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Act-On

Act-On

Overview

What is Act-On?

Act-On is an adaptive marketing platform designed to drive personal and purposeful multi-channel marketing. Its foci are inbound and outbound marketing, for enabling a tighter alignment with sales and turning data into actionable insights.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Intuitive User Interface: Users have found Act-On's user interface to be intuitive and easy to use, allowing them to complete tasks …
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Act-On review

10 out of 10
September 25, 2019
We are using Act-On to reach our customers through email blasting. We also use landing pages and forms to support our website. Currently …
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A great marketing tool

6 out of 10
May 11, 2019
Incentivized
Act-On is used by several departments. We use it for outbound and inbound marketing purposes. We also use it to score leads coming in for …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 26 features
  • WYSIWYG email editor (112)
    8.1
    81%
  • List management (111)
    8.1
    81%
  • Standard reports (112)
    8.1
    81%
  • Email deliverability reporting (112)
    8.1
    81%
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Pricing

View all pricing

Professional

$900

Cloud
per month (starts at 2,500 active contacts)

Enterprise

$2,000

Cloud
per month ( starts at 2,500 active contacts)

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee required
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.act-on.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Act-On Software Demo

YouTube

Act On! Software Demo

YouTube

Act-On Software and Touchtown: Personalization and the Buyer’s Journey

YouTube
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Features

Email & Online Marketing

Using software to manage lists, send emails, automate email campaigns, and track results.

7.8
Avg 7.8

Lead Management

The process of tracking and managing prospective customers from lead generation to conversion.

8.1
Avg 7.7

Campaign Management

Users can schedule campaigns and/or events with reminders, announcements, etc.

7.5
Avg 7.6

Social Media Marketing

Using social media networks to help amplify marketing endeavors.

8.1
Avg 7.5

Reporting & Analytics

Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.

8.1
Avg 7.5

Platform & Infrastructure

Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.

7.9
Avg 7.6
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Product Details

What is Act-On?

Act-On is an adaptive marketing platform that drives personal and purposeful multi-channel marketing, that aims to spark better inbound and outbound marketing, enable a tighter alignment with sales, and turn user data into substance to act-on.

The vendor states their customers range from start-ups and fast-growing young companies to well-established enterprise institutions; from marketing teams in small and medium-sized businesses, to independent teams in large enterprise corporations. They use Act-On in many different ways to realize their marketing objectives.

Act-On Features

Email & Online Marketing Features

  • Supported: WYSIWYG email editor
  • Supported: Dynamic content
  • Supported: Ability to test dynamic content
  • Supported: Landing pages
  • Supported: A/B testing
  • Supported: Mobile optimization
  • Supported: Email deliverability reporting
  • Supported: List management
  • Supported: Triggered drip sequences

Lead Management Features

  • Supported: Lead nurturing automation
  • Supported: Lead scoring and grading
  • Supported: Data quality management
  • Supported: Automated sales alerts and tasks

Campaign Management Features

  • Supported: Event/webinar marketing

Social Media Marketing Features

  • Supported: Social sharing and campaigns
  • Supported: Social profile integration

Reporting & Analytics Features

  • Supported: Dashboards
  • Supported: Standard reports
  • Supported: Custom reports

Platform & Infrastructure Features

  • Supported: API
  • Supported: Role-based workflow & approvals
  • Supported: Customizability
  • Supported: Integration with Salesforce.com
  • Supported: Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
  • Supported: Integration with SugarCRM

Additional Features

  • Supported: Email Marketing
  • Supported: Lead Scoring
  • Supported: Website Visitor Tracking
  • Supported: Automated Programs (Trigger & Drip Campaigns)
  • Supported: Social Publishing
  • Supported: Reporting & Analytics
  • Supported: SEO
  • Supported: Forms
  • Supported: Events & Webinars

Act-On Screenshots

Screenshot of List Segmentation - Segmentation using behavioral, demographic and/or firmographic dataScreenshot of the Quickstart PageScreenshot of Landing Page Composer - landing pages are designed with a drag and drop function

Act-On Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesAvailable Internationally
Supported LanguagesEnglish, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Thai, Arabic, Hebrew

Frequently Asked Questions

Act-On is an adaptive marketing platform designed to drive personal and purposeful multi-channel marketing. Its foci are inbound and outbound marketing, for enabling a tighter alignment with sales and turning data into actionable insights.

