Email marketing is a relatively inexpensive and effective marketing tool for small businesses that are looking to both engage and find new customers.  What many small business owners may not realize is that using an email marketing vendor is crucial in today’s world of spam filters that can sabotage an email campaign if it is not executed effectively.  An email marketing vendor will ensure your email and your subscriber lists comply with the anti-spamming laws and thus to enable you to communicate with your customers.

Email marketing has been around for more than a decade and there are many solid companies out there that offer the service.  Today I will take a close look at ActiveCampaign’s email marketing tool.The company, which was founded in 2003, currently has more than 50,000 users and stresses a social media element as their “unique selling point.”  Below I will take you through their basic features and describe how small businesses can use ActiveCampaign to implement a successful campaign.

ActiveCampaign has two other services in addition to their email marketing tools, including help desk software and a survey tool.  However, for purposes of this review, we are going to focus on ActiveCampaign’s email marketing service.

Overview:

ActiveCampaign boasts that its email marketing tools are the most comprehensive and easy to use in the market.  The service says that you can “combine all aspects of email marketing into a single and easy- to- use platform.”  They are not wrong.

When using ActiveCampaign, I found that I could quickly and easily create an engaging email and shoot it off to my email list in a short amount of time.  And the good news is that the service will help you every step of the way.  Occasionally the instructions were a bit difficult to understand such as their explanation around website integration – but after giving some of the tools a try — it all came together nicely.

It offers you the option to import or manually type in your email list/addresses; the ability to choose a template to create an attractive and professional-looking email  – such as a newsletter template; and finally the service allows you to share your email on Twitter and Facebook.

Once you have set up your email and imported your email list into system, you click on send and all the emails will quickly go out to your subscribers in mere seconds.

Like similar services in the market, Active Campaign will provide the results of your email marketing campaign including how many people opened the email, how many unsuscribed, and more.

The Basics:  What does it look like?

ActiveCampaign’s user interface is very simple to follow and the product does a good job of helping you to navigate through the site as you develop and manage your email campaign.

Currently ActiveCampaign is offering a 14-day free trial period – so sign up is free.  Once you choose a username and password, the service will create your dashboard that will house all of your data including your email lists, analytics and more.

The ActiveCampaign dashboard houses all of your data

The dashboard also offers you several options to help you set up your email campaign: Create a List, Import Subscribers, Integrate with Website, Create a Campaign and View Reports.  Once you do, Active Campaign walks you through the process.

There are several features that allow you to create an email campaign.  Here are the major ones:

Create a List

Create a list allows you to create a name for your email list and save it into the system.  You can then manually type in your subscriber email addresses.  You may create as many lists as you see fit and update and change them when necessary.

Import Subscribers

If you have many subscribers, you can import lists from a paid service, or have the system search services that you are subscribed to like Google, Salesforce.com and Zoho.com for your email contacts.

Create a campaign:

ActiveCampaign allows you to tailor your email campaign to your audience. There are several features you can choose from including implementing a one-time campaign to AutoResponder which allows you to automate your emails to your subscribers after a specific number of hours or days.  Active Campaign also offers other ways to distribute your emails through RecurringCampaign which will send your emails once, for example every 14 days.  One feature that is very helpful is Split Testing which helps you test different versions of your emails to see what resonates.

Create an Email Campaign in ActiveCampaign

After you choose the kind of campaign you want to implement  — automation, one time campaign, recurring campaigns – you can begin the design process and choose from several templates that ActiveCampaign has to offer.  If you want to design your own template, you can opt for the blank template and the system will allow you to import photos, logos and more.

Email Templates

Once you complete the design process, you can then schedule the time when you want the emails to go out.  You can send out the emails immediately or opt for a day and time in the near future.

Reporting:

After the emails are sent, ActiveCampaign will help you determine the impact of your campaign through its analytics feature.  You will learn how many people opened the email, how many people “unsubscribed” to your email and more. This will help you determine if the campaign resonated with your subscribers.

Pricing:

ActiveCampaign currently offers a free trial for 14 days and of course the option to upgrade afterwards.  There are monthly plans starting at $9 per month up to $625 a month.  The monthly plans are best for those who are going to send out emails on a regular basis.  For $9 you are able to send emails to 500 subscribers as well as create and distribute an indefinite number of email campaigns.  At the high end, you pay $625 per month which allows you up to 150,000 subscribers and the ability to send more than a million emails each month.

For small businesses that only send out email campaigns very rarely, the pay as you go method might be a better option.  Prices range from $15 to $1250 for “credits” – and each email is worth one credit.

Is it for you?

Email marketing, like any marketing tactic, will depend on your business goals and your audience.  Most people have email accounts these days so email marketing is a fairly effective and low-cost means to interact with your customers.  That said, people are wary about getting a lot spam these days so email marketing may not resonate with everyone.  In that case, you’ll want to make sure that email marketing is not your only promotions tactic and incorporate it into your overall marketing plans – including any advertising, PR and search engine marketing campaigns.  Email marketing as part of the larger promotions mix will probably make a stronger impression.

Overall, ActiveCampaign is a solid product that is very affordable and mostly very easy to use.  It offers many options in terms of email design, distribution methods, and interaction with social media sites.  My recommendation – give ActiveCampaign a try and see what you get out of it.  You might be pleasantly surprised.

ActiveCampaign:

Ratings: ease of use 5/5, features 5/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 4/5

Visit Website

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter or FaceBook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed