Act-On Erfahrungen

A great marketing platform

Kommentare: I've had very positive experiences with Act-On, the support has been wonderful and the platform has been solid.

Vorteile:

Act-On is a simple to use platform with WYSIWYG editors for emails, forms, and landing pages. You can quickly set up multiple touch point campaigns.

Nachteile:

Act-On recently updated their email composer which made it more cumbersome to design emails. They haven't forced users to use it yet, but eventually it will replace the existing composer.

Meeting goals and driving leads with Act-On

Kommentare: Our overall experience has been great as we have been able to drive leads, gain marketing insights, and develop automated programs with easy to use templates we created.

Vorteile:

Act-On offers automated program templates, all of which are completely customizable to meet our needs in driving leads in our marketing plan. The ease of use which is visually appealing with drag-and-drop, list segmenting, lead scoring options and integrations all work for our organization on both the user level and administrator level.

Nachteile:

Pricing as this tool is at the higher end of some marketing resources. Also, the inability to schedule integrating segment runs at the earliest of four hours has caused issues with some of our marketing aspects.

Buyer Beware!! Not a sophisticated system in the least

Kommentare: The worst. Beware - do NOT fall for this "automation" system. Go with something that actually supports the workflow of marketers in 2018.

Vorteile:

Absolutely nothing. I came from using Pardot at my previous company and then was stuck with this poor excuse for an automation system for two years. Luckily we're in the process of switching back to Pardot at the moment.

Nachteile:

Pricing Model Not Built to Scale: They think that the "pay for contacts" pricing model is a pro, but it is not! For any marketer with a growing database this is a pure nightmare given that they are basically unresponsive when you need to add more contacts. We are actually currently in a situation where we can't get ANYONE to respond to help us add more contacts, which means that I cannot execute on a very large campaign that we were set to launch yesterday. Customer Service: As mentioned above, good luck getting anybody to actually call you back or fix your issues. If you have any level of sophistication in your marketing programs and automation, it's just a matter of when you're going to run into issues with Act-On, and half the time, they don't even know why the system doesn't work. I just got a call back a few days ago about a support ticket I submitted in JULY (it's October 18 right now). Product: Act-On does not have a contacts database. So if you need to look up a contact and see every list that they are on, every automation program they are in, or to manage their subscriptions or lists, you cannot. That's right - there is no way to globally search for a contact in Act-On. This is absurd. There is no way that you can call yourself an automation system in 2018 and not have this most basic of capabilities.

Wonderful Product. Great Value, Amazing Results!

Kommentare: I've used Act-On for many years and enjoy the ease of use, their great metrics and the intuitive interface. This is a product I can't recommend enough. I use it daily and enjoy the automation as much as I enjoy the social publishing and email marketing abilities.

Vorteile:

Act-On is easy to use and great metrics!

Nachteile:

Nothing I'd change about this software!

Act-on is an easy to use and robust marketing tool.

Kommentare: Our sales team is massively impressed with the capabilities and insights that Act-on provides through the integration with our CRM tool. We have been able to message leads with the right message at the right time easily and are able to have a hands off approach when it comes to funneling leads to our sales team. The value Act-on has added has been worth it.

Vorteile:

Most actions are very intuitive and the tool is easy to navigate.

Nachteile:

Our onboarding experience wasn't the best, but Act-on has since implemented a new onboarding process that involves thorough training and set-up. We went to the bootcamp later and we are pleased that Act-on now offers that at the kickoff for other customers.

Mass marketing approach which is really effective.

Kommentare: Easily deployable and effective tool. No time wasted on unproductive campaigns. Adaptive and secure software.

Vorteile:

There is a huge uniqueness in the services I get from Act-On compared to my switch softwares. I have experience a fast way to reach out to our leads through SMS and emails. It is quite effective and saves time too. We have been able to collect important data concerning our marketing efforts. It is generally easy to launch and user friendly.

Nachteile:

I can't get enough of this. Act-On is easy to use and quite customizable. I have only experienced advantageous services so far.

A very customizable software that allows us to carry out high-level marketing.

Kommentare: Since Act-On came to our company, we have noticed that we have had a positive impact on our clients, we have improved the attention to their needs, since we can segment clients, automate email advertising and maintain good advertising strategies with the help of the functionalities of this software.

