Recommended Autoresponder – ActiveCampaign Review
Visual eMail Automation In An Autoresponder
If you have any type of a contact list to which you want to send email updates to, this is one of the top services. You can send newsletters, a broadcast email, an automated sequence of emails, or a direct 1:1 email.
You can manage your contacts with tags, track visits to your website, and integrate with a bunch of other services such as payment processors and membership sites.
This is an autoresponder that I use regularaly and manage for clients. Be sure to check it out, and if you are interested in having me set it up and manage for you, just drop me a line.
ActiveCampaign
The ActiveCampaign autoresponder is very flexible and capable. In addition to the expected capability of sending either one-time email campaigns or a full sequence of emails in an automation, ActiveCampaign offers tracking and contact management features.
It also offers a visual designer for your email contruction and also for the flow of your autoresponder series.
RECOMMENDED
Setup is Very Simple
I've tried a lot of autoresponders and I find myself pressed to say that any of them are super easy. But ActiveCampaign is one of the easier systems.
Fact of the matter is, there is a lot of capability in ActiveCampaign, and mastering it requires getting to know a lot of settings and steps. That being said, if you start out just concentrating on the basics - like sending a one-time campaign - you will get to know that fairly quickly and be able to grow in complexity from there.
It's More Than A Autoresponder
Every autoresponder out there allows you to send emails and automated sequences of emails. But ActiveCampaign focuses on contact behavioral actions. You can monitor all sorts of contact actions such as visiting a web page, clicking a link in your email, or replying to your email.
This really can take your customer care and marketing to the next level.
A Visual eMail Editor
Editing emails in ActiveCampaign is pretty straightforward with their visual editor. It is a drag n' drop interface that uses predefined 'blocks' of content type. There are block types for text, images, social media links, headings, etc. To create the email you simply drop the content type block wherever you want it to appear - could be a new row or a new column - and then edit the content.
An Available Integrated CRM System
If you want to take your contact management to a new level, you can choose a plan with an integrated CRM system. There are so many ways that you can ramp up your game and manage the communications with your contacts. For example, you may have a prospecting funnel and have each contact assigned to an account manager. In ActiveCampaign with CRM you can manage the entire contact lifecycle and followup process right within ActiveCampaign.
Tag, Your It
Tags are little pieces of information that you can add to a contact's record. These tags can represent just about anything you can think of. Just a few that I can think of are:
- Where did the contact sign up from?
- What affiliate are they associated with?
- What products is the visitor interested in?
- What membership level is the contact?
- Which emails did the contact open?
So what can you do with tags? You can use the tags to segment out a portion of your contacts such as everyone who is a customer. Or you can start an autoresponder series to a contact when a specific tag is added to their record. Of course, there are other things you can do also, but that should get you thinking.
Intelligence Driven Automations
You want to send information to your contacts when it is timely for them. It could be that they are in the middle of an online course, have opened a previous email from you, or have a support question. The ability to have action based triggers allows you to deliver content to your contacts when it is the most appropriate to them.
Templates
There are multiple templates and styles available that are pre-designed for your use. I don't know how many templates there are in total, but it's a bunch. Of course, I doubt that you will use all the templates; my guess is that you will ultimately use fewer than ten of them. But everyone seems to like a different style either due to personal taste or branding needs. So it's nice to have a great selection of templates to start with.
... which leads me to the next comment. You can start with one of the prebuilt templates, modify it with your images, branding colors, and boiler text, and then save it as your own template. That way any new email that you create can start with your look and layout in the email.