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Net-Results, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud are common alternatives for Act-On.

Reviewers rate WYSIWYG email editor and Dynamic content and Landing pages highest, with a score of 8.1.

The most common users of Act-On are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).

Act-On Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)29%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)67%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)4%
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Comparisons

View all alternatives
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Reviews and Ratings

(407)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Intuitive User Interface: Users have found Act-On's user interface to be intuitive and easy to use, allowing them to complete tasks quickly. Several reviewers expressed this sentiment, highlighting the platform's user-friendly design that requires minimal training.

Flexible and Catering to Different Skill Levels: Act-On has been praised for its flexibility and ability to cater to users with different skill levels. Multiple reviewers commented on how the platform can accommodate both simple and complex campaigns, making it accessible for novice users while also providing advanced features for experienced marketers.

Robust List and Contact Management Capabilities: Act-On's robust list and contact management capabilities have been appreciated by users, enabling seamless communication within the platform. Many reviewers mentioned this as a positive aspect of Act-On, emphasizing its effectiveness in managing contacts and facilitating targeted marketing efforts.

Unintuitive and Confusing User Interface: Multiple users have expressed frustration with Act-On's user interface, finding it to be unintuitive, confusing, and difficult to navigate. Some reviewers mentioned difficulties in finding certain features and abilities, resulting in a time-intensive process.

Limited Customization Options: Several users have mentioned limitations in Act-On's customization options. Specifically, the form builder is considered somewhat difficult to use, with limited CSS customization available, requiring manual updates on every single form. Additionally, the landing page creator lacks flexibility in terms of design and layout.

Performance Issues: Users have reported experiencing slow and laggy performance when using Act-On. Edits often fail to save or are lost if left idle for a few minutes. These issues can significantly impact productivity and frustrate users trying to complete their tasks efficiently.

Users highly recommend Act-On for its ease of use and configurability, praising its resources, innovation, and accessibility. They suggest utilizing the available tools and resources provided by Act-On, such as training video courses, help documentation, and customer service. Users also appreciate Act-On's user-friendly interface and easy accessibility to information and tools.

Another common recommendation is to leverage Act-On's capabilities for email marketing. Users advise properly segmenting email lists and testing email blasts before sending. They find Act-On to be an excellent platform for personalization, targeting specific users, analytics, and automation.

Lastly, users recommend taking advantage of Act-On's support and return on investment. They suggest getting a demo, attending training sessions, and trying Act-On for a month or two to fully experience its benefits. Users find Act-On affordable and praise its fast interface for managing customer relations effectively.

