Act-On https://act-on.com/ Marketing Automation Software, B2B, B2C, Email Mon, 25 Aug 2025 22:52:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://act-on.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/cropped-AO-logo_Color_Site-Image-32x32.png Act-On https://act-on.com/ 32 32 85% of Marketing Teams Have 10 or Fewer People. How Are They Getting the Work Done?  https://act-on.com/learn/blog/85-of-marketing-teams-have-10-or-fewer-people/ Mon, 25 Aug 2025 22:09:06 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501854 Marketers are feeling the pressure. Often working with smaller teams and tighter resources, they’re under fire to get more done with shrinking budgets. In fact, a Gartner survey on marketing budgets found that CMOs have settled into the “era of less,” with only 24% reporting they had a sufficient budget to execute their strategy in the previous year. The good news is that martech, like marketing automation, provides teams with tools to improve their impact and stretch resources even further. 

Act-On ran a survey to understand exactly how marketers are using automation in today’s environment. We heard from 114 marketers across a mix of company sizes and industries. The results showed how teams are using their tools, the size of their current tech stacks, and what they’re hoping for next as they move forward in an environment of persistent uncertainty.

Smaller Teams Are Doing Big Things 

One of the more interesting findings from the Act-On survey is that 85% of respondents say their marketing team includes 10 people or fewer. Nearly two-thirds report having just one to five marketers.

This data reflects a broader trend we’re seeing across industries: marketing teams are continuing to consolidate. Sixty-eight percent of marketers say it’s harder to find a job in marketing today than it was five years ago. Team restructuring is also at a three-year high, with half of all marketing teams undergoing changes in the past 12 months, and that number jumps to nearly 70% among larger businesses.

As a result, small teams are now handling more than ever, from campaign planning and lead nurturing to sales enablement and beyond. That growing list of responsibilities leaves little room for slowdowns.

“These days, small marketing teams are managing projects that used to be handled by larger departments,” says Matt Sailor, Act-On’s creative director. “But the days of weekly marketing standups with dozens of colleagues may not come back. This puts pressure on your tech stack: If your tools aren’t super easy to use, it’s far too easy to fall behind.”

And while marketers rely on a variety of tools to get the job done, the Act-On survey shows that tech stacks remain relatively lean, even as the number of available solutions continues to grow.

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2025 Act-On Marketing Technology Insights: Doing More With Less

Marketing teams are being asked to do more with less. Get key insights from our 2025 report on the future of B2B marketing automation. Learn what your peers say about AI, lean teams, and proving ROI.

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Tech Stacks Are Slimmer 

Marketers may be short on time, but they’re not short on martech options. The Act-On survey found that, even with roughly 15,000 tools available on the market and 3,000 new products added in 2023 and 2024 alone, teams are carefully curating their tech stacks. In fact, 92% of respondents say they’re using 20 or fewer tools.

Ease of use continues to rank high when evaluating marketing automation tools. One study found that 54% of marketers listed it as a key factor in their decision-making process. That preference came through in the Act-On survey as well. Tools like Canva, ChatGPT, Semrush, and CRMs topped the list not just for their functionality but because teams can start seeing value quickly.

“There’s a ton of value in being able to hit the ground running with fewer ‘learning curve hours’ to log,” says Jennifer Blanco, senior director of customer marketing. “That kind of quick adoption is a big deal when you’re already stretched pretty thin.”

Automation plays a major role in helping marketers move at the speed they need. The Act-On survey also uncovered some interesting insights about what marketers expect from automation in the months ahead.

Automation Is Helping Marketers Keep Up

Our survey explored exactly how marketers are thinking about AI inside their marketing automation platforms. You can check out the full breakdown of those stats here in the complete report. However, the findings echo other research showing that 83% of marketers say AI has improved their productivity, and 93% report AI features have been added to their existing tech stack during 2024.

As a result, MAPs that give busy teams faster insights, reduce manual work, and increase visibility will play an important role in the months ahead. These capabilities help marketers show leadership that their actions are delivering results.

Satisfaction Hinges on Simplicity 

Marketing leaders can maximize their output with strong automation tools on their side. Is your tech stack up to it?

The Act-On survey also looked at how happy users are with their current marketing automation platforms. Our research found a clear satisfaction gap between Act-On and other platforms. The exact numbers are in the full report, but one factor behind the difference that stood out is ease of use.

Act-On outperforms competitors in user-reported time-to-live for the most important marketing automation tasks, including:* 

  • Email creation: 29% faster than Marketo and Pardot, 50% faster than Eloqua
  • Automated journey creation: 50% faster than Marketo and Pardot, 70% faster than Eloqua 
  • Form creation: 50% faster than Marketo and Pardot, 67% faster than Eloqua
  • Landing page building: 29% faster than Marketo and Pardot, 50% faster than Eloqua

When marketers can launch a campaign or build a landing page in minutes instead of hours, it changes what they can accomplish in a day. That matters for busy teams. If a MAP takes weeks to learn or requires a dedicated admin, the time savings get much smaller. Ease of use is what truly helps marketers stay on track and feel satisfied with their MAP as they push their goals forward. 

Marketers Need Tools that Prove ROI 

The Act-On survey brings to light what many marketers are experiencing in the trenches each day. More work to do, fewer hands to do it, and a limited yet important tech stack that needs to pull its weight. With leadership leaning in more than ever to see results from marketing, having tools that show exactly what is working and the impact marketers are making is more necessary than ever before.

