The most bang for your buck a marketing automation tool has provided me
November 29, 2015
The most bang for your buck a marketing automation tool has provided me
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Act-On
Act-On is the core component of our in house marketing platform. When I joined Anachron, one of my key goals was to professionalize the marketing department - almost starting from scratch. Act-On enables me to monitor, maintain and execute a range of internal, inbound and outbound marketing activities through a single platform. It is the cornerstone of our entire marketing platform and its excellent integration with Salesforce and robust sales user functionality has enabled us to strengthen the relationship between marketing and sales greatly.
- Behaviour Analysis. Anachron allows me to monitor all user behaviour on our websites, landing pages, emails webinars and other items. This knowledge, even the anonymous company data around who is on our sites and what they are doing is invaluable.
- Email marketing and list management. Act-On's list management and email capabilities compare very favourably with some of the higher end automation tools I've used in the past. Although it has its quirks, it stands up strong against its biggest competitors in this regard.
- Sales Support. The Act-On Anywhere Chrome Extension has rapidly become a must have item for our entire sales team. This recent addition to Act-On gives much greater insight into prospect behaviour to sales and most importantly enables the to get access to that information without having to log into another system, It's included right there in their emails and their web browser. The Act-On tab in Salesforce is also of great interest to our sales team.
- Program automation: the only feature I miss from Eloqua, which I used in a previous role, is the drag and drop canvas for building out a drip campaign. Act-On's functionality works perfectly, but the fact it's all listed in one vertical line makes it slightly more difficult to visualize the flow. Having said that, the tools are all there, it could just do with some extra visualization when it comes to making complex programs.
- Website prospector. This is one of the features I use very heavily and although the new version recently launched is a big improvement, there's still room for more info. It's by no means bad, but I'd like to see some extra info in here.
- Forms: Id like to see a more visual formbuilder, in line with the landing page improvements recently made. The form works great but are quite plain visually. This could be improved and remove the need for extra tools in WordPress/other programs.
- Average web audience grew 300% within three months, with visitors coming from over 100 countries.
- Greater integration and cooperation between marketing and sales.
- Enabled us to become much more proactive in lead generation that the company was able to do previously. We can monitor behaviour, react to that appropriately and serve our prospects and customers much more effectively.
- Oracle Marketing Cloud - Oracle Cross Channel Marketing to Businesses (Eloqua)
I used Eloqua in my previous role and while it was a great tool I found it very cumbersome and difficult to work with. It's interface was old and it was actually quite a task to get many terms created, designed and aligned as I liked within that tool. Also, the costs for the platform were extremely high. Act-On was a real breath of fresh air for me. Its a much more intuitive interface, and much easier to work with. Although it may not have all of the bells and whistles that some of the bigger players have, it does a lot more than just the basics and gets them right as wel. It also has some cool little innovations of its own as well, the Act-On Anywhere tool is really interesting and valuable, not just to marketers but for sales staff as well. But overall, value for money is much greater with Act-On and that's a key concern for any business.
Act-On Feature Ratings
Using Act-On
8 - Marketing, Sales, Higher management
1 -
- Marketing expertise
- Marketing strategy - inbound/outbound/internal
- Communication skills
- Design skills
- Editorial skills
- Branding/Housestyle Management
- Website Maintenance
- CRM integration and maintenance
- Lead generation
- Prospect/Customer behaviour analysis
- Content Management and Creation effectiveness
- The Act-On Anywhere has done more to promote the benefits of Act-On and marketing as a whole to our sales team than any other feature or demonstration I've given. The reason? it instantly shows them the value THEY can receive from the platform and how it can benefit them in their role.
- When building up a marketing approach, almost from scratch, gaining internal approval is key to reaching your objectives. The data and analysis tools available within Act-On have made it easier for me to demonstrate the effectiveness of marketing, its value to the organization and instigate a number of process improvements based on those findings.
- Greater inbound lead generation activities
- More effective communication with existing customers (loyalty/satisfaction improvements)
Evaluating Act-On and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
Price. I knew I wanted a fully functional marketing automation tool but I would have found it difficult to justify the expenditure on one of the bigger players, like Marketo, Eloqua etc., simply because of the size of our company. I didn't want to have to rely on MailChimp, or a simple email blast program and some of the other tools aimed at small businesses didn't really come up to scratch. HubSpot was the only other option I seriously considered, but their pricing levels made it difficult to justify when compared with Act-On.
I wouldn't. I was quite thorough and Act-On made the most sense for our business.