Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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.

Read more
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 …
Continue reading

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 …
Continue reading

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 …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

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%
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

Product Demos

Act-On Software Demo

YouTube

Act On! Software Demo

YouTube

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

YouTube
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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 Small Businesses (1-50 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%
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

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

(1-25 of 170)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Sourov K Chowdhury | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Act-On's interface offers more functionality and flexibility. Simple to use requires no coding knowledge to use or navigate. It provides pre-built templates for automated programs that can be customized to meet our specific lead generation requirements. The drag-and-drop, list segmentation, and lead scoring options make the user-friendly interface appealing. It is possible to incorporate integrations. Our company uses this software both as an administrator and as a user. Switching between HTML and visual views is straightforward. With the integration of our CRM with our instance, we can create dynamically populated segments that are used to populate our automation. It is beautiful to download our data into more specific and affluent reporting tailored to our requirements. We could also create a proactive pipeline development program using MS Dynamics. It enables us to learn more about how our customers use our content (or not) to identify high-quality prospects.
  • The templates are easy to use and set up campaigns.
  • It's simple to use, and the email editor features a drag-and-drop interface.
  • It's easy to set up a drip campaign or a series of scheduled emails.
  • It has the flexibility of having a variety of scheduling options and the use of user experience automation.
  • A more straightforward UI and faster loading times are needed.
  • User direct communication within the platform would be fantastic.
  • There are a few areas where the functionality could be improved.
Act-On simplifies the creation of landing pages, web forms, email campaigns, and other types of marketing automation. Designing a customer journey using the workflow builder (a nurturing flow) is possible. It is used in various ways and in a variety of contexts. Tactical's knowledgeable support team helped us unlock Act-On's potential for complex integrations and marketing campaigns. In some areas, it would be beneficial to improve functionality.
Gerald Gorman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Through Act-On, we can keep in touch with potential customers and customers, track their progress, and actively participate. Solve marketing performance issues by helping us create successful email campaigns. Setting up the workflow is very simple, and the logic is very reasonable. Thanks to Act-On, we could solve marketing problems and improve our activities, which is excellent.
  • Act-On is very useful for creating, managing, and sending effective marketing campaigns.
  • The use of landing pages has attracted many potential customers.
  • The reporting function is integrated and is easy to access and understand.
  • The landing page allows you to customize the page for any activity or reason you need.
  • Its reporting helps to understand audience engagement.
  • This is a program that meets all requirements, our performance has no problems, and all results are positive.
I recommend Act-On to users and companies that want to increase interaction with customers. You can divide them into different categories and focus on the specific goals of each type. It's easy to set up and various campaigns; you can use a custom landing page. When you need help, Act-On's customer service is excellent, fast, and comprehensive.
Karli Brophy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Act-On has helped us grow our brand in a variety of ways. With Act-On, we are able to deliver extremely account-based and customizable experiences to help our clients and prospects go through the journey we want them to. From internal marketing newsletters to external automated drip campaigns, Act-On has been essential to our success.
  • The automation builder is extremely easy to use. Mapping out the customer journey is so important when planning behavioral-based campaigns. With Act-Ons user friendly UX, it's simple to create.
  • Their customer support is outstanding! Via chat, through email, or with our Account Rep, Act-On goes above and beyond to ensure my problems get addressed and fixed quickly.
  • Forms are incredibly easy to create and embed into our landing pages and website.
  • Their customer service chat feature would be helpful to be available during all working hours from west coast to east coast.
We are a small marketing team looking to grow our business and provide excellent customer journeys. Act-On addressed all of our small business needs when we were a company of less than 100 and then grew with us as we merged with other companies and continued to grow quickly. I don't know where Act-On wouldn't be appropriate.
December 13, 2019

one woman show

Megan Collins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Act-On is used by our marketing department to sell and inform our customers across the country. Act-On allows us to stay in contact with our customers and allows us to send a message to a large amount of people and allow us to schedule messages in advance to keep us on track. Act-On also tracks our open rate and bounce back so we can be informed on what is working and not. As well as if customers are receiving our content.
  • Scheduling
  • Analytics
  • Usability
  • Auto response emails do not work properly
  • Auto response analytics do not work properly
  • Media inserts have a lag
Act-On is well suited for companies that have a small marketing department. Everything is easily accessible and easy to use. The scheduling of email content can be a large task but with easy flow templates and the ability to schedule a month in advance it makes a daunting task manageable.
September 25, 2019

