Act-On Reviews

Pros
I liked that over the past four years I have worked with the product I have seen it grow leaps and bounds. They have a team that is dedicated to making smart improvements with the product.

Cons
Like all products this isn't perfect. I had the most problems with our sales rep kept changing. Also, once in a blue moon a feature would change without proper notification.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Act-On offers automated program templates, all of which are completely customizable to meet our needs in driving leads in our marketing plan. The ease of use which is visually appealing with drag-and-drop, list segmenting, lead scoring options and integrations all work for our organization on both the user level and administrator level.

Cons
Pricing as this tool is at the higher end of some marketing resources. Also, the inability to schedule integrating segment runs at the earliest of four hours has caused issues with some of our marketing aspects.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Once we figured it our, it was extremely smart and well designed workflow.

Cons
Tricky to understand and use appropriately at first

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Absolutely nothing. I came from using Pardot at my previous company and then was stuck with this poor excuse for an automation system for two years. Luckily we're in the process of switching back to Pardot at the moment.

Cons
Pricing Model Not Built to Scale: They think that the "pay for contacts" pricing model is a pro, but it is not! For any marketer with a growing database this is a pure nightmare given that they are basically unresponsive when you need to add more contacts. We are actually currently in a situation where we can't get ANYONE to respond to help us add more contacts, which means that I cannot execute on a very large campaign that we were set to launch yesterday. Customer Service: As mentioned above, good luck getting anybody to actually call you back or fix your issues. If you have any level of sophistication in your marketing programs and automation, it's just a matter of when you're going to run into issues with Act-On, and half the time, they don't even know why the system doesn't work. I just got a call back a few days ago about a support ticket I submitted in JULY (it's October 18 right now). Product: Act-On does not have a contacts database. So if you need to look up a contact and see every list that they are on, every automation program they are in, or to manage their subscriptions or lists, you cannot. That's right - there is no way to globally search for a contact in Act-On. This is absurd. There is no way that you can call yourself an automation system in 2018 and not have this most basic of capabilities.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 0/10

Pros
This is a very robust email marketing program with marketing automation capabilities. We switched to Act On to be able to take advantage of setting up automated campaigns based on user behavior both in our emails and on our website.

Cons
Because the automation capabilities are so robust, this software has a very steep learning curve. It would not have been feasible for us to use this for marketing automation in-house without a full time person just using Act-on. We had to hire a consultant to be able to use this software.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
Act-On is easy to use and great metrics!

Cons
Nothing I'd change about this software!

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Most actions are very intuitive and the tool is easy to navigate.

Cons
Our onboarding experience wasn't the best, but Act-on has since implemented a new onboarding process that involves thorough training and set-up. We went to the bootcamp later and we are pleased that Act-on now offers that at the kickoff for other customers.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Less expensive, serves the purpose for a while not for long run

Cons
ui and ux is very poor and navigation was not so friendly

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 5/10

Pros
Great support and product learning program. The integration with our CRM and overall features/ease-of-use was excellent. It was a pleasure working with their team.

Cons
I'd like to have more in-person user group opportunities to discuss best practices.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Act-On’s automation platform is intuitive, I like the way the menu is built, it’s been made in a logical order so that when you move from one section to another, you go down the logical path to build automation. The support team is great, they’re efficient and patient ! There are many ways to find answers and tips; the Act-On community, the Act-On university, the online training courses, the webinars, everything is made for us to easily learn and efficiently use the platform.

Cons
Sometimes it takes us quite some times to do some simple tasks, for example when editing a step in an automated program, we have to wait a few seconds for the system to record what we edited and allow us to move to the next step. When there are many steps, it can become frustrating. Another example is when editing an image using Act-On editor, it can time many minutes before we can see the changes on the image where it’s being used (in emails, landing page, etc). These delays can be a bit frustrating when you are working on a template and you can’t finish it because some of the assets are still being processed by the system. The marketing calendar is a bit confusing sometimes, I see messages that have not been sent marked as sent, and we can only have a month view unless we export the details.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I liked everything about this software! It was truly an all-in-one deal. First of all, it integrated with our CRM (we used SugarCRM). The features related to this integration were: lead generation from our web forms, lead generation from our email campaigns, lead generation based on user action. It also pulled information in from our CRM, so any lead lists we created in our CRM (manually or automatically based on file status, etc) could be pulled into ActOn for campaigns. Next, it integrated with our website - it also has the ability to design your own website within ActOn that allows for even more neat features. It tracked users across emails & webpages and the reports allowed us to drill down to specific geographical areas of activity, key words used, which pages they were on and for how long, etc. It also gave a numerical value (that you can custom set) to each action and at a certain point could put that contact into a sales cycle or send an alert to the sales team to reach out to them. Lastly, the automated marketing feature was THE BEST. You have the ability to design a multi-faceted campaign that could run for a set amount of time, or indefinitely. What I found to be the cherry on top was that you could set actions for contacts who didn't do certain things (didn't click, didn't open, etc) and then repeat steps or put them into different tracks. As huge as this program seems, it was also incredibly easy to navigate. Saved our teams a lot of time and energy.

