Act-On Erfahrungen

I liked everything about this software! It was truly an all-in-one deal. First of all, it integrated with our CRM (we used SugarCRM). The features related to this integration were: lead generation from our web forms, lead generation from our email campaigns, lead generation based on user action. It also pulled information in from our CRM, so any lead lists we created in our CRM (manually or automatically based on file status, etc) could be pulled into ActOn for campaigns.

Next, it integrated with our website - it also has the ability to design your own website within ActOn that allows for even more neat features. It tracked users across emails & webpages and the reports allowed us to drill down to specific geographical areas of activity, key words used, which pages they were on and for how long, etc. It also gave a numerical value (that you can custom set) to each action and at a certain point could put that contact into a sales cycle or send an alert to the sales team to reach out to them.
Lastly, the automated marketing feature was THE BEST. You have the ability to design a multi-faceted campaign that could run for a set amount of time, or indefinitely. What I found to be the cherry on top was that you could set actions for contacts who didn't do certain things (didn't click, didn't open, etc) and then repeat steps or put them into different tracks.
As huge as this program seems, it was also incredibly easy to navigate. Saved our teams a lot of time and energy.

The most challenging features were the design elements. It was very template based and it took some CSS or HTML skills to make them less-standard. This was true for everything - emails, web pages, landing pages, etc.

Act-On’s automation platform is intuitive, I like the way the menu is built, it’s been made in a logical order so that when you move from one section to another, you go down the logical path to build automation.
The support team is great, they’re efficient and patient ! There are many ways to find answers and tips; the Act-On community, the Act-On university, the online training courses, the webinars, everything is made for us to easily learn and efficiently use the platform.

Sometimes it takes us quite some times to do some simple tasks, for example when editing a step in an automated program, we have to wait a few seconds for the system to record what we edited and allow us to move to the next step. When there are many steps, it can become frustrating. Another example is when editing an image using Act-On editor, it can time many minutes before we can see the changes on the image where it’s being used (in emails, landing page, etc). These delays can be a bit frustrating when you are working on a template and you can’t finish it because some of the assets are still being processed by the system.
The marketing calendar is a bit confusing sometimes, I see messages that have not been sent marked as sent, and we can only have a month view unless we export the details.

We just started using Act-On a few months ago. We had debated marketing automation companies to go with for years. Overall, Act-On was able to go toe-to-toe in most regards with the other vendors we were considering, at least. The deciding factor was the pricing model, which is a bit unusual. They only charge you for "active" contacts, which are contacts you are actually reaching out to. You can import other contacts for reporting, data synchronization, or potential marketing purposes down the line if you wish, and you won't be charged for them. The support team at Act-On is great. During our evaluation, I received an email from the CEO himself, asking what he could do to help us choose. Throughout implementation, we had several calls and I was always provided what we needed quickly. Act-On does so many things, it would be impossible to cover here, but I like their email and landing page creator. I found it to be very intuitive. The user interface is showing some age, but it's very straightforward and there's not a lot of guessing about how to use it. Act-On is list based, which is the "old" methodology in the industry right now, but if you're a fan of that strategy, you'll feel right at home. Workflow creation is very easy. Data Studio (an add-on) also allows you to create custom reporting, and baked in integrations and an automated FTP connection allow you to get your data talking to each other automatically. The university has great educational information available too.

You'll get out of Act-On what you put into it. The support and university is there to guide you in that process, but it's ultimately up to you. That's how it is with any platform that doesn't offer in-house services, but with a marketing automation suite, you will really get more out of it if you have knowledgeable staff that have experience implementing and using these platforms. It can be daunting if it's your first time using a marketing automation suite. While Act-On is working on some new things, I don't know that they are putting as much effort behind investing into the product as some of the leading companies in the space. Also, some of the tools are a little rudimentary, and the UI could certainly use some modernizing. It feels too much like Windows XP at times.

Act-On gives me the ability to get extremely specific with my target prospects and customers. It's easy to build new segments and immediately see the size of those groups. It's very useful for data mining and determining where to focus your marketing efforts. For example, in just a couple of minutes (assuming you've done the work to collect the information from customers and store them properly in custom lists) you can create a segment of prospects who have downloaded or purchased x product from your website, meet criteria x,y,z for their attributes, have opened or clicked messages in a specific timeframe, and have visited a specific page of your website. You have the ability to get as granular as you want. You can then build automated programs that send targeted and timely messages depending on where these prospects are in your funnel and use conditional logic to define any future interactions.

The UI in some areas of the platform could use some design enhancements for aesthetics and for consistency throughout.

Great support and product learning program. The integration with our CRM and overall features/ease-of-use was excellent. It was a pleasure working with their team.

I'd like to have more in-person user group opportunities to discuss best practices.

- Their support team was stellar
- Their Salesforce integration is the best I've seen in a Marketing Automation Platform
- Their list segmentation system features were fantastic
- We were early subscribers to act-on so we had a really cheap rate

I haven't used this software for a couple years, so they may have improved a lot but here were some of my major gripes:

- Extremely difficult to track lead sources
- Integration with ad platforms wasn't very good
- Landing page builder was terrible
- Lots of limitations with forms
- Email builder was quite painful to use but they made some improvements along the way while I was using them

Act-On is great for most tasks. I can create emails, forms, and drip campaigns with ease. It syncs really easily to Salesforce and I haven't seen a single issue with that yet.