Act-On review

Christi Moses | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using Act-On to reach our customers through email blasting. We also use landing pages and forms to support our website. Currently it is accessed mainly by our marketing department, but the plan is to integrate it into other systems to provide additional customer information to sales soon. We are able to see if our email marketing campaigns are successful through easy reporting setups built within the system.
  • Representatives are responsive to customer needs.
  • Act-On continuously works on improving their system - using customer feedback to help them know where to focus.
  • Technicians are friendly and responsive.
  • I would like to see a way to schedule a single email to multiple groups at different dates & times by accessing the email just once, instead of programming a new email every time.
  • I would like to see easier features with mapping hyperlinks - where you could use your mouse to draw out areas to link to a url.
We loved that the reporting features are built-in and so easily accessed and understood. We also love that our usage level is based on the number of addresses we email to, not by the number of emails we send. This is a key point when you are segmenting your customers into smaller focused areas of focus. I like that we can schedule an email at any time and can schedule them in advance.
Jose Aguilar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marketing and support teams use Act-On daily at our shop. I provides a central place to create and publish most interactive communications.
  • Email and Landing Pages, great feature set. Flexible for different skill level users. Easy integration to CRM.
  • Robust list and contact management allowing complete communication cycle to take place in one place.
  • Solid lead scoring platform and follow up tools.
  • Social Media tool needs development.
Great integration to WebEx! If you are running WebEx webinars, you have to evaluate Act-On as your automation tool.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Act-On for all of our email efforts. Currently, just the email department is using Act-On. We needed a platform to send one-off emails and automation tracks. Currently, we have over 8 automated nurture tracks. For example, if someone is added to our lead database they will instantly receive a welcome email followed by a demo email. We needed an easy to use solution to set up these automated tracks and chose Act-On based on the intuitive level of service it offers.
  • Act-On excels with its Salesforce integration. We haven't had any issues and it's always in sync.
  • Easy automation. It's really easy to set up workflows and the smart logic just makes sense.
  • One of my favorite features is the ability to change links and images after an email has been sent. For example, if you have the wrong link after the email has been sent it's easy to go into Act-On, change the link, and Act-On will automatically create a redirect.
  • The database is a mess. Currently, there is no way to search the database for an individuals profile. You have to go into the list you think the individual resides in and do a search. This causes a lot of wasted time if you are using multiple lists.
  • RSS feed is lacking. Certain design limitations make the RSS to email feature pointless. It looks like it was designed in the early 2000s.
  • My biggest complaint is that the software is buggy. Sometimes the email won't be sent out in time.
Act-On is great for email sends and automation. It's very intuitive and easy to use. Setting up forms is a breeze and plugging in social aspects is easy as well. It's not well suited as an all-in-one. For example, if you are trying to use it for building landing pages you will be very disappointed.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the Act-On Software to create a number of things to support the content we create, such as eBooks, case studies, infographics, etc. We primarily use Act-On to support email nurture campaign creation processes, create forms and landing pages.
  • User-friendly interface.
  • A reliable and good place to house ample assets.
  • Lets salespeople and marketers connect to generate a better lead gen process.
  • Social media connections are lacking.
  • The form submission process can be hokey.
  • Customer service support to fix issues that need to be resolved ASAP are not always available.
Act-On is great, especially for those focused on an inbound marketing strategy. I would recommend Act-On to anyone using a CRM, first of all, and who wants to boost brand awareness, build credibility in their industry, have a safe place to store content, and more. Overall, I'm pleased with the user interface and resources provided to me that make it easier to use.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our sales and marketing departments use ACT as our main hub for contacts. It is a database that holds all our leads and clients with detailed information and the ability to tag for segmenting and note so other team members know what is going on. It is a simple way to look up and sort contacts.
  • Sort by select fields
  • Edit templates to view clients info
  • Ease to see other users notes
  • Slow
  • Outdated
  • Hard to sort with multiple topics
