Today, I’m excited to announce that over 145,000 customers in 170 countries use ActiveCampaign to power incredible customer experiences. As founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign, my favorite part of growing the customer experience automation (CXA) category is watching the impact that it has on businesses of every size as they grow beyond email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM.
To fulfill our CXA mission and help our customers, ActiveCampaign needs to continually advance. These are some of the advancements we’ve made since the beginning of 2020:
- Announced new product functionality, pages, along with major marketing, ecommerce, and sales automation enhancements
- Expanded the app ecosystem to over 850 — including integrations with Facebook, Microsoft, Twilio, and Zendesk — adding to already powerful integrations like Salesforce, Google, and Shopify — so businesses can connect the tools they want to use
- Doubled the number of pre-built automation recipes to over 540 and added 150+ new email templates, making it easier than ever to start automating personalized messages
As a result of these advances, and many others, ActiveCampaign has reached record usage levels, powering 4 billion weekly automated experiences. We’ve added over 55,000 customers since the beginning of 2020, as well as 300 new team members to help them grow.
Today, with over 145,000 customers, we want to accelerate CXA even faster. That’s why we’ve raised a $240M Series C round of funding — to help more businesses create great experiences for their customers.
Everything we do is for the customer
I love to look back at the progress we’ve made, and forward at what’s still to come. But even more than that I love to hear about how customers use and get value from ActiveCampaign. I’d like to share three short stories about three of our customers.
Koia is a plant-based drink company that offers plant-based protein in stores and online. With ActiveCampaign, Koia was able to create Koia Krew, a loyalty program that lets customers earn points by completing missions (powered by ActiveCampaign’s automations).
Automation and segmenting customers based on preference and location has generated incredible results. Since switching to ActiveCampaign, Koia has acquired 10,000 new email addresses per month, dropped their cost to acquire a customer by 65%, and increased online sales by 92% (in just three months).
“ActiveCampaign is so flexible. I was able to create a loyalty program that has helped us learn more about our customers and keep them engaged. We are now understanding our customers better and becoming more personal at every touchpoint.”
— Sven-Anders Alwerud, Director of Digital & Retail Marketing at KoiaMuseum of Science and Industry, Chicago is the largest science center in the Western Hemisphere. When MSI came to ActiveCampaign, they needed a way to consolidate contact information and segment their 350,000+ person contact list.
With segmentation and an integration with Salesforce, MSI was able to automatically sync contact information for visitors — so that each guest could be notified about new exhibits based on their interests. MSI was also able to segment by audience type for the first time, allowing them to target guests, members, teachers, and donors with relevant information.
“ActiveCampaign lets us send email campaigns, automate features, and manage contacts by staff group. The holy trinity. Other tools couldn’t do all three.”
— Steven Beasley, Senior Director of Digital Experience at MSIHipcooks is a cooking school with seven locations that stretch from San Diego to Seattle. With local classes in different cities, Hipcooks needed a way to send people info about the classes that were close to them. Segmentation by location even allowed Hipcooks to send recipes based on ingredients that were in-season in each area. The combination of beautiful, customized emails and personalization led to a 70% customer retention rate.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hipcooks has used ActiveCampaign to take their hands-on cooking classes digital, creating unique messages and offers that bring offline fans online. Once in-person classes resume, Hipcooks will use CXA to bring digital customers back to their seven locations across the west coast of the United States.
“Localizing our content keeps our customers engaged, because we’re able to write about produce that’s relevant to the season in that community.”
— Monika Reti, Owner and Founder of HipcooksThese are the stories that energize us. Every conversation with a customer — every note, every email, every piece of feedback — is a reminder of the impact that great experiences can create.
How we will continue to advance customer experience automation
When businesses are starting out, personal touch is what creates great experiences. It’s the reason that businesses grow — but as they grow, it gets harder and harder to maintain those personal relationships. There are too many things to do, too many people to serve, and manual, repetitive work steals the time needed to add an extra human touch.
Generic messages plug the gap, but not very well. And customer experience suffers.
CXA is about building personal relationships, whether a business has 10 customers or 10 million. It’s about automating what can be automated, combining tools and channels that are the best at what they do, and creating segmented, personalized messages that build real connections.
Growing businesses need to build those connections today. They can’t wait. Every day that passes is another missed opportunity. That’s why we built the number one CXA platform, and that’s why we’re working to accelerate the growth of CXA.
The last year has been difficult for many companies, and people have been forced to adapt and face difficult decisions. We have been constantly inspired by that adaptation — and as places reopen and businesses return to a changed world, we are here to be part of the next phase of their evolution.
In the coming months, you can expect to see increased international expansion, new product functionality and innovation, additional work on the core of the product, an expanded partner ecosystem, and an even stronger world-class customer success team.
All of this will be paired with product enhancements guided by YOU! Starting in May and throughout 2021 we are rolling out a customer love program focused on delivering customer-requested enhancements. You’ll hear about these through an all-new product updates webpage, monthly product webinars, and new customer-only emails that will ensure you get the most out of your investment in ActiveCampaign.
To the team here at ActiveCampaign, thank you. You make all of this possible, working from homes and offices around the world, but always together. I can’t wait to welcome more people as we continue to grow, and we plan to reach 1,000 teammates by the end of 2021.
To our customers, everything we do, we do for you. Thank you for bringing us along on your journey.