ActiveCampaign Review 2021: Why I Love ActiveCampaign

in this review i want to give you my honest opinion about activecampaign so that you can decide if activecampaign is the right email service provider for your online business because when i got started with email marketing a couple of years ago i chose the wrong email service provider and then the wrong email service provider again before i found activecampaign in 2017 and i've been using them ever since so needless to say i really like activecampaign but there's also some things i don't like so i want to talk about both of those things so let's just dive right in so this is what i want to cover in this review so i want to talk about what activecampaign is actually good for for who activecampaign is the most important features how easy it is to use what support is like i want to talk about pricing pros and cons and my conclusion so let's talk about what activecampaign is actually good for so i think one of the biggest mistakes that online businesses are making that just gets started with email marketing is that they maybe have an email list and then just send out an email every once in a while to try to get people engaged but what is really cool with activecampaign is that with all the automation features you can basically create a whole automated experience that consists of a series of emails that are sent at set intervals or when the contact performs a certain action so i will also show you an example of that in a bit but you for example could deliver a lead magnet and then as soon as they open that email you can send a follow-up email and then the next day you could invite them for maybe a free email course the whole free email course can also be automated it's like it's really crazy it's super cool what you can do with it so yeah basically instead of manually sending an email every week you have a series of pre-written emails that are automatically get sent to new subscribers now then for who is active campaign so i think active campaign can basically be used by any kind of business but i think especially online businesses really benefit from an email service provider like this so activecampaign i think is really the right choice for you if you really want to automate big parts of your email marketing and you want to create an automated experience that nurtures leads and convert them into customers so some people also call this a funnel and if you're like me and you really love to nerd out on automation try especially automation super big so many cool possibilities there and i think it's not a fit if you only want to send newsletters once a week i think there's just much simpler and cheaper tools for that and if you're buying email list to send spam to an active campaign is really not the right choice for you and if the sole purpose of your emails is affiliate marketing because they have some policies uh about that you can read it on this page i've also really linked it out to this in the description below so that you can read it if you want to but basically if you're an affiliate marketer and the only purpose of your emails is affiliate marketing that active campaign might not be a good fit for you now then i want to talk about the most important features inside activecampaign so i think the first one the biggest one is automations so with automations you can automate the whole experience so i have two examples over here so here is an onboarding automation so this is an example of an automation that could be sent or start when somebody is submitting a form so you see over here in the top we have our triggers so when the trigger happens then the automation will start so in this case that is when the contact submits a form called checklist and then what you can do is you can build out your whole automation like this so you have your blocks by clicking these pluses you can add blocks you see that over here pretty cool and you see over here that we have an email it's just like hey here's your checklist then we have a wait action so we wait until something has happened so in this case we wait until the contact has opened this email or click the link inside this email for up to two days so that means that as soon as they open it or click a link inside it it will continue right away and otherwise it will continue after two days then we have an if else and if else basically allows you to split the automation based on the condition that you set so the condition over here is has opened this email or click the link inside this email if not now what you can do is you can automatically send a follow-up email that says something like hey did you see the checklist i've sent it to you two days ago but i noticed that you didn't open that email yet something like that then you could add another wait until to also wait until they opened this email maybe and then if they either open this one right away or then this one then it will continue over here to the yes path of the if else and then you could maybe send a little onboarding series of like hey this is how i'm going to help you this is my story these are my biggest learnings something like that so it's really simple automation but super super effective then another one that i want to show you is an evergreen newsletter so instead of having to send out an email every single week what you could do is you could pre-write all your emails or use some old emails and then just put them in your automation and then just send them out every week for example every tuesday so this is the automation i'm using for that so someone subscribes to the main list then we wait until the current day of the week in the context time zone is tuesday and the current time in the country time zone is 10 a.m so it's pretty cool that you can select here like hey i want to do this in the context time zone so you see that over here current day of the week context time zone you can also say current day day of the week in my time zone so i'm in europe uh amsterdam time zones and then you can also send it about that but because i have my audience in different parts of the world you can also do like this that you said okay when it's tuesday 10 am in their time zone then i want to continue and then i want to send newsletter number one then i want to wait a day and then i want to wait until the next week basically until it's tuesday and 10 am again i send my newsletter and so on and so on so this is just some simple examples of automations in a bit