Well suited: helps us see what other team members have made notes. Ability to each have our own layout to mold to our specific needs. Less appropriate: It becomes harder to sort when people enter multiple answers for multiple fields. Can't group by multiple fields at once, which I would like for our team.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company used Act-On to collect customer/prospect/partner data, view trends based on industries and titles, send marketing email campaigns to different levels of our engagement "funnel", design and send both internal and external newsletter emails, set up resource pages for our website and special events, and use forms to gate resources or facilitate sign-ups for events.
  • I liked their functionality for creating landing pages and forms. They looked nice, had plenty of options, and were easy to embed in websites.
  • Creating email campaigns was easy and effective through Act-On. With A/B testing, automated campaigns, and sleek design, it felt very professional.
  • It connected well with Salesforce, provided we had matching contact criteria. It was fast and easy to sync up.
  • The automation function within webinars was always efficient and convenient. They synced with GoToWebinar as well as Salesforce to make for a smooth invitation / follow-up / attendee tracking process every time.
  • The designer tools, especially for emails, were often difficult to use. The formatting of the text would be all over the place and change / refuse to change at random. Moving boxes around was shifty and sometimes nearly impossible. It just wasn't customizeable enough. No "undo" functionality either.
  • The only way to collect information expansively over time (there's a term Act-On uses for it, I can't recall) where it adds questions to the form each time a user fills it out, is if the person were to fill out the same form multiple times. I know this does happen for some websites/resources, but as a company that wanted to collect new information each time someone filled out any form, regardless of the resource or the URL, that was simply not an option, and that doesn't really make a lot of sense. I know it's not really possible to track someone but if they filled out the first part of the form and then it added new questions to answer, and then they submitted and got through the gating, that would actually be helpful.
  • There was no "trash can" of sorts in case you deleted something by mistake. This could be so stress-inducing if it was a major project. My coworker did this once, contacted Act-On, they couldn't even recover it.
There are so many ways it could improve with just smoother functionality and UI/UX, mostly in the ways I said it needed improvement that are quite major. But overall I think it has the right ideas and tries to offer a lot of options for marketing tasks and a solid system for working with a marketing funnel.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Act-On has been used by our marketing team to help us manage our email marketing, automation, and lead scoring efforts to improve the efficiency of our marketing campaigns. The software allows us to set up campaigns to segment our prospective customers, current customers, and closed-lost deals to help us build, retain, and try to reengage our database.
  • Easy to use. The UX is simple and you can easily navigate the program.
  • Marketing automation.
  • Customer service/help has been amazing with all of our questions.
  • Our server went out several times when we were in the renewal period.
  • Lead scoring constantly broke.
  • It's not as robust as other competitors.
I like Act-On and I think it's a good program for someone that is starting out in email marketing or has some experience with it. I feel like this is the intermediate solution for email marketing. It's great for setting up simple email marketing/automation campaigns with basic reporting needs. If you want super customizable or really advanced list features, you'll want to look at a different tool.
Nate Casimiro | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Act-On is used across two departments in my organization, Internally our Marketing department uses it to unmask anonymous website visitors, score leads and nurture prospects via automated programs. The second department helps onboard clients to the platform and do the same.
  • Lead scoring.
  • Automated email programs.
  • Landing pages.
  • Form creation.
  • Reporting is not as robust/user-friendly as it could be.
  • UX has been continually expanded, so there is a mix of old and new features that could use some polishing and regrouping.
Marketing automation via Act-On is helping our organization reach more targeted audiences during the windows of the customer journey. It has also allowed our organization to be more strategic with our media and communications and better illustrate Marketing's process to Sales.
Yosa Addiss | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used Act-On at both the agency level and currently at the individual business level.
Act-On is used by our sales and marketing teams.
  • Account Based Management ABM.
  • Marketing Automation.
  • Email Marketing.
  • Customer Service.
  • Text messaging capability.
