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Email marketing automation has become a hot topic amongst marketers and entrepreneurs, but it’s so much more than just a popular buzz phrase.
It entails creating email templates, building an email list, segmenting, sending out emails to prospects based on triggers, and much more.
And all of it is done automatically!
However, with so many email marketing platforms out there, it can be overwhelming trying to pick the right one for your business.
Not to worry!
After extensive research I narrowed down the search to two of the most popular email marketing tools on the market, ActiveCampaign and GetResponse.
In this article we’ll be looking into all the top features and functionality, as well as the pros & cons of both tools so that you will be able to select the most suitable option for your business.
To start, here’s a quick overview of both ActiveCampaign and GetResponse.
Table of Contents
What isActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign is a marketing solution that combines email marketing, automation, CRM tools, sales, and targeted messaging tools to offer a better user experience.
Source: ActiveCampaign
It consolidates and organizes customer data so that users can make better marketing decisions throughout the customer journey – from the first point of contact to conversion to fostering long-term relationships.
Suitable for small-to-midsize businesses, it helps you:
- Build and segment contact lists
- Send professional emails
- Manage marketing campaigns
- Track and analyze customer behavior
- Measure the performance of your email campaign and site
- And more…
Additionally, it integrates with various social media platforms and several third-party CRMs. Integration with Zapier also gives you access to over 150 third-party apps.
Apart from that, you will get exclusive sales force automation (SFA) features, including deal tracking, customer journey management, and lead scoring.
Also, ActiveCampaign aids different business niches like bloggers, agencies, e-commerce, SaaS, etc.
What isGetResponse?
GetResponse is an all-in-one email marketing solution that can help you build email campaigns, increase sales, engage subscribers – all from a single dashboard.
Source: GetResponse
Its email editor allows users to draft newsletters without any prior knowledge of coding. In addition, this email-drafting portion of GetResponse includes templates to help you design beautiful emails and free images to reduce graphics-related costs.
GetResponse’s landing page creator enables users to design 100% responsive web forms and landing pages.
You also get access to hundreds of ready-to-use templates and a drag-and-drop designer that can help you create web pages for sales, thank you pages, webinars, opt-ins, etc., without touching a single line of code.
Additionally, its marketing automation capability allows users to track subscriber behavior in real-time through stackable workflows.
Standard automation features include automation segmentation, lead scoring, cart abandonment, activity tracking, and scalable autoresponders.
Plus, GetResponse offers pricing tiers for email marketing beginners, growing small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), pro marketers, and enterprises seeking scalable, high-end solutions.
To summarize, GetResponse is ideal for sending beautifully designed emails and creating numerous types of landing pages. It also provides superb automation functionality as well.
On the other hand, ActiveCampaign is best for managing your email list and tracking your campaign.
Now, let’s dive into the details.
ActiveCampaign Vs. GetResponse: Top Features.
1. Email Marketing Features
Both GetResponse and ActiveCampaign are pioneers when it comes to email marketing. Let’s see how they fare against each other.
ActiveCampaign:
ActiveCampaign comes with built-in email marketing features that help you cover all aspects of your email marketing campaign, including:
- Build email newsletters
- Create email campaigns
- Send triggered emails to your target audience
- Segment email list based on different factors
For starters, you get access to over 25 pre-made email templates that you can further optimize the way you want using a drag-and-drop editor.
Source: ActiveCampaign
You can simply change the text, font, images, among other elements, to match your business.
Then there are segmentation and dynamic content features that help you personalize your email campaigns and send targeted emails to specific audiences.
For example, you can send ‘Thank You’ emails to all the contacts who recently made a purchase.
What’s more, it automatically sends triggered emails based on factors like purchase, site visits, engagement, etc. It also schedules emails based on different events, birthdays, holidays, and more.
Source: ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign also provides detailed reports to help you analyze which campaigns are showing good results and which ones require more tweaking. You can also split test your emails for better click-rate, open-rate, and more.
Additional email marketing features include:
- Multi-user editing
- Managed deliverability
- Conditional content
- Geotracking
- Autoresponder
- Audience segmentation
- Mobile-optimized email campaigns
- Social-sharing
- Email funnels (sales funnels)
- Reporting and analytics
- Upload unlimited images for your email campaigns
GetResponse:
If you are struggling to get more opens, clicks, and sales due to a lack of beautifully-crafted email campaigns, then GetResponse is the tool for you.
GetResponse provides all sorts of email marketing solutions, including:
- Creating emails
- Autoresponders
- Email analytics
- Email transaction
- Email list management
To get started, it provides goal-oriented email templates along with a drag-and-drop email designing tool to create eye-catching email campaigns.
Source: GetResponse
Source: GetResponse
You can send one-time email broadcasts with updates and special offers, automated follow-up emails, action-based emails, share blog posts via email, and more.
