Do I Need an Email Automation Platform?
Let me ask you this: Are you ready to start turning a profit with your email marketing campaigns? If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, then it’s time you use what the professionals use. Get ActiveCampaign, the leading email automation platform for professionals in 2024.
ActiveCampaign is the smartest, easiest to use email automation platform for 2024, and it’s exactly what you need to make your email marketing campaigns perform at a professional level.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to brand yourself to your ideal audience. Plus, email marketing is here to stay— in 2023 there were 4.3 billion email users worldwide and this number is expected to reach 4.3 billion users by 2023.
If you aren’t already, you need to use email marketing to connect with your customers and grow your business. Whether it be welcome emails, creative content to help customers make a buying decision, abandoned cart emails, or promotional offers, a personalized email message will increase engagement and help grow your revenue.
Maybe you’re a firm believer in the old adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Of course you don’t want to hound people with spam (that would be counterproductive), but the truth is customers actually want to hear from you!
Statistics Prove Email Marketing
Did you know, the average open rate for a welcome email is 64%? Plus, sending 3 abandoned cart emails results in 69% more orders than a single email. And finally, 49% of consumers said that they would like to receive promotional emails from their favorite brands on a weekly basis. So, give the people what they want!
With regular communication, sent out at just the right time, to just the right people, you can successfully nurture leads. As you build a relationship with your audience, you can use well-timed calls-to-action (CTAs) to convert prospects into closed deals. Help nudge and encourage your subscribers to take the desired action as they move through the buyer’s journey.
With all that being said, it’s no wonder that email offers the highest return on your investment. In fact, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42. Of all the channels available to marketers, email has the largest number of users.
Statistics show that email gets delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox a whopping 90% of the time. Compare that to the 2% of Facebook fans who see your posts in their News Feed. And hey, don’t forget that your email subscribers have explicitly indicated they want to hear from you, simply by adding their information to your email list.
Time to Upgrade?
By now you must see the merit in email marketing tools. Whether you’re new to email marketing or have been engaged in it for a while, you’ve probably stumbled across email platform’s like Mailchimp. Mailchimp offers the ability to schedule and send emails, newsletters, promotions, and more for free (well, sort of free). If you want to spend a little bit (or a lot), you can access a few more features and add a larger pool of contacts.
But wait! Wasn’t this blog supposed to be about ActiveCampaign? Yes, it was…We’re getting to it!
Quite honestly, you can use Mailchimp to send out your next newsletter or quarterly update. You can even do some basic segmentation. But, like the title of this blog says, if you’re looking for a more professional email marketing platform, and you want to start making more money from the emails you send, then you need to consider ActiveCampaign.
I’m guessing you’re not quite convinced yet? If you want to bring your email marketing campaign up a level and start turning a profit, you’ve come to the right place. So, here’s why ActiveCampaign is the leading email automation platform for professionals in 2024…
ActiveCampaign’s 6 Best Features for the Leading Email Automation Platform
I’m going to show you 6 of the best features in ActiveCampaign. We’re going to cover personalization, segmentation, and design. We’ll also explore their built-in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and how you can measure the success of your campaigns with their analytics dashboard. But most importantly, we’re going to cover what ActiveCampaign does best—email automation.
Email Automation Features with ActiveCampaign
You can cover the entire buyer’s journey simply by connecting with prospects via email. Email is an excellent way to answer questions, recommend products, offer promotions, or ask for feedback.
Want an even better return on your investment? Send out those emails at the exact moment your audience is most engaged.
Now, I’m not talking about sitting at your computer all hours of the day, at the ready to hit “send” on your next email masterpiece. Email automation is like email on autopilot. It’s an incredibly useful way to market your brand to more people, while spending less time on repetitive tasks.
Did you know that 35% of marketers choose to send 3-5 emails per week to their customers? A series of three emails performs better than a single email. You’ll get 90% more orders for welcome emails, 63% more for abandoned cart emails, and 75% more for customers reactivation.
Who has time for all of that? With just a few simple clicks, ActiveCampaign’s visual automation builder allows you to automate your email marketing so you can connect with your customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and spend less time doing it!
In the words of ActiveCampaign, “It’s like getting an extra employee without needing an extra desk.”
With email autoresponders you can choose what day and time you want your emails to be sent. You’ll be able to specify exact dates, or set up an email funnel so that prospects receive emails when they’re most engaged.
For example, a prospect signs up for your email newsletter. Let’s call her “Olivia.” She receives a welcome email a few moments later. Using an email funnel, Olivia can get the next email a certain number of days (or hours) after she first received the welcome email.
But what if Olivia never even opened the email? When you implement an email autoresponder, you can ensure that those who engage don’t get repeats and those who don’t engage eventually have another chance with a more personalized email.
Of course email autoresponders and funnels sound like a fantastic way to improve your email marketing campaigns, but people always wonder is it too late to teach an old dog new tricks? No. The answer is no. I’m pretty sure MythBusters even busted that one!
