I admit it.  I hung onto MailChimp for a long time.  Secretly, I think I was just in love with their little monkey.  He’s cute, and not only was MailChimp free, I was also familiar with this popular email software tool.  Not quite ready for something like Infusionsoft or Ontraport, I chose to move to ActiveCampaign.

I know it can be a pain to do a migration to a new tool, but what if it’s necessary for your next stage of growth?  That was the primary reason I finally decided to pull the plug on MailChimp. Not to mention, I was honestly tired of hearing my team whine about MailChimp.  And it’s not that their whines were not valid. The other day on FB, one of my business colleagues posed a simple question “What is a popular software tool that you absolutely despise?”

Guess what the most popular answer was?  MailChimp! It seems a lot of people are whining about MailChimp.  I suddenly felt sad for my monkey friend. Are you still friends with the popular chimpanzee?  Or are you ready for something more robust to handle not only your email marketing, but so much more?

Here are 10 reasons I think moving to ActiveCampaign was a smart move:

ActiveCampaign is easier to use.

There is something about the way ActiveCampaign is designed that makes it intuitive and easy to find what you’re looking for.  I can remember getting frustrated with MailChimp, searching for features that should be seemingly easy to locate. With little to no training in ActiveCampaign, I can easily navigate my way around this platform.  It makes sense to me, even though there are more advanced features in ActiveCampaign. Probably also explains why so many users complain about MailChimp.

Their forms are easy to build and use.

ActiveCampaign has several types of forms to choose from – inline, floating bar, floating box and pop-up.  You can embed the forms, link directly to them, or add them to Facebook or WordPress. Recently my tech VA left for vacation and I needed to update my website with some new forms.  At first, I started to sweat and dread the idea of messing with this task. Thankfully, it was easy and relatively quick to dive in and get it figured out.

ActiveCampaign’s list management is flexible.

Most business owners want to segment their lists according to various criteria.  One client I worked with wanted a main list, local companies for event promotion, executive women, sales leaders, and a client list.  In MailChimp, if you have five different lists and want to send a single campaign to several of these lists, contacts will receive duplicate emails.  That’s crazy! ActiveCampaign counts a subscriber once, regardless of how many lists they belong to, and it will never send out duplicate emails to a contact.

Their Plus Version has a CRM

This was actually an important feature for me.  I wanted a place to store information about leads and clients.  The CRM allows you to segment your contacts using tags and custom fields. For instance, you can tag a contact as a “client” or a “prospect”, or anything else that makes sense to you.  These tags can be added and removed using ActiveCampaign’s automations. If a contact subscribes to your freebie, they can be tagged as a “lead” automatically. If the “lead” takes a different action, like purchase, the tag can be removed and a new tag like “client” can be added.

ActiveCampaign focuses on managing leads in a sales pipeline.

If you are not already using a platform that enables you to build a sales pipeline, this would be an important feature as your business grows.  Every business owner needs to know who is in their pipeline, and at what stage the lead is at. Otherwise, how do you keep track of who needs follow up, who has converted to a customer, and who drops out of your funnel?  ActiveCampaign also offers lead scoring based on actions a contact takes. This helps you know who are your strongest leads. All of these sales processes seamlessly integrate with your CRM and can be automated as well.

ActiveCampaign has sophisticated and visual automated workflows.

This is where ActiveCampaign shines.  You can build complex workflows for sending emails, scoring leads, segmenting, tagging data, etc.  Imagine a flowchart with decision boxes that create different results for different actions. This is the way ActiveCampaign’s automations are visually set up.  They are easy to follow and designed to handle more advanced automated processes. Right now, I have a simple 5-part automation set up that runs when someone subscribes to receive my free Guide to Scaling their Online Business.  However, I will soon be setting up a more complex automated workflow for onboarding new clients.

There is a robust list of integrations.

Being able to integrate with other software is crucial to building automated processes.  ActiveCampaign has over 250 app integrations with popular tools like Acuity, Facebook, WordPress, ClickFunnels, Google, JotForm, Quickbooks Online, SamCart, Slack, Survey Monkey, Zoom and so many more.  If your software app isn’t on the list of direct integrations, you can always use Zapier to get the two to talk.

ActiveCampaign has great deliverability rates.

If you are going to send out emails to your subscriber base, bounces and delivering to junk mailboxes is the last thing you want.  According to an article I read comparing ActiveCampaign to MailChimp, ActiveCampaign has a 95.6% overall deliverability rate.  Over ninety-three percent of emails land in the primary email inbox.  Unfortunately, the statistics for MailChimp are significantly lower than this.

ActiveCampaign has a great support team.

Let’s face it.  There will be technical issues with any software you use.  The better the support tools, the easier it will be for you or your support team to resolve problems.  ActiveCampaign has the typical video tutorials, support documents and access to tech support. But it also provides you with 1:1 training and a forum to interact with other ActiveCampaign users.

It is a better value for the money.

A lot of new online business owners choose MailChimp because it is free when you have a small amount of subscribers.  ActiveCampaign does cost more money, however, you have to look at what you receive for your money. The old saying applies “You get what you pay for.”  ActiveCampaign offers a pretty big bang for your buck. So if your budget will allow, take the jump and upgrade to ActiveCampaign.

Lori Young is the founder and chief marketing strategist at Amazing OBM.  She and her team manage the digital marketing for growth-oriented coaches and other heart-centered entrepreneurs.  To learn more, visit www.amazingobm.com.