A Solid Marketing Automation Platform

We are a media publisher that used Act-On primarily for sending out marketing emails — about 20+ a month, supporting a white paper site, and hosting 2 webinars a month. Act-On made it super easy to set up and market webinars from the initial thought, through sending a copy of the webinar to attendees when done and every step along the way. I've used about 4 different marketing automation platforms and I can tell you that Act-On was by far the easiest to send email campaigns in, from initial email creation to sending.

Pros

I liked that over the past four years I have worked with the product I have seen it grow leaps and bounds. They have a team that is dedicated to making smart improvements with the product.

Cons

Like all products this isn't perfect. I had the most problems with our sales rep kept changing. Also, once in a blue moon a feature would change without proper notification.

Meeting goals and driving leads with Act-On

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Well designed, thoughtful workflow

Pros

Once we figured it our, it was extremely smart and well designed workflow.

Cons

Tricky to understand and use appropriately at first

Wonderful Product. Great Value, Amazing Results!

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.

Pros

Act-On is easy to use and great metrics!

Cons

Nothing I'd change about this software!

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

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Needs more improvement in UI and UX

its was an ok use software but not the best. I use hubspot now, try to replicate hubspot acton

Pros

Less expensive, serves the purpose for a while not for long run

Cons

ui and ux is very poor and navigation was not so friendly

Great Automation Program, Especially for SugarCRM Users

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Great but with a learning curve

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Would Recommend For Basic Marketing Needs

Act-On has supplied us with a platform to create quality looking emails and marketing materials with ease.

Pros

Act-On is an extremely easy to use software. It is mapped out in a user friendly fashion to where you feel you are utilizing as much as possible from the program.

Cons

We have encountered a few deliverability issues with sending our email campaigns and I've felt that at times Act-Ons customer service has not always been the most responsible or understanding. They provide help but not necessarily in correlation with the severity of the matter.

A strategic tool to build successful marketing campaigns

Having a marketing automation tool such as Act-on is a really benefit to run successful marketing campaign. When we started using Act-On, we realized we were not as organized as we thought we were; It kind of "forced" us (in a positive way) to rethink our campaigns, how we built them and what we expected from them. We were able for the first time to really segment and target our audience. We saw a significant increase in our opening and click rates, we could trigger more interest by sending relevant content to our audience, and this led us to more qualified and interested leads. This tool allowed us to track our audience and create reports on our tasks and projects such as events, webinars, digital campaign (including google adwords, social media posts, emails, website, landing pages). It is a must-have in our marketing tech-stack. We would advise to really define your needs and do some benchmark; Act-On is a great tool to build segmentation, automated programs, nurturing programs and it can be integrated with many other tools, to create a great and efficient tech stack. It definitely is a tool worth having, but it requires to know where you want to go and what you want to achieve. It took us a few months before understanding and mastering most of what you can do within the platform, and we’re still learning. So be persistent and don’t be afraid to “play with” and test the tool, it’s totally worth it.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

One of the Best Marketing Automation Programs I've Ever Used

My sales and marketing team had so many benefits from this software. The marketing and data analysts had high-level, quality reports that were as detailed or as broad as they wanted. The sales team had live information about their hottest leads and could rely on the lead-generation process to do things automatically. They didn't have to worry about information not being part of the CRM from Marketing because the integration made that seamless. Truly a great program and I didn't even have enough characters to talk about all of the other features too!

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Invaluable Marketing Asset

Pros

Act-On is a robust, yet easy-to-use solution that combines multiple marketing applications into one. It has been a workhorse for us. While it can serve more than a dozen vital functions, including social media management and ABM, I most appreciate its integration with our CRM system (Microsoft Dynamics 365) and how it can be used to automate nurture programs, score leads based on behavior/engagement, and monitor web site visitor activity. I’m also very impressed by members of the tech support team who are very patient and have bailed us out of an after hours pinch more than once.

Cons

Keeping up with the constant evolution of Act-On is a full-time job. I often feel like we’re 5 steps behind in understanding newly released features and everything it can do. Of course, that’s a good problem. My only true critique is that the organization seems to have gone through some growing pains and lost its personal touch along the way. When I first selected and implemented Act-On at my previous company 4 years ago, I felt like our sales rep and implementation team were truly invested in our success. I was so impressed by the product and Act-On’s customer success team that I implemented it again at my next company and recommended it to several peers. However, faces began to change quickly, and we had 3 different reps in the same year. Our new contacts were less interested in our success and more interested in what we could do for them. One became obsessed with recruiting our company as a reseller. Things have settled down, but I don’t feel like they value our business as much as they once did.