One of the best features of Act-On is that their sales features and marketing automation data is available on a sales dashboard without needing a company to use a connected CRM. This is unique for ABM and MAP software. Our company selected Act-On over Marketo because of this differentiator. We are in the process of converting to a new CRM, but until that is ready we still have access to the activity and lead scores of each salesperson's leads. Act-On is particularly suited to a business that has salespeople with assigned leads or territories.
Mike Cubberly | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Act-On internally to help nurture prospects through to SQL status for a marketing agency. It helped with to transition the leads with its robust insight generated and extraordinary comms.
  • More robust insights than other MAPs.
  • Customer Service always on point.
  • A better drip overall.
  • Price. Act-On is a FANTASTIC transition from Mailchimp and the like, however, the price is a real jump. I did successfully transition a few freelance clients into users but the price didn't sit well at this early in the game. Maybe consider leveraging a super-entry-tier?
Small (when afforded) to Medium sized entities in any industry (I've leveraged it in plenty).
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Act-On in our marketing department. We primarily use it for email marketing, customer retention, and webinars.
  • Good integration with Webex for webinars. We're able to schedule webinar events, schedule invitation emails + reminder emails, and launch and conduct webinars all through the program. It's very easy to set up, manage, and use.
  • Users can set up solid email marketing campaigns with workflows, identify hot/warm leads, and push to Salesforce with the integration.
  • Customer support is responsive and easy to work with, and their Act-On Academy is a comprehensive resource for learning about the platform.
  • The automated email programs could be more intuitive to set up and manage.
  • I find their landing page templates lackluster. We've opted not to use them because we couldn't get them to look the way we wanted them to.
  • We had some trouble with list cleanliness and getting stuck in spam folders, with our opens decreasing and bounce rates increasing. Even after hiring Act-On to consult and help us clean up our lists, the same problems persisted.
If you have a mid-size to large marketing team who will take the time to figure out how to use all of the features and integrate everything carefully with other tools like Salesforce and Webex, etc. then Act-On could be right for you. It's been a good tool for us for integrated email nurture campaigns, customer retention campaigns, and events. I do not know how strong a tool it is for inbound marketing campaigns -- at least, we haven't had much success here.
Chris Lesner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Act-On with several clients to help their email marketing efforts. A recent client of ours needed an email marketing solution that would be robust enough to work across different divisions of their company while also giving the ability for people to access and manage different lists... Act-On has been a great solution for them!
  • Has easy to use email automation features.
  • Great list management.
  • Templated email options.
  • Good customer service/support.
  • Could be a lot cheaper.
  • Allow for more contacts at a better rate.
  • More integrations with outside systems.
It's great for big teams that need to manage a large email list. We use the email automation features and they work like a charm. Most competitors already have good campaign solutions (as does Act-On), however, the drip campaign process is much easier with Act-On and you have a dedicated account manager who will help make sure you succeed.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Act-On is being utilized by Progressive as our principal marketing software directed to our agents. It is used across our agency distribution marketing department. We use Act-On to create our marketing messages and direct them to our agents. It addresses the business problem of how we get our messages out to agents. Act-On is great because it allows us to quickly segment and get our messages to agents quickly if needed. The segmentation is good because we can import lists with demographic and business data allowing us to segment our messages to the right agents.
  • Act-On gives us flexibility to create high quality emails because we have the ability to import images and create links to websites or PDFs to increase agent engagement.
  • Act-On has a great survey tool that allows me to create survey so that I can quickly gather information from our customer base for our business needs. The data is delivered in spreadsheet format so it can be easily analyzed.
  • Act-On gives me the ability to create landing pages, which I can link our agents to more information with by an email. We have the same flexibility to create high-end landing pages.
  • Act-On has great engagement reporting of our email sends. I look forward to reviewing the reports with my internal customers to show how the emails have performed from an open and click standpoint.
  • I think Act-On could have a better folder system for marketing lists.
  • I think Act-On could offer a faster way to clean up lists and images. Right now you have to remove one at a time.
  • Act-On could make it easier to pull in personalized data to an email from an extension list. It is a two-step process right now.
