lead and webinar management; integrated with WebEx and GoToWebinar

Not for

Blogging, extensive content editing or coding novices

 
None
 
$600 - $8,950/mo.
Pricing details

Features

Content creation

Create custom content directly on the platform:

  • Landing Pages
  • Email Templates
  • Online Forms

Promotion & distribution

  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing

Support

  • Chat Support
  • Phone Support
  • Email Support
  • eBooks
  • Whitepapers
  • Video Tutorials
  • Webinars

Integration

  • Social Media Integration
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
  • CRM Integration
  • Blog Integration
  • Google AdWords Integration

Collaboration

Act-On allows accounts to have multiple users for your sales and marketing teams. 

Analytics and Tracking

  • Website Visitor Tracking
  • Analytics Reports
  • Google Analytics 

Pricing

Basic info

 
None
 
$600 - $8,950/mo.
 
Monthly subscription
Annual subscription
  • Professional Plan - Starting at $600/ month
  • Enterprise Plan - Starting at $2,000/ month 
Vendor Pricing

Reviews

4.3
12 reviews 
Sort by
 
Client Interview
Sep 15 2015

Implementation of Act-On by Midwestern Digital Marketing Firm

4.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
3.5
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
3.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Confidential spend
 
Digital Marketing
 
2-10 Employees
 
Missouri
CEO, Digital Marketing Firm
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The client is digital marketing company based in the Midwest. The client implements Act-On for their clients as a certified agency partner. The client has worked with Act-On for a number of years and remains very impressed with the capabilities of the platform. The client stresses that Act-On excels as an enterprise platform for sophisticated customers who have more than a million contacts, and a full-time digital marketing specialist who spends at least half their time with the platform. While Act-On can still be very useful for a client with a more modest business, typically the client would recommend another platform, such as SharpSpring. The client made it clear that with Act-On, "you get what you pay for," and that Act-On's support was the best he has ever worked with. Ultimately, the client's recommendation of Act-On would depend on the nature of the particular customer, but he still is very satisfied with Act-On as a marketing automation platform.

Experience

.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company?

We're a sales and marketing automation, consultation and implementation business. We started the company in 2008 and have been working with email and marketing automation since 1998. We are based in the Midwest, and most of our customers our regional, although we do have a few others spread out throughout the country.

What is the role in the company?

I am the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE

Can you give us an example scenario faced by one of your customers that encouraged them to implement Act-On?

One of our customers is a large winery that has many business segments. They have about 30,000 people on their email subscriber list. Roughly 6,000 of them have purchased from their online store, and the others either have gone to an event or have visited the winery. They probably have at least 30 different segments or variables that are associated with their contact records. The ability to create targeted segments and then be able to send a relevant message to those people had become important a couple years back. They were starting to see a lot a decrease in engagement. Their open rates were going down, unsubscribes were going up, complaints were going up, and they needed to break those segments out so they could start performing better.

SOLUTION

How does your company implement this platform or software?

We implemented Act-On to track the website visitor behavior as well as the email recipients to increase our targeted communications going out to their lists.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why this platform?

We treated Act-On as our enterprise platform so, typically, those are customers who either have at least one internal marketing resource, and they're willing to dedicate half of that person's time to marketing automation as opposed to just doing email because that's what you have to do to make Act-On worth the investment.

We recently did add the SharpSpring platform because from both a cost-per-month barrier as well as a time investment it makes more sense for some clients. SharpSpring's a better fit for customers who are looking to spend between $350 and $800 a month, and don't need the level of sophistication that you can get with Act-On. Overall, I'm pointing more and more of my customers towards SharpSpring because the value is just better. With that said, Act-On has by far the best support team I've ever worked with. You get what you pay for. It's just that, in some cases, clients haven't developed that far.

On an annual or monthly basis, how much does your company spend to utilize the platform?

It would range from $500 a month on the low side. I think our largest customer was around $1,050 a month. I'd say that most of the clients were in the $500 to $700 a month range.

RESULTS

Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results of your implementation of this platform?

I have a couple of enterprise clients that have a very high volume of traffic – more than a million visitors a month, and that's where Act-On really shines. You have an organization that has a lot more traffic and more attributes, they need to integrate other disparaged systems. Act-On is the best platform to deal with all of this in my opinion.

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?  

Their list segmentation tools are phenomenal, and their email-authoring tool that they just released is very good as well. Its integration with the landing page tool and their new forms tool is the best I've ever seen.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

The actual setting up of the marketing automation programs is what most people need help with. Act-On's not as intuitive as some of the other platforms.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

I like Act-On's support team so much that I actually took them all out for a happy hour at the end of last year to say thank you. In my experience, I've worked with several of them – Pardot, Marketo, and HubSpot – Act-On beats all of them. You can get people on the phone no problem, and their other resources are great as well.

OVERVIEW

We have a few quick questions and, for each question, we ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?

Four.

What would you give the software for ease of use or ease of implementation into your business?

Three and a half.

For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?

Five.

For overall satisfaction with the platform?

Four.

How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business?