we're also going to build one automation from scratch so that you can really see how these automations actually work but so yeah that's definitely my favorite feature of active campaign the second favorite feature i think is conditional content so let me show you an example so you see over here that we have an email and what you can do with conditional content name basically already says it you can make pieces of your content so like bar crafts blocks you can make them conditional and then show them based on the condition that you set so you see for example here in the top that i have hey first name so like hey john or hey hey but i obviously don't want both of those things in my email right so what i can do then is i can put this in different blocks like you see it over here and then you also see this little text that shows up over at the top you can also go here minutes conditions and then you see that this block with hey john will only show up if the first name exists and the second block will only show up if the first name does not exist and then you see over here i have little text that says like hey thanks for joining the list glad you found me in this little corner of the internet here's the cheat sheet you asked for and this text will only show up if the subscriber is actually new so if the tag exists event or see a recent activity joint list so this attack that i added to people would just join the list so then because i have different lead magnets different content upgrades then only this little text in the top will appear when they're actually new and if they're already on the list for a while it would be silly to say again like hey thanks for joining the list so then we just say like hey john here is the cheat sheet you asked for so just a simple example but you can really use conditional content to really hyper personalize your emails also maybe based on segmentation data so that's really pretty cool now then the email builder yeah i basically just showed you now i just clicked it away so let's go back over there so this this is the emo builder instant active campaign you have two different ones you have a html builder which is really pretty simple you just write your html and then on the right side you will see a preview of your email and then you have this one so this is the what you see is what you get builder so you have your email and then you can just drag blocks inside your email you can also add an image or you can maybe add a number another image next to it so this is all pretty easy i would say the html builder is a really solid choice if you know a little bit about html because it's a little bit more of a bulletproof way of styling your emails but this way is also really really fine and then over here you have a little menu of uh that you can like duplicate a blog you can make it conditional you can hide it on mobile devices you can even save it to your content library so that maybe if you have another email you can also reuse that same block so yeah that's pretty cool now then you have campaigns inside activecampaign so you have automations and you can have emails inside your automations but what you can also do is you can also create campaigns so let's quickly go over that so here we have campaigns and campaigns basically allow you to send one-off emails so instead of automating it you can also just say okay i have something that i want to share with my list and then you can just create your campaign you can give it a name you can say like here i want this to be a standard email and then we go next and then you can say like okay this is the people i want to send it to this is the design i want to use this is the email that i want to send so i have to say i'm not using this so often myself because i really like to use emails inside automations but the feature is there if you want it now then the next one is landing pages so with activecampaign if you want to you can also create landing pages which is pretty cool so you can just go over to site pages and then you can create pages and it looks a bit like this so you just have like a template and then it's like what you see what you get builder you can just like drag in different blocks and just style it as content and then use it as a landing page so that's pretty great now then what you also have is a side chat so they call this conversations and this is basically an add-on i will also talk about that in a bit when we're going to talk about pricing but for i believe 19 bucks a month you can add a site chat to your website and while i think the site chat is maybe still a little bit basic i know they're still developing it and like adding new features to this because it's just new but it's really cool that it's there and that you don't need yet another tool for that that you can just have this inside activecampaign and also that it obviously integrates so nicely with activecampaign so yeah that's the most important features the features that i like to use uh most then what i want to talk about is how easy activecampaign is actually to use and i think this is really important to talk about because some other email service providers they're really hugely complicated overly complicated packed with like lots of features that you maybe don't need and then you need to spend weeks to figure out how to create maybe a simple automation so with active campaign i would say it's medium easy to use so it's not super easy but it's also definitely not difficult there is a bit of a learning curve to understanding what everything is for but with the help of some youtube tutorials i also have lots of tutorials here on youtube about active campaigns you can check out if you want to you should really be able to quickly figure out how to build your first automations so what i want to do is i want to take a couple of minutes to show you how you can create a form and then how you can create an automation that is connected to that form so let's do that real quick so we're going over to activecampaign and then we go here to site and then the first thing that we do is we're going to create and form so here create a form and then i call this one active campaign cheat sheet and i call this v2 because i already have another version about it and then you can select a form style so in this case i just want to inline form which is basically just like a little embedded uh form that you can use on your page but there's also a floating bar a floating box a model window