You will find Act-On suitable for many agent communications that are both targeted and broad reaching. It gives you the flexibility to create high-quality emails and surveys that allow for quick engagement from your targeted prospect or customer base. Act-On is good for quizzes right now but my guess is that they will build this functionality down the road.
Danielle Armour | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization used Act-On for over two years as a whole. Act-On became our main source of emailing all of our constituents through our newsletter, gaining new donors through campaigns, providing information and so much more. We not only used the email campaign but we also used the landing page feature, the survey feature, the automated series feature and the form feature. Each of these functions were used at least on a bi-weekly basis. Being able to create aesthetically pleasing emails ourselves solved the issue of having to hire a company to outsource our emails. Being able to use the landing page feature solved the same issue and also allowed us to create pages on a quick turn around when we needed information out urgently. Having these landing pages was a saving grace on multiple occasions when the information was needed to be resolved or communicated more clearly. Having the forms options not only saved us from outsourcing but also let us collect data in a clean way through the same email campaign we emailed from. The automated series was one of my favorite aspects of Act-On as it allowed us to plan ahead with campaigns and set them up automatically.
  • Act-On's customer service is exceptional, they are quick and thorough when you are needing help. For example, we could not figure out how to automate a birthday date for our birthday campaign and the representative was able to walk through the process with myself and another team member. This is a strength of Act-On because many other companies do not have customer services that will speak with you, they direct you to blogs or informational sessions.
  • The landing pages that Act-On has created for use on the web is exceptional. The formatting is very user-friendly and the templates are great to navigate. The landing pages allow you to make the page fit whatever campaign or reason you are in need of. This is a strength of Act-On because the landing pages resolve the issue of having to create actual web pages.
  • The spam feature of Act-On's emails is a great add on. This feature allows you to test how the spam alerts are triggered in your email and how you can fix it. This has helped many emails be developed in a way so that they reach many more people than they would have without this feature. many other programs do not have this feature.
  • They can greatly improve how you are able to place photos in emails. The current way is very archaic and takes a long time to navigate to find your photo. Once your photo is in the email, you cannot crop or adjust the size. This should be upgraded.
  • The A/B testing or dynamic emails needs to be worked on. You can not currently test emails before placing them in a series to go to contacts, the testing route is long and usually ends up in frustration. There needs to be a way to test dynamic emails so that you can ensure success before sending.
Act-On is a great program for organizations who are on the smaller end. The system is easy to navigate and teach to others, which is crucial to the success of an organization that values time and efficiency. Each of the platforms are important in the success of marketing campaigns and gathering information to then succeed down the line. Act-On was able to sync with our database giving us information on multiple layers.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Act-On across the membership portion of our association & across all of our trade shows. We recently integrated Act-On with our new CRM, Sugar. This allows us to integrate even more data sets into our everyday marketing analysis.
  • Very intuitive, easy to use. You don't need a strong coding background to be able to set emails up.
  • The ability to set-up long or short forms and add them to a landing page.
  • Extremely helpful and timely support staff available 24/7.
  • You can't mass delete images.
  • Their reporting as a whole is lacking.
  • You can't edit the code/font behind the calendar widget.
The Act-On Software is well suited for any company that sends out numerous sends with a variety of creative logos. This tool would also be well suited for companies with smaller marketing departments, we don't have the biggest department so this helps pick up some of the slack where we are lacking; landing pages, forms, beacon tracking.
Dave Moll | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As an agency, we use Act-On to manage all our clients' marketing automation efforts. And that covers a lot of ground: web and social tracking, form submissions, content downloads, list management, lead scoring, landing pages reporting and, of course, email programs. The Act-On ecosystem is solid and each of the pieces complements each other well enough to create a marketing automation whole if that makes sense. So your emails "know" who visited what landing page and your forms "know" if this person has downloaded other content. This connected system allows you to build complex marketing campaigns, all within the Act-On system.