Three. Depending on the resources the client has and what their plan is would typically determine the tools that might be used. If they had somebody on staff that maybe half their time was committed, and some of the things that they needed, I would say Act-On was the one I would recommend. To me, it's kind of like Bruce Springsteen. If I get Bruce Springsteen a $50 guitar, he could make it sound better than my $50,000 guitar. The tool is kind of a commodity, but if the stage includes a lot of supporting pieces, then Bruce is going to take the guitar $50,000 and really make it rock. That's a vague answer, but if the circumstance is right, I would absolutely recommend Act-On.

4.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Features
  • 3.5 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 3.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Sep 17 2015

Implementation of Act-On by Dutch Marketing Agency

4.5

Features: 
4.5
Ease of use: 
5.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
$10,001 - $100,000/yr. spend
 
Digital Marketing
 
2-10 Employees
 
Netherlands
Co-owner and cofounder at Dutch Marketing Agency
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The client is a digital marketing agency based in the Netherlands. The client implements Act-On on behalf of their clients across a number of different industries. While the client works with a several specialized marketing solutions like MailChimp, Act-On is their platform of choice for full-scale integrations. In the client's opinion, Act-On excels at the complicated, multifaceted digital marketing campaigns that require a lot of attention and segmentation. The client also stressed that Act-On's support team was some of the best he's ever worked with. When asked for an area for improvement, the client did offer the suggestion that some of the functionality and features of the email automation be made available for landing pages as well. Overall, the client is very satisfied with Act-On as a platform and recommends it strongly to others.

Experience

.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of your company and the role that you play there?

We are a small online marketing agency based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. We currently consist of three consultants, and my role is co-owner and co-founder of the company. We deliver our services to mainly business-to-business and business-to-consumer customers. Our focus is marketing automation and inbound marketing. Currently, we only use Act-On and, occasionally, we help smaller customers with MailChimp rather than a full-packaged automation tool.

OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge your company was facing that necessitated the implementation of Act-On?

The biggest challenge for us and for our customers is mostly getting sales-qualified leads. The ability to nurture leads through the automated programs of Act-On is one of the most useful features.

SOLUTION

Was your company considering other platforms? Why this platform?

We looked at HubSpot and Marketo. We discovered that Act-On was the most easy to use for nontechnical consultants because we wanted to educate the customer to use the platform themselves. That was a logical choice. Also, the customer service is unparalleled, so that's a big plus for Act-On.

On an annual or monthly basis, how much does your company spend to utilize the platform?

For our business, we spend about $1,200 a month.

RESULTS

Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results of your implementation of this platform?

I can give you an example of implementation with a large car dealer. They have 11 dealerships, and they sell about 3,500 cars a year. We introduced Act-On to their current database, which is about 40,000 contacts. After three months, they started selling 50 to 100 cars extra a month, which is a big deal. 

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?  

What I like about the method, and Act-On provides that beautifully, is setting up scoring rules. It's very easy to set them up, but you can get very precise, dividing based on behavioral scores and demographics. The automation and execution of email programs based on these segmentations is very precise.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

What I'm missing right now is conditional content for Web pages. It's possible to use conditional content in emails, but I would like to use them in landing pages or in whatever page I could imagine. Also, conditional CTAs [call-to-actions] would be helpful. I know they are planning to improve their landing page composure, and that's an important one as well, because we're not using Act-On for our landing pages as of now.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

We used Act-On support on different levels. For instance, we connect with several CRMs [customer relationship management processes], which are not included on Act-On out of the box. We developed those APIs [application programming interfaces], and Act-On support is great about working with us to figure out how to get the integrations right. Immediately, there is a call, great follow-up, and there's never more than 24 hours before we get a meaningful answer. Also, it's the same on the user accounts. Every question I have is solved within 24 hours, no matter what.

OVERVIEW

We have a few quick questions and, for each question, we ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?

Four and a half. Just missing the details.

What would you give the software for ease of use or ease of implementation into your business?

Five.

For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?

Five.

For overall satisfaction with the platform?

Four and a half.

How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business?

Five – because that's part of my business model.

4.5
Overall Score
  • 4.5 Features
  • 5.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 5.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Sep 18 2015

Act-On Digital Marketing Agency Implementation

4.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
3.0
Support: 
4.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Confidential spend
 
Digital Marketing
 
11-50 Employees
 
Minneapolis, MN
Digital Strategist, Digital Marketing Agency
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The client is a digital marketing and lead-generation firm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The client implements Act-On as a tool for managing the full life cycle of leads on behalf of their clients as well as for their own business. The client highlighted Act-On's high-level features as what distinguished it from other marketing automation platforms. While the client is pleased with the functionality of the tools available, he did add that occasionally unannounced updates from Act-On can create a delay as users get acclimated to the interface changes. Overall, the client is very satisfied with Act-On, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a feature-rich marketing automation platform with strong support services.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company and the role that you play there?

We are a digital marketing and lead-generation firm based in Minneapolis. Our services encompass the entire life cycle of the marketing and sales forecasts and are focused on delivering qualified leads to our clients.

