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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

(201-219 of 219)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Stuart Howden MCIM | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Before deploying Act-On, we were using two separate email marketing tools, which were fine for basic emailing and reporting but they were both very limited in features and neither one of these integrated with our Salesforce CRM product. Act-On does everything these tools did and more but more importantly it integrates seamlessly with Salesforce. Now whenever we run an email campaign, as well as comprehensive reporting on the results of the campaign, our leads and contact records in Salesforce are updated too! We can also track our users when they visit our website and see which pages are of interest to them.But the email tool is just the tip of the iceberg, we've also already made great use of the competitors, social publish and SEO audit features too. Act-On will be the driving force behind our inbound and outbound campaigns for the foreseeable future.I can thoroughly recommend Act-On to anyone looking for a marketing automation tool (especially if they are Salesforce users too)
  • Email campaigns
  • Salesforce Integration
  • Competitor analysis
  • Sometimes the site freezes and needs to be restarted
  • Once a draft email has been sent, its a little complicated to then re-use or re-send the same email message out to different recipients
Salesforce integration was quick and easy
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Act-On is used across our organization as the marketing automation software of choice. Mostly, that means e-mail automation and bulk e-mail, as well as landing page and form creation & hosting. Because it syncs with our CRM (Salesforce), we are able (in theory) to connect customer activities to their record in the CRM, and reach out to specific groups of prospects & clients.
  • Timely and friendly support staff who are generally knowledgable. They are very responsive and helpful.
  • Constantly making additions/revisions to the platform. They roll out updates pretty frequently, though this is somewhat to be expected.
  • The sync with Salesforce is pretty strong, and they have a nice app that works within the CRM to identify web activities the customer has undertaken.
  • Platform performance. Slow, laggy, and don't you dare hit "Refresh" or you'll be pushed back to the home screen. Often, when editing landing pages or emails, edits won't save or will be lost if you leave them idle for more than a few minutes.
  • WYSIWIG editor. It's so bad, I don't know why they even bother. We had been using Act-On templates and modifying them, which was a mistake. They don't preview correctly, and don't provide support for responsive templates. If you select them, you're better off getting web designers to write everything from scratch.
  • Overall solution. I've just been very frustrated across the entire platform. As I write this, I can't even access the system. I have several support tickets in place. It's made my instance of Google Analytics look like a mess because the URL parameters that it generates are unpredictable and unwieldy. Act-On feels clunky, and it looks like it was made for 2004. Clearly a budget buy, and nothing more.
If you want a robust marketing automation platform, look elsewhere. If you want automated email and mass email functionality, look at MailChimp or ConstantContact before you look here.