and then uh what you can do is you can select an action so what happens when somebody is submitting this form so what i want to do is i want to subscribe them to a list i want to subscribe them to my main list and then i click create and then you see by default that the form looks like this i don't think this is super nice but it's really easy to change so i for example like to get rid of this text because i will just do that on my own website then i get rid of this and then i also want to disable the branding for example so i just turn this off then instead of the full name i want to ask for someone's first name so i go over here to standard and then first name i direct this one in here and i also want to make this required then we go to options and then here the form action so we subscribe someone to a list right and then you also have your opt-in options and then one thing i want to do is i want to disable the double opt-in i can just do that in automation or automatically and subscribe people when they are not engaging with my emails then i click save and then we basically already have a simple form and then you can also style it with things if you want to for example here we could make the button yellow we can make the text in it uh black something like that and then you can also use some custom css if you really want to go deep and like really style this to your own needs and then you can just click integrate and then you get a little code that you can add to your website and then the form will appear i'm not going to do that right now because i think it really depends on how your website is built but i'm going to click save and exit and then we're going to create an automation that will start when somebody is actually submitting this form so we go to automations create an automation and then we say here start from scratch we click continue and then it will ask us for a star trigger so what needs to happen before the automation starts so here we say okay submit a form click continue and then we select the form that we want to start with and then you can set it to either run once or multiple times and if you set it to run once then even if the contact fills out the form multiple times then the automation will only start once if you set it to multiple times then if the contact submits the form for three times for some reason then the automation will also start three times so i will leave it to once and i click add start then it will ask us for a first action so what i'm going to do is here i say okay send an email create an email and then i call this cheat sheet delivery so this is just a name for yourself the contact will not see this and then you can select a template so by default you have a bunch of templates some default templates that you could use i created my own templates i've also linked to these in the description below if you want to get started with those but then you can just create your own template and then you can say use this template and then i can say cheat sheet for and then here i say okay first name save close and then this is the sender details so this is my name and then i only want to change my email address here and then i click continue so then the email is created so you see that this is what my default template looks like and then obviously you can just write the email you can say like hey john uh here's the cheat sheet you asked for and then here is a link over that now then you can go over to next then there's a bunch of extra options over there so here you see like a basically a little summary your subject your pre-header text from message name the address that is related to your business and then there's also some options so you have open and re-tracking link tracking reply tracking google analytics so those options are also there and what i also think is handy is that there's also a spam check the active campaign will basically check a few basic things like if you're not using certain phrases that are often triggering spam filters and then you can just click finish and then you just click here save and then we have our email no then what i want to do conditions and workflow and i just want to say here wait until and then we say okay wait until has opened for example has opened cheat sheet delivery then we click save and then we say for up to two days so this also bit the automation that i showed you earlier in this video and then over here we say okay conditions and workflow if else we want to split the automation based on the condition so we want to split it based on somebody let's open the email and then we say add and then here you can add a follow-up email for people that did not open it and here you can maybe add an email for people that did open it so yeah this is how you create a simple form and a simple automation so just to show you that it's fairly easy to use i think the hardest part is probably uh to come up with like a solid strategy that really works well for your business now then i want to talk about what support is like at activecampaign i know that other reviews don't talk about this so much but i actually really think this is super important because if you just get started with the new tool you're going to have lots of questions and then you really want them to respond in a timely manner right so i find active campaign to support really really good like they always reply super fast usually within 24 hours so when i just got started with activecampaign i had lots of questions and they always responded really quickly but also we're really trying to help so they did not have like any of these copy and paste answers that some of these other email service providers are using just to save some time on support like i really think this goes a long way so yeah support really great now then we're going to talk a bit about pricing so active campaign as i record this video they have four different plans and every plan as you can see here has lots of features so you have a light plan a plus plan a professional plan and an enterprise plan so i personally think that most online businesses they really have enough with either the light plan or the plus plan like you obviously have to check out this page yourself see if there's something that you really really really really need but for example with the light plan you already have access to all the automation stuff that i showed you and much much more you can also use the forms but one thing that i think is really