SOLUTION

How does your firm implement Act-On?

We implement Act-On for own firms, and on behalf our clients as an Act-On partner agency.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why Act-On?

I wasn't a part of the selection process, but I know we were also considering SharpSpring.

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?  

Act-On is one of the more feature-rich platforms, and that's its primary virtue. It's very versatile, and they're constantly updating and adding functionality, which gives you piece of mind that you're staying up-to-date with the leading technology.

Overall, the tool is a crucial component of what we do on a day-to-day basis, and I know we are just scratching the surface with its capabilities.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

While it's great that they are constantly improving the tool. The downside to the updates is that it can be hard to build up momentum and speed through multiple accounts when there are unexpected changes.

It would be nice if they were more proactive about announcing interface changes – even simple ones, so we could more readily anticipate them on our end. However, generally the tool is intuitive enough to be able to react to these changes without losing too much time.

Have you had a positive or negative experience utilizing Act-On support resources?

Act-On's support team is very strong. Sometimes, there are delays, but they often get back promptly with a workable solution. As with all sites and tools, sometimes there are very brief failures but, overall, it runs virtually flawlessly and executes when we need it to. 

OVERVIEW

We have a few quick questions and, for each question, we ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?

Five.

What would you give the software for ease of use or ease of implementation into your business?

Three.

For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?

Four. There are occasional delays.

For overall satisfaction with the platform?

Four.

How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business?

Four.

4.0
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Features
  • 3.0 Ease of Use
  • 4.0 Support
  • 4.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Sep 23 2015

Act-On Implementation by Marketing Agency

2.0

Features: 
2.0
Ease of use: 
2.0
Support: 
4.0
Willing to refer: 
2.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Confidential spend
 
Marketing & Advertising
 
2-10 Employees
 
Ankara, Turkey
Digital Marketing Team Leader, Marketing Agency
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The client is a digital marketing agency based in Ankara, Turkey. The client implements a number of marketing automation solutions on behalf of their clients. Act-On and HubSpot  serves  as the two comprehensive marketing automation platforms it implements. Overall, the client is disappointed with Act-On's performance. While allowing that Act-On's segmentation tools and support resources are better than many of its competitors. The client found Act-On's features to be needlessly complicated and less functional than other solutions. It would have to be a highly specialized customer for the client to consider recommending Act-On.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of your company and the role that you play there?

We're an inbound marketing agency based in Turkey. I'm a digital marketing team leader, responsible for implementing digital marketing operations on behalf of our customers.

OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge you were facing that caused you to implement Act-On?

We use lots of different tools in our digital marketing operations, such as email marketing tools like MailChimp and social media management tools like Hootsuite. However, we were looking to offer a fully integrated suite that we could manage all of our operations from. That's why we initially started working with Act-On.

SOLUTION

Was your company considering other platforms? Why Act-On?

We were considering HubSpot as well, but Act-On is better at marketing segmentation, which was very important to our clients. 

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you? 

No. We've actually been rather disappointed with Act-On. It's very difficult to use, and its features are not any more impressive than the other automation platforms.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

There's plenty they could improve on, but their social media management tools, landing page creators, and importers stand out in particular.

Have you had a positive or negative experience utilizing Act-On's support resources?

Their support is very good, and they are great at answering your questions. But, it doesn't make up for very poor software.

OVERVIEW

We have a few quick questions and, for each question, we ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?

Two.

What would you give the software for ease of use or ease of implementation into your business?

Two.

For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?

Four.

For overall satisfaction with the platform?

Two.

How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business?

Two.

2.0
Overall Score
  • 2.0 Features
  • 2.0 Ease of Use
  • 4.0 Support
  • 2.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Sep 24 2015

Digital Marketing Agency Implementation of Act-On

5.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
5.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Confidential spend
 
Digital Marketing
 
51-200 Employees
 
Ukraine
International Marketing Manager at Promodo
Elena Ruchko
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The client is Promodo, a digital marketing company that serves customers around the world from its headquarters in Ukraine. The client implements Act-On for its own business, and on behalf of its customers' businesses as an Act-On partner agency. The client is highly satisfied with Act-On as a marketing automation platform. The client is especially impressed with the comprehensive nature of Act-On's tools and features, in addition to their phenomenal support resources. The client would recommend Act-On to others without hesitation.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of your company and the role that you play there?

I am an international marketing manager at Promodo. Promodo is a multinational Internet marketing company serving small and medium online businesses for more than 11 years. As a marketer, I am responsible for managing and growing our email contact base, converting contacts into potential business leads through email marketing, webinars, content marketing, and other tools.

OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge you were facing that caused you to implement Act-On?

We are operating in several target countries. In the Ukraine, for example, we are one of the biggest online marketing companies and have a large volume of inbound leads and contacts. Since 2004, we have gathered an impressive amount of data and information that we needed to process, store, manage, and reuse. We had to automate many of our marketing activities and sync them with the accounting software we used. This is why we were on lookout for the solution like Act-On.