In summary, the most common recommendations from users are to make full use of Act-On's resources and tools, leverage its capabilities for email marketing, and take advantage of the support and training provided to maximize the return on investment.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(176-200 of 219)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
Act-On is being used by my organization and by my clients. It allows us to quickly create and manage integrated marketing campaigns. But more importantly, with Act-On we gain powerful insights that enhance lead generation efforts and increase conversions.
  • Email campaigns and landing pages.
  • List management.
  • Marketing automation - based upon behavioral triggers.
  • Analytics and insights.
  • Responsive design - optimized for mobile devices.
  • Social media scheduling and publishing across multiple channels.
  • User interface.
  • Set-up and implementation.
The pricing models and the month-to-month payment feature, instead of a long term commitment required by competitors.
Audrey Dalton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using it for website intelligence, email campaigns, asset management, and sales use. We primarily use it in marketing but the sales people use it to track their leads and for website intelligence. The biggest thing it solves is being able to coordinate forms, campaigns, and most activity all in one place; we're hoping this year, we'll show some ROI for implementation with upcoming sales from our recent campaigns. The primary reason I decided to make this purchase was to take advantage of segmentation and behavioral scoring which should lead to faster pipeline growth and closed deals.
  • Asset management such as images, media, etc. One or two clicks and you have trackable indefinite urls that can be gated or not.
  • Dashboard view when logging is nicely laid out and customizable.
  • Love the the alerts feature letting us stay on top of hot opportunities.
  • I would love the ability to add in RSS feeds to list segment for our blog and news and press section. From what I've been told, they don't have an RSS feed function yet.
  • I also dislike the email templates. They are a bit dated and aren't very "responsive". I don't use them for those reasons, and just hack my own code. It would be nice if they had improved RWD options.
  • It would be great if they could form a partnership with Uberflip. We run our content through them and it would be helpful to integrate CTAs that directly plug into Act-on.
Act-On rocked when it came to helping us integrate with Salesforce and the website. They helped us every step of the way and continue to do so. I can't thank each and every support and success manager enough. Vinh Nguyen is our current manager. He's super knowledgeable, pleasant and makes an earnest effort to meet with us as soon as we need something. And on another note, Act-On doesn't charge for implementation or account management like some other automation solutions, so you get quite a bit of value with their service.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We primarily use the email blasting capabilities, A/B functionality, and integration with Webex but have also used the SEO and web traffic tracking with success. Act-On has become very instrumental in our ability to reach existing clients and prospects through email and our website.
  • The real highlight of our experience is working with Jacob Monserrat as our primary point of contact. Jacob is extremely well-versed in the capabilities and functionality of Act-On. Our business is built on client service, so Jacob's involvement in our implementation and use of Act-On has been very much appreciated. I would highly recommend Act-On to anyone looking for a great client service experience. They seem to hire and train people who place a high value on making a process simple without dumbing it down.
  • I wish it was a little more consistent in dealing with the professional services (consulting) department.
Although we are a smaller company (25-50 employees), our company culture is to be very diligent in our analysis of any new product or service. Our main considerations were how the interface worked with Salesforce.com and Webex. We have been very pleased.
Patryk Kelley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

I have been using Act-On for over a year and it has been a key part of our marketing plan to deliver important information to our leads and prospective customers. It is both easy to use and offers a high level of customization. This allows for the creation of professional looking marketing collateral.

Act-On support is also great. They offer quick and easy assistance to help with almost any problem. They walk you through the issue until you feel that it has been resolved. Thanks to everyone at Act-On!

  • Great Customer Support
  • Full Package allowing users to create emails, landing pages, forms and great analytics
  • Consistently updating the user interface for a better experience
  • Sometimes the editor can be a little buggy
  • Sometimes things reformat themselves
It is great for departments searching to connect with their prospects with other than just emails. It allows the creation of nurturing campaigns to more fully engage leads.
Salvador Castilla | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using Act-On to hep us optimise our marketing efforts, from Lead nurturing to the creation of automated programmes, We decided to use this tool because it is an complete marketing platform that allows us to have a complete overview of all our marketing activities in one place, great for reporting ROI and it integrated with existing CRM system.
  • Marketing Automation
  • Lead nurturing
  • Social media
  • Dashboards
  • Mobile app
Act-On is well suited for integration to existing business platforms.
Ricky Bandelin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
We are using Act-On as an Agency partner - meaning that we use it for our own business but also support our clients who use the Act-On system. It solves a wide range of business problems, and each of our clients uses the program in a different way. Some clients like it for the increased intelligence they get from knowing who is using their website, others use it to run automated email marketing campaigns, while others use it to track their marketiong ROI tracking leads from capture through to close. It's a great tool for both marketing and sales departments, and helping them work together to capture leads.
  • Tracking ROI from initial touch point all the way through to closing of the sale
  • In depth website visitor intelligence for sales team
  • Lead capture and tracking
  • List management interface is user friendly
  • Automated programs are user friendly and easy to setup
  • Reporting could be improved by offering more ways of exporting the data in the system and preparing customized reports.
B2B and industrial companies are well suited for Act-On because of the CRM integration and the ROI tracking capabilities.
Katie Doyle Kimel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Act-On is currently being used by our marketing department for sending out email blasts to our clients, for setting up out product/industry news webinars, and for allowing us to view how our clients are interacting with our website. The Act-On platform is currently only being used by our marketing department, but we will soon be adding our sales team members as users so that they can see how their clients are responding to our messages. Before we began using Act-On, we were unable to see who was viewing our website, and now we can reach out to those that have been previously cookied when we see that they have been searching our site regarding a specific product line that we carry.