That said, we use for all of the above. Mileage varies from client to client, but we certainly use every part of Act-On. We will build our client landing pages in Act-On, we house our email templates in Act-On, we upload marketing content to Act-On -- I'm in it all the time! In fact, I have it open in one of my browser tabs as I am writing this review.

Overall, it is a solid marketing automation platform. Act-On manages lists, segments, email programs, and sync's with SalesForce very well, but in some areas like landing page design and reporting it falls short.
  • List Management. Act-On has some powerful segmentation tools that complement the automated programs very well. Act-On lets you really slice and dice your lists however you see fit. Connected to Salesforce, Act-On becomes super-charged.
  • Automated Programs. You can then take your targeted segments and create robust automated programs that can be tailored into specific tracks for your targeted audience.
  • Webinar Programs. If you use GotoWebinar or WebEx, managing the webinar is a breeze. Act-On will handle the invitations, registrations, reminders and post-event follow-up for you. It works really well.
  • Landing Page Design. The drag and drop builder is OK. But it feels very limited for someone who has a good knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. Inevitably, there will be something that you simply can't do in Act-On that you could do in a standard web design environment.
  • No Server Side Scripts. There isn't any way to retrieve data in your lists and add it to a landing page. Basically, you can't use any data stored in an Act-On list and add it to a landing page.
  • It's limited. There is simply some data you can't pull from Act-On and into a 3rd Party Reporting app.
Act-On is great for companies who have multiple people managing marketing and sales programs. Each person will get their own log in and access to certain (or all) areas of the software. Alerts can be created when prospects reach certain stages of programs which means marketers don't need to constantly monitor lead scores or anything like that. Also, designers can log in and create landing pages, copywriters can login in and upload content and managers can login and build programs. There's no stepping on each other's work either. Team management is very good. Act-On is also great if you have multiple customer profiles. Act-On allows you to create programs designed to capture many leads across your customer profile.

Act-On would be overkill for the small B2C client. A small business that uses email to manage newsletters and product announcements will find Act-On to be much, much more than they need. Act-On can certainly do these things but so can MailChimp at a much lower price point. There would be many features in Act-On that this client simply would never use.