SOLUTION

Was your company considering other platforms? Why Act-On?

I should say that Act-On was chosen before I came, but now we keep on using Act-On because of its combination of rich functionality, reasonable pricing, and the very friendly support they provide.

To give us an idea of the size of the implementation. On an annual or monthly basis, how much does your company (or your client) spend to utilize the platform?

We have separate users who are using Act-on extensively and according to our subscription plan, we pay around $1,000. It is sufficient to cover all our needs.

RESULTS

Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results of your implementation of Act-On?

Thanks to automated email programs, we were able to develop and implement a long-term program of converting our company's prospects into leads and improve their quality. Regular calls with Act-on managers help improve the quality of our newsletters continuously, decrease the opt-out rate, and increase the click-through rate. We are not limited in our inbound marketing activities because they can be implemented quickly with Act-On. 

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you? 

There's so much to explore in the platform, I haven't dug too much into all features of Act-On, but I know there are plenty of them 

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

Some minor ones, I think. For example, when I edit emails with the rich text editor, some initial images in the email template disappear.

Have you had a positive or negative experience utilizing Act-On's support resources?

I have had a very positive experience of utilizing Act-On's support resources. We had serious problems with the webinar confirmation emails and, although it took some time to solve the problem completely, Act-On was totally devoted to helping us solve the issue.

OVERVIEW

We have a few quick questions and, for each question, we ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?

Four.

What would you give the software for ease of use or ease of implementation into your business?

Five.

For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?

Five.

For overall satisfaction with the platform?

Five.

How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business? 

Five.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Features
  • 5.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 5.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Sep 29 2015

UK Digital Marketing Agency Implementation of Act-On

4.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
4.0
Support: 
3.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Confidential spend
 
Digital Marketing
 
50-200 Employees
 
United Kingdom
Marketing Manager, Click Consult
Andrew Smith
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The client is Click Consult, a United Kingdom digital marketing firm focused on organic and paid search. As the client transitioned to focus on inbound marketing tactics, they were looking for a platform that could target, segment, and analyze their users so they could deliver relevant content that would engage their users. Since implementing Act-On, the client has built up a database of 10,000-plus qualified leads. The client had no complaints to report, and highly recommends Act-On to others.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of your company and the role that you play there?

Click Consult is a multi-award-winning search marketing agency. We work with brands and SMEs [subject matter experts] who want a tangible, measurable return from their online budget through our bespoke search marketing solutions. We specialize in organic and paid search, but also offer a number of other services that includes inbound marketing, social media and conversion rate optimization. We're a Google Partner, employ Bing Accredited Professionals, and are a recommended search marketing agency through the RAR [Recommended Agency Register].

I'm marketing manager here at Click Consult, looking after everything that encompasses marketing strategy, brand management, market research, product development, lead generation, and event management.

OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge you were facing that caused you to implement Act-On?

We understood how the marketplace was changing, with consumer perceptions of outbound tactics rapidly diminishing, an inbound model approach whereby creating quality, relevant and targeted content would attract consumers to our organization, rather than actively hunting for potential leads, our marketing activity would earn the attention of our prospects.

Act-On provided us with the platform to segment, analyze, and truly understand our target audience and help to deliver a smart, real-time marketing strategy that our customer base would not only be interested in, but would also feel obliged to engage with.

SOLUTION

Was your company considering other platforms? Why Act-On?

We considered multiple other marketing automation platforms including HubSpot and Marketo. However, we chose Act-On due to its easy to use nature, smart functionality and its seamless integration with our customer relationship management system.

RESULTS

Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results of your implementation of Act-On?

During the last year, we have generated over 10,000 marketing qualified leads, which currently sit within our platform, allowing for a smart, segmented approach to our marketing activity, and helping to deliver countless qualified leads for our business development team.

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

The features we liked include: user activity history, segmentation functionality, funnel reports, email metrics, user behavior and engagement reports, email builder, and CRM [customer relationship management] integration.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

Not at the moment.

Have you had a positive or negative experience utilizing Act-On's support resources?

Extremely positive. Act-On's support resources are industry leading. However, I don't think anyone can ever be 100 percent satisfied with a software's support resources.

OVERVIEW

We have a few quick questions and, for each question, we ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?

Four.

What would you give the software for ease of use or ease of implementation into your business?

Four.

For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?

Three.

For overall satisfaction with the platform?

Four.

How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business? 

Four.

4.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Features
  • 4.0 Ease of Use
  • 3.0 Support
  • 4.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Oct 02 2015

Agency Implementation of Act-On

5.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
4.5
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Confidential spend
 
Digital Marketing
 
11-50 Employees
 
Portland, Oregon
Founder, Marketing Firm
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

Utilize their support as needed. Be careful about what other providers list as their standard pricing vs. what may be additional products and fees.

Background

Can you provide a brief description of your company and the role that you play there?

We are a demand generation agency that works with marketers to help them solve engagement problems with their sales teams. Sometimes, this is from a visual standpoint; sometimes, it is from a content perspective. We work around automation tools all the time. I am the founder of the company.