All these functions help you nurture your subscribers and deliver emails at the right time to the right audience.
Other prominent features include:
- Segment Your Contacts – You can use automation to track and rate customers’ actions and generate custom segments based on specific data and criteria. GetResponse also allows you to use a limitless number of tags for improved profiling, monitor engagement scores to measure contacts, and add points to the actions of your contacts on your pages or emails.
- Send Personalized & Relevant Emails – You can search and segment tagged contacts to run targeted and automated email marketing campaigns. For example, you can activate automated email campaigns to retarget website visitors who abandoned your site without converting.
- Autoresponder Emails – Autoresponder helps you run time-based drip campaigns – from the beginning to the entire customer journey.
Here’s how the Autoresponder works:
Source: GetResponse
Besides, the automated tool also helps you track your email marketing campaigns, analyze open-rate, clicks & bounce-rate, A/B test subject lines, and track user behavior.
Winner: It’s a Draw!
Both ActiveCampaign and GetResponse offer all types of features like autoresponders, A/B testing, reporting & analytics, drag-and-drop builder, and more.
2. Reporting & Analytics
There’s no way of knowing how your site is performing unless you analyze important metrics and get insightful reports.
Thus, it’s essential to choose a tool that provides detailed reports and helps you track all types of metrics.
ActiveCampaign:
ActiveCampaign offers tools to track both email campaigns and your site.
ActiveCampaign’s Website Tracking feature helps you connect marketing to your audiences’ behavior. Thus, you can respond to customers depending on their behavior on the website.
Site tracking lets you discover what services and products your target audiences are showing the most interest in.
You will find a complete page view history attached to all contact records, displaying what they have and haven’t done on their site.
This is a very helpful feature!
Source: ActiveCampaign
Subsequently, you can easily follow up and adapt your marketing to the interest of your existing or potential customers.
There’s also an event tracking option that lets you see what people are doing on your app, site, or online portal.
Source: ActiveCampaign
Besides, ActiveCampaign comes powered with machine learning capability that helps you:
- Predict wins or losses
- Predict the probability of acquiring customers
- Forecast customer behavior
Once you are armed with all the information, you can align your marketing and sales process accordingly.
GetResponse:
GetResponse helps you turn your web traffic into sales opportunities by monitoring and analyzing events on your pages and then sharing relevant offers to your audience. GetResponse helps you identify your audiences’ likes, dislikes, and buying habits.
You can create tailored emails based on page visits, analyze specific actions of your users, trigger personalized journeys, and more.
Source: GetResponse
Moreover, GetReponse’s reporting capabilities are also top notch. You can view simple reports directly in the dashboard that will give you an overview of your campaign’s success through raw numbers and pie charts.
Plus, there’s an Email Analytics section in your dashboard that provides more detail, with line and bar graphs for clicks, opens, unsubscribes, complaints, and bounces. And for each report, you can see which subscriber in your email list has performed what action.
Winner: ActiveCampaign.
While both tools are neck to neck when it comes to analytics and reporting, ActiveCampaign has a substantial edge due to its machine learning capabilities.
3. Automation Functions
ActiveCampaign:
ActiveCampaign offers automation in every aspect of your sales cycles, including marketing automation, email marketing automation, and CRM & Sales automation.
Plus, it’s the sole platform that offers true automation recipe functionality.
ActiveCampaign’s automation recipes are pre-built automation templates that help you build solutions to achieve your business goals. The good news is that it is accessible to businesses of all sizes.
The ActiveCampaign Marketplace provides automation features like:
- More than 280 pre-built automation recipes.
- Filtering options that allow you to browse recipes by experience level, industry, features included, or business requirement.
- Comprehensive descriptions and recipe suggestions on each page.
Besides, ActiveCampaign’s automation features also help with email follow-up, setting-up workflows, segmenting contacts, goal tracking, and more.
Source: ActiveCampaign
GetResponse:
GetResponse’s marketing automation can help you deliver better customer experiences using a visual marketing automation tool that you can customize according to your needs.
The visual marketing automation tool entails a drag-and-drop automation builder that lets you build automated funnels and visually see what you’re building. You can also make changes simultaneously or after building the entire funnel.
The platform also provides prebuilt workflows to capture and convert new leads, helps you send automated emails to all new subscribers, and nurture them with relevant offers.
You can also leverage user data to create automation events based on users’ behavior and send personalized emails.
For instance, you can follow up with potential customers who abandoned their carts and engage them by sending attractive offers.
Source: GetResponse
Marketing automation allows you to communicate with your audience with great precision, making use of the data stored in your account.
Based on consumers’ behavior, you can create automation events, add a personal touch to your campaigns, take action based on selected conditions, and make use of filters for accurate targeting.
Winner: It’s a Draw!
