I've written an in-depth comparison of two leading email marketing platforms, ActiveCampaign and AWeber. If you're new to email marketing, this article will give you a better understanding of the basics.
ActiveCampaign is a powerful email marketing platform that offers many features that make it suitable for SMB business owners. Its main competitor is AWeber.
This article compares ActiveCampaign vs AWeber in all terms possible and necessary. But first, an explanation as to what these tools are.
Email marketing automation is a powerful system of rules-based scripts that allow us to automate our emails in real-time based on what we know about customers (emails assigned automatically using AWeber or ActiveCampaign) and tracked information from the website.
Customers send their emails to follow-up with the information they received via email, phone or social media. The system receives this information and automatically follows them (automatically sending emails) according to a predefined template based on that data.
The system will follow up on customers based on which email they chose to read or click and how long ago they did it. This automatic process allows us to capture more leads without any additional work from our side as marketers or salespeople.
A well-known tool, Active Campaign, was created in 2000 by Marko Randjelovic and Tom Edler in San Diego (now they lead the Company). The name "Active Campaign" comes from its original purpose: to build automated campaigns on an existing database of leads and contacts - Nowadays, it has become more than this with more advanced tools!
Goals are what you want your campaign to do (e.g., increase sales, improve website ranking, etc...) and how you want to achieve these goals (e.g., invite email subscribers, increase traffic through SEO).
In order to reach the goal as soon as possible - use your time efficiently by creating an automated campaign that will help you generate sales or build more leads!
Abraham Waldegard founded AWeber in 2003 when he went looking for an easy way for webmasters to interact with their visitors regularly through newsletters and other forms of communication. Since then, it has grown into one of the leading providers of Email Marketing Services worldwide. Today there are more than 750 employees working at the Company's headquarters in San Diego, California.
The Company is the third-largest Email Marketing Service Provider globally. It offers email marketing services for many different customers and industries, including eCommerce (Apparel & Accessories, Beauty Products & Services), Businesses of all sizes, as well as individual consumers.
AWeber has offices located in Europe, North America, South Africa and Asia-pacific regions with over 700 employees worldwide who are dedicated to delivering superior customer service through personalized client solutions that include contact center support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Company concentrates its efforts on helping small businesses grow and prosper by providing them with tools, resources and tips to help increase their online sales.
AWeber also provides customized email newsletters services directly from the client's website or through a web-based CMS that integrates seamlessly into all desktop browsers. Clients can easily create customized emails on their own websites using AWeber's simple yet powerful templates & design wizards, which are available for both HTML (HTML5) and JavaScript coding languages.
One of the main reasons why people prefer working with Aweber over other companies is its customer support team, who are ready 24x7x365 to assist customers at their convenience.
AWeber is a leader in Email Marketing Services, offering promotional email services to over 15000+ customers around the world. The Company has pioneered email marketing and continues to lead the industry with its vast array of email promotions, customer service tools and best practices that enable clients to grow their businesses by selling more products & services online through effective direct response strategies.
AWeber's email marketing platform allows its clients to create and manage powerful segmentation strategies in real-time. This feature has made the Company a favorite with customers both small and large, especially eCommerce sites that have thousands of subscribers, which they can easily target.
AWeber offers many ways for businesses to segment their subscriber lists based on first names, last names or other fields such as job titles, gender etc., allowing them to obtain more accurate results by analyzing customer behavior & behavior patterns through these various methods. Aweber also provides an advanced filtering system under Customer Segments where users can filter the data based on a variety of parameters.
AWeber has been designed to work seamlessly with almost every type of business, and its advanced segmenting functionality is one reason why customers have always loved working with it. There are different ways for businesses to automate their email campaigns through Aweber, such as Auto Responders, which can send messages like orders placed or reminder emails.
Active Campaigns Segmentation capabilities go beyond simple email segmentation and allow businesses to not only identify the best customer segments but also to create customized landing pages for each individual customer.
This can be achieved through their Custom Fields feature, which allows users to add new fields such as a Shopify store name or even include specific URLs in order for customers who have already purchased a product from their website to be directed towards your own site automatically when they sign up with Active Campaigns.
One of my favorite features about Aweber is its ability to export data into Excel spreadsheets, meaning that it makes importing contacts extremely easy as well; this is an advantage for businesses who need to import data from other services such as MailChimp or GetResponse.
Active Campaigns is more expensive than Aweber, and the pricing starts at $29 for a basic plan, which gives businesses access to their web app with up to 500 contacts, whilst AWeber provides a free trial that allows you 30 days of email marketing without paying anything.