Vorteile:

We like to use Act-On to have a bigger impact on our clients, the personalization is very good, it empowers our sales force, it keeps the marketing automated which allows us to maintain a good interaction with our clients, good detailed reports. It allows us to segment our clients to design specific marketing strategies.

Nachteile:

Our expectations with Act-On have been exceeded as we have increased our sales and customer acquisition, we have achieved good ROI with this software, the implementation was easy and it has great technical support.

If you take advantage of all of its features, you will succeed.

Vorteile:

We chose Act-on as our marketing automation software because of its native integration with Salesforce, our CRM at the time. We made the move from Marketo, and Act-on has a much easier user interface. There were so many things we could track and do. We had great customer service, including weekly calls with a customer experience rep.

Nachteile:

Like most marketing automation software, the key to success is learning all of the ins and outs of the system, then create a strategy surrounding it. If you don't have someone on your team willing to take advantage of all of the features, the price might outweigh the benefit. Our customer experience rep could have helped more in overall strategy and campaign building, but they were incredibly busy, too busy to go in depth on those items. The team ended up moving to a simpler and cheaper product because they weren't taking advantage of everything Act-on had to offer.

ACT-ON customer service is fading fast

Kommentare: I was looking for an email tool that integrates with MS CRM and this product fits the bill. It allows you to drip campaigns, which is nice (albeit not intuitively). Just make sure you give yourself ample time for their assistance.

Vorteile:

In the landscape of marketing automation systems, ACT-ON is not the most powerful solution, but it is not the most expensive. It works quite well for our needs.

Nachteile:

I generally don't need a lot of support, but if I can't find a solution on their knowledge base, I have no choice but to call them directly. Ever since ACT-ON closed one of there offices a few months ago, it has been taking me an hour to get through on their support line. I had someone email in June and said they would get back to me very soon. After 6 weeks, I emailed them back and then received a response.

Seamless integration with a CRM system

Kommentare: Act-On simplifies marketing automation, enhances time management, enables precise tracking, and efficiently strengthens collaboration with our CRM

Vorteile:

Act-On has proven to be a valuable tool in optimizing my marketing efforts in the aviation industry. Efficient task automation has freed up my time, allowing me to focus on more creative strategies and high-quality content generation.

Nachteile:

While Act-On offers customization, some advanced features may require deeper technical skills.

Agree with recent Forrester Wave Report

Kommentare: I started out using Marketo years ago and while I was a power user and loved the depth of features, others in the company found it to be complex and most could use it for only the basics. I moved on to Pardot and I really liked it, and I even attended their user conference three years ago in Atlanta - which unfortunately, was when they pass along the news to customer that they have been acquired and would end up Salesforce's portfolio. Pardot was moved into their Sales Cloud (and ExactTarget went to the Marketing Cloud), and the result has been, other than some UI improvements, almost no innovation at all... and a major rise in costs, where it's extra for phone support, they charge for Salesforce Engage, they charge for Wave Analytics, etc. etc. Meanwhile, Act-On has been the steady player in the market that has continued to advance - and you see that in Forrester's Q4 2014 Wave report where Act-On moved to the upper, Leader quadrant ahead of Pardot and HubSpot (though, I'd say that HubSpot has always been more "Movement-First" versus "Product-First" where they invest more in their marketing then their marketing features, particularly with their focus on their CRM now). Act-On received a large round of investment money, brought in loads of new talent on the executive team and down, and continue to push out new features faster than others on the market. They were first to launch Account-based Marketing, their Social tools are very advanced (Forrester scored them higher than HubSpot for example), built Data Studio that allows us to push to our BI easily (Tableau), they overhauled all of their composers (email, landing page and forms), added dynamic content & personalization features, and added a unique way to create Program Templates that is awesome and now have a growing library of templates you can grab and use that build out all the nurture program steps for you automatically (including sales alerts, CRM campaign updates, basic or advanced if/then scenarios, etc.). I've always thought that price should not be a big driving factor for which tool to use. But, their Active Contacts model allows you to pay for what you use, versus the size of your database - and where Marketo and Pardot are adding more modules, Act-On includes everything in their Enterprise edition. And their Support is also fantastic. Don't be fooled. This is an advanced tool that medium and large companies are using.