“Leadership knows we’re working hard, but what they really care about is what’s driving results,” says Nate Meneer, Act-On’s senior product marketing manager. “We need tools that have our back when it comes to proving what’s working and what’s not. That’s the kind of support that actually moves things forward.”

Want to learn more about what 114 marketers said about how they’re using marketing automation? Join our upcoming webinar to hear from the marketers featured in this piece, along with others, as they share their insights and answer your questions live. 

Do More with Less: How Lean Marketing Teams are Thriving

The ‘do more with less’ pressure is on. With 85% of marketing teams having 10 or fewer people, it’s time for a new playbook. On Wednesday, September 18th at 10:00 am PT, join Act-On’s marketing and product experts to learn how to turn your small team into a strategic superpower. Discover practical strategies to amplify your impact and prove the ROI leadership demands.

Learn More

*Disclaimer: All stats from ChatGPT meta-analysis of user-submitted data on leading marketing automation platforms. Actual times will vary based on the specific user, brand, and circumstances.

]]> Why Using AI Doesn’t Mean Losing the Joy of Marketing https://act-on.com/learn/blog/why-using-ai-doesnt-mean-losing-the-joy-of-marketing/ Sun, 24 Aug 2025 10:47:00 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501859 I feel like I’m living in two AI worlds right now.

In one, I’m having thoughtful, behind-the-scenes conversations with my co-workers about AI’s potential for marketers. We’re exploring what’s exciting, what’s tricky, and how we’re all experimenting. On the other hand, I’m scrolling through social media, where the conversation is a little more … surface level.

You have folks who try AI once, get a weird output, and declare it useless. Then you have the other side of the spectrum: people who see it as the absolute answer to everything.

I’m finding the reality sits somewhere in the middle. AI isn’t going to single-handedly run your marketing strategy or your department (take a deep breath of relief, marketers!). But it does have some pretty amazing capabilities that go far beyond the surface-level em-dash conversation. Let’s start there, shall we?

Retiring the “AI Giveaways”

One of the most frequent conversations I’ve seen lately is the notorious em-dash debate. You’ve probably seen the social media posts declaring, “If you spot an em dash, it must be AI!”

But if you’re a writer, you know the truth. We’ve been using them forever. I’ve actually never met a writer who didn’t count the em dash as one of their favorite tools. If you want a laugh, check out this piece written from the em dash’s POV. Apparently, it’s noticed all the buzz on social media too.

And the same goes for the cliché intro line: “In our fast-paced digital world.” In a prior life, I taught English at the university level, and I can tell you plenty of human writers have leaned on that line.

So these so-called AI dead giveaways don’t really hold up. AI detectors are unreliable, and any “telltale signs” you see now will likely disappear as users get better at prompting and editing.

What we’re really seeing is people engaging with AI at a very surface level and then posting about it on social media. And don’t get me wrong—I’m not mad about it (See? Humans really do really love their em dashes). But I do think we can have a more intelligent, nuanced conversation about its potential to transform us as marketers and expand what we can accomplish.

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2025 Act-On Marketing Technology Insights: Doing More With Less

Marketing teams are being asked to do more with less. Get key insights from our 2025 report on the future of B2B marketing automation. Learn what your peers say about AI, lean teams, and proving ROI.

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What Should Those Conversations Be? 

I’ve found that AI’s real potential isn’t in pounding out a 1,000-word blog post. The opportunity is to push past those surface-level tasks and into something more.

We recently did some AI training here at Act-On, and I realized much of AI’s value lies in keeping the fun parts of your work for yourself and letting the robot handle the ones that aren’t so fun.

For example, can AI do content ideation? Yeah, of course it can. But that’s something I actually want to do. So it’s more about looking at your workflows and asking: What are the things in my day that are manual, time-consuming, and not really that enjoyable? Those are the places where AI can step in to make your job more fun.

Here are some of my favorite ideas:

Content audits and categorization. I once spent an entire summer manually reviewing and categorizing hundreds of blog posts. AI can now take on much of that work. It can scan your backlog, group content, find gaps, and suggest updates in far less time (and budget) than we’ve done in the past.

Adding structured updates. If you create content, updating and refreshing it is part of the job. Adding FAQs to old blog posts, for example, is the kind of repetitive, rules-based task that AI can handle well.

Organizing content assets. AI-based organizational tools might not be perfect yet, but they’re getting closer. Some of these tools can help you customize workflows, clean up messy file systems, and make your content assets much easier to find.

Supporting internal thought leaders. Teams are also using AI to scale content creation. Our team, for example, set up a tool that helps SMEs turn their expertise, industry knowledge, and real-time insights into short blogs. The AI adds structure, strengthens connections between ideas, and makes it much easier for internal experts to share their perspectives more often.

We’re at a point where we, as marketers, can control our destiny a bit and use AI to make ourselves and our creative work much more efficient, without handing over the best parts. It’s also a great opportunity to stop giving up the parts of your job you love most and start giving it the parts that slow you down.

ChatGPT can be a powerful tool, but it’s up to us to use it where it’s needed, not when humans are still better equipped for the job.

Where Do Humans Still Fit? 