Solution

What was the business challenge your company was facing that initiated the need for this platform?

We need to be in all channels all the time, but we have only a limited staff. It's not enough just to own a channel today and email is not enough. Clients are using automation as a way to set up a program and let that program run. They'll optimize the program in time, but at least it's running while they focus on something else.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why Act-On?

Act-On is definitely support- and customer-focused, although we do partner with Marketo and have a few people internally that do Pardot work. Act-On has some of the best support we've experienced from any of the available platforms. They are continually investing in their product, even to the point of releasing something every month. Many other platforms release only on a quarterly or yearly schedule.

How much does it cost for your customers to use Act-On?

We have an infographic on our site that talks about the benefits of marketing automation and provides a range of costs for each one of the various types of applications. For the majority of our customers, Act-On is going to cost somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000 a month, depending on how many active contacts they have.

Spark by Marketo is limited, so customers realize quickly that they need more, which is going to get them into pricing that's going to start somewhere between $500 and $2,000. This price will increase depending on how large their contact database is and what kind of Marketo add-ons they have. Pardot is going to be somewhere between that – somewhere in the $1,500 to $4,000 range.

Now, because of their Salesforce acquisition, Pardot is getting more aggressive in its pricing. They know that once you have Salesforce and once you have Pardot, they kind of own you and that relationship. You're not going to go away easily. They're definitely putting some downward price pressure on Act-On and others at the lower end.

Results

Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results of your implementation of this platform?

Clients will bring us in as a professional services partner, and we'll do the implementation for them if they need something more than just an account management setup. We'll provide strategies for them as for how to best use their automation tool and, many times, they'll involve us in those efforts. Act-On is going to come in, identify us as their professional services partner, and then show the customer how all of us are going to work together. We will do the initial implementation for them to get them going, talk about overall marketing strategies they might consider, and show them how to get the best use from Act-On.

Act-On is always there for the customer from a support standpoint to show them how to use a specific tool. They have a page that's dedicated to each account, and their customer service manager cares about the outcome and that the client is happy. Their managers are very helpful, and they spend hours on the phone with us at times to help us make Act-On do what we want it to do. They're always very helpful with that kind of thing.

Most of our clients, when they're going into automation, are used to batch and blasting. We try to show them that rather batch and blast. It would be better to define what segment they want to go after and put together a program that's nurturing, one that shows how to advance the conversation. We've been able to double the engagement rate customers have had with their audiences, from the opens, clicks, and actual conversions, just by that kind of nurturing approach. That's the kind of benefit you get from a tool like Act-On.

Were there any software features or tools that impressed you?   

One of the things right now that Act-On is working on is the whole data studio, and it's being slowly released. The nice thing about the data studio that Act-On is bringing to market is that it enables the users to get access to any data in the system that they want so they can do cross-campaign analysis. That is a pain in both Eloqua and Marketo because users have to export by program or buy another add-on, and that still doesn't get them to exactly what they want to have. I love the fact that Act-On is going in that direction so we can do the analysis across all the different campaigns.

Looking back, are there any areas of Act-On that you feel could be added or improved?

Again, it's the data studio, which as I've said they are working on. We like that because we can extract the information we need and go to Tableau reports and things like that. What everybody would love to have is a click of a button and be able to do this in the application. Of course, that requires very robust software. Once you get one report, you always want more – you want to do this, you want to do that, and you want to slice and dice – and you want to be able to do all of that within the application. Of course, Salesforce doesn't even do that. That's why you need something like GoodData on top of Salesforce so you can see what's going on. Act-On and any other application can do the same thing.

The UI [user interface] was, for a long time, a challenge for Act-On, but they continue to make improvements on that. They're bringing out a responsive editor for both emails and the landing page – the landing page just came out this month. That's exciting because Marketo's responsive editor is not very good.

Have you had to interact with Act-On's support team or reference their support resources?

Their support is the best thing they have. Their application is great, but their support is even better. They work with their customers to show them how to do things. It's not chat-based, like some of the other providers, or a ticketing system. You call them, you get somebody on the phone, and you get some help – right there. They also have the university where you can go to for help files. Recently, they started introducing certifications, so they can bring everybody up to a certain knowledge level on the common uses of the application.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Features
    For us, it's a 5, but we don't need everything that a billion-dollar organization needs.
  • 4.5 Ease of Use
    It's pretty easy to get up on the application because it's not all that complex. You can send an email the same day.
  • 5.0 Support
  • 4.0 Willing to Refer
    We do it all the time.
 
Client Interview
Oct 07 2015

Act-On Agency Implementation by Pravda Media

4.5

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
4.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Confidential spend
 
Digital Marketing
 
11-50 Employees
 
Tel Aviv, Israel
CEO, Pravda Media Group
Kfir Pravda
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

Take a look at what your intended usage is like and you'll likely find you can save a lot of money with Act-On's pricing. Though, their product could integrate more seamlessly with other providers, it is improving. The support team is responsive to customer's evolving needs.

Background

Can you provide a brief description of your company and the role that you play there?

