I Tried Active Campaign ( My Review ) - Is it the Best Email Marketing Automation Platform in 2024 # Email marketing # active campaign
In this ActiveCampaign review I show you the features of one of the most powerful email marketing tools.
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00:00Hey, friends! It's Anastasia here. In this video, I'm going to walk you through ActiveCampaign,
00:05the email marketing software that I use as an online creator. The goal is that by the end of
00:11this video, you will know if it's the right fit for your email marketing needs and for your business.
00:17And although I did partner with ActiveCampaign for this video, I have to say that I started
00:23using the software for my lead magnets to send my weekly newsletter to my list and for all my
00:29email automations. So, my opinion is based on real and up-to-date experience with this software.
00:36After watching this, if you feel that ActiveCampaign is the right choice for you,
00:40you can sign up for a 14-day free trial using the link in the description.
00:45Now, let's dive into why myself and many other creators and online business owners
00:51use specifically ActiveCampaign. The reason is that it has an excellent deliverability rate.
00:56This website is dedicated to email tool testing and it has a graph that shows ActiveCampaign
01:02has the highest deliverability rate compared to its top competitors. This means that your emails
01:09are more likely to land in the primary inbox of your subscribers rather than in the promotions
01:15or spam folders, which is crucial for effective email marketing. If you send emails that few
01:22people will even notice in their inbox, then most of your efforts on writing a perfect email copy
01:28might be wasted. Another feature that makes ActiveCampaign so powerful is email automation.
01:34See, here is one of my automations and it includes 10 emails that I had to set just once and then all
01:41subscribers who signed up for this free online course will receive them automatically. So, I set
01:47the intervals, usually it's one or a couple of days between the emails. But you can even create
01:52customized sequences that are based on how subscribers interacted with your content.
01:58For example, you can send different follow-up emails based on whether someone opened a previous
02:04email, clicked a specific link, or visited a particular page on your website. The automation
02:11possibilities are virtually endless and this makes ActiveCampaign an excellent choice for you
02:16if you heavily rely on email marketing specifically to engage with your customers. And what I really
02:22loved here is this new AI-powered automation builder feature. You can save a lot of time by just
02:29giving a text prompt here, like, I want to send an offer for my flagship program to the students
02:35who enrolled in my entry-level course. So, I could say that I want to send an email a day
02:42after their enrollment and then another email two days later and maybe the final reminder seven days
02:48later. See, I just typed it and all the steps automatically appeared here in the automation
02:53with these new steps and the intervals between them. ActiveCampaign also has a feature called
02:59predictive sending. You see, the platform tracks when each contact opens your emails and when a
03:06contact reaches an email automation with send with predictive sending, it uses this data to
03:13predict the best time to send the email. So, the email is then scheduled to be sent at the contact's
03:20optimal time within their time zone, so within the 24 hours around their time zone. I also use
03:27segments and tags to identify subscribers in my list based on their interactions with my emails.
03:34This helps me send targeted emails that match interests of specific subscribers. See, here I
03:40have tags like Pinterest masterclass or free blogging course. If you know me for a while,
03:46you know probably that I have two major categories of topics, blogging in general and Pinterest
03:52marketing, which is a more narrow topic. Some of my subscribers signed up for a free course on how
03:57to start a blog, others signed up for my Pinterest masterclass. So, I make sure to have tags for both
04:04of these categories, which allows me to select groups of subscribers for every email campaign
04:10in the future, so that people who don't want to learn about blogging, for example, and they only
04:17wanted to know about Pinterest marketing, they don't get emails that they're not interested in.
04:22This improves open rates and the overall engagement, providing a better experience for
04:28subscribers. Now, while active campaign offers a lot of features, it does require a little bit of a
04:34learning curve. But don't worry, because their team prepared fantastic resources, which include
04:40video tutorials and even live webinars covering different features and goals that you might want
04:46to achieve with your email marketing efforts. Some of the webinars are actually live Q&A sessions
04:53with their team, which allows you to ask all of your questions that might come up as you're setting
04:58up your account. I have used many other email tools in the past, but I've never seen this kind of
05:05thorough training for new users, with webinars and extensive documentation. And you can also get
05:13one-on-one support from active campaign team either by email or even using their live chat feature.