The main advantage of ActiveCampaign over its competitor is that it comes with hosting plans, whereas some other services such as GetResponse do not provide this service within packages. The downside, however, would be if your website has many visitors or high transactions per month, then you will run into problems should your server go down or suffer from any downtime.
This is why I would not recommend AWeber to businesses with a high volume of visits or sales, as it can become extremely expensive and unreliable if your website suffers any downtime due to this reason. On the other hand, ActiveCampaign integrates well with WordPress, which makes it incredibly easy for users who build websites on top of WordPress platforms such as Squarespace, Weebly and Wix.
This means that you will be able to create custom landing pages through their Custom Fields feature within minutes without needing any technical expertise whatsoever; instead, you simply need an account at ActiveCampaign, and you are good to go.
Aweber offers three pricing plans which are associated with the number of emails sent via their platform; these include Basic, Pro and Enterprise. In addition to this, there is also an additional service for businesses who wish to implement automated email marketing campaigns or have other types of features integrated into their website, such as lead capture tools - all these come at a cost but offer great value depending upon your specific needs.
Though not important, the CRM features in ActiveCampaign and AWeber are quite similar. Both services come with order tracking, social sharing and analytics as standard, including the ability to send automated emails when specific product orders have been placed by customers through their websites, for example.
In addition, both platforms offer a powerful reporting system that allows you to analyze your email marketing campaigns on an individual or global level within seconds. The main difference here is that Aweber integrates directly into MailChimp, whereas ActiveCampaign requires its users to access it separately via a web browser interface; this means there may be some limitations in terms of the kinds of reports you can create and export.
AWeber's intuitive user interface makes it easy to find the settings option needed when creating a campaign; this means that most users should be able to get everything they need within minutes without having any technical knowledge whatsoever.
On the other hand, ActiveCampaign requires its users to access their account via an external web browser as opposed to being integrated with WordPress environments through an API like Aweber does, which may mean some limitations for some businesses who wish to link up their email marketing platform directly into WordPress sites using their API.
In addition, AWeber is not only based on a proprietary platform but also has the most powerful analytics tools available, which allow you to track your email campaigns' performance in real-time and view exactly what content worked best for each individual customer or client; this means that businesses can make informed decisions regarding their marketing strategy by using these reports.
As far as ActiveCampaign goes, it's possible to export some of its data into Excel spreadsheets; however, exporting results may take some time depending upon how many emails have been sent over an extended period of time; the interface itself doesn't offer much in terms of analytics reports, so it's best to stick with AWeber if you want a more robust solution.
Although this is a good area to compare ActiveCampaign with AWeber in terms of functionality, it's important to remember that these are both email marketing platforms, so you should look at the overall performance and deliverability rates of each platform before choosing which one will be right for your business.
The interface used by Aweber makes it easy for customers or clients to connect their contact lists directly into the system using its integration APIs; this allows businesses who want more control over how they send out campaigns via email not only to have an easier time but also save on costs as well since companies can operate without having to pay for email services like MailChimp or CampaignMonitor.
ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, is a more sophisticated offering since it allows you to split and merge your campaigns as well as create new ones from scratch; this means that businesses who have many different types of campaigns can benefit from its features which allow them to target their messages in a way that fits their specific objectives.
Additionally, AWeber offers support via phone and live chat while ActiveCampaign only has an online form where you must provide basic information about yourself before getting access to customer service representatives' advice; although both platforms offer seven days a week support and can be contacted via phone, live chat or email.
Although both of these platforms offer various types of campaigns that you can use to direct your messages towards specific individuals based on their contact lists, it's important to note that customers who are looking for more customization options when creating new campaigns should opt for ActiveCampaign since this will allow them the most control over how they send out emails using its drag-and-drop features which allow users to import designs from Creative Cloud as well as customize each campaign in a way that best fits their needs.
AWeber's drag-and-drop features might not be as useful since it only allows users to import templates, whereas ActiveCampaign offers a more comprehensive set of tools that allow customers to create all types of campaigns with ease; this is especially handy for business owners who want multiple email messages sent out on different days or times so they can run their businesses from anywhere in the world because these platforms offer 24/7 online and phone support as well, which eliminates any issues you may have had when creating new emails at odd hours.
If you're looking to connect with contacts across your entire revenue operations (Leads, Prospects, Existing, and Churned Clients), Cliently would be a great way to engage at scale. Sometimes multiple tools can leave blind spots in who's engaging, how they're engaging, and when to engage. This is where Cliently could benefit you the most.
