ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit are two email marketing tools that we hear about often. Many customers swear by ActiveCampaign, while others swear by ConvertKit. So, which one is better? Which one is the right fit for your business? This article will help you to make a choice based on what you need from an email service provider (ESP).
An email service provider is a company that handles your emails. A large majority of companies use ESPs to handle their marketing and advertising campaigns. The main services that ESPs offer are Bulk email creation.
This is a big reason why customers often choose an ESP over another marketing platform. If you're building your own marketing emails from scratch, this might be easier for you to do with an existing tool like ActiveCampaign (or ConvertKit). However, if you already have a custom-built campaign and need to update it in the future, then using an ESP will make things much simpler for both yourself and your team of marketers!
If you're still not sure which one will work best for your business needs, then you're in luck. This article will help you to understand what makes each one different so that you can make the right decision for your marketing needs!
Now that we've talked about why customers choose ESPs over another email service provider, let's talk about how those companies offer their services and software tools.
1) Bulk Email Creation - The ability to create emails from scratch is a huge benefit when it comes to marketing emails. If you don't have the skills or resources required to create them, then it's not going to be easy. However, if your email list is already built up and you need help updating current campaigns in future (or creating new ones entirely), then this might be a useful feature for you!
2) Automated Campaigns - When building an email campaign with ActiveCampaign, there are plenty of options available that can make things much simpler all around. You could opt for automated emails such as Text-only messages, Outward-facing calls/emails, Internal SMS messaging, Email newsletters, Batch emails
3) Customization - ActiveCampaign allows you to customize your email campaigns by adding new features that can make things easier. These features include: Dynamic templates (to create a template for each Campaign), Email blocks (to block certain recipients from receiving emails or to hide specific information from their inboxes.)
4) Smart Campaigns - Whether you're looking at sending out weekly newsletters or regular promotional messages, then the ability to segment and target customers is something that most marketing platforms lack! However, with Activecampaign smart campaigns feature, this problem becomes irrelevant. As well as being able to accept third party integration, this feature allows you to: Create filtering rules for a campaign Send specific messages only when certain conditions are met (e.g., if a customer has taken out an offer or discounted product)
5) Email Analytics - If you're interested in finding the most effective way to promote your business, then there is no better tool than analytics; Activecampaign's email service offers some of the best on-page reports available! With these reports, customers can be segmented by country and region as well as searched by name or unique identifier. This means that it's easy enough to get insight into how many people are opening your emails, who they are and where you need to fine-tune your campaigns.
6) Real-Time Tracking - A great way of measuring the effectiveness of an email campaign is by tracking how many people click on each link that has been sent out! With ActiveCampaign's real-time tracking feature, all links can be tracked; this means that you'll know exactly what marketing message works best so we can build upon it in future. Also included with Activecampaign will be important stats such as pay for the number of subscribers you have. Convertkit, on the other hand, offers a limited amount of emails which can be increased if needed with an upgrade, but they also charge per subscriber, so it's not really unlimited. The exact pricing is found on their site, and depending on your needs, either one platform will suit your needs better - they both offer monthly subscription plans or yearly ones too (which obviously sounds much better).
Both services are pretty similar when it comes to features, so this section won't go into detail about what each offers – instead of as: Bounce Rate Opens/Clicks Click-Throughs
7) Social Media Integration - For most companies, social media is a key element in their marketing strategy. If you've got the budget to do so, then it's worth looking into having your brand integrated with Facebook and Twitter; Activecampaign allows integration across all these channels!
8) Custom Fields - This feature may not seem important, but when combined with other features such as segmenting customers or tracking how many people visit certain pages on your site, custom fields can create huge amounts of information, which will allow us to get a clearer picture of who you're targeting. These types of reports are much more useful than those that only give general statistics about total traffic.
9) Custom Reports - Activecampaign has a number of custom reports that you can use to get more detailed information about your campaigns. These are especially useful as they allow us to see in great detail what's happening across all the different marketing outlets we're using and how well each campaign is performing. Some of these reports include Conversions - A detailed report that shows the number of people who have been converted on email campaigns and how much money has been made.
10) Object Tracking & Segmentation - This is a feature that we've not used before, but it's something that we'll be using in the future; object tracking allows us to track specific elements such as what pages or emails are performing well, allowing Activecampaign to build upon this information for future campaigns!
We've got the tools, we've set up the systems, and now it's time to start sending out emails. We're going to use Activecampaign for our email marketing; which of them is better?