In the background, there’s some fear in marketing about which parts of our jobs AI will replace and where humans still fit. One thing I’ve noticed is the level of oversight AI requires.

For example, right now it’s built to agree with you (finally, a co-worker who thinks all of your ideas are brilliant!). But it also can’t use human judgment to recognize when something is off.

Recently, I was reviewing historical data to understand which forms in our content generated the most leads. The dataset included many different form titles, including “book a call” (which appears throughout our website) and forms tied to eBooks.

After AI analyzed the data, it decided that eBook forms outperformed the others by a landslide. That just didn’t make sense. Looking closer, I realized it had lumped “book a call” in with “eBook” forms, which skewed the results.

It’s a small example with a big lesson: No matter how you use AI, you still need a human to catch the errors. Left unchecked, AI will swear up and down that an eBook form and “book a call” are basically the same thing. And of course, as humans, we know they definitely are not. 

How to Spark Better AI Conversations in Your Team 

If you want to step away from the surface-level discussions into something deeper with your team, here are a few things to consider: 

  • Find the people who are already doing interesting things with AI. They might be another department in your company, or individuals in your professional network. Invite them to share their processes. For example, what are your demand gen peers doing with AI? What are your content and creatives doing? 
  • Follow thought leaders experimenting with AI in your space. And avoid the ones that are basically posting “Just tried AI once; here’s my TED Talk.” You’re looking for marketers who explain the “why” behind their workflows, rather than just the wow factor. Want some inspiration? Check out Act-On’s LinkedIn feed where we regularly reshare and highlight top voices in AI.
  • Experiment in small groups. With AI, it’s natural to feel cautious since we’ve all heard big promises before. That’s why it helps to stay curious, try new things out, and keep a healthy dose of skepticism without writing it off too quickly. One way to do that is by experimenting in small groups. Partner up to test new tools and workflows, then share what works and what doesn’t with the larger team to discover new uses. 

As marketers, it’s important to keep our curiosity alive. Not every new AI tool will deliver value, and I have my own list of experiments that definitely missed the mark. But what matters is staying intentional. Protect the parts of your job that are best left to a human, and the parts that sparked your love for marketing in the first place. Because when you bring AI into the right parts of your process, you can create stronger results for your team and continue experiencing joy in your work.

eBook

2025 Act-On Marketing Technology Insights: Doing More With Less

Marketing teams are being asked to do more with less. Get key insights from our 2025 report on the future of B2B marketing automation. Learn what your peers say about AI, lean teams, and proving ROI.

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]]> New Gmail “Manage Subscriptions” Page: What Marketers Need to Know https://act-on.com/learn/blog/new-gmail-manage-subscriptions-page-what-marketers-need-to-know/ Fri, 18 Jul 2025 21:56:12 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501637

Introduction

For email marketers, Gmail has long been one of the most important inbox providers to keep an eye on. Whether your marketing audience is primarily B2B or B2C, Gmail addresses undoubtedly make up a significant portion of your list. This week, Google announced a new feature. Gmail Manage Subscriptions could significantly impact how your recipients interact with your messages.

This new tool is designed to make it easier than ever for Gmail users to quickly review, manage, and unsubscribe from marketing emails. With just a few clicks, recipients can now see all the brands emailing them, ranked by frequency, and decide which subscriptions to keep or cut. For marketers, this signals a clear shift: Gmail is making it simpler for users to opt out of unwanted emails, meaning engagement, relevance, and subscriber trust have never been more critical.

TL;DR: Gmail’s new “Manage Subscriptions” feature gives users a simple dashboard to view and unsubscribe from marketing emails — ranked by how often brands send. This means high-frequency senders are now more exposed to opt-outs. For marketers, it’s a wake-up call: prioritize valuable, relevant content and subscriber trust over sheer volume. With the unsubscribe process now frictionless, only the most engaging emails will earn their place in the inbox.

What is Gmail’s “Manage Subscriptions” Feature?

The “Manage Subscriptions” feature is essentially a centralized control panel inside Gmail inboxes. Instead of scrolling through a cluttered inbox to find the tiny “unsubscribe” links buried at the bottom of emails, users can now:

  • View all their email subscriptions in one place. Gmail consolidates active marketing senders into a single interface, making it easy for users to see who’s emailing them most frequently.
  • Sort by sender frequency. Brands sending the highest volume of messages appear at the top of the list — prime real estate that could also make them prime targets for unsubscribes.
  • Unsubscribe with one click. No forms, no confirmation emails, no friction. Users can remove themselves from lists instantly.

Gmail Manage Subscriptions functionality is currently in rollout, and as of now, it’s only available to standard Gmail inboxes — not Google Workspace (business) accounts. There’s no timeline yet for a Workspace release.

How to Manage Email Subscriptions on Gmail

Managing email subscriptions in Gmail is now easier than ever thanks to the new “Manage Subscriptions” feature. Watch a video on how users take control of their inbox or follow the steps below:

  1. Open Gmail on Desktop or Mobile App: Make sure you’re signed into your personal Gmail account (this feature currently isn’t available for Google Workspace accounts).
  2. Access the “Manage Subscriptions” Page: Navigate to the Promotions tab or scroll to the bottom of a marketing email. Gmail may display a link or prompt labeled “Manage Subscriptions” — click it to view a list of all active senders.
  3. Review Your Subscriptions: Gmail will show a consolidated list of brands and senders, sorted by how frequently they email you. This makes it easy to identify which senders dominate your inbox.
  4. Unsubscribe with One Click: Next to each sender, you’ll see an “Unsubscribe” button. Click it to instantly remove yourself from that mailing list—no need to fill out forms or confirm through another email.
  5. Repeat as Needed: Use this dashboard to regularly clean up your inbox and maintain control over the types of marketing messages you receive.

