VIDEO: Act-On Marketing Automation Platform Review

This review video is for Act-On, a cloud-based marketing automation platform. Act-On provides a suite of tools designed to help businesses capture and convert online leads. At first glance, the Act-On interface seems clean and fairly intuitive. You can add different widgets and shortcuts onto the customizable start screen by dragging and dropping from the widget menu. The “active messages” widget, for example, shows an overview of stats for recent email messages.

You can also add any favorite items you would like to keep tabs on, such as web forms or email templates. The collapsible menu on the left side of the interface lets you navigate between different sections of Act-On. In the Contacts section, you can view and manage different lists for your campaigns, either by creating your own, or by using lists the system automatically creates. A little further down in the same section, you can access and edit your lead scoring criteria.

Simply click the blue “+” to add a new rule. The Content section is where you will store and manage any assets used for marketing campaigns, such as landing pages and forms. Any downloadable assets can be stored in the Media Library. To change the title or control whether an asset is gated, click the dropdown arrow to the right. In the Reports tab, you can access a variety of different out-of-the-box reports to track performance and revenue. Act-On also includes a month-to-month breakdown of web data, so you can analyze traffic and conversion trends.

Under “Revenue Attribution,” you can pull quarterly reports to see what campaigns are turning out the best results. Additional Act-On features include lead nurturing, progressive profiling, dynamic content, web forms, and a/b testing. Act-On is an “open-architecture” system, so it’s designed to allow heavy customization. For a marketing automation platform, Act-On has a much lower learning curve than some of its big-box competitors, so it’s a great choice for small and medium-sized companies getting their feet wet with marketing automation.

Act-On comes in two editions — Professional, and Enterprise, depending on users, features, and contacts. Pricing is mid-tier for the industry, and the professional edition is an affordable choice for smaller companies with up to three users. A limitation we discovered is that the knowledge library is lackign and many times we have had to contact the support representative to figure a function out. Act-on can has a lot of functionality, but it has some limitation with complex automation setups.

Act-On helps businesses: Attract new prospects, Convert leads into revenue, and Turn customers into brand advocates. To learn more about Act-On and other marketing automation solutions, check out our website, TechnologyAdvice.com, where we can help you find the best technology for your business. Thanks for watching.