Vorteile:

Sincerely easier to use than others on the market, great overall feature set, love the dynamic content options, program templates were a game changer, account-based marketing provides visibility into how programs are doing at the Account-level that we haven't had.

Nachteile:

The UI is slowly being overhauled but I'd like to see this go faster. Their out-of-box reports aren't great, but I haven't run across a marketing automation platform who has great reporting (I do like Marketo's Opportunity Analyzer report) and we use Data Studio to simply pull data out the way we want it to populate our reports in excel or Tableau

Act-On helps me stay organized and save time.

Kommentare: When Act-On is working smoothly, I am able to keep in contact with my prospects, to know what they are looking at and what interests them as well as to determine how I need to send communications to them. The insight that Act-On provides into the life of the leads is very helpful by allowing me to stay organized and save time.

Vorteile:

With Act-On's Activity History, I am able to view a Timeline that helps to keep me organized so I know what I may still need to send and so that I have a good idea about whether or not my prospects are getting communications that they should. Sometimes, with email blasts emails may not get through an organization's spam filter, but using the Activity History and Timeline in Act-On and testing by sending things through Act-On Anywhere in Outlook help to determine who need to receive emails alternate ways.

Nachteile:

Often times, maintenance and issues are not brought to our attention prior to us having issues with the software not working or causing issues with our campaigns. Having warnings in advance of when maintenance is being done or of possible known issues so that we can watch for them and be prepared would help a great deal.

Best Marketing Automation Tool ever!

Kommentare: Coming from no experience at all, to being able to automate programs and have all the detailed information and reporting on them is a huge step for me. I've been using other Marketing Automation platforms also, but they are just to complicated.
Act-On is very user-friendly and easy to use, learn and understand, and also has very detailed step-by-step guides to every feature they offer, besides the courses you can go over at their University.
Customer support is always there to help and very effective.

Vorteile:

That you can do everything in one place, you don't need to code anything, (it is useful if you want to improve features or personalize a little bit more, but really not necessary) all modules are easy to use. You have Social Media, Automation, Reporting, Scoring, detailed contact information, connectors, etc.

Nachteile:

I think that lists could be updated a bit, like being able to sort by any of the columns. I don't like that they don't have a connector for Instagram and only to webinar options.

Daily Act-On User

Kommentare: It is an excellent tool to use whilst prospecting and almost provided you with 'warm' leads, especially when they return to your website and look at product details etc.

Vorteile:

The only feature I use is to see who has been on our website. You are able to see who has been on your website and what links they have clicked on. Works really well when sending out speculative mails. You are able to see who actually looks at your mails and who has a genuine interest when they click further into links.

Nachteile:

On occasions you can see someone has been on the website, but can't track down who (as no IP address present) I understand this may be security measures their end and there is no way of ever knowing. I have real issues linking ActOn with my Outlook mail.

clunky, mediocre, customer support is hit or miss and hard to get a hold of

Vorteile:

I like that I can build drip campaigns or send one-time emails. I also like using the send over time feature. I like the variety of options in how to customize email content.

Nachteile:

The tool is clunky-not very user friendly. It takes too many clicks to get to the screen you want, whether it's changing a step in an automated program or checking email opens on a report. The reporting is very limited and makes my reporting process very manual because it doesn't provide what I need. Whenever I call customer service, there is at least a half an hour wait to get through. If I leave a voicemail, they do not call back. They email instead and provide very limited answers in the responses, so it takes multiple emails back and forth to get the information I need. The whole email process takes several days until my issue is resolved.

Budget-friendly marketing automation that does what we need

Kommentare: We've worked with Act-on for more than three years and have appreciated what it accomplishes for us. Customer service has always been responsive, as well. If you can't necessarily affort one of the major players in the market, Act-on is a great alternative.

Vorteile:

The automated programs make staying in touch with customers and prospects very easy. You can set up quite complicated programs that incorporate not only emails to the target audience but that also notify internal staff and other functions.

Nachteile:

It's not as complete as some other systems. For instance, the website info you can get is not super detailed or useful. As well, connecting with a CRM that isn't already integrated is not a simple task.

Great but with a learning curve

Kommentare: It’s been a great tool but because we couldn’t utilize all the features internally, we had to hire a consultant.