This streamlined process empowers users to quickly reduce inbox clutter—making it even more important for marketers to deliver emails that are relevant, timely, and welcome.

Why Does This Matter for Email Marketers?

This feature is more than just a convenience for Gmail users — it’s a wake-up call for brands. With such a low barrier to unsubscribe, every email you send must justify its place in the inbox. High-volume, low-value campaigns are more vulnerable than ever, as Gmail is effectively putting brands that “send the most” at the top of the chopping block.

Marketers can’t rely solely on list size anymore. Instead, success will come from building and nurturing quality relationships, focusing on content that genuinely resonates, and ensuring your communications align with subscriber preferences.

Key Takeaways:

  • Currently Limited to Individual Gmail Users: At launch, Gmail Manage Subscriptions only applies to personal Gmail.com accounts, not Google Workspace or corporate email addresses. If your audience is primarily B2B and uses company domains, the impact may be limited for now. However, given Gmail’s dominance, most lists will see at least some effect — and Workspace support could come later.
  • Simplified Unsubscribing for Recipients: By giving users a one-stop dashboard to review all subscriptions and unsubscribe instantly, Google is empowering its users to declutter their inboxes with minimal effort. This is a major convenience shift compared to searching for unsubscribe links, and it puts the control firmly in the recipient’s hands and outside of marketers’.
  • High-Volume Senders Face Greater Scrutiny: Brands that send frequent campaigns will likely appear at the top of the subscription list. While visibility can be beneficial for recognition, it also paints a target for users looking to trim their email load. If your engagement rates aren’t strong, your volume could quickly work against you.

With Gmail Manage Subscriptions lowering the barrier to unsubscribe, marketers must focus on quality contacts and wanted messaging, not quantity. It is increasingly important to ensure every message is worth your audience’s attention. Act-On helps you meet Gmail’s bulk sender requirements. Gmail is leaning on marketers to meet subscribers’ needs.

]]> The Benefits of Bot Clicks and Proxy Opens in Email Marketing https://act-on.com/learn/blog/the-hidden-benefits-of-bot-clicks-deliverability/ Thu, 03 Jul 2025 20:47:45 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501529

Introduction

When email marketers hear about bot clicks and proxy opens, they often think of inflated metrics and distorted reports. These clicks can be frustrating as they distort performance metrics, making the click rate an unreliable indicator of engagement. As a marketer, the goal is to measure real user interactions, not automated activity. But what if these seemingly problematic signals can also provide valuable insights?

Before we dive into the benefits of bot clicks in email marketing, let’s clarify what these terms mean and outline the difference between a bot click and a proxy open. 

TL;DR: Bot clicks and proxy opens in email marketing can distort engagement metrics, but they aren’t all bad. These automated actions, triggered by security systems, actually confirm deliverability, list hygiene, and sender reputation. By recognizing their patterns and using smart filtering tactics (like invisible links), marketers can separate real engagement from automated activity—and even gain insights to optimize email performance.

What are bot clicks in email marketing?

A bot click happens when an email security system scans and clicks on links within an email before it reaches the recipient’s inbox. This often happens immediately after the email is sent. Bots are commonly used within specific organizations, meaning all recipients sharing the same root domain may be impacted. Systems like Mimecast or Microsoft Defender often perform these actions to detect phishing attempts or scan for malicious links. 

What is a proxy open?

A proxy open occurs when an email is opened via a security system or privacy filter rather than by the actual recipient. These opens often happen in corporate security systems (like Proofpoint or Barracuda). A proxy open also includes other privacy-focused email clients that prevent tracking. Notably, Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) which automatically loads images, including tracking pixels, to mask user activity.

Do More with Less: How Lean Marketing Teams are Thriving

The ‘do more with less’ pressure is on. With 85% of marketing teams having 10 or fewer people, it’s time for a new playbook. On Wednesday, September 18th at 10:00 am PT, join Act-On’s marketing and product experts to learn how to turn your small team into a strategic superpower. Discover practical strategies to amplify your impact and prove the ROI leadership demands.

Learn More

How can marketers use bot click and proxy open metrics?

Bot clicks in marketing emails and proxy open metrics can become easily inflated, and can potentially create noise. But they can also offer useful insights into deliverability. Instead of dismissing them as bad data, marketers can utilize them to confirm active inboxes, improve sender reputation, and adjust tracking methods to focus on real engagement. Here’s how:

  • Confirm deliverability: Bot clicks in marketing emails confirm the email was delivered and wasn’t flagged as spam or phishing. Nice work! 
  • Assess list hygiene: Security system activity confirms that an inbox is neither abandoned nor deactivated. Even if the recipient’s engagement is in question, you know that the email address is valid. Further, you’ve followed important technical requirements because you were accepted by the recipient’s organization.
  • Establish a baseline: Since both proxy opens and bot clicks remain consistent, you can use them to set a baseline. Then, any variations from that norm can alert you to potential deliverability concerns.
  • Watch for blocklist signals: A lack of inflated opens could mean you have been added to a blocklist and security bots aren’t checking the email because the server assumes you’re a malicious actor.
  • Understand ISP sender reputation: Bot and proxy clicks signal that email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo consider you a legitimate sender.

