If you’ve been in the digital marketing industry for a while now, you’ve probably heard of ActiveCampaign and GetResponse. Both platforms are great for email marketers and business owners who rely heavily on email and marketing automation platforms to maintain a healthy relationship with their audience.
Since both platforms are arguably popular, it can be easy to see why the ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse debate remains heated and mostly unsolved. Unfortunately, I’m not here to tell you which platform I prefer over the other.
Instead, I’ll help you make a decision for yourself so you can choose the platform that is right for you and your business.
With that in mind, it’s time to dive into the ins and outs of ActiveCampaign and GetResponse.
ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse review summary
Before we dive into the technicalities of this review, let’s take a quick look at both platforms and how their features stack up against each other.
I found that while there are glaring differences and it can be quite easy for you to determine that one is better than the other, they’re both simply designed to cater to different audiences.
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You’ll see what I mean later. For now, take a look at this GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign comparison.
Review Summary: I found that there are many differences in features that can be found on both platforms when you try to compare them. Keeping that in mind, this also means that each tool is better suited for a certain demographic.
For example, GetResponse is better suited for webinar marketing whilst ActiveCampaign is designed to reach a wider audience for email and lead marketers.
ActiveCampaign features
By now, I’ve already told you that ActiveCampaign holds a high recommendation from me if you focus on connecting with your leads and if you don’t use webinar marketing all too often. One of its key benefits is that it’s filled with advanced features that allow you to maximize your email and marketing automation.
Moreover, it also has tools in place that allow you to maintain a line of communication with your customers, manage and boost your business, and keep all your customer records in one convenient place.
Some of its main features include an email marketing tool that allows you to create and automate marketing emails, CRM, and chat or messaging options.
These tools are designed for business owners who value interaction by giving their audience multiple ways to connect with you and vice versa. This means you can better build relationships with your audience because you’re not limited to reaching out through emails.
Before we move forward, let’s take a closer look at some of the most popular features ActiveCampaign has to offer.
Email marketing platform
The email and marketing platform that ActiveCampaign offers is incredibly advanced. This means there’s plenty of room to make adjustments and allows you to reach your audience using different email templates like broadcast, triggered, targeted, autoresponders, funnels, and scheduled emails.
One of the most remarkable things about this advanced email marketing software is that it isn’t hard to use. Despite the advanced features, it still gives you plenty of room to use it even if you have little to no prior knowledge of email marketing.
The drag and drop builder is intuitive, easy to use, and optimized to help you send conversion-geared emails without difficulty.
Furthermore, this also means that you shouldn’t face any complications trying to use the platform for the first time. There is a very minimal learning curve involved in the software, but this doesn’t mean there isn’t room to perform more technical changes when needed.
Another feature that you’ll appreciate is the premade template selection. There are various pre-made templates designed by professionals and proven to be effective. They’re also easily customizable so you can alter any existing templates to fit your brand more accurately.
Email segmentation and dynamic content
Other features you’ll find within the email marketing platform include email segmentation and dynamic content tool. This allows you to send varying emails to different customers in the same campaign.
With these features, you can send different emails based on the previous behavior of your customers. This means you could select the type of email sent depending on their actions on your site.
These features make it easier to send effective emails based on what you want your customers to do. For example, if a customer has already made a purchase on your website, you’d be able to send them an email geared towards convincing them to repurchase. This is essentially what you would call customer retention.
On the other hand, you could also set specific emails to be sent to the same customer list but with a different email for contacts who have yet to make a purchase.
Reporting tools
ActiveCampaign also boasts a good selection of reporting tools that allow you to more easily identify and optimize the emails you’re building.
One example would be the A/B split testing tool. This allows you to consistently optimize your emails to make sure you have the best version possible before you send it out.
Essentially, the reporting tools help you identify problem areas, strengthen and maintain high-traffic areas, and maximize your efforts. It also eventually leads to more clicks, opened emails, and purchases.
Integrations
ActiveCampaign can be integrated with a variety of applications like Facebook, Zapier, or WooCommerce accounts. This not only helps you maximize your marketing efforts and connect it wherever you need to.
The platform allows you to integrate it with over 250 applications.