Anyways, ActiveCampaign has a drag and drop automation builder that allows you to set up automated workflow in minutes. This is easily my favourite feature in ActiveCampaign. You no longer need to wait to nurture your contacts. As your prospects engage, their actions trigger messages that you specify, like immediate follow up after they submit their contact information.
As your prospects funnel through your automation, you can turn them from a cold lead into a burning-hot customer. All you have to do is set off a trigger that sends them the perfect email at the right time depending on what actions they take, whether it be in an email itself or on your website.
Not only is it easy to use, but ActiveCampaign lightens your work load, too. Since you can create email campaigns in advance, you can set it and forget it. Your subscriber list will feel the love while you’re sipping Mai Tais on the beach.
Personalization
Let’s get personal, personal. If you’re still sending generic and impersonal bulk emails, you’re wasting your time. You’re like a dog chasing its tail. Consumers open emails with personalized subject lines at a 50% higher rate compared to emails without personalized subject lines.
In fact, message personalization is the number one tactic used by expert email marketers to improve performance.
ActiveCampaign makes it simple to include dynamic information (like one’s name or job title) or specialized information (like interests or past purchases) in your emails. This way you can create a unique customer experience for every contact.
By employing personalization, you make every campaign you send feel personal. The more personal it feels, the more likely your audience is to engage.
Of course, sometimes you need to send out a quick email to everyone on your list, all at once. ActiveCampaign also enables you to send out one-time broadcast emails if a personalized format doesn’t fit your needs.
Segmentation
Segmentation is in itself a personalization tactic that helps you deliver more relevant email marketing to your subscribers. Usually segmentation is based on geographic location, interests, or purchase history.
By sending email campaigns segmented by user interest, you can see 74.53% higher click-through rates as compared to non-segmented campaigns.
Sending email to a specific segment of your email list allows you to reach your audience with exactly what you know they want to hear. If it’s something of interest to them, your prospects are more likely to listen and engage…
Coupled with an autoresponder, powerful segmentation is a great way to give your customers the information that is most relevant to them. Once again, the more personal your marketing feels, the more money you’re going to make.
When adding contacts to ActiveCampaign, simply add a “tag” to track where leads come from and what they’re interested in. The “tag” makes it simple to target that specific contact (and others like them) whenever you need.
You can also add tags, automatically, whenever your contact takes a certain action so you’ll be segmenting contacts without lifting a finger (or paw).
Create as many groups as you want, based on whatever information you want. Plus, in ActiveCampaign the segment builder is a floating feature that allows you to create segments from several different places within the platform. If you want a deeper dive into segmentation, take a look at this article straight from the horse’s mouth.
Design
Over 20% of marketers surveyed say that email design is improving their email engagement. Your audience wants clean, modern, and professional looking emails that capture their attention. Think dynamic content like videos, pictures, and beautiful elements of design.
With ActiveCampaign’s email designer you no longer need to hire an expert to get professionally designed emails. ActiveCampaign’s email builder focuses on usability to save you time while you perfect your branding.
No knowledge of coding is required to craft visually creative, custom email campaigns. Choose from nine different types of drag-and-drop content blocks to build your campaign. You can add and resize images, format text, and even add a bright button for your call to action.
Not sure how to get started? You can choose from over 25 pre-designed email template and layout options. Plus, the options are organized by business goals so you can easily find the specific templates you’re looking for or get new ideas that line up with your marketing goals.
Using templates helps you save time and keep brand consistency across messages. If you just need a little inspiration, browse through the library of professionally designed email templates or choose one that works for you. Once you customize your design, save it as your own template for future use!
Perhaps you have a design that worked particularly well for you in the past. With ActiveCampaign it’s easy to access previous designs so you can recycle past campaigns or work off the design you’ve already done. Once again, ActiveCampaign makes it easy to maintain professional consistency with your brand and messaging.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A sales CRM is exactly what you need to keep track of leads. Keep all of your customer data organized in one platform. You can view a lead’s entire history and have contact details update automatically. This way you’ll leave yourself more time to sell because lead prioritization and contact management is automated too.
Now, I’ll be upfront. If we were giving ActiveCampaign a rating out of 10, this is where they’d get a 9. ActiveCampaign’s CRM doesn’t quite compare to something like Salesforce or HubSpot, but that’s not quite fair because ActiveCampaign’s bread and butter is email marketing.
For most of us, their CRM is an added bonus and just what we need to round out our marketing and sales pipeline. So, what can it do?
With ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation platform and CRM tools you can prioritize your leads with lead scoring, win probability, and automated segmentation. That way you can identify your best leads and focus your time where it’s most likely to make a difference.
Perhaps a lead needs some nurturing first? You can automate your sales funnel so that leads aren’t driven away by pushy sales tactics.
Working with a sales team? Everyone can see the whole sales process so you don’t waste time (and frustrate leads) by picking up where the last sales person left off. You can also take notes directly within each deal and contact record, assign tasks to individual team members, and track their performance.
Plus, you can manage your CRM and access the information it contains directly from your cellphone. No need to change email providers either—ActiveCampaign allows you to connect their CRM to your existing Gmail, Outlook, or other email provider accounts.
I think I just convinced myself that ActiveCampaign’s CRM is all you need. Let’s bump them up to 9.5/10.
Measure Your Marketing with Analytics
No one wants to waste their time and efforts on an email campaign with little return on investment. You want to know how your email campaigns are performing. In fact, companies that A/B test every email see email marketing returns that are 37% higher than those of brands that never include A/B tests.
ActiveCampaign offers this too. With ActiveCampaign’s advanced reporting you can take action based on clear and insightful reports. Track the performance of your messages and automations so you can easily see what’s working and what isn’t.
Once you know the data, you can make intelligent adjustments to better on-board and nurture your audience. Users who want these advanced features can subscribe to the Plus plan and can access performance reports for tags, campaigns, automations, and forms.
You can even select date ranges to see performance in a specific time frame or export reports as a CSV file.
Stop guessing if your emails are being opened, read, and engaged with. Use ActiveCampaign to analyze your campaign’s performance, and start making informed decisions about your email marketing.
Customer Experience
ActiveCampaign has great customer support. They can personally help you with migrating from your old platform, and they have a ton of documentation to help you fully integrate with their comprehensive email platform across all of your marketing channels.
Migration
Learning about ActiveCampaign may leave you pondering if it’s worth the work of switching from your current email marketing platform. Once again, ActiveCampaign takes the stress out of this task by offering free migration services—from a real person!
You can easily move your contacts and automations to ActiveCampaign. They promise to help you get set-up quickly, too. With their migration services you can import lists, contacts, custom fields, and tags.
ActiveCampaign will assist you in re-creating opt-in forms, automation workflows, and even email templates (Although, if it’s time to switch things up, you can explore their templates instead).
Just reach out to ActiveCampaign, and their customer service team will promptly give you information and instructions about what to do next.
Integration
I know you’ve worked hard to establish your brand across a variety of marketing channels. No one wants you to waste time re-creating forms and online stores that you’ve already spent hours setting up. With ActiveCampaign, you don’t have to.
ActiveCampaign offers 1000+ integrated apps so you can connect with the tools that are most applicable to your business. Just search for an app that you’re looking to integrate with and you’ll find the most popular apps (Facebook, WooCommerce, WordPress, Shopify, Zapier, Unbounce, Google Analytics, PipeDrive, and more…) are already included. Plus a growing number of new apps are added regularly.
Support
As with any new software or tool, there’s a bit of a learning curve. However, you don’t have to spend months learning how to get started on ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign offers free support and training with a real person…I mean they might be a robot, but they sounded pretty real to us! And they guarantee you’ll get what you need when you need it.
Depending on your questions and learning style, you can find support in a variety of ways: schedule an appointment with ActiveCampaign’s customer success team to talk one-to-one about your needs, attend one of their webinars, or explore the library of tutorial videos and self-help guides.
Even better, ActiveCampaign offers a variety of templates and pre-built automation recipes to help you get your next marketing campaign started today.
Pricing
Your business isn’t basic. So why are you using basic email marketing software? It’s time to invest in a platform that makes you look professional and performs better too.
ActiveCampaign is the most professional, sophisticated, user-friendly email automation platform for 2024. And it won’t cost you a fortune. Think of it as an investment.
With Active Campaign you can expect to market your brand better and start seeing a more generous return on that investment.
ActiveCampaign’s pricing depends on the number of contacts you have. You won’t have to pay a setup fee, and you can pick the plan that fits your business best.
There are four tiers of pricing, each varying in the features it includes. You can choose to pay monthly or yearly; although, paying yearly does save you some money up front.
The lowest tier, offering the fewest features, starts at just $39/month (paid yearly). This Lite plan still offers unlimited sending, marketing automations, chat and email support, and more.
However, we recommend that you at least start with the Plus plan to unlock access to their wide range of integrations and SMS text marketing. This way you can set your marketing funnel on autopilot.
Allegedly, the most popular option is the third tier, Professional. This plan starts at $201/month (paid yearly) with up to 2500 contacts and unlocks a plethora of extra features such as predictive sending, split automations, site messaging, strategy consultation, and more.
Overall, the pricing might seem a little out of reach at first, but the more contacts you build up the more competitive the pricing gets. You can’t go wrong with all of these features either, and their deliverability rates make the investment well worth it.
Summary
If you want to start making money with email marketing, then ActiveCampaign is what you should be using. They have the best email automation software in the game at a reasonable price. Their support is top notch, and their platform is very user friendly.
Overall, we give ActiveCampaign a 9.5/10 as the leading email automation platform for professionals in 2024. If you want to get started with an ActiveCampaign alternative that will fit your budget, then I have just the thing. Click here to learn more about Encharge.io.
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