  • Support network - the support function of Act-On is outstanding.
  • Listens to users - if there is something that we feel would be a good addition to the system, they are always looking to make the product more user friendly.
  • Account Manager and Success Manager - always willing to meet online to address questions we have regarding the program.
  • If there is anything that we would like to see done differently in the platform, there is a suggestion portion of the Act-On site that allows users to send a request to see that function added to the product in the future.
Well suited for companies that conduct gotomeetings for their clients. We are able to work the entire process through Act-On, from setting up the meeting, sending out the invitaiton, creating reminder emails, and then following up with customers after the webinar has taken place.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We currently use Act-On as our email provider in the marketing department. It simplifies our email process and allows us to set up automated programs, manage our email lists, and schedule sends so that we can work ahead of the curve.
  • Customer support: Act-On has incredible support. My customer success manager, Jacob Moserrat is always available to answer questions or walk me through a process if I'm unsure.
  • Scheduling sends: Creating and scheduling emails is very straight-forward and easy. The user interface is simple and user-friendly.
  • Deliverability reports: As with my customer success manager, Patrick Cappy, my senior delivery analyst is always available if I have any questions or concerns. He responds in a timely manner and the reports are great.
  • I would love to see an easier way to send remails. Currently, there is an option to resend emails to those who haven't opened an email but I feel it could be easier. I would love to see it set up as an option when I'm scheduling the initial send.
  • We are currently testing out another email provider (signed up at the same time as Act-On) and they have a free text-to-join option. I would love it if Act-On had something similar so that we could quickly and easily sign up new customers to our email list.
I'm currently with a fairly small company with a relatively small email list for now. I'm unsure how well and easily it would perform with a really large company. I am relatively new to the company as well as Act-On so I don't think I can answer this question fairly. So far, I have really enjoyed working with Act-On, over the other email provider we're working with so I'd recommend them to a colleague.
Sharon Welk | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Act-On is being used by our marketing and sales teams. We utilize it to send trackable emails and monitor our website visitors. The business problems relate to efficiency of our outreach, we circle back to those who open/click on our emails and that this info is readily available in Salesforce is very powerful. We had zero intel coming out of our website before Act-On, now we know how to recognize known visitors and capitalize on any website visitors. We can see which ads are driving traffic to the website and understand which LinkedIn groups are successful in generating interest in the same way.
  • The support is fantastic. Joe Brown is my CSR and his responsiveness, efficiency and demeanor make me look forward to bringing questions to him. We have many (at least 5) sales enablement tools and the support is varied of course, but none of these other companies comes close to the level of support we get from Act-On.
  • The integration with Salesforce and Gmail make it seamless and more easily adopted by salespeople.
  • The information I have to provide to our webmaster is simple and easy to update in this dynamic environment.
  • It's complicated because there's so much you can do. It's like Excel where I don't think I'll ever master all the capabilities.
  • Our extremely responsive Act-On reps are quick to work through the steps for us, unfortunately, this means that I'm not always sure how they did it.
  • Some intel requires downloading excel spreadsheets or complex automation. There are a few insights I would like to see more readily available, such as customized alert lists.
Ideal if you have outreach plans well laid out. SEO intel and outside influences driving traffic to your website would also be great in advance of implementing Act-On.
Abhishek Reddy Malipeddi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Act-On has become a key part of marketing and lead generation strategy for the whole business. The lead generation, tracking and nurturing facilities addressed by Act-On along with end-to-end solutions for almost all our marketing needs has been beyond expectations. Over the last couple of months, we have increased our reliance on Act-On due to the excellent results we have seen.
  • Lead Nurturing
  • Database management and cleansing
  • Email management
  • Landing page and forms
  • Out-of-office email handling
  • More features to create landing pages
  • Integration with LinkedIn
Act-On is a very good tool if you rely heavily on email campaigns. They do very well on tracking Google Adwords and website visitors too but the success ratio on finding out the user detail varies as sometimes Act-On can only track them till the ISP they are using and a better lead capture mechanism is required for such situations.
Steve Thielke | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I enjoy being able to see what traffic is coming to our website and from where. I like being able to send email campaigns through it and get that engagement click-through and dive into what else those customers who are interested in our products are looking at. It really is able to help the sales team in this day and age where most consumers have all the information available to them online if they want to do their own research. We are solving the disconnect between marketing and sales that plagues many organizations. With Act-On as our marketing automation platform we are able to close the gap between marketing and sales and actually bring us closer together with the visitor alerts and the integration between Act-On and Salesforce.
  • Website visitor tracking is a big strength and the ability to have the daily digest to show you all these in a nice list view that is linked so that you and others can all see the same data and go dive deeper if desired.
  • They do customer service right. If there are ever any issues it is as simple as calling or emailing in and someone is responding to you within 30 mins. That is what I call customer service.
  • The reports on emails are easy to read and helpful when you are needing to show results internally.
  • Connecting with Salesforce is a breeze and bridges the gap between sales and marketing disconnect.
  • Email Template builder, they are currently in the process of rolling out a new email builder that is very slick with drag and drop functionality but this can always use improvement to keep up with being able to create new fresh looks quickly.
  • Allowing for the internal to be bundled with external functionality. They should be throwing in the SEO optimization parts with their tool and not wanting to charge extra. You retain customers for longer by giving them new tools to use within the same package; not tacking more on for additional money.
  • Shouldn't be limiting users. the User model is a thing of the past. You have a great product, you should want to have it in the hands of as many people as you can.
I think Act-On is well suited if you have a CRM within your organization or are looking to adopt a marketing automation platform for emailing, forms, landing pages etc. It might not be appropriate if you don't have a CRM and just send out a few emails a year. You really see the benefit when you have a whole process put in place and can get the value.
Theresa Navarra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Act-On for our company's internal marketing as well as for our client marketing. Clients of Catalyst who have marketing automation as part of their marketing strategy use Act-On for email marketing, lead engagement and nurturing, and landing pages. We also work with new business clients who may be considering other platforms, and discuss Act-On versus other platforms.
  • Customer Service -- Act-On is supportive in a very engaging and personalized way.
  • Assistance with campaigns -- Act-On will actually develop collateral for you.
  • Ease of use - The system is very intuitive and easy to navigate.
  • Emails that are mobile friendly
  • Landing pages that are responsive
  • HTML or CSS guidance
Always consider how many active contacts you have when choosing a marketing automation platform. This will help you to decode the pricing structure. Additionally, if you are going to be using a great deal of gated content, you want to be sure you have cloud based storage and not a system where you will need to pay additional fees for storage of your assets. This can add up quickly. Finally, be sure you choose a platform that allows you to learn in a custom way. Act-On is very good at understanding the level of competence a user has, and catering their implementation and training to that.
October 01, 2014