Vorteile:

This is a very robust email marketing program with marketing automation capabilities. We switched to Act On to be able to take advantage of setting up automated campaigns based on user behavior both in our emails and on our website.

Nachteile:

Because the automation capabilities are so robust, this software has a very steep learning curve. It would not have been feasible for us to use this for marketing automation in-house without a full time person just using Act-on. We had to hire a consultant to be able to use this software.

Act-On Is An Excellent Tool

Kommentare: Act-On is the engine that my marketing success runs on.

Vorteile:

It's functionality and diverse tools makes it the top-of-class when it comes to marketing automation platforms.

Nachteile:

In recent months, the customer service has not been as strong as in the past. It seems like it takes more than 48 hours to get questions/concerns of mine answered.

Easy to use

Kommentare: Overall great experience with the platform. The ease makes the biggest difference.

Vorteile:

Very simple user interface. With a team spread out across the country, there was no problem in teaching everyone how to use this platform. Really like that I can schedule out my email for time zones, that is a great feature.

Nachteile:

Sometimes painfully slow to run. Also, help desk would take a long time to respond to a request that would be marked as urgent. While I understand a small company is not biggest fish to fry, it would be nice to have responses within an hour if marked urgent during normal business hours.

surprised (not a good way)

Kommentare: Let met take an example. You want to create a decent marketing automation campaign. For this, you need to create landing pages but first, landing pages templates. oh, I want forms in it so lets create some forms templates to create a form for this landing page template. You do your landing page etc.. and you need to change something in the form. You must go to forms, edit the form to modify it in the templates..... Why not on the go actions ? this would make so much less clicks and back and forth actions... The preview mode for the landing pages is not very a preview mode because you can't really preview all things (like hoovering colors changing on a button, actions on buttons etc) so what is the point ? Maybe I don't really understand your way of thinking but the tool seems to be made by programmers who are not really into User Experience and User Friendly stuffs.
This is maybe a bit too critical but this is my honest review of a intense user.

Vorteile:

We like the fact that is it powerfull and we have so much possibility with it

Nachteile:

BUT the way to get things done is not very straight foreward. for example, you don't have any customer support - just deal with the manual and the community (this business model is used by sub brand of big brands), the fact that it is not very user friendly (no possibility to edit pictures directly in the landing pages / emails..).

Satisfied with product

Kommentare: I think Act-On is a great tool for marketing. I've been using it for the past year and a half and finally feel confident with it. It does take time to understand everything, but customer service and the free webinars have been a huge help.

Vorteile:

Once you figure it out, it's a very simple tool to use and can be easily accessed.

Nachteile:

The form set-up. I think the set-up is complicated & could use some tweaking. I don't like that you have to create a new form (when pulling the data) if you add anything new into the original form.

ActOn rocks

Kommentare: as our Marketing automation platform we use ActOn daily for lead gen email campaign send, as well as client communications.

Vorteile:

Ease of use from start to finish- fairly intuitive software so it is easy to train new folks on, too!

Nachteile:

the layout has some glitches every once & a while- looks one way in review pane & then totally different in the test send.

Act-On Review

Vorteile:

The ease of reporting and how well it integrates with Salesforce

Nachteile:

the customer service can take a while to resolve an issue

A 2nd tier product in the race of Marketing Automation

Kommentare: In my experience with using Pardot, Marketo, Hubspot, and Act-On (email marketing only solutions such as MailChimp and Constant Contact as well...), Act-On is still playing catch-up with the bigger, more enterprise companies in terms of technical capabilities. Its support system is great, however.

Vorteile:

Support team, the fact that Act-On is growing quickly

Nachteile:

Inability to sort information on the platform itself, rigid reporting and display of data, certain key functions that should be given to everyone are add-ons, has no predictive, real-time adjustment, automated insights, multi-channel marketing funnel value analysis, etc. yet.

A Decent Marketing Automation Tool

Vorteile:

You can do a lot with Act-On, so long as you know how to use it. It integrates well with SalesForce and is really useful for tracking engagement and behavior via email and web pages.

Nachteile:

Act-On gets the job done on marketing automation, but it's not pretty or easy to navigate. Its UI looks like it dates back to the early 2000's. It is very cluttered and disorganized. Although there are a lot of features, they are a pain to find and implement smoothly together. It is difficult to manage data inside of it.