It's not as comprehensive and contemporary as some platforms. The forms aren't dynamic, and the emails are in a modular form instead of an easier drag-and-drop format.

Building mailings is relatively straightforward. There are a decent amount of functions that allow us to customize our mailings in different ways based on content and branding for our various campaigns.

The sorting and filtering functions for sent mailings isn't very robust. The mailing builder is actually really quite finicky sometimes. Adding borders around image blocks causes extra white space around mailings. Also, buttons and other smaller elements render differently in the mailing builder than in Outlook, which is one of the primary email clients people use. Mailings end up looking less polished in Outlook.

Great features
Support

Price
Contract length term

I think you will find ActOn easy to use. I can quickly develop an email and define a target list and send as easily to 10 people or 100,000 people. I also like the reporting and graphs associated with a campaign. I also find the Form editor very valuable b/c I can quickly create a business need survey in a matter of minutes for my internal customers. The responses are easy to analyze b/c they are in spreadsheet form.

ActOn recently rolled out a new forms editor and they did not bring over the reporting URL feature from the Classic Form editor...this would make it easier for my internal customers to pull data vs having me pull the data for them.

Once you learn it, you realize how nice of a tool it is. Email campaigns, lead scoring, assessing total voice of customer -- it's all there.

Unless you get the white glove setup service, it's tough to really figure out what you're doing at first. I would not recommend for Dynamics CRM (it's missing features that other CRMs have). The Outlook email template plugin is nice when it works, but more often than not, there are problems. I do wish they help you better understand what data fields are required in both Act-On as well as the CRM, and how to add/edit what is being integrated.

The company's main advantage (whether they market it or not, but they definitely use it during a sale) is they allow for companies to BUY lists and bring in cold contacts. Almost every other provider prohibits this.

Well, that's why for good companies, your marketing performance and emails drop wayyy down. And worse, their support imagines nothing is wrong, and everything is going OK.

They will also negotiate your price far lower than others, to lock you into an annual contract.

- Email delivery is terrible
- Their support tried to help, but makes false promises on waiting
- Locked into a major contract, which even with their lack of performance, is tough to leave
- Their UI is really, really bad
- Barely any templates for things like landing pages, emails, etc.
- General data between modules is not easy to gather, collect or use for additional sales.

The Dynamics integration was a crucial part of my decision to adopt this software for my company. Ease of use is comparable to any other robust marketing automation tool. We've seen huge value in this purchase.

Unfortunately the software does not function well on iOS devices.

- The simplicity of the interface and overall product
- Creating email programs is a nice drag and drop style
- Pretty advanced options in creating a program
- Salesforce sync is nice when building out lists. Being able to save syncing preferences is a great option that reduces time.
- Don't have to know HTML or CSS to use
- Nice Inbound section for SEO, paid ads, and website visits (if you're doing ABM you can see what companies are coming to your site).

- The platform for us is really slow. We have a lot of emails going out and it can really slow down the entire platform, which can be frustrating.
- Segmenting within a program not that great
- Adding multiple IF branches almost break the entire platform. Clicking on one segment to change can take 10 seconds to load the drop-down menu.
- The menu can get really confusing at times
- Knowledge-base is nonexistent. I can never find any resource from Act-On that helps with problems I encounter. I have to email or call them every time.
- Can't dive into reports (at least in my account). I can see an overall report but I can't dive into specific campaigns, lists or by time period.

I have used and reviewed many tools, but i will say Act-On is my favorite. Easy to use, and the best customer service of any of it's competitors.

The email builder works great but does not live up to my requirements. I wish you could get more advanced with designs.

Act-On is easy to use especially if you know a bit of html knowledge. When designing you can even go into the code and alter it a bit if you know any html. The designs come out nice and clean and you can always work around any issues that comes up.

When designing emails and your using tables and have the image set to the max pixel you have to alter the code for it to display on mobile devices.

Very easy to learn and use the platform. The drag-and-drop Landing Page and Email composers can your team productive with Act-On in no time.

The interface is a inconsistent (some modules have been updated more than others), and there are a few missing nice-to-have options (like the ability to add anchors to CTA buttons - this can be done but by manually adding a button with HTML).

Good set of features and functions. Good product team and exciting roadmap. Easy to implement.

Onboarding could have been better (but that was some time ago now and I know they have improved it). Feature request facility feels like a black hole at times!

We started using this as an alternative to similar features in SalesForce. It does have a ton of features and integrates with many other systems.

We've had nothing but trouble with this since the beginning. Even after two years we still have random issues (services disconnecting) which can take hours to repair. The bulk emails we send from Act-On consistently end up in spam folders and customer support gives us the run around about how to fix it, usually we end up spending hours just to prove to them that this is actually happening.

Act-On has been my go-to solution for the last 5 years. They may not be as well known as some, but they offer great value and a deep bench of functionality. Incredibly innovative too.

Customer service has gone through hiccups of late

customer success team was friendly
feature set sounds useful

interface is abysmal
functionality is limited
product is slow and outdated

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

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.

The customer support, they are very quick to respond and follow-up.

The ease of use you could be improved. More tutorials on new features.