However, if you have a few developers and want a skin of a system that you can bend to your will, then Act-On would probably be a good fit (unfortunately that's not me).
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The customer service has been outstanding. There are two main contacts that we have for Act-On, Mitch Vanderwall and Kyle Guiao and they have always gone above and beyond to schedule trainings and answer any questions that we have.
  • We do a lot of email marketing campaigns and they are so comprehensive and easy to set up with this Marketing Tool.
  • Act-On has so many features that create the look and feel we want for our campaigns.
  • I think that Act-On has a lot of functionality. We are thinking of adding some new features that Act-On provides, so far there hasn't been anything we wanted that they couldn't provide.
Will Act-On be able to provide me with the features I need to create successful email campaigns?
Evan McKenzie | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Act-On's pricing model made adopting marketing automation software for TPC Training Systems a reality. I reviewed other platforms I was already familiar with including Marketo and Pardot but Act-On was the best bang for your buck.
  • First off, Act-On's customer service is great. They go above and beyond to help implement, understand, troubleshoot, and utilize all features.
  • Act-On is an easy to understand platform that can have a novice up and running in no time. There email template builder is particularly easy to understand and helps you create professional emails quickly.
  • Some reporting features had been lacking. Being able to select a specific date range to dial-in to exact metrics were missing. Must supplement with Google Analytics for complete picture.
  • Load times from the CRM side can be slow and frustrating for sales team. Might just be our connection but seems to take longer through the Salesforce connector.
  • I wish there were more "permissions" that could limit some features for sales team members. Some give too much freedom with sending mass email.
Marketing automation has become essential in order to successfully do my job. Act-On has a pricing model that speaks to smaller companies that need the essentials to what marketing automation brings. We weighed the cost to benefit with Act-On and it made sense for us. Marketing has been happy since we purchased almost a year ago.
Sarah Ortega | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Easy Interface - the WYSIWYG interface makes it extremely easy to build out marketing campaigns in a short amount of time. Just place your text and images and you've got a beautiful cohesive design.
  • Wonderful customer support - I have had very few problems with Act-On, but those I did have were resolved very fast by my customer care rep. They are very hands on with their customers and do whatever they can to help you succeed.
  • Integration - smooth integration with our Salesforce account allow us to build out elaborate campaigns with specific lead lists, and then add qualifying data back to customer accounts.
  • The only issue I have with Act-On is that when you build out a form with a list item like a checkbox or dropdown they are hard to edit later. Essentially you enter your values into boxes and if you want to delete fields or add in fields you have to pretty much start over.
There really isn't any advice needed. Act-On provides an extensive library on getting started and your customer service rep is a great asset in learning your way around. All the tools are self explanatory and built for ease of use.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Integration opportunities are helpful and work well: Salesforce.com CRM, GoToWebinar, website Google Analytics tracking integration
  • Automated programs are easy to build and very flexible.
  • You can't beat the price!
  • Landing pages and forms are particularly hard to design, with no templates available. Unlike Marketo you cannot embed a form directly into a landing page (must use an iframe) and you cannot use absolute positioning to place objects.
  • The Lead Scoring mechanism is not very advanced, cannot change score based on negative activities (did not open, did not visit) and cannot change score based on custom fields filled out on forms.
  • Unsure of deliverability due to shared IP servers and poor sending practices of other customers.
Are you comfortable with manually coding HTML? The landing page/form design process is not intuitive, if you want something like looks nice and converts well, you are going to need some web design skills or buy services. Also, if you are just starting to grow a list or if you email list is very small this is a good solution to start with.
Daniel Kuperman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Easy to use interface
  • Creation of multiple tracking links for a single landing page
  • Social media integration
  • Website tracking
  • Reports could be more detailed
  • More flexibility in nurturing process flow
It all depends on how you want to build your lead generation and nurturing program. Act-On may not have all the bells and whistles of some competitors, but for those needing a simple, effective way to automate email nurturing programs, it is a great value. They are also on the right track in building social media integration and if they can create more detailed reporting and also offer custom reports, they can certainly beat some other guys out there. Act-On has a different pricing method, as they charge based on "active contacts", which is good because you only pay if the software actually helps you generate engagements, but the more successful you are, the more you will pay so take it into consideration.
Noe Marti Segui | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Easy-to-use automated programs to better nurture leads.
  • Great integration with Salesforce.
  • Lead Score tracking that allows Sales to determine sales-qualified leads.
  • More options on form formatting would be nice.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • It helps us generate leads and help nurture them so we can help better qualify them for sales whether that be through monitoring lead scores or education through email campaigns.
  • The inability to create real custom forms is a bit troublesome and could be improved.
Keep in contact with your customer success account manager they are extremely helpful and really want to make sure you succeed.
Katherine Pomfret | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • List management is very strong, with ability to segment and create segments of segments, allowing very detailed targeting.
  • Act-on today gives a live, accurate overview of our entire 50,000 customer and lead database and allows us to respond incredibly quickly to any trends
  • The templates for landing pages, forms and emails allow us to send impactful and persuasive communications quickly and at no cost.
  • Automatic reports have greatly increased the quality of information I can give to directors.
  • The templates lack some flexibility and perhaps impact.
Act-On is not as 'sexy' as Hubspot, nor is its marketing collateral as strong. But it was definitely the right solution for us, and the ongoing product development and the ability users have to request development work and have others vote on it is truly impressive. Even in the short time we have been customers, we have seen impressive new functionality added. And it was good before!
September 19, 2013

Act-On Improves Engagement

Todd Holbrook | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Act-On makes it easy to convert HTML coding for email marketing, combined with an automated capability to send the email to correct contacts.
  • It's easy to use and straightforward.
  • It integrates easily with Salesforce, making it valuable in our outreach with clients and contacts.
  • I've had trouble, as is the case for many email marketing automation platforms, getting past quarantines and filters to hit inboxes.
In looking for an email marketing automation tool, we were particularly looking for one that integrates well with Salesforce, and Act-On seamlessly does so. It's easy to update lists and address particular groups.