We said that these two services have similar features - in terms of pricing, both are more expensive than Mailchimp. However, there are lots of extra features on offer with Convertkit as well as some additional benefits such as integration with other social media platforms (such as Facebook and Twitter), so if you can afford their initial price, then they could be a good choice!
The difference between ActiveCampaign and Convertkit is how they score our leads; Activecampaign uses a 'lighter' system whilst Convertkit has a more robust scoring methodology.
The main difference between the two systems lies in their policy around lead and contact scoring - we can see clearly that with ConvertKit, you will get far more detailed information about who your contacts are by using their extensive list of questions to categorize them, but it's at the expense of not having as much control over what information each segment gets compared to Activecampaign.
Now it's time to look at all the features they both offer! Overall, we feel that Convertkit offers a nice balance between Activecampaign and MailChimp, but there are some areas that were compared with Activecampaign - such as customization of your emails (you can only control aspects like colors) and no integration with social media.
One area in which you will find little difference is how each service lets you customize your email marketing; this rather important feature allows us to make sure that our messages stand out from the competition - for example, if I'm emailing a new prospect and they already have an existing relationship with another company, I can use that information to personalize my message and include details about the other company, so it stands out from their old emails.
Both email services allow for customization of your messages, but only Convertkit lets you change fonts, colors etc. - this really means more impact! Activecampaign allows you to replicate what Mailchimp offers by including some elements like social media icons on each email which is great, but we still feel that having this kind of control would be better (you get at least two different font styles). However, while we feel that this could be improved on, it is still a very useful feature - especially if you want to send emails out at different times during the week.
Automating your email marketing can be a great way to increase response rates and save time when sending out your messages - but what's the best service for automating? Although both services offer automated integration with many popular tools like Google Analytics or Mailchimp, they are quite limited in regards to customization of these integrations (as mentioned above). However, there are relevant areas where Active Campaign shines - for example, the ability to integrate with the most popular CRMs is a massive benefit because this can save you time and ensures that your messages get through.
Active Campaign allows you to connect all of your marketing channels like email or social media accounts, but Convertkit only lets you choose which ones; however, Active Campaign integrates Mailchimp into their tool, so it's very easy to link up any kind of email system in one place. This means that when someone signs up with an email address via a form on my website, I can also automatically add them as subscribers - probably not something we need for every single email, but it's nice to have the option.
Both services offer support through a number of different channels, from free ticket assistance on their website (which you can access even if your account is in good standing) and social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter accounts that are designed specifically for customer support. There is also an active forum that allows people to ask questions and get answers - again.
This helps as most questions will be answered quickly here by actual people instead of automated messages. However, there are some areas where Convertkit shines in terms of support - for example, and their blog articles include helpful tips and tricks that can help you with your email campaigns. So if you're not sure about something or there's a problem with integration, it will be easier to find the answer here than in Active Campaign, where everything is written by hand (and sometimes out of date)
Active Campaign has some great features, but most importantly, they have one key advantage over Convertkit – this subscription plan allows people to get unlimited emails sent through their service, so they don't need to worry about exceeding the plan they've signed up for.
Convertkit has a basic $19/month subscription that allows you to send emails, but once it's exceeded this price, you will quickly be charged more (and if your account is still in good standing after three months, Convertkit refunds the extra amount). This means that people who don't need all of their email features on one service but want to save money and not worry about exceeding their limits are limited by what services they can choose from.
Meanwhile, Active Campaign takes care of everything, so there is no way for someone to sign up for an unlimited plan only to find that they've exceeded the limits of their chosen email service.
Active Campaign is also more expensive - you pay $29/month for a full-featured account, and when you go over this amount, your costs start to rise significantly as each additional feature requires an extra monthly fee. Convertkit, on the other hand, has two options:
1) Their basic package, which includes all of their features but with no data tracking or A/B testing – it's only $19 per month
2) This 'Plus' plan gives people access to some really useful data collection tools like segmentation, real-time report and A/B testing but it also costs $29 per month.
ConvertKit has some great features, but they also have a lot of things that would make you really think twice about using them. For example, the data tracking tools are a nice idea in theory but currently not very practical as there is no way to export the reports or segmentation information from Convertkit into another tool. As for ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, everything works perfectly, and it's fairly easy to set up, so you can easily manage your email campaigns without having any kind of issues with setup time or bugs.
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.