If your company uses a custom CRM, Act-On won't be the best fit. I imagine you would need to hire a developer (or commit an in-house developer) to a large project of integrating your CRM with Act-On. Otherwise, you'll be importing and exporting list data on a regular basis.
Maria Carver | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The integrated platform for marketing automation helps to automate how we used to handle the target customers and marketing campaigns along with website visitor tracking and social media marketing. It is very intuitive and useful to generate reports and analyze the data. Documentation for navigating through the software is very detailed. Support is great if you get stuck somewhere.
  • Integrated Marketing Platform, which includes social media management helps to automated programs, website tracker, generating reports, analyzing the data, and a lot more. It adds value to the business.
  • Very useful to increase client base or run successful marketing campaigns.
  • Training materials, documentation, and webinars are very useful to understand the power of the software.
  • It takes quite some time to understand how to use it, and without documentation, it becomes very difficult to navigate through the application.
  • User support base needs to be more active.
  • The system takes time to reflect the changes.
Automating workflows to target an audience, or in receiving feedback is a big time saver. Helps to increase efficiency and saves time for more productive work. Report generation is very helpful when sharing with the top management to help them analyze and take business decisions driven by data. Automation takes quite some effort and time to be put in place.
Christian Banach | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization uses Act-On to deploy email marketing campaigns to generate leads for advertising agencies and marketing services companies. It provides us with the capability to set up automated email programs and send thousands of emails to our clients' prospects.
  • Manage multiple clients and segment the client accounts
  • Activate multi-step automated email campaigns
  • Track recipient engagement such as opens, clicks, and website visits
  • Set-up requirements and steps are complicated
  • Customer service could have been better
Act-On is well suited for activating complex automated email programs but requires a significant investment of time to learn the platform. Act-On is not well-suited for basic email campaigns since the set-up process and capabilities are complex.
Fedor Paretsky | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Act-On as a marketing automation tool at our company. It helps us automate our marketing campaigns by allowing us to track our campaign target audience, and fulfill our benchmarks for digital campaigns. It also allows us to integrate other digital campaigning tools like Google Adwords, email, websites (like Squarespace).
  • Digital marketing campaign integrations, like Google Adwords, email tracking, other tools that track audiences, and website integrations like WordPress or Square Space.
  • The customer support, from what I've heard, is very good.
  • Integrations with other CRM systems make this really easy to add to a company's workflow.
  • It is one of the most expensive tools on the market, the price, compared to other similar tools, is very high.
  • It's a little difficult to get accustomed to this software, it looks like it's designed for people that already have experience in the marketing and campaigns space.
  • There are some necessary features, like contacts and sales users limitations, that are only available at higher pricing tiers, despite being already expensive for some of the lower tiers.
If you have an existing CRM system, like Microsoft 365, you can integrate campaign automation with Act-On, and then it is worth most of the time it takes to get less-experienced employees on-boarded. In other cases that require more minimal use, the on-boarding may be too lengthy. In that case, it may be better-suited to choose a different SaaS that tracks campaign, ROI, lead scoring, etc.
Brittney Collier | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Act-On is mainly used by the marketing department, but our sales team occasionally uses it with our help. We mostly use the platform for email marketing, automation, and to create landing pages for our marketing content. We’ve also started using Act-On to collect web data for lead generation.
  • My favorite Act-On feature is the web prospector. It allows you to gate your marketing content so that anyone viewing the content on your website provides information about their location, contact info, title, etc. It really helps us to generate leads for the sales team and has helped us get in contact with prospects who are highly interested in our products.
  • The feature that we use the most is the outbound content section for creating emails. The templates and different sections you can add to emails enables us to create very organized, versatile emails while sticking to our own branding and color guidelines.
  • After an email is sent in Act-On, the platform begins counting which links in an email were clicked the most. This really helped us to test how engaging certain emails were over others. It also helped us understand how to present certain content in a more engaging way. Something as simple as changing the color of a button can make our subscribers click on it, and we wouldn't have that insight without Act-On.
  • The most obvious con when using Act-On is that it’s not very intuitive. The menu options don’t always seem to correlate with what’s on that page so, I get lost on the platform often - even after using it for a year.
  • I wish there was an easier way to organize content added to Act-On by other users within my organization. I often have to sort through emails and drafts that were created by other people on my team to be able to find my own drafts.
I would definitely use Act-On if you’re a marketing team that supports a sales team and does a lot of client sales/up-selling. The platform does a great job at engaging a currently existing set of customers and prospects. However, I wouldn’t recommend this for companies seeking to expand their customer base. You would be better off using SEO tools to attract people to your website.
Layne Latham | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Act-on is currently used between the Marketing and Sales department as a way to track visitors to the website. Some of the sales team also uses Act-on to track email opens from customers and prospects. Marketing uses Act-on to track the effectiveness of drip campaigns and to host marketing content that the sales team uses in their messaging to prospects.
  • Tracking known sales prospects and their behavior on the website
  • Tracking anonymous visitors to the website and reporting the location and potential company based on their ISP
  • Hosting marketing content
  • Not user-friendly for tracking email opens for a specific user, it takes too much time to locate them within Act-on
  • Primarily built for marketing, the sales tools feel like an afterthought
  • Browser add-on needs to be removed and re-added regularly to ensure functionality
As mentioned before, this tool seems well suited for a marketing department.
The sales tools are marginal at best, and don't come close to the functionality and user friendly sales features of tools like ToutApp and Yesware.
Return to navigation