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Category: Act!
Written by Ken Quigley
March 13 2023
Act! Marketing Automation has undergone many changes since it was first released in late 2018, so it's helpful to review the comparative benefits of each AMA tier, especially since the free basic tier was introduced in April of 2021. And while Keystroke has put together a reasonably exhaustive comparison chart on our website HERE (with detailed explanations of the feature nested within each row), it's still challenging to understand the real-world cases for using one tier or the other. To that end, we've laid out the following explanation for understanding the broad feature difference between the four tiers below. 

Introduction
Before we get into the details of each tier, we need to divide the top two tiers from the bottom two since the features of Basic & Select are more akin to emarketing than marketing automation. This is not a knock against them, so much as to help control customer expectations. Customers looking to promote their products or services with ad hoc eblasts or multi-step drip marketing campaigns will find Basic & Select sufficient for their needs. The template editor in each is powerful and easy to use, with 170+ responsive template themes to choose from. And the campaign designer is flexible and intuitive, with most users able to create their first campaign within a few minutes. Act! has even published hours of free training videos to shorten the learning curve faster.

EMARKETING  MARKETING AUTOMATION 
    • Editor's note: All four tiers include the template editor, workflow designer, drip marketing, email tracking & statistics, 170+ responsive templates, campaign calendar, and delivery & compliance tools
However, customers looking to build marketing automation campaigns that adapt to how the audience engages with the emails, and then trigger workflow back into your CRM to initiate sales notifications & follow-ups, and even the inclusion in other campaigns, should look past the first two tiers and start at Complete.
 
With that said, let's get into the AMA feature breakdown by tiers.
 
act marketing automation basic new tile side view300Basic Tier
The Basic tier of AMA is included free with Act! subscription and offers 2500 monthly sends, with the robust template & campaign designer I mentioned in the intro. If your distribution list is small and you're looking to send out email blasts, newsletters, or drips, Basic may be a good fit. Basic also allows you to upgrade your sends to a total of 10,000 per month, meaning you can quadruple your send limit for only $540/year ($180/year for every 2500), and still be close to half the price of the Select tier. Compare this to what Act! Emarketing team used to offer for a comparable amount, and you'll discover Basic is an excellent value.

Select Tier
The Select tier starts at $79 per month (billed annually at $948), and includes 10x the monthly sends as Basic. Like Basic, Select is perfect for design, delivery, forms and reports. If ama select 400px 1you're coming from another emarketing platform like Swiftpage emarketing (SPEM) or Act! emarketing (AEM), and want to continue the same emailing type with better design & delivery tools, then the "Select" tier is an easy choice.

Select is perfect for those designing business newsletters, sending up to 25,000 emails per month with standard delivery or drip functionality after the template is sent. What this means is with Select, you can schedule several templates to be sent in sequence, but you cannot implement decisions that change what is received based on how the audience engages with the emails. Decision trees based on clicks and opens are not available with Select, nor is feedback like AMA scoring. See the action choices below with Select (click each image to expand).

Select  Select1 

With Select, users can also build simple landing pages to capture basic contact data with web forms, but they'll need Complete or Advanced tier to add these new contacts to groups or campaigns, or trigger follow-ups of any kind. SMS upgrades are available in all three paid tiers of AMA, including Select. You can review a detailed tier comparison chart at the bottom of this blog. 

ama complete 400px 1Complete Tier
The Complete tier starts at $199/month, billed annually at $2388, and includes all Select's "outbound" delivery workflow, while adding support for powerful "inbound workflow" into Act!. What this means is Complete & Advanced can include campaigns with Decision Trees that score how the audience engages with your emails, and then adjust the campaign accordingly. For instance, you can have a campaign send a follow-up email if they open the first email, and schedule a call in Act! if they don't. You can even configure your Complete and Advanced Tiers to notify your team members when a particular action occurs in a campaign.
 
Complete and Advanced Campaigns can create tasks inside of Act! like adding new or existing contacts to campaigns, or alerting sales staff of click-through responses, or even creating follow-up activities or opportunities based on how a recipient reacts to any stage of a campaign. Scoring is also included with Complete or higher.

So the simplest way to understand the difference between Select and Complete is the former supports "outbound delivery workflow", and the latter supports that AND "inbound response-driven" workflow. Reviewing the comparison chart at the bottom shows that most differences between the first and last two tiers follow this theme.  See the action choices below with Complete (click each image to expand).

Complete1  Complete1 

It should be noted that Complete also has another 25,000 sends per month (total of 50,000), and more robust landing pages that support many more types of actions & tasks like creating follow-ups & opportunities. 

ama advanced 400px 1Advanced Tier
The case for Advanced is even more straightforward. Those that need advanced features like a/b testing or multi-stage lead profiling already know what they are, and understand their benefits. These are sophisticated marketing tools; if a user is qualified to use them, they likely know their value well enough to justify the extra cost. The only other reason a user would justify the additional cost of the Advanced tier is based on the increased send limit, namely the extra 50k included with the top tier of AMA for a total monthly send of 100,000 emails. In these cases, the math will speak for itself.
For additional information about the uses of each feature, as well as localized pricing, please see act.com/pricing 
 

Marketing Features

 Basic 

Select

Complete

Advanced

Price per month (billed annually) FREE $79 $199 $399
Email Sends / Mo

    2,500    

25,000

50,000

100,000

Email Marketing

170+ Responsive Templates

Interactive Template Editor

Email Tracking & Metrics

Drip Marketing

Visual workflow designer

Campaign calendar

Deliverability & compliance tools

Turnkey campaigns  

HTML email editor  

Social sharing  

Landing pages  

Surveys  

Team Management  

Inbound CRM workflow    

Response-driven nurture marketing    

Asset tracking    

Advanced lead capture    

Lead management & scoring    

Event marketing    

Website activity tracking    

Progressive profiling      

A/B testing      

SMS - phone number + 500 sends/mo  

$6.25/mo

$6.25/mo

$6.25/mo

SMS - per additional 500 sends/mo  

$5/mo

$5/mo

$5/mo

Additional monthly email sends 
(per month/billed annually)

$15 for
2,500

$15 for
2,500

$15 for
2,500

$15 for
2,500

Additional domains
(per month/billed annually)

$50 per
domain

$50 per
domain

$50 per
domain

$50 per
domain

 
 
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