Though there are benefits to understanding these inflated metrics, it’s essential to adjust how you measure success. Look at bot clicks in marketing emails as engagement signals to help identify currently active email addresses. Continue to keep proxy-opened emails on your list because they indicate a live inbox! But because we can’t treat proxy opens as direct engagement, be sure to track other actions like visiting landing pages, website visits, and form submissions to differentiate bot clicks from real engagement.

A female marketer learning about bot clicks in marketing emails.
Bot clicks in marketing emails aren’t a reason for marketers to panic. They can be useful signals in and of themselves.

Mitigate false engagement signals from bot clicks and proxy opens

Bots tend to click on random links, which can distort engagement metrics and lead to inaccurate results. To mitigate this, consider implementing a couple key strategies:

  1. One effective approach is embedding an invisible link within emails. Since real users won’t see or interact with it, any clicks can be attributed to bots. This makes it easier to filter out automated activity.
  2. Additionally, to improve the unsubscribe process and prevent accidental opt-outs, replace the 1-click method with a two-step confirmation. This requires users to verify their unsubscription on a dedicated landing page. It ensures intentional action while also providing an opportunity to offer alternative options, such as adjusting email preferences or reducing email frequency.

As you can see, many of these inflated interactions are to protect end users. Email marketers have learned that even though bot clicks in marketing emails do not come from real users, they can still offer valuable insights if you know how to interpret them. Soon, Act-On will launch True Open, a proprietary feature that uses AI to provide clarity into the origins of automated vs. human clicks.

By understanding the benefits of these automated interactions, email marketers can fine-tune their reporting, optimize deliverability, and build more accurate engagement strategies.

Summary

Bot clicks and proxy opens, while often viewed as nuisances in email marketing, can actually provide valuable deliverability insights. These automated actions—typically caused by corporate security systems or privacy protections—confirm that emails are reaching live inboxes, adhering to security standards, and maintaining sender reputation. While inflated metrics can mislead performance tracking, smart strategies like invisible links and two-step unsubscribes help filter bot activity. Embracing these signals as part of a holistic deliverability strategy allows marketers to fine-tune engagement metrics and ensure more accurate reporting.

eBook

2025 Act-On Marketing Technology Insights: Doing More With Less

Marketing teams are being asked to do more with less. Get key insights from our 2025 report on the future of B2B marketing automation. Learn what your peers say about AI, lean teams, and proving ROI.

Learn More
]]> Key Brand Elements That Build Trust and Drive Awareness  https://act-on.com/learn/blog/the-key-brand-elements-that-build-trust-and-drive-awareness/ Tue, 27 May 2025 20:30:00 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501291

When you hear the word Nike, what brand elements to mind? You see it, right? The black and white swoosh, or maybe you hear the whisper of the slogan, “Just Do It.” And while marketers know that brand matters, it often gets overshadowed by its louder, attention-seeking cousins like lead generation and performance marketing.

“You can’t rely only on lead gen or performance marketing and forget about brand,” says Matt Sailor, creative director at Act-On. “You might be getting leads, but if people don’t really know who you are and your reputation, marketing efforts can hit a wall.” 

Investing in brand helps you reach people in the dark funnel—the ones still researching, having conversations, and deciding which solution is right for them before they ever fill out a form or trigger a measurable action.

As marketers revisit their strategy and key brand elements, returning to the fundamentals can help create a stronger foundation. That foundation makes it much easier to reach prospects in the dark funnel and build trust before they ever officially raise their hand.

Introduction to Brand Elements: Mission, Vision, and Values

Matt describes good brand development as a form of “brand archaeology.” 

“The most effective brands really come from deep within the culture and the history of the company,” he explains. Instead of creating an identity from scratch, he recommends digging into what’s already true about the company.

Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan is a great example. It’s one of the most recognized taglines of all time and reflects a spirit that athletes connect with. To apply this idea to your own company, ask yourself: What do I hear over and over in conversations with customers and coworkers? What ideas keep coming up in meetings?

“It’s deep research and almost a celebration of all the things that make your company what it is,” says Matt. “I think that’s how you get to the authenticity piece, and that’s how you define your mission and values.”

These brand elements often hold more power than anything manufactured in a team brainstorm. Creating something authentic means unearthing what truly makes your company different and finding the right words to express it. Matt also recommends looking at your competition to make sure your message is markedly different, so you’re not just repeating things across your industry that have been said many times. 

Positioning and Messaging

Once your mission and strategy are clear, the next step is to express them in a way that genuinely connects with your audience.

“Many companies get too generic with their positioning and messaging,” says Matt. “That often comes from risk aversion—not wanting to say something that might not resonate or catch on in the market. But ultimately, it’s much better to be memorable than to blend in.”

That’s why he encourages teams to be a little bolder. Try ideas that might feel slightly outside your comfort zone. Matt also believes brands should aim to be more approachable in the way they communicate.