05:20Support is crucial when you're choosing an email provider, and active campaign offers a very
05:25thorough support. But keep in mind that their live chat feature is not available 24-7, but it is
05:32available Monday to Thursday from 3 a.m. to 11 p.m. and on Friday from 3 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. American
05:40Central Time. Just for the context, these are very extended working hours and, you know, the fact that
05:46they even have a live chat support helps active campaign stand out, because the majority of other
05:52email providers that I used in the past did not have a live chat at all and they only worked
05:59through an email support. Now, when it comes to creating email marketing campaigns, in active
06:05campaign you can choose from pre-made templates or you can build your own templates using their
06:11drag-and-drop editor. And I also love that you have an option to request a free email design service,
06:18so you can get a template that is made by their team specifically with your branding and colors
06:24that you picked. And you can also use this new AI-powered feature that generates for you a brand
06:31kit and it's importing your brand colors, your fonts, logos, and social links directly from your website.
06:38Then you can use AI-generated email templates based on your brand's unique style. The personalization
06:46options are great here and you can save different blocks as templates for future use. You also have
06:52split testing and it's another valuable feature which allows you to test different email versions
06:58to find the most effective one for your audience. Again, not many email providers even have this
07:05split testing at all. Active campaign also gives you tools for getting new email subscribers. I
07:12created an active campaign this form for one of my lead magnets and all I had to do is create the
07:18form here and copy its code to my website page builder. They also have a landing page builder to
07:24design custom pages for collecting subscriber information. This feature is user-friendly and
07:30effective for growing your email list, especially for those of you who don't have a website and you
07:36still want to send users from your social media to some lead magnets. So, you can just copy the
07:42URL of your active campaign landing page and then paste it anywhere in your social media posts.
07:48Now, integrations are another strong point for active campaign. You can click here on apps and
07:55you will see that it connects seamlessly with so many third-party tools and platforms, including
08:01Stripe, that's the one that helps you to receive online payments, including Calendly, Typeform,
08:07Facebook, Google Analytics, and many more. And even if you don't see the tool that you need to
08:12integrate here in the apps tab, don't worry because active campaign is a very popular email
08:18provider, so most of the third-party tools already have built their own integrations with active
08:24campaign. And if you're a creator like me, who also has online courses, then getting all the
08:30integrations with your online course or webinar platforms working smoothly is crucial. For example,
08:36I couldn't find here Thrivecart in the apps and it's the platform that I use to host and sell
08:42my online courses, but I was in luck because when I looked at Thrivecart's integrations,
08:48they actually had their own integration with active campaign, so I just needed to insert
08:54the API key from active campaign in a certain field and the two platforms started talking to
09:00each other. Now, when someone buys my course, they're instantly added to my email list and
09:05they receive a welcome email through active campaign. If there is no direct integration
09:10available for the tool that you need, in my experience, you can always connect almost
09:16anything and everything using Zapier. And on top of it, the analytics and reporting features in
09:22active campaign go beyond the basic metrics and this gives you an in-depth insight to optimize
09:28your email marketing efforts. You can go to the reports tab and you'll see the performance of
09:34your forms, for example. You can see what is the most popular email clients that your audience uses.
09:39In my case, it's Gmail, for example, and my favorite report here is about the days of the
09:44week and hours of the day when I get most opens for my campaigns. This helps me schedule newsletters
09:52for the time when my audience is more active online. You can install the tracking code of
09:58active campaign on your website to also get more in-depth analytics and set more advanced automations
10:05based on how users interact with your website. Now, let's talk about pricing. Pricing for active
10:11campaign works in a similar way to other providers based on the number of subscribers that you have.
10:18The first plan starts at $15 per month and you get a 20% off if you pay annually. This plan includes
10:26essential features like email marketing, subscription forms, and automations. The plus plan
10:32offers additional features like the landing page builder, CRM, and more integrations. For advanced
10:38needs, the pro and enterprise plans include features like predictive sending, attribution,
10:44and conversion tracking. After using active campaign, I think it is one of the best email
10:49marketing providers on the market, especially if you have an online business and you need more
10:55robust automation features. Even if you don't need all the features right now, it can save you the
11:01hassle of switching providers later as your needs grow. If you're still unsure, you can just start
11:06with active campaign's 14-day free trial and just start by watching their training videos. Attend
11:13their live webinars in these two weeks that you have to get all your questions answered. And if
11:19you found this video helpful, give me a thumbs up, subscribe to my channel, and hit the notification
11:24bell so you don't miss any new videos. Thanks for watching, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video!