Cons
The most challenging features were the design elements. It was very template based and it took some CSS or HTML skills to make them less-standard. This was true for everything - emails, web pages, landing pages, etc.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Act-On is a robust, yet easy-to-use solution that combines multiple marketing applications into one. It has been a workhorse for us. While it can serve more than a dozen vital functions, including social media management and ABM, I most appreciate its integration with our CRM system (Microsoft Dynamics 365) and how it can be used to automate nurture programs, score leads based on behavior/engagement, and monitor web site visitor activity. I’m also very impressed by members of the tech support team who are very patient and have bailed us out of an after hours pinch more than once.

Cons
Keeping up with the constant evolution of Act-On is a full-time job. I often feel like we’re 5 steps behind in understanding newly released features and everything it can do. Of course, that’s a good problem. My only true critique is that the organization seems to have gone through some growing pains and lost its personal touch along the way. When I first selected and implemented Act-On at my previous company 4 years ago, I felt like our sales rep and implementation team were truly invested in our success. I was so impressed by the product and Act-On’s customer success team that I implemented it again at my next company and recommended it to several peers. However, faces began to change quickly, and we had 3 different reps in the same year. Our new contacts were less interested in our success and more interested in what we could do for them. One became obsessed with recruiting our company as a reseller. Things have settled down, but I don’t feel like they value our business as much as they once did.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Sincerely easier to use than others on the market, great overall feature set, love the dynamic content options, program templates were a game changer, account-based marketing provides visibility into how programs are doing at the Account-level that we haven't had.

Cons
The UI is slowly being overhauled but I'd like to see this go faster. Their out-of-box reports aren't great, but I haven't run across a marketing automation platform who has great reporting (I do like Marketo's Opportunity Analyzer report) and we use Data Studio to simply pull data out the way we want it to populate our reports in excel or Tableau

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
We just started using Act-On a few months ago. We had debated marketing automation companies to go with for years. Overall, Act-On was able to go toe-to-toe in most regards with the other vendors we were considering, at least. The deciding factor was the pricing model, which is a bit unusual. They only charge you for "active" contacts, which are contacts you are actually reaching out to. You can import other contacts for reporting, data synchronization, or potential marketing purposes down the line if you wish, and you won't be charged for them. The support team at Act-On is great. During our evaluation, I received an email from the CEO himself, asking what he could do to help us choose. Throughout implementation, we had several calls and I was always provided what we needed quickly. Act-On does so many things, it would be impossible to cover here, but I like their email and landing page creator. I found it to be very intuitive. The user interface is showing some age, but it's very straightforward and there's not a lot of guessing about how to use it. Act-On is list based, which is the "old" methodology in the industry right now, but if you're a fan of that strategy, you'll feel right at home. Workflow creation is very easy. Data Studio (an add-on) also allows you to create custom reporting, and baked in integrations and an automated FTP connection allow you to get your data talking to each other automatically. The university has great educational information available too.

Cons
You'll get out of Act-On what you put into it. The support and university is there to guide you in that process, but it's ultimately up to you. That's how it is with any platform that doesn't offer in-house services, but with a marketing automation suite, you will really get more out of it if you have knowledgeable staff that have experience implementing and using these platforms. It can be daunting if it's your first time using a marketing automation suite. While Act-On is working on some new things, I don't know that they are putting as much effort behind investing into the product as some of the leading companies in the space. Also, some of the tools are a little rudimentary, and the UI could certainly use some modernizing. It feels too much like Windows XP at times.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Act-On gives me the ability to get extremely specific with my target prospects and customers. It's easy to build new segments and immediately see the size of those groups. It's very useful for data mining and determining where to focus your marketing efforts. For example, in just a couple of minutes (assuming you've done the work to collect the information from customers and store them properly in custom lists) you can create a segment of prospects who have downloaded or purchased x product from your website, meet criteria x,y,z for their attributes, have opened or clicked messages in a specific timeframe, and have visited a specific page of your website. You have the ability to get as granular as you want. You can then build automated programs that send targeted and timely messages depending on where these prospects are in your funnel and use conditional logic to define any future interactions.