4. Third-Party Integrations
ActiveCampaign:
ActiveCampaign provides an app marketplace that provides access to over 340 third-party tools of all types, including ecommerce, social networks, CRM, marketing, accounting, analytics, etc.
Some of the most popular integrations include Shopify, Facebook, Zapier, Salesforce, JotForm, and more.
Source: ActiveCampaign
Additionally, you can get access to thousands of apps through their API and Zapier integration.
GetResponse:
GetResponse also provides direct integration to over 125 third-party apps. Some of their categories include ecommerce, CRM, social, analytics, CMS, etc.
Source: GetResponse
You can also connect your favorite tools with GetResponse and start to monetize your marketing campaigns.
GetResponse also has a feature to sync your online store and CRM data. You can also can populate your product inventory and connect your payment processors.
Winner: ActiveCampaign!
5. Sales & CRM
ActiveCampaign:
ActiveCampaign provides built-in sales and CRM features to help you keep track of your leads, automate lead prioritization, contact management, and more.
The platform makes sure that the entire sales process moves smoothly by:
- Notifying your sales team
- Updating deals & creating tasks
- Nurturing leads automatically
What’s more, the robust CRM tool helps you manage your contacts from a single centralized platform, automatically update contacts, and view your lead’s entire history.
GetResponse:
GetResponse provides a simple CRM platform to give you an overview of your leads and contacts.
You can perform all the necessary actions like:
- Managing and moving your contacts
- Segregate contacts into different stages
- Attach notes and track conversations
Winner: ActiveCampaign!
6. Customer Support
ActiveCampaign:
ActiveCampaign provides a free ‘Expert Migration Service’ that makes it easy to switch to ActiveCampaign from your old email marketing or marketing automation provider. This service can save you several weeks of work.
Moreover, ActiveCampaign boasts of being the only Customer Experience Automation provider that promises excellence in value, service, and trust. You can also get assistance via Live Chat, phone support, or using accelerated onboarding.
The platform also provides the ActiveCampaign Community that lets users like you ask questions, share best practices, and connect with marketers and businesses globally.
GetResponse:
GetResponse’s award-winning customer service team provides email support in seven languages. It is the first email service provider to offer 24/7 live chat, even during weekends.
There is also a Help Center and Learning Center for customers that includes resources to help answer any questions or problems.
Additionally, the knowledge hub includes FAQs, webinars, video tutorials, and downloadable documents like reports, manuals, and whitepapers.
7. Pricing Plans
Pricing is an essential deciding factor when it comes to selecting a tool. Even the top features take a backseat if you can’t afford the tool in the first place.
ActiveCampaign:
ActiveCampaign offers four flexible payment plans, including:
- Lite: $9 per month, paid annually
- Plus: $49 per month, paid annually
- Professional: $129 per month, paid annually
- Enterprise: $229 per month, paid annually
Source: ActiveCampaign
These prices are for 500 contacts and increase exponentially as the number of contacts increases.
Furthermore, all plans come with a 14-days free trial to help you get familiar with the platform before making your final purchase.
What’s more, all plans provide one-on-one training, no set-up fees, and free migration.
GetResponse:
GetResponse also offers four pricing plans:
- Basic: $15 per month
- Plus: $49 per month
- Professional: $99 per month
- Max: Quote-based
Source: GetResponse
You can get an 18 percent discount with an annual payment and 30 percent off with a two-year upfront payment. GetResponse also provides a 30-days free trial, giving you plenty of time to zero in on one platform.
Also, each plan offers standard features, such as:
- Autoresponders
- Visual email editor
- A/B Testing
- Inbox preview
- Split tests
- And more
ActiveCampaign’s Top Features
1. Machine Learning
Machine learning will answer all the tough questions like:
- What is the likelihood of your lead becoming a customer?
- What is the best time to send an email?
- What do your customers like to read?
When ML-based features, you get more time to focus on your business and make better decisions.
But like most companies, you can also use machine learning to generate additional work for employees. However, it is not easy to set up machine learning and it’s only useful in certain circumstances.
With the ActiveCampaign solution, you can do everything with ease in a single click. And the best part is it’s easily accessible for all companies – every type of business can implement it to scale their business and decrease workload.
2. SMS Marketing
Apart from emails, ActiveCampaign also helps you send text messages and promote your brand using SMS marketing.
You can send subscription links to potential leads, follow-up texts to existing leads, notify sales agents, and more.
3. Chrome Extension
ActiveCampaign provides direct integration to Chrome with its Chrome extension.
The ActiveCampaign Chrome extension will make accessing ActiveCampaign more efficient and allow you to work out of your email account.
It can help you:
- View the exact timing when people open your emails.
- View your CRM information from your Gmail inbox.
- Add a new contact into your account easily.
- Make new deals on the go.
