A Great, Cost-Effective Marketing Automation Solution
Updated June 16, 2015
A Great, Cost-Effective Marketing Automation Solution
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Act-On
Act-On is used by our marketing department to create and track all of our digital marketing campaigns and materials including e-mail campaigns, webinars, and white paper downloads. We integrate it with our Salesforce CRM so that our sales team can access all of the information in their daily workflow. Thanks to Act-On, our sales team has greater visibility into their sales leads and I've received compliments from our sales team that they love getting their Act-On alerts. In today's world, I can send a sales rep a marketing lead and tell them how they got to our website, what blog articles they've read, and just give them much more context so that they can have a better conversation with our current and prospective clients.
- Third-Party Integrations like Salesforce CRM and Webinar services (WebEx, GoToMeeting) work exceptionally well when compared to other marketing vendors, and there are no additional charges or need to purchase third-party plug-ins from an "app exchange" in order to get this functionality.
- Customer Service is critical for any company that we work with. And with Act-On, you really do feel like a customer and they treat you like an actual person, not just another client number.
- Marketing List Management - Act-On's contact list management is superior when compared to other marketing software vendors from my personal experience. They understand that sometimes you may want to delete list of contacts you no longer wish to market to, while other marketing vendors won't let you because they want to keep charging you for the same number of contacts, regardless of whether you send them e-mails or not.
- Media Library Management - Again, they have a great and easy to use interface for their media library, where we can upload pretty much any type of file like white papers, PDF's, and images to use in our marketing campaigns or even to embed on our website or external landing pages. We tried another vendor's file system, and it was just not very easy to use and renaming files a nightmare--something that just simply works and is never an issue with Act-On.
- Better reporting capabilities for revenue attribution specifically with Salesforce CRM.
- A tool for dynamic Calls-To-Action (CTA's).
- More flexibility with Landing Pages or an integration with Unbounce landing pages. For the time being, we have to manually embed forms on our Unbounce landing pages, which works, but takes more time than if there were an out-of-the-box integration with the system.
- Increased employee efficiency
- Better insight into marketing leads
- Better revenue attribution
- Customer Service: Act-On is very easy to use when compared to HubSpot overall. Act-On's customer service is superior to HubSpot, where I was not really treated as a customer. At times with HubSpot, I felt like simply a client number.
- Webinar Integrations: HubSpot does not have an out-of-the-box integration with GoToMeeting or WebEx. At the time when I tried HubSpot, they had a third-party plugin only for GoToMeeting, but it didn't work properly and you had to pay an additional fee.
- Two-Way CRM Integration: After trying out HubSpot, I really appreciated the way that Act-On's integration with Salesforce works. With HubSpot, I was getting leads duplicated when I deleted them from one system. Sometimes you do need to delete a lead for one reason or another, but HubSpot didn't allow for this. And even our Sales Team wasn't too happy with this integration. They were happy when we made the switch back to Act-On in this area.
- Easy-to-Read Data in Salesforce: Act-On's lead information in Salesforce is presented in an "easier to read" format when compared to HubSpot. Act-On also has a timeline view that allows you to see each marketing touch-point since the system began tracking the lead.
Using Act-On
Act-On Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
In January of this year, I scheduled an Act-On training session for our Sales Team. My Customer Success Manager and my Act-On Sales Rep worked closely with me to coordinate the training session, which by the way, was not "out of scope" for our subscription. With Act-On, it truly feels like a partnership and they are invested in their clients' success.