Overview
ActiveTrail is an intuitive email marketing platform that enables digital marketing professionals to send automatic emails, SMS messages, online surveys, and to create high-converting landing pages. As you can see, the email marketing platform is comprehensive in its offerings.
ActiveTrail is available in 20 languages including English, French, German, and Spanish.
With numerous advanced marketing options available, ActiveTrail truly is an all-around player in the marketing sphere.
ActiveTrail also offers real-time data/analytics tracking, as well as A/B testing and optimization capabilities. One of ActiveTrail’s biggest assets is its ‘Timed Email Delivery’ feature, which chooses the most optimal time to automatically send emails to subscribers.
ActiveTrail Advantages
Low Cost – ActiveTrail is definitely cheaper than your average email autoresponder service providers. Even though they are priced at a lower tier than their competitors, they boast some exciting features that are hard to find elsewhere.
Landing Page Builder – A dynamic and easy to use page builder isn’t something that all email autoresponder services provide. Most other email autoresponder services allow you to build email opt-in forms, but having a separate landing page builder is definitely an advantage that ActiveTrail can brag about.
SMS Messaging – The ability to send SMS messages to your subscribers is a rare feature that can benefit your campaigns in ways that most other email autoresponder companies can’t provide.
ActiveTrail Disadvantages
Questionable Scaling – The largest pricing package that ActiveTrail promotes is 20,000 email subscribers.
This leads one to believe that they cater to smaller businesses and email marketers, so if you already have a large email marketing presence you’ll have to contact them in order to get a quote.
That being said, after conducting additional research, it would seem that ActiveTrail does conduct business with some very large companies. That being said, it’s prudent to note that ActiveTrail doesn’t list the prices for subscription bases exceeding 20,000 subscribers.
Limited Support For Noncustomers – Upon browsing their website, it would seem that ActiveTrail doesn’t offer a wide variety of support services. There is no live chat feature to noncustomers and finding a support telephone number isn’t readily evident
Upon further investigation it’s true that ActiveTrail provides one-on-one support for their paying customers, in addition to a live chat feature. However, their lack of a live chat feature for noncustomers is worth noting.
Lack Of Upfront Pricing Transparency – If you run a large organization who requires robust email marketing features in addition to on-demand support, you’ll have to contact ActiveTrail for a quote.
ActiveTrail Features
Advanced Landing Page Creator – The majority of email marketing service providers only provide an op-in form generator. ActiveTrail separates itself from the pack by having a fully-fledged landing page creator, so you can create beautiful landing pages from within the email autoresponder service itself. No third party software or expensive scripts are required to make awesome lead generation pages, and you never have to learn a single lick of code.
Ability To Send SMS Messages – You can’t deny that a large portion of your audience uses mobile devices more and more. That’s why you might find this rare tool from ActiveTrail to be enticing. So you can send SMS messages to your subscribers, reaching them where they are, even if they’re on the go.
Easy To Use Autoresponder Campaigns – Imagine how it would feel to automate email followups, so you can build rapport with your subscribers without any ongoing work. Instead, you can setup a prewritten campaign that builds relationships, polls your audience, and builds rapport while at the same time selling your products and services. All of this is easily setup using ActiveTrail.
ActiveCommerce – ActiveCommerce is a propriety app used for ActiveTrail users that allows you to integrate with your commerce stores. Integrate with your leads and buyers to keep in touch, sell more products, and add your buyers to your list automatically without any third party scripts or software.
Built In Survey Tools – One of the best ways to outmuscle your competition is by outthinking them. The surest way to accomplish that is by knowing your end user demographic better than anyone else. That’s why ActiveTrail wisely puts easily deployable survey and polling tools in your hands, so you can figure out the pain points and requirements of your end user demographic, making it all the easier to deliver content that will make their lives better.
Easy Opt-In Forms – So you can create beautiful opt-in forms using sleek tools even if the idea of graphic design makes you tremble in terror.
Active Bounce Management – ActiveTrail boasts a high deliverability rate. They attribute high deliverability to several variables, including active bounce management. So if your subscribers change or delete their emails, you get feedback so you can remove inactive email subscribers, making your email deliverability skyrocket thereby saving you money on redundant subscribers.
Campaign Triggers – Setting up behavioral campaigns is surprisingly easy using ActiveTrail. So you can segment and send content based upon the actions that you define within the campaign management tools.
Split Testing – Have you ever wondered what subject lines, or even what types of colors will convert better than others? Put your curiosity to test while at the same time optimizing performance beyond your wildest imagination. This is all easily accomplishable with ActiveTrail A/B split testing.
Geographic Reporting – You might be shocked to learn where your subscribers are coming from. Would you like to get real-time statistics so you can see where your emails are being opened from all over the world? These statistics will provide valuable insight as to who is reading your emails, at what time, and from what geographic region your subscribers are from.
ActiveTrail Pricing
ActiveTrail pricing is based upon your number of subscribers. One thing you’ll find is that the cost of ActiveTrail is marginally lower than most of their competitors.
So if you have up to 500 subscribers, the monthly fee is $13. If you have up to 5,000 subscribers, the monthly fee is $42. If you have up to 10,000 subscribers, the monthly fee is $59. And if you have over 20,000 subscribers, you must contact ActiveTrail for a quote.
These prices are arguably best in class when compared to similar email marketing service providers.
It’s also important to note that ActiveTrail has an entirely different pricing model in the event that you don’t want a subscription. For example, ActiveTrail offers “SMS Pricing Plans” upon which you can send 3,000 SMS messages for $306 ($.10 Price Per SMS), and the price for 10,000 SMS messages is $900 ($.09 per SMS).
ActiveTrail also allows you to purchase “Email Packages”, so if you want to avoid a recurring charge and send onetime email blasts, they can accommodate you.
For example, the price for 5,000 emails sent is $99 ($.02 Price Per Email), and the price for 10,000 emails sent is $149 ($.015 Price Per Email).
ActiveTrail also allows you to preview their service for absolutely zero cost without using a credit card. You can register, import your list of leads using an Excel document, and preview their services without any risk on your behalf.