Example of photography as one of the key brand elements.
Great brand assets don’t happen on accident: it takes key brand elements like photography guidelines to enable consistency and quality.

“I really stand firm in the idea that we don’t stop being people when we go to work,” he says. “I’ve seen B2B messaging and positioning that could challenge that notion, packed with jargon and sounding way too mechanical.”

There are times when technical language might be necessary, but when it comes to positioning and messaging, Matt recommends focusing on emotion. Ask yourself: What do I want my audience to feel?

Make sure your messaging is emotional, human, and immediately clear to the people you’re trying to reach. And if you’re not sure where to start, there’s a great resource for branding guidelines that lets you peek into what other brands are doing to gather some fresh inspiration.

Tone and Voice Guidelines

Matt notes that he’s seen and created many tone and voice guidelines, and he believes what separates the so-so from the really strong ones often isn’t what marketers expect. The biggest differentiators are being understandable, approachable, and intuitive. In other words, do people actually understand it?

“I’m sort of an ultimate word nerd, and tone and voice are a big obsession of mine,” says Matt. “And personally, I’d love to write guidelines that are very language nerdy. But we have to remember that not everyone who uses them has a writing background, and those kinds of documents might not feel very accessible.”

He recommends creating tone and voice guidelines with a broader audience in mind.

Examples of brand voice as one of the key brand elements.
Tone and voice guidelines are a key brand element you’ll need, but make sure they’re approachable and easy to use.

“I’m a big advocate of having training and workshops to talk through how to use these guidelines,” says Matt. “Get the people who will actually use them into a room. It might be the writers, but it could also be customer service or sales. Bring everyone together with a few examples and open up the conversation.”

He also suggests building one-pagers, workbooks, or other quick-reference resources. These help your team get on board without needing to sift through a 65-page PDF. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out how Slack and Audi approach voice and tone in a clear, accessible way.

Visual Guidelines 

Strong visuals help your audience recognize your brand consistently, whether it’s a product screenshot, event banner, or LinkedIn ad. But to keep those visuals aligned, you need more than a list of rules. You also need real-world examples.

“Great examples are almost as useful as the guidelines themselves,” says Matt. “That includes mockups showing how to apply brand colors, use the logo, incorporate iconography, and more.”

Without those examples, visuals can vary, especially across different teams or external vendors. Matt recommends addressing this by clearly outlining both what to do and what to avoid. Add guardrails. Show before-and-after examples. Help users understand the creative space they can work within, without letting things veer off brand.

Logo examples illustrating the idea of successful brand elements.
Outlining proper (and improper) logo usage is crucial for key brand elements like brand guidelines.

For example, Google publishes its brand element guidelines online, which include plenty of examples showing the proper use of visuals. 

He also highlights the importance of regular updates. If something isn’t working or is causing confusion, that’s a signal to revisit your guidelines. Your visual identity should evolve right alongside your brand.

Logos, Colors, and More 

When evaluating your key brand elements, Matt recommends stepping back and taking a more holistic view. “I’m not looking at a single deliverable or a single image, but at everything at a high level. I would say, find yourself a process to do that.”

He suggests reviewing your brand components once or twice a year. Take time with your team to assess what you’ve created, and do a brand teardown or critique. You might say, “This seems to really be working” or “These pieces don’t really seem to resonate when we use them.”

Example of a brand's color palette.
Key brand elements such as color usage guidance can keep your brand consistent across channels.

“You also want to listen to the people who actually do the work,” says Matt. “Are your designers able to stretch creatively and explore new directions with the brand? Or are they feeling boxed in? Are they coming up with fresh ideas, or does it seem like the same thing is happening again and again?”

As you refresh those components, one of the areas that comes up is concern about losing brand equity. How do you retain the brand equity you’ve already created? Matt suggests thinking of your brand as a pyramid. At the top are your mission, vision, and values, which should flow through everything else.

“The way you make sure those refreshes don’t lose brand equity is to keep laser focused on the top levels of the pyramid, right?” says Matt. “Focus on that mission, vision, and value, and constantly ask yourself: Is this living up to that? Are your visuals, for example, communicating your mission, vision, and values, or are they going astray?”

He also points out that while there are certain things that your brand won’t likely change, such as Nike with their swoosh, the best brands continue to experiment, test exciting and interesting things, and go to new places. 

The Trickle Down Effect of Brand 

As marketers, making the case to invest more in brand isn’t always easy. Sure, we know it’s important, but exactly how important is it? If your lead generation efforts feel stuck, brand might be the tipping point. It helps you move the needle and make more impact with all of your other marketing efforts. 

“You might get leads, but do they really know who you are?” says Matt. “Brand helps you reach people, but more importantly, it builds trust. That way, they already know and trust you before they ever become a lead.”

Want to learn more about key brand elements and how to build and measure brand loyalty? Check out how brand is also the path to retention for B2B companies. 

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]]> 5 Ways to Improve Internal Communications with Marketing Automation https://act-on.com/learn/blog/5-ways-internal-communications-is-easier-with-marketing-automation/ Tue, 27 May 2025 20:00:00 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501296

Exactly how many internal communications emails will hit your work inbox today? It probably depends on your role, but chances are your days are busy and your inbox is full. Those in other departments in your organization likely feel the same way.