Act-On is Amazing!

Maureen O'Brien | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Act-On for list management, marketing campaigns such as email and webinars as well as scoring leads. Our sales folks use it to follow up with qualified leads. The system is easy to use and works the way you think it should. The cost is the most reasonable out there in the market. What I love the best is the EXCEPTIONAL support team. They are always there for me.
  • Exceptional Support Group
  • Great Value
  • Easy to Use System
  • The email editor could use some work.
You will want to discuss support. Other systems charge for a phone call or amount of time - but not Act-On.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Act-On to launch all of our email marketing, understand our visitor analytics, and notify our team of the activity on our website and within our product. It allows us to have our finger on the pulse of how people are interacting with us online.
  • Automated email programs, which can filter based on the user data
  • Anonymous website visitor lookup
  • Customization of the templates and emails
  • Reporting
  • Integrations
  • Deliverability on shared-ip
Act-On is well suited for those people who want equal or more functionality than HubSpot, Marketo, and Eloqua but don't want to be locked into yearly contracts.
July 11, 2014

Just what we needed

Leah Dockter | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used as our CRM and we use it for mass marketing emails. It is as well linked to our Sage BusinessWorks accounting software.
  • I specifically like the ability to put our customers in groups and specific markets.
  • Attaching files is as well highly convenient for our purpose.
  • Task list and calendars are quite helpful as well
  • Tracking history of emails and letters sent is very helpful.
  • Linking to other Sage products is as well highly convenient.
  • When changing contact data, it will prompt to "continue working with this record". After clicking yes, you have to redo your look-up. So if a company changes their name and I have 5 contacts within that company, I have to look up each one to make the changes.
Any major "service" industries including construction would benefit from this software.
June 21, 2014

Act-On is Awesome.