Agree with recent Forrester Wave Report

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Powerful and user friendly marketing automation suite with excellent customer support

We've been able to bring our marketing data into one place and create a more unified platform from which to send out our marketing campaigns.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Excellent Segmentation and Automation Tools

Act-On is instrumental for meeting our company's revenue goals with email marketing campaigns.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

ActOn -- act on it!

ActOn allows me to get important professional messaging out to my target audience in a timely basis. I am impressed with their can-do customer support team. They always help me figure out a solution to building content. The software wear offers so much in terms of content marketing, form building and automated drip campaign functionality. The email content reporting and tracking is also very good.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Act-On helps me stay organized and save time.

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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 for small B2B business

We needed a platform to help us segment and reach customers across many varied products lines, and this has helped. Adding in customer service analytics and social media mindshare, and we are pleased with what Act-On provides.

Pros

Ease of use is first and foremost. To create, segment and automate emails of value that will reach our varied customer base is key for us. The social media aspect of Act-On is also a valued feature that not only allows us to plan when our content is shared but what content hits at the right time. We don't use the scoring as much as most companies probably do, but our dive into behavioral analytics through Act-On is yielding great results as well.

Cons

Main dislike: More personalization for our sales force to view how their customers are responding. Dashboard is fine, for sure, but we'd love a better way for them to witness the contacts happening.

Good marketing automation, with some catches

Overall, Dynamics CRM is the biggest problem; however, if Act-On is going to support its integration with the platform, it has to better understand it. Besides that, I like the tool. It has a lot of bells and whistles and is competitively priced against similar marketing automation programs.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Best Marketing Automation Tool ever!

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Best Cost-Effective Marketing Automation Software

Our company has tried different Marketing vendors, and not every experience has been a pleasant one. This is why I can say with confidence that Act-On is the best Marketing Software that we have found. Not only do they deliver a great product, but the customer experience has been stellar from Day One. You can really feel they care about their customers and I especially love the fact that I am not treated like just a client number. It's always great to find a vendor that takes such great care of their clients. Our Product Management and Marketing Teams are definitely #TeamActOn! One of the things that Act-On does better is their Salesforce integration which works both ways, meaning that no matter where the lead information originates, it will synchronize correctly as it should, which was not the case with other software we tried. Act-On's out-of-the-box Webinar integration with GoToMeeting and WebEx simply works and there's no need to purchase or subscribe to additional "Apps" as was the case with other Marketing platforms. We really appreciate their service--it has helped our Marketing Team be more efficient and take our Marketing campaigns to the next level. Did I mention that our Sales Team loves seeing who's visiting our website? They even have their own Act-On Tab in Salesforce with leads in their territory based on Act-On's lead scoring. I feel that Act-On provides the best value from the marketing software that I've personally vetted. They recognize that sometimes you don't market to the same individuals all the time, which is why their pricing model is based on the number of active contacts you e-mail each month. Unlike other vendors, you are not locked into a 12-month or greater commitment contract. The contract is on a monthly basis and you can cancel at anytime--they truly earn our business on an ongoing basis. If I had to change anything, I would probably request for greater reporting capabilities when it comes to integrating our Google AdWords campaign, but it looks like they plan on rolling out some improvements in that area soon. Overall, Act-On is a great service and we plan on being a customer for many years to come.

Very Solid Product for Very Little Money

Our target markets have become much more complicated as we've grown, and ActOn allows us to segment our campaigns to send the right message to the right audience - by geography, vertical, etc.

Pros

Syncing with SFDC is awesome. Easy to use - novices can pick it up quickly. Reporting is quite good and easy to understand. Love the continuous product improvements that are made.

Cons

WYSIWYG can drive you crazy, especially with formatting and fonts and hyperlinks, making it tedious to get the look you want. Lately it has been very slow to load, especially photos/graphics.

Daily Act-On User

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Dynamics Compatible, Great Value

An unexpected benefit has been in the customer support department. Proactive email drips for recent purchasers helps that team provide great service consistently through scheduled email programs with tips and tutorials.

Pros

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.

Cons

Unfortunately the software does not function well on iOS devices.

Great tool starting out but has some minor flaws

It's a great tool starting out but I think in the long-run you would need another option. If you're looking for a pretty simple, effective marketing automation platform that syncs with Salesforce easily and can do some pretty advanced things, this is a great option but may not be the best if you're looking to do advanced tactics.

Pros

- 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).

Cons

- 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.