Automated marketing
What use is your marketing calendar, when you have to enable each task manually? This is never a good marketing strategy. After all, you can’t expect to be awake 24/7 or risk losing prime marketing opportunities when you’re away from your marketing tools or computer.
The ActiveCampaign automated marketing platform makes it easier for you to maintain a relationship with your customers and reach out during key times efficiently without having to do it manually.
This feature basically allows you to automize newsletters, trigger emails, or follow-up emails depending on the preferences you set.
If you’re worried about your emails feeling like they’re too robotic or obviously automized, don’t worry. Some several settings and customizations allow you to personalize emails.
This means although you’re not personally sending the emails, they’ll still include your customer’s specific information so it feels as though they’re getting a personal email.
Sales and CRM feature
The in-built sales and CRM tools allow you to keep tabs on your sales and leads. This also makes sure you’re able to more effectively use automation to further optimize your sales process.
The sales automation feature helps you sell more with less effort involved. This is done by maintaining a relationship with your customers and leads. Furthermore, it also allows you to nurture your leads - essentially grooming them, to make them more open to the idea of making more purchases from you.
This passive yet effective marketing technique has been applied time and time again. Whilst in some cases you may need to do so manually, the sales and CRM tools allow you to automize the process.
Several trigger options make sure every action your leads and customers take on certain areas in your page and emails are responded to correctly.
Messaging tools
Other than email marketing options, another great feature ActiveCampaign boasts is its SMS and in-site messaging tools. This allows you to reach out to your leads in more ways than one.
Essentially, that means you don’t have to rely solely on email marketing, but you can also reach your customers through SMS and in-site messaging; or vice versa.
Machine learning and AI capabilities
Several features go hand in hand with ActiveCampaign’s various automated marketing tools. This includes a win probability tool that identifies leads that are most likely to convert so your sales efforts are spent wisely.
More than that, the predictive sending feature identifies which times your customers or leads are most likely to open and respond to emails. This further optimizes the automation by raising the chances of your lead clicking on your email.
But more than that, ActiveCampaign also offers a wide variety of other features that will help your business flourish. Take a look at those features below:
ActiveCampaign pros
As we have tackled above, ActiveCampaign does utilize some of the most impressive features and tools in the industry. These tools, when used together work hand in hand to effectively allow your marketing techniques to reach their full potential.
Before we move on to the drawbacks of ActiveCampaign, let’s take a look at what ActiveCampaign does right.
ActiveCampaign cons
Like any other platform, there will always be room for improvement. The same can be said for ActiveCampaign. While it does offer some great benefits, it cannot be denied that there are certain drawbacks.
GetResponse features
Now that we’ve talked about everything ActiveCampaign has to offer as well as its drawbacks, it’s time to give our attention to GetResponse. Like I said before, both platforms are good for their respective uses, it just so happens that GetResponse caters to a wholly different demographic.
Let’s take a closer look at the key features GetResponse has to offer:
Email marketing
GetResponse offers a reasonably powerful email marketing tool that allows you to essentially build and send professional targeted emails to your chosen audience.
The great thing about the platform is that you aren’t restricted to choosing templates or relying on a drag and drop builder entirely.
You have the option to use a pre-built template or create one from scratch yourself. To build on this, the template library offers a reasonable set of templates to choose from. Each of these varies depending on the kind of task you need the email for.
Despite the great customizability of the platform, it still offers a user-friendly drag and drop builder interface for anyone who is not as well-versed when it comes to the more technical email building side of things.
The page builder is intuitive, easy to navigate, well-organized and it even features a smart editing tool that allows you to edit, resize, or crop images on the builder with ease.
The platform also allows you to send various types of emails like newsletters, autoresponders, automated email sequences, segmented sends, and automated blog content.
Another nifty feature that GetResponse uses is the perfect timing and time travel delivery tools. At its core, these tools identify which times are the best to send emails to your customers and automatically send them out to raise your conversion and click-through rates effectively.
Thanks to the above-mentioned tools, you’re guaranteed a delivery rate of over 99%. This means you don’t have to worry about your emails ending up in spam folders where they’re not doing anyone any favors.
This email marketing software also gives you the ability to build personalized campaigns with customized and dynamic content. This means you can choose basically any image, CTA, offers, and content you want to use for your emails and tailor them to your customer’s individual actions such as their purchases.