Jake Ferguson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Act-On is used mainly by our marketing department to segment our marketing lists by industry and to automate the email communications we have with those lists. We were trying to run multi-level marketing campaigns by hand before we started using Act-On, eventually keeping track of it all in Excel made us want to cry. Our main objective was to automate list segmentation and lead nurturing.
  • List Segmentation. We can slice and dice lists in any way we please, add them to automated marketing programs, and track prospect engagement easily.
  • Lead Nurturing. Getting the automated programs set up takes a bit of time upfront but once they are in place they run on their own essentially.
  • Website Tracking. It's always nice to know who is on our website and what they are looking at.
  • Exporting Reports. The reporting is beautiful within the system, but when I export it's a bit harder to work with.
  • Social Media. There's room for improvement on engagement here. It's fine for distribution but it's less social feeling than the networks themselves. I don't know is anyone does social media correctly yet.
If your need matches their offering I would highly recommend them. There are a ton of marketing automation offerings out there. Act-On is good for small to large companies looking for an easy to use lead nurturing tool. You can insert your marketing strategy into their software and let it run. You will need someone to do a lot of work upfront to get it set up and then to continue adding to it as time goes on. It's pretty intuitive and with their training I would say that anyone should be able to master it.
Christopher Collier | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Act-On is being used by our company as a lead nurturing, email launching and media database. It's mainly used by our marketing department to solve organizational issues with forms, media tracking and lead nurturing.
  • Act-On has been nothing but amazing in the last two years that we've been using the platform. From lead nurturing, so implementing forms and sending out communication, the platform can do it all. Customer service is top notch. If you can't find a solution in their Knowledge Base, they will do everything in their power to move mountains and fix any problem.
  • We have had problems with the integration of Act-On with SalesLogix.
Having some knowledge of HTML in order to have an easier time to implement forms and other assets on your website would be helpful.
Mary Rusnak | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Act-On is being used as our marketing automation software, as our initial keeper of data from form completions (push to SugarCRM), integration with Go to Meeting for webinars and also for website analytics. Is it being used by Marketing and Sales and helps us organize our customer information in one complete platform instead of multiple locations.
  • Act-On has really great website traffic data.
  • The integration with SugarCRM is seamless and reduces redundant data entry for staff.
  • Act-On has fabulous customer service. They are very attentive, quick to respond and make sure your problem is solved. They will also just help walk you through new processes to make sure you are doing it correctly and efficiently.
  • Email templates can be improved.
  • An easier, non-html email creation option would be really nice for professionals who don't have a background in web design.
Our lead life cycle is very long so we don't use the automation portion as much as companies that need to stay on top of leads and close the deal in a shorter period of time. Having said that, it is still useful for providing immediate communication to our prospects and setting up automatic timed responses.
May 16, 2014