The reporting structure seems to be complete and satisfying. We enjoy being able to review which email contacts opened which links and how they interacted with each particular email. It is very helpful.
Melissa Kornicki | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Integrates marketing efforts into one platform
  • Easy to use interface
  • Great help and technical support resources
  • Ties sales and marketing efforts together
  • Would like to see more intuitive reporting capabilities
Act-On's CSM and technical support responsiveness and personal service is exceptional. They are quick to respond and always willing to help out and find a solution.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Act-On is easy to use and offers so many powerful tools beyond just email campaigns. My sales team loves the lead scoring and activity history because they can really evaluate a lead's level of interest before having to pick up the phone. My executive team loves the high-level reporting that shows campaign effectiveness beyond the first email because it includes subsequent activities including web visits, form submissions, webinar attendance and more. I love Act-On because it has greatly reduced my workload in terms of manual intervention with campaigns and data management between platforms.
  • We have not found anything lacking from Act-On's included features. If I were to create a wish list it would include greater customizability of form layout and styling without having to upload custom HTML stationery. I would also like to see the out-of-the-box reporting be more customizable.
Great system for a great price.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Act-On handles a content marketing strategy to perfection. Deploying emails with white papers for prospects to download (among other content types) is simple and not time consuming. It makes a marketing "team" of one be able to handle all the details of a complicated campaign and lead scoring process -- without the complicated interface.
  • I feel Act-On could integrate better with my CRM. Specifically - it uses a report to generate the basic building blocks for my email campaigns. Other than that, it's performed very well, and the Act-On dev team is always cranking out new, useful tools.
  • I'd also like to see multiple lead scoring models. I have a manual workaround to produce a lifetime lead score.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The streamlined platform puts first-rate marketing tools at our fingertips, making campaigns and programs easier and faster. We integrate our CRM, webinar management and other tools so our analytics are accessible. with one click.
  • Our company would benefit from more detailed ROI reports for offline campaigns in Salesforce.
Overall very positive experience throughout the last year. I would recommend to smaller companies looking for a marketing automation tool.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Act-on has been a revolutionary product for us as it has given us transparency into the top of our funnel. We've been able to fine tune our value propositions and marketing messaging to learn what each segment of our prospect base identifies with and then turn this into actionable leads for our sales team. Through the lead score process we know which of our prospects are responding to our marketing and that allows us to contact them and engage them in further development with the ultimate objective of moving them to a sales ready lead.
  • The product is fantastic at mass email marketing, webinar integration, social media marketing, CRM integration and providing transparency into your sales and marketing funnel
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Email automation. This is so easy to use. We've been using for about a year now and it's very intuitive and easy to set up campaigns. Segmentation requires a little learning bit of a learning curve, but it's not hard. I was walked through how to do it by an Act-On trainer.
  • Visitor tracking. This tells us who visited the website. Not just the person's name, but also the fact that they visited this page and read this content, and are interested in this product, etc. We relay this data to the sales team so they can they follow-up. We also use Google Analytics, which is useful, but does not provide us with this level of granularity.
  • Integration with salesforce is seamless. This works very well indeed.
  • The HTML editor is a little wonky - we have to mess with it quite a bit as content doesn't always look the way we want it to. IT has a WSYWIG editor which is fine for most things, but if we want to write custom HTML for more complex templates, it doesn't work well. The tool does let you write in HTML, but it doesn't always work very well.
I highly recommend act-on and it's something that should be on the shortlist of anyone looking for email automation.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The tracking and analytics capabilities are spot-on and it is very useful for large marketing lists and for interfacing with Salesforce. (We don't actually use Saleforce however - we use a custom CRM system). Act-On helped a lot in building a simple integration to our custom CRM.
  • Tracking is particularly helpful for our ad-word campaigns. Act-On allows us to capture information even if someone doesn't enter specific data. Analytics provides us better data than we would get from Google.
  • The product does not emphasize all of the functionality clearly enough at times. we struggle in the beginning in not knowing exactly what the product could do which hampered our initial campaigns. Training is too rushed and does not cover all the details you need to know. You really need to spend a week to 10 days using the system to really understand all the functionality before going live.
  • For example, we struggled with email templates. Their training module on this (forms) was very light. After that, they added a lot more functionality and variation and templates. Although we were not aware of it, one month in, they had added many more templates which I was not aware of and which would have given us some of the template flexibility I needed. Also, we didn't even realize that it was possible to design our own templates by writing HTML directly.
For a company using salesforce and dealing with a large contact base that has at least 2 or 3 people they can dedicate to the system, this product will be highly effective.
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