Happy Journey from ZohoCRM/Act-On to Salesforce/Act-On

A few years ago, after consulting and then joining a growing small business, the president and I threw out Microsoft's Business Contact Manager and brought up ZohoCRM integrated with GoogleApps/Mail. The combination was a 'right-size' approach at the time, for many months. But as the customer database grew, the reporting needs and interest in integrating marketing automation intensified, we knew we needed to augment or replace the use of Vertical Response for outbound. Surveying the segment, I found and researched Eloqua, Marketo, and Act-On. As we were staffing limited, time was valuable, complex solutions were of no interest. We went with Act-On and have never looked back. The recent migration from moving from the ZohoCRM platform to Salesforce.com as the needs and demands grew has gone quite smoothly. I have seen the comments related to Salesforce by others and believe that for some who are not going to try to work towards automation, and for whom a solid Ecosystem of solutions from which to draw are not important, ZohoCRM can be an attractive solution. But, if a minimal level of usage sophistication begins to be applied, integration with other systems like Lead Management/Marketing Automation is important (and at this point, it should be for nearly any business with revenues over a few hundred $K a year) the Salesforce/Act-On combination has been killer-good,

Pros

Act-On is FAST to get running, whether using alone, or in conjunction with another platform like Salesforce. Answers, insight, follow up automation are all easily obtainable quickly without being sent to a week-long training seminar for $1500.

Cons

Act-On is still building out some capabilities that other players like Eloqua have had. But if you're just starting out, you're not likely to need those features for some time as you get your feet under you. A/O is best for small to mid-size firms.

Very Effective

My experience has been great! We don't have an overly complicated marketing plan and this does everything that we need it to do.

Pros

This software works very well for our company. A lot of people I've chatted with feel it's out of date but for us, it's perfect. It's easy to write and send an email campaign, and even easier to track the results! I also appreciate how easy it is to use with Dynamics CRM and upload .csv files.

Cons

There really isn't anything I don't like about this software. I haven't had a negative experience and it hasn't disappointed me in any way.

Budget-friendly marketing automation that does what we need

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Act-On Worth The Marketing Dollars

Act-On is one of the best values for what you get in regards to marketing automation systems. It is worth the cost.

Pros

Act-On is an easy to use marketing automation platform. I've used Marketo in the past, and Act-On was much simpler and user friendly. Over the last 2 to 3 years they've enhanced the look and feel of the product only for the better. But perhaps the portion of Act-On that I like the most is the support. They offer top tier support. It actually might be some of the best support I've had for a SaaS offering.

Cons

I do wish they had a few more options around landing pages. Unfortunately, HubSpot blows them out of the water on this feature.

The Best Marketing Automation Tool

Highly recommended, this is the second company in which i have worked for and implemented Act-On. This is my go to marketing automation tool.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

ACT-ON customer service is fading fast

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

This is really a marketing tool that has build some features for salespeople

Pros

I like that it will track my emails and log them to our CRM (Microsoft Dynamics). I like that I can get a daily email letting me know of known and anonymous visitors to our website.

Cons

It's clunky to try and track down a specific email to see if the recipient has interacted with it. This is really a tool that is more valuable to marketing, but has built some features that are being sold as a sales tool. It's a nice to have, but not a need for sales.

Easy to use

Everyone I have spoken to from account manger, tech support and engineers for trouble shooting any problem that we have have been really helpful. They have always figured out a way to fix the problem especially with our really complex list that we have.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Over-promising and under-delivering are key traits of Act-On

Overall I would give Act-On a low pass. The issues with customer service, slightly overpriced and the lack of proper development plagued my experience. If I could go back, I would have used HubSpot or Marketo. At the moment, we have cancelled our Act-On account after 3-4 years and are using a stack of SaaS solutions tied into our practice management system. This is far more cost efficient, easy to use and with better customer service. My advice would be for businesses considering using Act-On due to the price of the above-mentioned competitors to use a stack approach instead of using this system. Using Vision6/Campaign Monitor/MailChimp in tandem with a better landing page provider (Unbounce, Instapage) linked to a CRM would be far better. Stay away, particulalry due to the service - this is even more important for Australian based consumers.

Pros

The system was pretty easy to use. The set-up process for lead nurturing, forms, creating newsletters and other tools were pretty useful.

Cons

Customer service, account limits, aesthetics were below average. The customer service was woeful, the original salesperson who on-boarded me and two referral partners promised the world features wise. Lots of nice looking mocks and promises were made yet nothing provided. On the customer service side of things, on two occasions when the unique contacts and email limit was exceeded the entire system shuts-down. All nurturing campaigns cease and there is no ability to send any emails at all. It took two weeks for someone to be able to apply a temporary increase to allow our marketing efforts to continue.

Act-On Is An Excellent Tool

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

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Act-On's strengths are it's customizability and robust features.

Great piece of marketing and survey software. Very powerful and can have multiple uses in almost any organization.