Cons
The UI in some areas of the platform could use some design enhancements for aesthetics and for consistency throughout.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I think you will find ActOn easy to use. I can quickly develop an email and define a target list and send as easily to 10 people or 100,000 people. I also like the reporting and graphs associated with a campaign. I also find the Form editor very valuable b/c I can quickly create a business need survey in a matter of minutes for my internal customers. The responses are easy to analyze b/c they are in spreadsheet form.

Cons
ActOn recently rolled out a new forms editor and they did not bring over the reporting URL feature from the Classic Form editor...this would make it easier for my internal customers to pull data vs having me pull the data for them.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
With Act-On's Activity History, I am able to view a Timeline that helps to keep me organized so I know what I may still need to send and so that I have a good idea about whether or not my prospects are getting communications that they should. Sometimes, with email blasts emails may not get through an organization's spam filter, but using the Activity History and Timeline in Act-On and testing by sending things through Act-On Anywhere in Outlook help to determine who need to receive emails alternate ways.

Cons
Often times, maintenance and issues are not brought to our attention prior to us having issues with the software not working or causing issues with our campaigns. Having warnings in advance of when maintenance is being done or of possible known issues so that we can watch for them and be prepared would help a great deal.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
We chose Act-on as our marketing automation software because of its native integration with Salesforce, our CRM at the time. We made the move from Marketo, and Act-on has a much easier user interface. There were so many things we could track and do. We had great customer service, including weekly calls with a customer experience rep.

Cons
Like most marketing automation software, the key to success is learning all of the ins and outs of the system, then create a strategy surrounding it. If you don't have someone on your team willing to take advantage of all of the features, the price might outweigh the benefit. Our customer experience rep could have helped more in overall strategy and campaign building, but they were incredibly busy, too busy to go in depth on those items. The team ended up moving to a simpler and cheaper product because they weren't taking advantage of everything Act-on had to offer.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 6/10

Pros
Ease of use is first and foremost. To create, segment and automate emails of value that will reach our varied customer base is key for us. The social media aspect of Act-On is also a valued feature that not only allows us to plan when our content is shared but what content hits at the right time. We don't use the scoring as much as most companies probably do, but our dive into behavioral analytics through Act-On is yielding great results as well.

Cons
Main dislike: More personalization for our sales force to view how their customers are responding. Dashboard is fine, for sure, but we'd love a better way for them to witness the contacts happening.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Once you learn it, you realize how nice of a tool it is. Email campaigns, lead scoring, assessing total voice of customer -- it's all there.

Cons
Unless you get the white glove setup service, it's tough to really figure out what you're doing at first. I would not recommend for Dynamics CRM (it's missing features that other CRMs have). The Outlook email template plugin is nice when it works, but more often than not, there are problems. I do wish they help you better understand what data fields are required in both Act-On as well as the CRM, and how to add/edit what is being integrated.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
That you can do everything in one place, you don't need to code anything, (it is useful if you want to improve features or personalize a little bit more, but really not necessary) all modules are easy to use. You have Social Media, Automation, Reporting, Scoring, detailed contact information, connectors, etc.

Cons
I think that lists could be updated a bit, like being able to sort by any of the columns. I don't like that they don't have a connector for Instagram and only to webinar options.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Rating breakdown

Pros
Syncing with SFDC is awesome. Easy to use - novices can pick it up quickly. Reporting is quite good and easy to understand. Love the continuous product improvements that are made.

Cons
WYSIWYG can drive you crazy, especially with formatting and fonts and hyperlinks, making it tedious to get the look you want. Lately it has been very slow to load, especially photos/graphics.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
The only feature I use is to see who has been on our website. You are able to see who has been on your website and what links they have clicked on. Works really well when sending out speculative mails. You are able to see who actually looks at your mails and who has a genuine interest when they click further into links.

Cons
On occasions you can see someone has been on the website, but can't track down who (as no IP address present) I understand this may be security measures their end and there is no way of ever knowing. I have real issues linking ActOn with my Outlook mail.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
The Dynamics integration was a crucial part of my decision to adopt this software for my company. Ease of use is comparable to any other robust marketing automation tool. We've seen huge value in this purchase.

Cons
Unfortunately the software does not function well on iOS devices.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10