ActiveCampaign Review 2023: Best All Around Platform?

In today's digital era, having a well-organized contact management system is a non-negotiable aspect of successful business communication.

In our efforts to provide a comprehensive ActiveCampaign review, we tested this feature extensively.

The importing process was a breeze, with ActiveCampaign allowing us to import contacts from a variety of sources.

There's a staggering amount of options available (shown below).

Some of our favorites from the list included:

• Popular CRMs
• Google Contacts
• Asana
• PayPal
• Shopify
• Zapier

So if you're making the switch from another platform and worried about the opportunity cost involved, rest assured—ActiveCampaign makes it incredibly easy!

Now, let's talk about manually adding contacts. We added our affiliate marketing B2B contacts at Small Business Bonfire to test the waters.

We got started by clicking the "add a contact" button.

Here's how the "new contact" form looked with ActiveCampaign.

As you can see, ActiveCampaign keeps it simple, only requiring basic contact info (name, email address, and company name).

You can also add custom fields to further refine the process.

We added a few custom fields for tracking our progress in the partnership talks with each affiliate.

This really came in handy because it allowed us to keep track of sales data that we otherwise would have had to manually record in a separate document.

Plus, we were able to easily accomplish the following with each contact:

• Add to deals
• Add to lists
• Add tags

We think this is super helpful for teams managing hundreds (or even thousands) of contacts simultaneously.

Here's how our contact management screen looked once we had everything put in.

So what's the takeaway? With all these options available, ActiveCampaign stands leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors when it comes to contact management.

Creating powerful web forms and landing pages is extremely simple with ActiveCampaign.

This feature truly shines when it comes to capturing leads and gathering customer information.

We think it's perfect for SMBs looking to ramp up their sales efforts in a big way.

To initiate the web form creation process, we started by clicking on the "Website" tab, which took us to a user-friendly interface.

From there, we selected "create a form" (shown below).

Here, ActiveCampaign offers a variety of templates that cater to different business needs. These ready-to-use templates can be customized to match your brand's aesthetics, further driving home your brand's identity with every interaction.

They included the following:

• Inline form
• Floating bar
• Floating box
• Modal

We found the customization options particularly impressive, allowing us to easily add and rearrange fields (without the need for any coding knowledge).

This simplified process translates into high-converting forms designed to capture your audience's attention.

ActiveCampaign also allows you to integrate forms directly into your website or share them via a link.

Here's how ours looked after just under a minute of customization.

The ability to track the performance of each form right from the dashboard was the cherry on top.

In conclusion, ActiveCampaign's web form and landing page builder is an absolute winner. They are intuitive, flexible, and powerful, transforming your lead generation process into a seamless operation. ActiveCampaign marketing automation

ActiveCampaign truly stands out from the crowd of CRMs due to its robust marketing automation capabilities.

We tested this feature over three months at Small Business Bonfire, and we were blown away by the ease of setup and the power of automation available.

ActiveCampaign gives you the tools to create, manage, and execute powerful automations that can take your business to the next level.

The different types of marketing automation ActiveCampaign offers are as follows:

• Sending Options
• Conditions and Workflow
• Contacts
• CRM
• Salesforce
• CX Apps

One of our favorite aspects of this feature is the wide range of sending options available; from time-based scheduling to advanced segmentation, you have complete control over when, where, and how your messages are delivered.

This works extremely well in conjunction with the platform's email marketing capabilities, making it fantastic for marketing teams.

To test this feature out (over three months), we navigated to the "automations" tab, where we were given some awesome templates to help get started.

Here's what we saw.

We ended up creating a ton of automation so we could work smarter, not harder.

For example, we created automation to do the following:

• Add contacts to specific lists
• Send personalized emails based on customer behavior
• Trigger follow-ups to customers who haven't engaged in a while
• Nurture new leads with welcome messages and follow-up sequences
• Perform A/B testing and create reports based on the results

Here's an example of an A/B testing automation we created for a customer win-back scenario.

We thought this would be a complicated process based on some other ActiveCampaign reviews we've read, but honestly, that wasn't the case!

ActiveCampaign offers a handy "automation wizard" that basically walked us through the entire process from start to finish.

So while other CRMs offer long videos on how to figure out the complicated automation diagrams, ActiveCampaign held our hand and pointed us in the right direction (with almost zero effort on our end).

Talk about helpful! We'd recommend ActiveCampaign's automation capabilities on ease of use alone, but when you throw in the fact that there's a ton of utility here as well—it's almost too good to be true!

Great deal pipeline management can help you stay on top of the progress of your most important sales leads and deals.

This is especially true if you have multiple sales reps working on different accounts or if you're running a large-scale operation that requires volume sales.

ActiveCampaign's deal management feature helps streamline this process by providing an intuitive user interface with powerful tools to help you focus on what matters—closing more deals.

Our first step in managing deals with ActiveCampaign was creating a pipeline (shown below).

We named ours "Affiliate Marketing Partnerships" so we could track our affiliate marketing deals at Small Business Bonfire.

From there, we could customize each aspect of our deal stages (screenshot below).

We loved the layout and how easy it was to customize the following:

• Name
• Color
• Width
• Appearance

The SBB team and I think a great user interface goes a long way to making for a successful sales CRM, and ActiveCampaign certainly passes with flying colors!

Once we had our pipeline customized to our liking, we added in some of our affiliate deals to really test this feature out.

Here's how it looked to give you some perspective.

Once we had all our deals put in, we were able to easily see the following:

• What deals are being worked on
• Who's responsible for each deal
• How far along we were in each stage of the deal

This level of visibility was a huge plus for us, especially as our list of affiliate partners has grown over time.

We also liked that we could add and manage multiple pipelines with ease.

Overall, ActiveCampaign's deal management feature is an absolute powerhouse that will help you get organized and close deals.

At Small Business Bonfire, we firmly believe in making data-driven decisions.

So, we were excited to learn that ActiveCampaign offers advanced analytics and reporting tools rivaling the best CRMs in the game.

The platform provides comprehensive insights into almost every aspect of our business, allowing us to measure, analyze, and optimize our strategies for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.

ActiveCampaign offers insights into the following areas:

• Sales process analytics: ActiveCampaign lets you track your entire sales pipeline with ease. From initial contact to deal closure, every interaction is recorded, giving you a crystal clear view of your sales process. This feature allows us to identify bottlenecks in our pipeline and optimize our sales process.
• Email marketing campaign analytics: The platform provides detailed reports about your email marketing campaigns, including open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and more. This data-driven approach allows us to continually refine our email marketing strategy and boost engagement.
• Customer engagement analytics: ActiveCampaign offers deep insights into customer behavior, helping us understand how our customers interact with our content and services. From website visit tracking to event tracking, we get a full picture of our customer's journey.
• Automation reports: The platform offers detailed reports about the performance of your marketing automation. This includes information such as how many contacts have entered the automation, what actions they have taken, and the overall effectiveness of the automation.
• Web page analytics: The platform provides detailed insights about your website's performance, including visitor statistics, bounce rates, page views, and more. This lets us fine-tune our website performance for better user experience and conversion.

If you're looking to scale your business, you will need to understand what works and what doesn't.

ActiveCampaign makes this process a breeze, allowing you to easily measure, monitor, and optimize your strategies.