4. Mobile App.
Your customers use their mobile phones every day. So, using their mobile app will help you understand your customers better and be available precisely where and when they need you.
Plus, ActiveCampaign’s mobile app allows you to work on the go, so you never miss out on anything significant.
Their mobile app also lets you view in-depth marketing reports, keep your CRM up to date, track your email performance, and more.
GetResponse’s Top Features
1. Landing Page
GetResponse comes with pre-designed landing pages and a drag-and-drop automatic builder to help you create unique and engaging landing pages in just a few clicks. And don’t worry, you don’t have to be an expert in web designing.
It will also help you to expand your contact list by:
- Special incentives and converting high-quality leads
- Increasing your sales by making use of ready-made sales funnels to add products or services to your page
- Promoting your webinars by driving traffic to your registration page and attracting more people to your online events
2. Built-in Webinar Tool
GetResponse provides a free webinar tool to help you connect to your audience. You can set up the software in no time without having to install it.
The integrated webinar software is designed to boost conversions and engagement and provides easy access to interactive tools to create, promote, and monetize webinars.
ActiveCampaign Vs. GetResponse: Final Review
ActiveCampaign Pros:
- Ease of use – ActiveCampaign is the first platform with a visual marketing automation builder. It has a well-designed and intuitive user interface, and the marketing automation tools need no extra training to understand. Thus, it’s suitable for beginners as well as tech experts.
- CRM – ActiveCampaign comes with a built-in CRM that comes in handy when you migrate from another platform.
- Affordability – Many small businesses don’t want to spend thousands of dollars yearly on marketing automation. ActiveCampaign is a good solution in such cases. ActiveCampaign pricing starts at only $9 per month, and you don’t have to pay any upfront setup fees.
- Zapier Integration – ActiveCampaign integrates with more than 2,000 different tools through Zapier integration. Although it allows you to link ActiveCampaign with different tools, you have to pay for Zapier’s subscription to access some of the tools.
- Automation split testing – You can A/B test the whole sequences against each other instead of just testing individual emails.
- Machine learning – ActiveCampaign provides several ground-breaking ML-based features like predictive sending, predictive win-probability scoring of leads, and predictive content to help you to automate more of your marketing and sales process.
- You Own Your Data – ActiveCampaign’s partners own their own data. And when you leave ActiveCampaign, you can easily take along your data with you.
ActiveCampaign Cons:
- Not a Standalone tool – ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation is mainly powerful as it comes with an in-built CRM system. Though it’s not as effective as standalone platforms like Salesforce, ActiveCampaign is a reasonable option for the platform’s automation features.
- Reporting – Even though ActiveCampaign’s reporting is comprehensive and provides insights on sales/goal conversions, it is fairly crowded and quite tough to navigate at times.
GetResponse Pros:
- User-friendly – Getresponse offers user-friendly email automation features and landing pages, allowing you to focus more on your business.
- Affordable – If you are okay with the ‘Basic’ plan, GetResponse is cheaper compared to its key competitors while offering equal functionality as them.
- Generous Discounts – It offers generous discounts if you pay upfront for one or two years of service. It will be hard to find similar deals from key competitors.
- Flexible Data Segmentation – Since it has a flexible approach to data segmentation, the list management becomes straightforward, outperforming many competitors.
- Great Webinar Functionality – One of the few marketing tools to offer a built-in webinar tool.
- Useful Conversion Funnel – GetResponse’s conversion funnel is very useful for small businesses wanting to manage all features of their sales funnels, social media ads, and e-commerce activity simultaneously.
- Transparency – The platform is very transparent about its deliverability rates, offering deliverability stats for the e-newsletters and publishing figures on its website.
- Integration – GetResponse integrates with all significant ecommerce, CRM, marketing, and analytics tools.
- GDPR Requirements – GetResponse is good when it comes to meeting GDPR requirements, except for sufficient cookie consent features on its landing pages.
- Free For 30 days – Getresponse offers a free trial for 30 days – you can try it without the need to enter the credit card details.
GetResponse Cons:
- You can’t use Facebook pixel with GetResponse’s landing page feature in a GDPR-compliant way.
- The users should be able to switch on or off the data capture forms on their smartphones.
Final Thoughts
So, this was my detailed review of ActiveCampaign and GetResponse. Both of these platforms have some similar features and some unique functions.
It wouldn’t be fair to declare one winner since it totally depends on your business requirements.
For instance, if you require machine learning-based capabilities along with SMS marketing features, you might want to go with ActiveCampaign.
However, if you are looking for a more all-in-one marketing tool with a webinar platform and landing page builder, then GetResponse is the tool for you.
The good news is that both the tools offer a free trial. This means you can try out both first hand and make a more informed decision.
Make sure to review all the features and pricing plans carefully before you make the final choice!