I'm the chief executive officer of Provident Media Group. We are a demand generation company, working mainly with B2B [business-to-business] global technology companies who have some presence in Israel. Usually, those companies have their development and parts of their marketing in Israel, but they're selling their products worldwide. In general, we're not working with companies that only sell products in Israel.

We provide three types of services. One is training and knowledge transfer regarding digital marketing to companies that are doing digital transformation processes. The second is managing and running full-blown demand generation programs for our clients – content, distribution, and traffic – everything. The third part is helping companies choose and implement marketing technologies, with marketing information as one of the most important ones. That's where we connected to Act-On. We work with Act-On, Marketo, Pardot, and Silver Pop, and we provide a wide variety of products.

Solution

What business challenge were you trying to address with Act-On?

Because we work with multiple vendors, there is not necessarily a single specific need that companies have when they choose between Act-On and Pardot. The market is currently in a situation where the largest part of the market is still not advanced in the way they utilize marketing automation capabilities. The reason for this is mainly because to use marketing automation properly, companies need to change the way they market their products. The challenge is less focused on a specific platform and more focused on organizational knowledge and capabilities.

How does your company implement Act-On?

The basic purpose of Act-On is to create a very sophisticated email marketing platform. We call it the glorified MailChimp scenario. The more advanced platforms facilitate scoring and routing of leads between marketing and sales. The most advanced ones also look at behavioral data, the customer journey, and that kind of thing. Act-On provides a platform that can address all three of these specific challenges.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why Act-On?

Act-On has several capabilities and features that give it an edge. However, we work with a number of different platforms because each company needs a different solution. It's not that we always need to choose the same software platform. We have to work with multiple platforms because of the demand in the market.

The reason we chose Act-On as one of the platforms we use is, first of all, they have a very good reputation. When compared to others, there is a huge gap when you're talking about reputation. Point number two is that Act-On is a very flexible platform. They integrate very well with Salesforce. We can do some very exciting things with that integration, so we like working with it because of that. The third reason we like working with them is that their support – customer service and overall engagement is simply outstanding. We work with many vendors, but I can tell you that we've never worked with another vendor that provides this level of engagement with their partners and clients.

How much does it cost for your customers to use Act-On?

The pricing varies, and their business model is a bit different from others. They are only looking at something called Active Contacts. All other vendors require companies to pay based on the size of their database. With Act-On, companies pay for the market people that they email, per month. It's a bit of a different model. A company can have a million people in its database, but if it sends an email every month only to a thousand individuals, the company will only pay something like several hundred dollars a month, if I'm not mistaken. If a company is smart, it can reduce its ongoing operational cost considerably using Act-On. Assuming they are not blasting out their entire database on a weekly basis, there is a price advantage in using Act-On.

The thing is that their pricing changes. They now have a new level called Enterprise Level, something they didn't have in the past. The prices are beginning to increase but, compared to Marketo, for example, for the same amount of money Act-On provides a more robust platform, and the database size fits more companies.

Results

Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results from your use of Act-On?

We have one company that we've implemented this platform for end to end, which we accomplished in about three weeks – a very short process – very quick. We had them launch several landing pages as well, all integrated with the platform. This was just before a major event that was crucial to meet their annual marketing KPIs [key performance indicators]. We started from scratch, basically.

We went live a couple of weeks before the event itself, and the platform became the hub of all their digital marketing from that point onward. They were able to increase their amount of engagement by a considerable amount, but I cannot give you specific numbers. In the past, they didn't collect as many leads, they didn't know how to set their database correctly, and they didn't know how to track what was happening with the people they emailed. However, with Act-On, they managed to do a multichannel email campaign – a media campaign that feeds Act-On – and then take out the results from it and do follow-ups in a fraction of the time and effort that it took them before using Act-On.

The beauty of Act-On is that it's 0 to 100 in a very short time. The results are awesome because you see them immediately. When you're doing it in the right way, and assuming you don't have a very complex website or special technical challenges, you can see, in a very short time, an increase in efficiency, performance and insights in a very considerable way, and that's great.

Does Act-On have any features or tools that impressed you?

I think they have two things. First of all, they have a very robust Salesforce integration, which stands out compared to their competition. They also have a new product called Data Studio. It enables a company to actually export raw data, raw logs from the system and put it into a usable product. We've been working with Data Studio for a while now, and we've integrated it with a couple of the systems we work with. It provides a lot of flexibility in getting insight.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software that you feel could be added or improved upon?

One thing is that their integration still needs some work. They are a bit behind when you're talking about a company's ecosystem. The products that integrate with them as part of a B2B digital, demand generation platform – well, they're a bit behind compared to Marketo and HubSpot. I think they need to do a better job in that area so that more partners can integrate with them seamlessly.

They don't have strong enough personalization features for landing pages and for integration within websites. When the volume gets high, in some cases some parts of the system are a bit slow. However, this is a problem with other products as well, so I wouldn't pick that as all that important. I know that they've improved the UI/UX [user interface/user experience] tremendously in the last 12 months, but there's still work to be done there.