a bit of a shame with the light plan is that you cannot use conditional content to hyper personalize your emails so if that is important to you then definitely go for the plus plan and also if you want to create landing pages with activecampaign then also go for the plus plan and maybe also one important thing to mention is that only the plus professional enterprise plan come with a crm so a customer relationship management system basically so if that is really important to you to manage all your contacts then go for that but personally i don't find that super duper important so if you don't need landing pages you don't need conditional content then i would say go for the life plan you can also always upgrade later on so yeah pricing itself really depends on how many contacts you have so you see over here if you have 500 contacts then the light plan is for example nine bucks and the plus plan is 49 bucks but it quickly goes up like here if you have a thousand contacts and the light plan will get more expensive the plus plan finally enough will just stay the same and over here if you see if you have two thousand two nine thousand contacts then the light plan is 45 bucks the plus plan is 99 bucks and so on and so on and there's also a really big difference um if you bill if you get built yearly or not so if you pay monthly you pay about 30 more and if you pay yearly you pay about 30 less so what i would recommend is to start out with a monthly plan really make sure this is the right tool for you and then when you know like hey i'm going to use active campaign probably for at least the next year then switch to yearly billing because i can really save quite a lot on a yearly basis now then pros and cons i think is my favorite part of any review so pros of active campaign is really good deliverability which is really important because there is no point in using a new service provider that has bad deliverability so i just want to quickly want to show you an automation that i've been using last year so this is like an evergreen newsletter it has lots of emails in it so that's why i thought it's maybe a good example to show you so as you can see here so it is more like an archive right now but like i have lots of emails in here and if you go over here a few emails then we can see the open rates of my email so you see here 29 46 42 51 53 50 52 42 53 44 48 43 so as you can see here i got amazing open rates uh with active campaign open rates obviously depends on lots of things also like what kind of subject lines you're right what kind of content you send but just in general my emails get opened really really well with active campaign so i thought this may be good to share now then i think yeah the pricing is quite friendly especially if you just get started like imagine you have maybe a thousand contacts and then if you would start with the light plan then you only paid 29 bucks a month and even if you pay yearly then you pay 25 bucks a month so i think that is really great then web hook so this is not something i talked about before inside the review it's a little bit taggy but i wanted to mention it because myself i find web books really important because i can really easily integrate basically any tool on the planet with active campaign because activecampaign has web hooks so if you find it important it's there now you can automate absolutely everything i think that's freaking amazing from the moment that they opt in to the moment that they're going to convert into a customer and now support i also mentioned it earlier is really fast so that's also really great but then the cons so i think for example active campaign is radar slow to use so sometimes when you want to create an automation change in automation changing email insight and automation you sometimes really have to wait 10 to 15 seconds before the page is loaded i have a really fast internet connection so i have no clue why it's so slow but i've been experiencing this for the last i don't know two years and i really find this pretty annoying so this for me is really big con then forms are pretty basic so i just showed you how to create a form and i think these forms are actually quite great i've been using them also on my own website but they're pretty basic you for example cannot do any a b testing or something with them now they're uploading images inside your email so if you want to use images inside your emails you need to upload them somewhere you can either upload them to activecampaign to use them inside your emails or just upload them for example on your website and then use the url um to display that image and uploading images inactive campaign is really not a nice experience because it just gets super messy this interface looks like it's built 15 years ago and it's not so great i think so if you're going to use images inside your emails i would just recommend to upload them on your own website and then use them inside your emails that way an active campaign like well i said it's like medium easy to use i think it can also be a bit overwhelming because there's so much possible with automations itself like it's really exciting but there's so much possible so it can be a bit hard to know where to get started with all this marketing automation stuff so i also have some tutorials about this on my youtube channels here girls check those out if you want to now then the conclusion should you use activecampaign or not so i think it's pretty clear from my review that i absolutely love activecampaign the powerful automation possibilities are great it's fairly easy to use pricing is great for beginners and the guns are very minimal so what i will do i'll put my affiliate link for activecampaign in the description below this video so that you can try active campaign out for free and by using that link i get a little kickback at no extra cost to you and if you have any questions about activecampaign maybe about any of the features just let me know in the comments below and i'll try to get back to you as soon as possible

Channel: Max van Collenburg

Views: 581

Keywords: activecampaign review 2021, activecampaign review, activecampaign demo, activecampaign opinion, is activecampaign good, what is activecampaign good for, why is activecampaign the best, activecampaign pros and cons, activecampaign pricing, activecampaign 2021, 2021 activecampaign review

Id: 1yR9Arsbtu0

Length: 24min 33sec (1473 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 07 2021