Fantastic Product

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Act-On to communicate with our members (customers) through email and track their online interests to foster better relationships.
  • It's a user-friendly platform that gives us flexibility in design and content.
  • It collects tons of useful data to help us better understand what each individual customer is looking for in our products.
  • It eases communication between us and our customer and allows communication to be consistent and branded.
  • We would really like Act-On to remember more of our company's settings, such as brand colors and fonts, so they could be set as our defaults.
I would say use Chrome or FireFox when working with Act-On. Internet Explorer doesn't always play nice.
Casey Scott | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
The Act-On platform is only used by our marketing department at this time. We don't currently have a dedicated sales team. We mostly use Act-On for email marketing, but we're slowly starting to roll out web forms attached to gated media to generate new leads. Eventually we'd like to connect our e-commerce platform (Magento) to Act-On so that we can begin developing automated programs. There are many tools Act-On provides that we aren't using yet, but eventually they will be incorporated into our marketing plan.
  • The user interface is very easy to navigate, which helps save time when we are creating emails, forms, or uploading media.
  • There are many preloaded templates for emails and forms that are easily customizable if you know basic HTML. You can also use the WYSIWYG editor they provide.
  • Act-On's customer service is excellent. Every time I've gotten stuck trying to figure something out (like using their subscription management tool to segregate our email lists) they have been extremely helpful. It's always easy to reach a real person when you need something.
  • Act-On does not report on revenue conversions, so there is no way (other than Google Analytics) to see how much revenue was generated from your campaigns.
  • Sometimes they can lag a bit on addressing support tickets, and they need to be reminded about the issue to get things moving again.
  • There is no way to create subfolders within the main folders for lists, images, and so on. I wish that functionality was available because it's much easier to organize things when you can create subfolders within folders.
If you are looking to measure revenue rather than interactions, you need to bring that subject up right away and figure out a solution that works for your company. This platform works extremely well for lead generation and behavioral marketing, but it doesn't work as well for targeted marketing based on specific product purchases.
Philipp Weissgerber | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Act-On for marketing automation, mailings and preparing the data for our CRM in our whole organization. With the improved list management it is a great opportunity for any automation we need and it offers much more.
  • The list management with its maintenance automation is a great.
  • With the automation programs you can do many many things.
  • The connector the our CRM Solution is very well implemented.
  • The rich text editor can be improved, sometimes you have too much tags after changes and must edit the source code.
  • The scoring and managing of custom events or trade shows should be improved.
  • The own database fields should be synchronized with the CRM so that we have in both the same fields.
For marketing automation, list management and mailings it is a very good tool in Marketing & Communications to Sales.
Eric Lehnen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Integration with Salesforce. Each time an email goes out, it is recorded in the Contact Activity History. Additionally, our Sales reps use it for individual emails so they can prioritize people who seem interested based on the customizable lead score that Act-On tracks. However, some of the integration is limited and with specific features such as webinars management.
  • Email marketing. This is their flagship tool and it works quite well. I can track who bounced, opened, clicked emails. These are then calculated in the lead score. It does a good job of scrubbing bounced emails and it flags bounced emails in Salesforce. The steps to create a mass email is methodical so you do not miss anything. You can include different types of content inside emails such as custom HTML, attachments, and buttons. Everything is WYSIWYG and easy to use. There are some obstacles with setting up custom templates but once you have them set up, they are really powerful for branding purposes.
  • Automated programs. They are very simple to set up and show exactly what happens based on certain triggers: behavior (clicked on an email, attended a webinar, received specific email, etc.) and profiles (specific titles, lead score, geography, etc.). You can organize a very complex drip campaign or create niche marketing strategies for people who meet certain criteria. Automated programs are best utilized if you are marketing to a significant amount of people.
  • Webinar management. Our company uses WebEx and Act-On says that they integrate best with them. However, features are so limited for our company's needs, we found it is easy to keep them separate. For instance, we need to identify who attended a webinar in Salesforce. It is not an automated process to push attendance to the Salesforce record. Instead, the integration with Salesforce and Act-On for webinars is simply an interface. It does not push data to Salesforce. This is annoying because it creates more steps for our sales people who need to identify important information and forces them to use Act-On separately from Salesforce.
  • If your company produces a good amount of webinars a year, creating them is very time consuming. There are so many steps required before you can market the webinar. For instance, in our situation, we created custom emails for the following situations: When someone registers for a webinar, When their webinar registration is rejected, When their webinar registration is accepted, Follow up email for those who attend a webinar, Follow up email for those who do not attend, 1 hour reminder email, 1 day reminder email. Each email needs to be added in manually and this process if time consuming if you have to create 100+ webinars a year.
  • Email deliverability. We had problems with email deliverability to certain companies. After talking with our IT department to figure out why Act-On was having a lot of these problems, they said it is because they do not have reliable email marketing practices on the technical side. For example, every so often, I have to send a new IP address range to our IT department to whitelist Act-On emails so any test emails we send to ourselves do not bounce. It says something when you try sending a test email to yourself and it doesn't work.
  • I am not a technical person, but our IT department talked with their support team and concluded that they had technical issues on their side that was causing a lot of our emails to bounce. Act-On tried to address some of the email deliverability problems we had but did not help.
  • Competitor tracking. Act-On has ways of tracking competitor's social media and web traffic. However, it only provides a week time period for Twitter. In general, it doesn't aggregate data so it can be analyzed over different time periods. It does give a fair snap shot of what is going at present time, though.
  • Web traffic monitoring. Stick to Google Analytics for analyzing web traffic. The only good thing about it is you can identify which anonymous/known companies that have visited your website. But sometimes, some businesses do not have a dedicated IP so when Act-On does the automatic reverse IP look up, it does not provide the business, rather the ISP instead. You can only view data a month at a time and cannot select ranges of time Such as 60/90/120 month ranges. It goes strictly by month.
  • Reporting and Analytics. I was very disappointed when trying to run reports on our different marketing campaigns. While they have a dashboard, it is not the same as Salesforce. And because data between Salesforce and Act-On is limited, reports are done separately. When we need to check our email campaigns, the only option to look at them all at once is to download an excel document and manipulate the data from there.
  • Forms. Forms are a little on the basic side. We tried using them for people signing up for events, but the absence of conditional logic forms, where if a contact selects option "A" it will display a separate field/question than someone who selected option "B."
If you are marketing on volume, it would be a fair fit, depending on other marketing needs too. In comparison to other marketing automation companies, they do roughly the same thing, but the depth is the biggest difference. Be aware of some of the limitations of the product - You get what you pay for. The big one is email deliverability. If you can suffice with some of their outbound emails bouncing, it would be a good product. But if you are trying to integrate with a webinar platform to gather more information, be careful because we ran into a lot of customers and prospects complaining that they did not get their registration email to enter a webinar.
February 18, 2014

