Act-On Pivots To Growth Marketing, Announces Software & Brand Updates

Published: June 17, 2020

Act-On Software, a growth marketing platform, has unveiled updated capabilities, a refreshed interface and new product announcements designed to help users grow their business, deliver exceptional brand experiences and drive personalized product engagement.

The new updates aim to position Act-On to transform traditional lead management into marketing automation that gives users complete control over their customers’ brand experiences across all digital touchpoints.

These updates include:

  • Event triggers designed to send real-time digital messages based on user interaction in various channels;
  • Interactive reporting that identifies patterns and measure campaign and experience success;
  • Transactional emails that deliver critical non-promotional communications;
  • SMS messaging designed to improve operations and buyer conversations by connecting the buyer to their preferred channel; and
  • Enhanced content creation tools that allow marketers to create and edit their content more efficiently.

“Even in tough times like those we face now, marketers are optimists and solution-finders,” says Kate Johnson, CEO of Act-On, in a statement. “Act-On was founded on a fierce dedication to helping our customers succeed, which is at the heart of our new look and enhanced platform. For over a decade, we’ve helped marketers evolve and grow their businesses — not just secure leads. Now more than ever, we are committed to helping marketers deliver exceptional brand experiences and nurture long-term relationships.”

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david greenberg

Demand Gen Report recently sat down with David Greenberg, Act-On’s SVP of Marketing, to learn more about the pivot to better serve growth marketing.

Demand Gen Report: What triggered the decision to re-imagine the Act-On platform?

David Greenberg: One thing that I’ve noticed in the market and in our customer base is the way people buy has dramatically changed over the last five years. Our customer base has really been pushing the envelope of our product and using it in the ways that they feel are needed. They have that new consumer new buying mindset where they’re generally out there doing a lot of research, looking at peer networks, looking at review sites to make a decision.

What we’ve done is in conjunction with a number of new products and platform enhancements is we launched the company in a way. There’s a new brand element to this. When customers are excited about the brand and the product, they will stay there a long time and be a proponent.

DGR: How does Act-On define growth marketing?

Greenberg: For us it’s about marketing, applying and focusing on the areas that drive the most growth of the business. Much of growth marketing is actually focused on getting customers to fully adopt and engage around the product. So a lot of it is starting to be focused on the post-purchase, which is a newer field for growth marketing and PR marketing in general.

DGR: There seems to be a heavy focus on customer retention in growth marketing. Would you agree?

Greenberg: Yes, we believe that if you keep customers retained and keep them happy, that is the fuel for the next level of new business coming in. Look at the rise of G2 as an example. When marketing automation came, G2 wasn’t even a thing. Now it’s one of the primary places people go to evaluate what’s out there in the market and make a decision on the software they should take the next step with. So, the whole concept is absolutely about retention, because happy customers drive new customers.

DGR: So, you’re getting feedback and collecting that engagement data from customers to help build a more streamlined and seamless customer experience for any customers coming in and for prospects. Is that right?

Greenberg: Absolutely. For example, we have a very large hotel chain that is using us to drive their loyalty card program. People send in comments, they get a loyalty program, they get first-class treatment, and they’re using Act-On as a key way to do that. Obviously, it’s to keep them coming back for more, but they also have tons of amazing data around how and when those customers are happy. They have a referral program so they can track all that stuff. The bounds of what marketing is have expanded. We used to be just completely focused on the lead equation. And I think more and more, it’s around making sure there’s a marketing discipline in there that’s thinking about how do you drive things like loyalty.

Demand Gen Report: Tell me about the new features for B2B companies. What makes them important and why are they the core of the platform?

Greenberg: Event triggers are very important, and our customers have been asking for this capability. It’s the ability for third-party systems using an open API to fire events into Act-On to streamline processes. Instead of sending messages related to other activities, it’s really about letting these other systems drive data into Act-On and giving you that information. The core benefit of Act-On is you get all of this behavioral data. Now users are able to take things that were usually in disparate systems and centralize them, so they have a much better full view of what this person’s preferences are. And that automatically drives different types of messaging and personalization.

Another one is SMS. Act-On has historically been very email-centric. And mobile has transformed marketing a lot, too. In the long-term, I think you’ll see more strides in mobile from Act-On — our first journey into this is SMS and that’s mostly customer-driven.

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