Another area where they could do a better job is with the types of reports a company gets from the system itself. However, because they now have Data Studio, they are compensating for that. They have another feature that provides much more sophisticated capabilities, but there are still things that could be improved there.

Have you had to interact with Act-On's support team or reference their support resources?

Their support is truly outstanding. They have a decent support team. They are trying to help, and they're very proactive. They initiate monthly calls with clients to hear more about their campaigns and to talk about new features. I've not seen that with any other vendors. They have good support in multiple time zones, and when they see a problem, they knock it out very fast. They're very good at that. When I talk with my customers about which vendor to choose, I stress that they will always find bugs in software products, but they need to know that with Act-On they have someone to call. I believe that Act-On manages to answer this challenge in a very positive way.

4.5
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Features
  • 4.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 5.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Jun 03 2016

Automated Email Marketing with Act-On

5.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
5.0
Support: 
4.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Marketing and Advertising
 
11-50 Employees
 
Portland, OR
Operations Manager, Marketing Agency
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The user is a marketing agency. They use Act-On to set up a variety of email campaigns, including email newsletters and drip campaigns to past, current and potential clients. They really like that it is a robust and intuitive email marketing  tool, but occasionally experiences bugs in its editor function. 

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of your company?

We are a marketing agency. We specialize in paid media, SEO [search engine optimization], and social media. We offer a full suite of marketing services. 

What role do you play there?

My role is Operations Manager. I also do all the email marketing for the company, a lot of sales and marketing work with lead proposals, and I do a little bit of set management as well.

OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

I honestly wasn’t here when they decided to implement Act-On. I actually was just talking to a representative the other day and I think we’ve been using it for a long time. I had looked back at our records to see when we started because we have a grandfathered price at this point since we’ve been using them for so long.

SOLUTION

How does your company implement this platform or software?

I think that it’s served our purposes for what we need in terms of sending monthly newsletters to our clients and prospects, and past clients. We do a weekly newsletter to our current clients, other prospects, and such. We do some drip campaigns; we use the forms on our website to collect leads as well. It’s a pretty comprehensive and intuitive tool for us to use.

We’ll do different campaigns. If our sales team is at a trade show or a big event, and we have a number of leads from that event, we’ll develop some specialized targeted messaging for that group and we’ll hit them with certain email messages over a period of time that are probably spaced about two or three weeks apart, just to see if we could get some more interest out of our interactions with them at the show or whatever conference we were at. I generally have templates that have been built for our different campaigns, whether it’s a newsletter or one of these direct messages to a targeted group. I will develop the messaging and design it based on how we feel it will best resonate with the people we’re targeting. We also use it for our website, for people to download white papers and cheat sheets, and such. We’ve had some automated campaigns go through it from there as well.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why this platform?

I manage a career-focused networking group in town, and we have a direct weekly email that goes to those people that are part of our group. I use CoolerEmail for that, so I’m very familiar with that product as well. In the past, I’ve used Constant Contact. I’m actually talking with Constant Contact right now to potentially move from CoolerEmail to Constant Contact because Constant Contact is a little bit more basic. You don’t have as much control over designing your template that you’re using. You have to really work to stylize it. Whereas products like Act-On and Constant Contact, you can more beautifully make your emails and have more control over what it will look like at the end of the day.

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

Act-On is a pretty robust product. You can track social media and who’s going through. We also use it to see who’s visiting our website on a daily basis and we’ll get a report from that. I work for a small business, and I think that it’s just a really robust product that somebody can fully use and implement. There are quite a few options, whether it’s creating an email, setting up a form on your website to collect information, using it for landing pages, creating landing pages, etc.

They’ve made some changes to it, over the past six months to a year. It has been frustrating at times because you’re used to what it used to be like, but at the end of the day, they’ve all been really positive. You can look back through history very easily to see which emails you’ve sent, how many people it went to, your opens or clicks. It’s very easy to see how campaigns are performing from one week to another or one month to another. You could set it up so certain emails are part of a particular campaign; it’s just not a one lump sum.

To be perfectly honest with you, I haven’t ever been able to create an email with just dragging, or dropping, or inserting. I always have to clean it up on the HTML level. Maybe it’s something that I’m missing, but I always manipulate the HTML a little bit for everything I do in here.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

I think that one of the only problems I have is when I’m copying content from a Word or a Google document into there. I understand it’s really not the product’s fault. Every once in a while, it gets really buggy with what I want my font to look like and behave. My only downfall is that sometimes in the editor my text will be one color, but my actual review and my test message will be the color I want it to be. It doesn’t always resonate the exact way I want it to be. I’m not quite sure why it does that.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any results that you can share that came out of your use of Act-On?