Pros

Act-On's back end really customizable and you're able to make your emails look exactly how you want. The landing pages you make are able to capture documents (like jpgs or PDFs) so participants can upload files making it really easy to download all the attachments along with their responses at once. I also appreciated the ability to schedule survey reminders to participants in advance and to cross check that with live results. This means that you could schedule a reminder to go out at 8AM tomorrow, but if someone completed the survey at 7:59AM, they wouldn't receive the reminder. Great feature.

Cons

It's very admin and training heavy. The software is not intuitive and you need to setup the pieces of the survey/email first (I.e landing pages, contact list, etc) before you start working on the actual survey or email.

Great product

Act-On is a mainstay of my marketing team. If I could keep only one product or service it would be Act-On. Great team behind it in my experience.

Pros

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

Cons

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!

Easy to use

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Easy to Use Marketing Automation Platform

We've built all of our landing pages in Act-On, and every marketing emails is sent through the software.

Pros

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.

Cons

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).

surprised (not a good way)

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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..).

If уоu wаnt tо hаvе а suссеssful busіnеss, уоu nееd Aсt-On

Pros

I’m а рart оf а sаlеs аnd mаrkеtіng tеаm, аnd wе hіghlу аррrесіаtе thіs sоftwаrе. It hеlрs us соunt еvеrуоnе, whо vіsіts оur wеb раgе, іnсludіng sіgn-іn сustоmеrs аnd аnоnуmоus vіsіtоrs. Nоw wе саn еаsіlу sеt uр аutоmаtеd рrоgrаms, whісh mаkеs оur wоrkflоw sіmрlеr аnd smооthеr. Lаstlу, thе сustоmеr suрроrt іs tеrrіfіс.

Cons

Lіkе аnу рrоduсt, thіs оnе іs not реrfесt. Fоr іnstаnсе, уоu nееd tо gеt fаmіlіаr wіth thіs арр bеfоrе уоu dесіdе tо usе іt. Othеrwіsе, іt іs еаsу tо mаkе mіstаkеs аnd sеt uр wrоng аlgоrіthms. Yоu аlsо nееd tо mоnіtоr thіs арр rеgulаrlу, bесаusе sоmеtіmеs sеttіngs wіll аutоmаtісаllу сhаngе wіthоut рrореr nоtіfісаtіоn.

Satisfied with product

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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 - Pretty Good for the Price

Pros

The platform is very simple to understand and use. You don't need much training before you can get up and running building e-mails, landing pages, and programs for marketing automation. There is a lot of room for customization as well. Also, the price is a bit lower than some other marketing automation software.

Cons

There are some issues within the landing page builder - sometimes it is hard to get the object placement right if you do not know the HTML coding on the back end. The system also can run a bit slow at times.

All the features & exceptional service without overpaying

I'm impressed overall with the Act-On team and I am a client advocate. I <3 AO!

Pros

I like that I am able to have all the functionality I require in a marketing automation tool without overpaying. It is important to me that I can use as much or as little of the software as I need. It's very robust and provides connectors and performance in outbound social and email, scoring, competitive insights, just like it's competitors but without paying for a Farrarri.

Cons

Sometimes I find that I don't understand the handling of cases/issues I bring forward and I get a little frustrated and don't end up with solutions. Sometimes, that's bcs I didn't see an email but I sometimes don't get closure and I wish there was better communication about that aspect.

A repeat customer

Act-On allows us to do some next level segmentation and marketing.

Pros

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.

Cons

Customer service has gone through hiccups of late

ActOn rocks

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

Pros

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

Cons

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

Good alternative for Pardot, but not as comprehensive

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

We specifically communicate with the C-Suite and particularly with the CEO or President of our clients. It's a relationship-selling process and a one-to-one marketing environment with the most difficult demographics imaginable. We needed a marketing automation platform to track visits to our website from various sources: print campaigns, event follow-up, quarterly articles, etc. Before Act-On we had no software solution. We have an enterprise account. The implementation was extremely easy, and integration with salesforce was not too complicated or messy. We had a lot of data scrubbing to do on our end before things were working correctly. It took about 30 days and Act-On was really helpful. Act-On is very easy to use; it only took us a few days after our initial conference call with the support/training group to send out our first campaign. Customer support is very responsive and thorough. I was having difficulty getting one particular form to do what I wanted it to do, but after a quick chat with our support representative (we have our own dedicated account executive and support person) I was creating landing pages left and right. We can see results in near-real-time! (just hit the refresh button and wala!) It's great to have reports that track everything that our executives can understand and show where marketing is making an impact. It's very difficult to tie in marketing to sales a lot of the time, but we can show where a specific individual landed on our site after a campaign or email, and see what their behavior is. After seeing the pages they landed on, we can issue a request for a follow-up call and direct the sales team to what topics might be of interest to the prospect.