Breaking Down Act-On’s New Look and Bigger Vision

Over the last few weeks Act-On Software had been teasing a big announcement across web, email, and social media. Earlier this week the marketing automation pioneer revealed a modern new look with an updated vision for how the company views its technology supporting marketers.

In our minds there are three distinct areas of this announcement to break down: the brand, its new vision, and most importantly the updated product roadmap. Let’s dig in!

The Brand

The most immediate change comes in the form of a rebrand. The light and dark blue rectangle logo is a thing of the past, replaced with a vibrant new logo and a completely reimagined website. The colours and open logo are a notable departure from the previous branding, representing a fresh and expanded new look for a company that has evolved a lot over the years. The bright and colourful logo also acts as a stark contrast to direct competitors (Salesforce/Pardot, HubSpot, Adobe/Marketo, etc) which feels pretty deliberate. Act-On clearly see themselves as more than “just” marketing automation (ie. email marketing) and are now sprouting into broader marketing applications like web personalization, social media management, event management (digital and in-person) and text/SMS.

New Vision

As one of Act-On’s top partners – and particularly as someone who has spent a considerable amount of time with their team and executives over the years – we can honestly say the company has taken the time to understand both the landscape of responsibilities marketers today owns and how Act-On customers are using the platform to solve various challenges that lie within.

Unfairly, marketing automation in general has been pigeonholed into a “lead generation solution” over the years. While that’s usually the primary use case, it’s certainly not the only challenge marketing automation can solve for. We’ve spoken at length about the different ways marketing automation can support the entire prospect-to-customer journey. Act-On have repositioned their software as a growth marketing platform. The updated tagline of “going beyond the lead” speaks to this same vision.

Act-On see their platform supporting engagement throughout the entire prospect-to-customer lifecycle, across a variety of channels. Act-On are addressing the increased revenue ownership marketing now carries for many organizations – be it new logo revenue or existing customer-base revenue (renewals, up-sells, and more).

Product Roadmap

What’s especially compelling about Act-On’s modern brand and vision is their new features and enhanced capabilities to empower marketers to truly address the full customer lifecycle. We wanted to highlight several of the new capabilities they released this week:

Automated Programs

  • A new builder for Automated Programs will be available within the next 6-12 months with enhanced reporting capabilities. This new builder will make it easier to visualize and build the path each contact in the Automated Program will take. This will make revisions to active programs a lot smoother as well.

Transactional Email Add-On Enhancement

  • This add-on is currently in beta but it is a new API integration, intended for communications that need to be deployed immediately and can be set up as email templates. This add-on will also include reporting functionality for transactional emails inside Act-On. Email use cases include: password resets, fraud alerts, hotel booking confirmations, account sign-up, and form auto-responder.

Triggered Emails

  • This new API feature is in development and is intended for immediate communications. Similar to the Transaction Email Add-On Enhancement, these emails can be set up as email templates and have reporting functionality. Email use cases include: abandoned shopping cart reminders, anniversary offers, time-sensitive promotions, and webinar reminders.

SMS Notifications

  • This new API driven solution is an add-on under development and allows you to setup SMS notifications for order/shipment confirmations, product announcements, customer engagement, and company information.

Zapier Integrations

  • New Zapier integrations for Act-On are available today and can all be found by visiting Zapier website. These are no-code integrations and allow you to send form submissions to another app, use automated program API block to call another app, add contacts to a list in Act-On, create form submissions, and a new feature; modify a contact in Act-On. Common Integrations include:
    • Zoom (add registrants)
    • Twilio (send SMS)
    • Eventbrite (add attendees)
    • LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms (add leads)
    • OneSignal (send push)
    • Google Sheets (add rows)

Integration Platforms

  • These are available today and provide access to Act-On’s API without building and hosting an application yourself. The integration platforms that currently provide this ability are:
    • SyncApps by Cazoomi
    • tray.io
    • blender.io

Whether you are a customer of Act-On or not, this is a great story. Like their peers Act-On are evolving themselves and their platform to meet the needs of the modern marketer. Marketing automation 1.0 is dead. The time for marketing automation 2.0 is now, and that means empowering marketers with technology that truly addresses the entire customer lifecycle – from lead through to customer and beyond.