That’s why getting teams to take action, whether by joining an employee advocacy program or attending that next event your team worked really hard to plan, can be a challenge. One message usually isn’t enough, and you likely don’t have time to keep repeating it to stay top of mind.

The good news is that the same tactics that make your marketing efforts successful can also work for your internal audiences. We’ve gathered some of our favorite ways to use marketing automation to make your internal communications a little easier. 

Improve Attendance at Your Next Event 

If you’ve ever planned an event, you understand that the worries about low attendance are real. What happens if hardly anyone shows up? What if you waste your time and resources on something that totally flops? And what will your boss think? In marketing, we talk about the rule of seven, where prospects often need at least seven touchpoints before they take action. Internal events also benefit from that same steady communication to build awareness and interest.

The good news is you can use automation in your internal communications to build promotional sequences, send personalized reminders, and create a landing page for easy registration. You can segment invites by department or location, highlight different benefits for each group, and track engagement to send targeted follow-ups.

Staying present in employees’ inboxes helps you stay visible and improve attendance rates at your next big event. 

Do More with Less: How Lean Marketing Teams are Thriving

The ‘do more with less’ pressure is on. With 85% of marketing teams having 10 or fewer people, it’s time for a new playbook. On Wednesday, September 18th at 10:00 am PT, join Act-On’s marketing and product experts to learn how to turn your small team into a strategic superpower. Discover practical strategies to amplify your impact and prove the ROI leadership demands.

Learn More

Employee Landing Pages 

When you think of landing pages, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? It might be lead generation, such as offering a juicy content download to a prospect who just finished reading your latest blog. However, landing pages are also a great way to collect employee data in a user-friendly format. Whether planning a giveaway, launching an internal program, or receiving RSVPs for a team event, landing pages can help you easily manage the flood of responses you might receive. 

For example, you can create a branded internal landing page to collect T-shirt sizes for a company-wide event or to poll employees about which activities they’re most interested in. These forms can then trigger automated email confirmations and route the data directly to the appropriate person. As you can imagine, this process is much easier than the manual, time-consuming alternatives. It also helps streamline your internal communications strategy. 

Employee Social Sharing 

Your internal teams are some of your best brand advocates, but do you want to know what often gets between them and sharing on social media?

I want to help, but I just don’t want to say the wrong thing.

I keep meaning to post, but the day gets away from me.

If someone would just give me an example, I’d totally do it. 

Research shows that having an employee advocacy program increases total social engagement for a brand by 25% to 40%. Marketing teams can build an email series with ready-to-share posts about thought leadership, upcoming events, and company news. Employees can read the email, pick what works for them, and start posting. 

For example, one way we support our sales team here at Act-On is by making it easier for them to share relevant content, without having to come up with ideas from scratch. We use Oktopost, which integrates with our marketing automation platform and includes an advocacy feature that makes the process super simple for our team.  

We’ll load up a set of posts on a specific topic, like email deliverability, and our sales team can either personalize the message or just hit repost. It saves time and helps them stay active on social media without stressing over what to post or when they’ll find time to actually write it.

A man focuses intently on a laptop screen on internal marketing automation.
Internal marketing automation campaigns can be every bit as effective as campaigns to persuade customers.

Internal Campaigns to Showcase Marketing Wins

Have you ever launched an amazing campaign but felt like no one in the organization really understood what it did or the full impact it had? As marketers, we have to advocate for our work and “market our marketing” internally. Doing this helps others understand what your team is working on and feel connected to the brand story you’re all building together.

Consider setting up automated newsletters or landing pages that showcase recent marketing campaigns, key wins, behind-the-scenes highlights, and employee shoutouts. Sharing these moments across teams helps everyone stay informed and builds a stronger sense of connection.

Getting New Team Members Up to Speed 

Do you remember the last time you started a new job? It can be overwhelming, even if you’re experienced and confident in your abilities. Onboarding is important, with one study finding that companies with a strong onboarding process increased new-hire retention, with some reaching 82% higher retention rates. An automated onboarding experience can help your new hires feel welcome and sets them up for success.

Marketing automation allows you to build onboarding journeys personalized to each employee’s role, department, location, or other important factors. For example, your new marketing employee might receive an email series over several weeks introducing them to brand guidelines, creative tools, and analytics platforms, along with key contacts they’ll need to collaborate with across departments. 

Creating these automated paths helps make the employee journey smoother and saves time by avoiding the need to start from scratch each time someone new joins your team.

Moving Forward Creatively 

Internal communications might not receive the same level of attention as our external marketing, but it also deserves creativity and focus. With tools like automated journeys, segmentation, and landing pages, marketing automation can help you engage with employees and put some momentum behind your internal goals. 

Whether you’re encouraging employee advocacy, increasing event attendance, or simply keeping everyone in the loop, these tools make it much easier to connect without a huge time investment and a drag on your resources.

Want to learn more creative ways to use marketing automation? Check out how companies are using it for revenue marketing and how it helps solve the challenges marketers are facing today.

Do More with Less: How Lean Marketing Teams are Thriving

The ‘do more with less’ pressure is on. With 85% of marketing teams having 10 or fewer people, it’s time for a new playbook. On Wednesday, September 18th at 10:00 am PT, join Act-On’s marketing and product experts to learn how to turn your small team into a strategic superpower. Discover practical strategies to amplify your impact and prove the ROI leadership demands.