Act-On Worth a Look

Ryan Thurman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We utilize Act-on for lead generation and scoring along with marketing automation within our marketing department. It has allowed us to grow and prosper and the road ahead looks bright.
  • Great support and on-boarding program.
  • Fun product to use and track results
  • Lot's of features for the price
  • Still growing
  • Lacking in certain features
  • Does not integrate with all applications
Maybe not the best platform for large companies but for our situation we found a good fit.
February 14, 2014

Happy Customer!

Ken Barhoover | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Was an ExactTarget user. Evaluated Hubspot and Act-On. Hubspot seemed to be more suited for top of the funnel marketing automation where Act-On was more middle/bottom of the funnel focused. After looking at the features and functionality, my choice was obvious. In my opinion, if you're looking for a beautiful product interface, choose Hubspot. If you want great functionality at a lower cost, choose Act-On and use all of Hubspots materials for free.
  • The email engine is far superior to the email engine in Hubspot (in my opinion).
  • Ability to purchase a limited number of seats of Act-On and still get our Sales organization what they need (without a seat requirement)
  • Cost/Feature Ratio!
  • Customer service isn't the best.
  • HTML markup leaves something to be desired.
If you need top of the funnel functionality for attracting visitors, Act-On falls short and Hubspot might be a better option. If you don't have issues getting folks to your site, but need help converting, Act-On is a great choice. Why pay for a content management system and blog functionality when you don't need it!
Kasim Aslam | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Act-on as a full-spectrum marketing automation solution:

  • Lead intelligence and analytics
  • Landing page deployment
  • A/B testing
  • Email marketing and nurture campaigns
  • Content marketing
  • Targeted downloads
  • SEO
Regardless of their role, everyone in our organization comes in contact with Act-on in some way; that's how important it is. Act-on helps us to automate our marketing processes (for ourselves and our Clients) in a way that allows our campaigns the ability to reach far beyond "normal" or traditional marketing campaigns.
  • Act-on allows for the customization of campaigns and deployment based upon our specific needs
  • Act-on is extremely easy to use and makes day to day management of marketing activities much easier
  • Act-on is exceptionally robust and features everything we need to run high-level marketing automation campaigns
  • I would love the ability to integrate with Highrise CRM (although it does integrate with the larger CRM applications like Salesforce, SugarCRM, etc.)
  • The ability to setup visual nurture campaigns would be helpful
Act-on is, by a wide margin, the best tool that I have come across for marketing automation. First, the process isn't linear (like Hubspot or Infusionsoft) which means it's not limiting. Act-on has an incredibly robust tool set that's easy to use and, most importantly, easy to customize to our specific needs. The majority of marketing automation tools "out there" force you into a pigeon hole of what they think marketing automation should be. Act-on provides the tools and makes them available in a way that allows you the control to customize your process to meet your needs. Add to that a support team that is as responsive and helpful as any that I've ever seen and you have a truly winning solution. I recommend Act-on to all of my Clients and use it for our own marketing.
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