Likelihood to Recommend When choosing a marketing automation system, it is important to think of what exactly you want it to do. I think no matter what you are hoping to get out of a marketing automation platform, you can achieve it with ActiveDEMAND. It can be used for simple/basic marketing email sending and campaign execution or it can be used to develop a microsite, create sales and marketing kiosks, run multi-step campaigns, host protected assets or whatever you want to do with it. You can easily choose (or ignore) the modules and features to be as creative as you choose to be.
Read full review Cordial has multiple options to create a message: single campaign, automation, orchestration and sculpt templates, which are drag-and-drop type functionalities but each of these blocks are based on HTML content so a user needs to be technically savvy. I would avoid using HTML includes as it is not possible to see which include a customer received. The team is fabulous, they know the tool and are dedicated to the success of the business. They are quick to respond and provide feedback. Reporting and analytics are very manual if you are combining multiple days in a test.
Read full review Pros Customer Service - this company EXCELS at customer service, always answering our questions and being helpful. Innovative Ideas - they stay on top of the trends in marketing, offer ways for us to incorporate these items into our efforts. Friendly staff - the staff at ActiveDEMAND are great to work with and are responsive to our needs. Read full review Provides helpful desktop and mobile previews. Sends emails reliably. Allows for pretty robust audience rules. Read full review Cons Reporting - Though the reporting is extensive and very very good... I sometimes miss a simplified view of email opens/clicks/link clicks etc. Don't get me wrong, you can get to this data in ActiveDEMAND relatively easily, the default views through the campaign dashboard are just quite detailed (which some people would probably prefer) and I just don't think that we need that level of reporting on first glance. That being said, I do love the option to drill down and uncover the complex detailed data when i do want it (ActiveDEMAND is very good at this). One element of reporting that I would also like would be an event registrant report showing all registered people (this part exists) and their responses on the registration form they completed to register for the event. (These things would be dietary restrictions, industry, customized responses to other event related questions). I also wish the reports autorefreshed more frequently. ICS Files - Right now there are work arounds for loading an ICS file (Calendar meeting invite file) that can be accessed in campaign assets. I just wish this was more native to the tool. Archive Filing - Now, first of all, it is so amazing that ActiveDEMAND even has an archiving feature... I LOVE this. One small downside, however, is that the archiving cannot be organized using a folder structure or anything. I would like to be able to group my live events together, then group my webinars together etc. Read full review Some of the tasks on the platform are still technical in nature and often requires the help of a developer or technical marketer. But I've witnessed great strides towards accessibility and ease of use for non-technical marketers over the past three years. A lot of the templating must be built from scratch. Deliverability insights (out of the box) could be expanded further. Read full review Alternatives Considered Vertical Response wasn't a full marketing platform at the time when we used it, but it was clunky and the tech support wasn't easy to use. I like the one-on-one response we get from ActiveDemand and really being on a first name basis with the folks there
Read full review Cordial by far has the best UI for simple navigation
Read full review Return on Investment Simplified email marketing and event management Better tracking of leads Better intelligence about which initiatives are working well and where future opportunities lie Less reliant on IT department/third party to execute our online marketing Read full review Best to manage your clients' business. Not ideal for freelancers. Read full review ScreenShots