I don’t know if I can think of any specific examples, to be honest. I just think that it serves our purposes on a weekly basis. It’s easy to see what people are clicking on and who is clicking on things. For instance, we sent out a newsletter this past week and we have a hot client who has a hot prospect that received it. They clicked on multiple messages. We know that they are at least intrigued. We can see what content they’re intrigued about and hopefully cater our future messaging on a one-on-one conversation with them in that respect. Otherwise, I just think it’s a pretty easy, intuitive program.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

Yeah, I have a couple of times. It’s almost all been very positive. I recently had a little bit of an issue with somebody. He wasn’t very clear on what he was asking me about my problem, and it resulted in a bit of frustration on my end. After talking with my direct representative, he helped clear it up. Other than that, they have been really awesome on the support side, much better than sales, which of course I think is atrocious.

Do you have any recommendations or advice for anyone that’s currently using this tool or thinking about it?

Depending on what your objectives are, I think that it’s a great product to use. Really take the time to learn about all the options that it has to offer, because it really does have a lot of tools and features that can be used to help you with your business, sales, marketing, and so on.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Features
  • 5.0 Ease of Use
  • 4.0 Support
  • 5.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Aug 02 2016

Email for Non-Profit

4.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
4.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
3.5
See More
the reviewer
 
More than $1000/mo. spend
 
Non-Profit
 
Small Company
 
California
Former Marketing Associate, Non-Profit
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

A non-profit used Act-On for email marketing, especially around fundraising events, to target specific lists of people with different emails. They like the ability to change links even after the emails have been send, and the onboarding and training Act-On provides. While deliverability has been good, it was not at 100%

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there.

At the time, I was doing marketing for a non-profit.

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

Because they don’t have the budget that large companies have, they tend to lack a little bit in the technology space. We had over 5,000 contacts and over 3,000 members that we reached out to regularly. There wasn’t any type of segmentation done. There were things that we needed to do as far as making sure that if we sent an email out about an event, that we were able to segment out the people who had already registered for the event. We just needed something a little more flexibility than they were using. They’d used Constant Contact, and they moved on to Robly. They were testing Robly, which is an email marketing software. That was the challenge we had. That was the reason that I implemented the marketing automation.

Solution

How does your company implement this platform or software?

Act-On has a really good on-board team. They do a fantastic job of walking you through how to use the software. It’s even helping you along the way. If down the line I have a question that I might not have had when I first started, they’re really responsive to you. They also helped a lot with setting up. It was still pretty simple. It was setting up the lists and making sure the lists were segmented. That would differ for each company. For our particular company, it was members versus non-members versus expired members, profit entities versus non-profit entities, and things like that. We also had vendors. We had a list of people who were interested in getting promotional emails from our sponsors. There were a number of segmentations that we had and that were easy to set up using their software.

The analytics are pretty good. They basically showed the open rates, bounce rate, and click-through rates. One feature that I really loved about Act-On, that I imagine is on other platforms but I haven’t necessarily seen it, was the ability to change a link after the fact. Say, for example, I sent out an event with a link, but I put the wrong link.  It’s now August and I accidentally put the one for July. I can go back and change the link after the fact, and it will update. That was a really cool feature that I thought was very helpful. As marketers, a lot of time we get information that we have to immediately throw together and put out. Unfortunately, we all make mistakes, but it made it really easy to come back from that.

How much does your company spend to utilize the platform?

I think it was around $1,200 a month.

Results

Can you share any results of Act-On?

We had 17 different locations. I was managing all of the communications for those 17 locations. I was able to systemize our communication process, which was amazing. I was able to go from just sending out blank “attend this event” emails, to sending out very targeted emails for events they’d already registered for; I’d send out one series of emails. If they haven’t registered, I’d send out another series of emails. If they registered last year, but not yet registered this year, that’s another series. It allowed me to be far more systematic about it and send more personalized targeted messages than I would have been able to send just using Constant Contact.

Features

Looking back, are there any areas of the software that could be added or improved?

Aside from the deliverability, I can’t really think of anything. They had something called ghost forms. Basically, if you had a form on your website, you could connect that form to a form that’s built into Act-On and deposit information directly into a certain list. I think they could have made that part easier. That was something I had asked them a lot about. I felt like their report team couldn’t help me with that. You would need a developer to do something like that. That’s just what they said. It didn’t seem easy for someone and I’m fairly tech savvy. I was surprised that I wasn’t able to get it.

I don’t believe there’s a single system out there that will offer 100% deliverability all the time or come close to that. There are so many other factors that go into a piece of mail being sent from your system and landing in someone's inbox. There might be whitelist issues on the other side that need to be addressed. Make sure they look at all of that. Reach out to their prospects, customers, members, whoever, and make sure they whitelist the domain to ensure deliverability.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

I did. I noticed there were a lot of deliverability issues with it. Some of them I understand. When you’re moving over to a new system, that can be an issue, but it got a little inordinate to deal with those issues as long as we did and in the way that we did. I spent a lot of time with their customer support. I will say they were very friendly and helpful in terms of what they were telling me, but the issue didn’t necessarily seem like it was resolved. I was a little disappointed with that. In terms of their customer service, I think they did a good job with their friendliness and their willingness to try to make things whole.

4.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Features
  • 4.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 3.5 Willing to Refer
    That’s due to cost. A lot of people I know say they can’t afford a system like that.