Advanced analytics tool
More than that, GetResponse also utilizes an advanced split A/B testing tool that actively identifies which version of your email would be the most effective for your target audience. This allows you to target problem areas before they’re sent out.
Ultimately, this leads to highly optimized and high-converting emails. Which - let’s be honest, is what we all really need.
Automated marketing features
One aspect where GetResponse flourishes well is its automation features. Its automated marketing tools are designed to help you select both simple and advanced automation. This means you’re able to further optimize your marketing efforts by catering to all kinds of scenarios.
Moreover, it’s surprisingly easy to create marketing automation using their builder. The drag and drop interface allows you to preview your automation in real-time so you can fix any issues immediately instead of later.
The automation tool is also designed to tag and score your customer and lead actions. This means your sales team can easily view reports made by the platform and connect them with certain actions and marketing efforts to more effectively optimize the sales process. This in turn, effectively raises your chances of making a sale.
CRM
The CRM platform gives you a clean and organized overview of your customers and leads. It allows you to segregate them into different stages and allows you to focus on certain groups to make sure as many leads as possible are converted.
This also gives you better access to your customer files since they’re all in one neatly organized platform. It’s also easy to manually move certain leads from one stage to another as needed so you can focus on customer retention and maintaining your leads.
But more than that, think of this as your own personal customer cheat book. You have the option to attach notes to each customer. This allows you to keep track of what you’ve conversed about, how they interacted with you, or how they responded to certain marketing techniques.
This will effectively help you maintain a good level of contact with your customers while making sure you’re never redundant or forget specific things about your customer’s experience.
Landing page builder
Compared to ActiveCampaign, GetResponse features a highly intuitive landing page builder. And might I say, it’s not just any ordinary landing page builder. In fact, the software is designed to maximize your leads and make sure your landing pages are as effective as possible.
Now, if you don’t have experience building your own landing pages or if you’re simply under a time crunch, there are several templates you can choose from. There is also the option to fully customize pre-made templates with images, content, and branding.
Webinar tool
Another feature that GetResponse has going for it is its webinar tool. This allows you to host webinars within the platform itself.
The platform is most likely better used if you’re a webinar marketer or have use of webinars. This also removes the inconvenience of having to subscribe to a different webinar platform.
GetResponse pros
Take a look at the shining features and benefits that I noticed GetResponse boasts. If any of these appeals to you, then GetResponse is certainly a platform you should look into.
GetRespons cons
While GetResponse does employ effective marketing techniques, there are a few drawbacks that I’ve noticed as well. Such as:
Pricing plans: how much does it cost
As far as pricing goes, both platforms offer a good variety of plan options. Let’s take a look at what plans they offer below:
ActiveCampaign pricing plans
ActiveCampaign offers four different pricing options, namely: Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise. Each of these plans is designed for a variety of contact lists. The plans are paid annually instead of monthly with the cheapest plan priced at $9 monthly.
The Enterprise plan on the other hand is priced at $229 per month. That said, their most popular plan - the Professional plan, will run you $129 a month.
ActiveCampaign also offers a free trial. So if you’re unsure whether you should continue with it or not, feel free to take full advantage of the trial period.
GetResponse pricing plans
GetResponse also offers four pricing plans. The unique thing about the plans offered is that while the cheapest starts at $15 for a monthly subscription, its Enterprise plan (which is the most expensive) is customized and can fit the specific needs of your business.
Their most popular plan - the Plus plan, is priced at $49 a month.
GetResponse also offers a free trial if you’re unsure whether it’s the right for you. Unlike other platforms, the trial runs for 30 days which gives you plenty of time to try out all of the features it offers.
Which platform is the best?
Like I said, I’m not here to tell you which platform is the best. There’s simply no comparison. Each of these platforms caters to two entirely different marketing categories.
Nevertheless, I conclude that GetResponse is the ideal choice for you if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that allows you to build funnels and host webinars without having to rely on third-party integration.
On the other hand, ActiveCampaign might be more your speed if you’re looking for something more affordable and offers more choices when it comes to interacting with your customers and leads.
Overall, both platforms offer a free trial. So if you’re unsure whether you should choose one over the other, I suggest you take the time to get to know each platform better before making a final decision.
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