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]]> How to Upsell Effectively by Automating These 5 Strategies https://act-on.com/learn/blog/how-to-upsell-effectively-by-automating-these-5-strategies/ Tue, 27 May 2025 17:00:00 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501288

Onboarding new clients is exciting, especially after marketing and sales have worked so hard to capture their attention, show why the solution is the right fit, and close the deal. But as marketers know, that’s just the beginning. 

The real work starts once your prospect becomes a customer. It’s about making sure they feel good about their decision and planting subtle seeds about other ways you can help them. The sales team is skilled at cross-selling and upselling. But do you know what else helps? When marketing can put some of that work on autopilot.

Many marketers already use automation for lead nurturing and top-of-funnel campaigns. But it’s also a powerful tool for growing existing relationships. You can use it to create automated journeys, build stronger connections, and naturally introduce new products or services. We’ve gathered top upselling strategies to help you upsell more effectively and make the customer experience even better.

Upsell Effectively with Industry Segmentation 

If you serve many industries and have multiple buyer personas, you have a significant opportunity to drive revenue by segmenting your new customers and personalizing their experience. 

Let’s say you’re a manufacturing company that sells industrial equipment across sectors like automotive, food processing, and pharmaceuticals. Each industry has its own set of challenges, goals, and regulatory requirements, so a one-size-fits-all approach won’t fully capture your cross-sell and upsell opportunities. 

Marketing automation allows you to segment customers by industry and automatically trigger onboarding emails or product education journeys. With this segmentation, you can address a customer’s specific needs by industry, speaking to their pain points more deeply, and make product recommendations that feel like a perfect fit. 

Use Survey-Driven Campaigns, Mapping to Business Challenges 

Have you ever gotten an email and deleted it immediately, not because you didn’t like the brand but because the content wasn’t that important to you? It happens. And it’s also a missed opportunity. 

A strategy to improve cross-sells and upsells is to understand what specific customers care about and then send them content that matches. An easy way to do this is by creating a survey-driven campaign tied to specific products. Start by sending a quick email asking customers about their current challenges. For example, if you’re a marketing automation company and some of your customers struggle with email marketing, let them tell you that.

From there, you can use marketing automation to route those contacts into customized nurture campaigns that highlight features or upsell opportunities that solve their specific problems. This allows you to send customers more relevant content and product offerings that help improve cross-sell and upsell opportunities. 

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2025 Act-On Marketing Technology Insights: Doing More With Less

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Upselling Strategy for Your Power Users 

Your most-engaged users likely love your products or services, which can create entirely new opportunities for upsells and cross-sells. Take a financial institution, for example. If a customer regularly uses mobile banking and sets up multiple savings goals in the app, that might be a good sign they’re financially engaged and ready to expand their relationship. 

An automated journey could celebrate those milestones, like hitting a savings goal, while introducing relevant services, like a higher-yield savings account, financial planning tools, or even mortgage options that match their life stage. 

Aligning offers with the usage of your products and customer behaviors allows you to build stronger trust, add value, and grow relationships and revenue. 

Create Feature Adoption Series Based on Product Gaps

Have you ever used a tool for months, or maybe even years, only to suddenly discover a feature that makes your life so much easier? We’ve been there too. The good news is you don’t have to wait for customers to stumble on those moments. You can create them.

A great way to do this is by building a “feature adoption” email series based on product usage gaps. For example, let’s say you’re a financial software provider and notice that many users haven’t tried a budgeting tool. You could trigger a personalized email series that highlights how to use it, shares quick tips, and even links to a short video demo. 

Maybe customers who use this feature are more likely to upgrade to the version of your product that includes advanced financial planning tools or real-time spending alerts. By highlighting how the budgeting tool can improve their daily money management, you not only improve feature adoption but also create a path for introducing higher-tier offerings that align with customer needs. 

Woman exploring upselling strategies.
Learning how to upsell effectively may take time and research, but marketing automation can help get you there faster!

Upsell by Teasing Higher-Tier Products 

The customers most likely to stay with you the longest and grow their business are the ones seeing strong results from what they’re already using. A great way to support that is by creating educational content mapped to their customer journey.

For example, Georgia United Credit Union built a “next best product” cross-sell program using marketing automation that focused on recommending complementary financial products. They created segments based on each member’s profile, including details like current products and credit score.

Each month, a personalized offer was sent automatically by email, tailored to that specific profile. These programs helped the credit union cross-sell thousands of new products through automation and increased application volume by 96 percent.

Growing Relationships and Revenue 

Marketing and sales teams work hard to bring in new customers, and naturally, you want to keep that momentum going. But if you also focus on improving your cross-sell and upsell efforts, your revenue potential can grow quickly. After all, it is often much easier to generate new revenue from existing customers than to find brand new ones.

Automation can be a big help with these efforts. It allows you to provide more value to current customers, support them in ways they may not have considered, and improve the performance of your campaigns.

Do you want to learn more creative strategies to drive more revenue? Check out our guide breaking down “revenue marketing” and detailing how to answer many of the current challenges that marketers face. 

eBook

2025 Act-On Marketing Technology Insights: Doing More With Less

Marketing teams are being asked to do more with less. Get key insights from our 2025 report on the future of B2B marketing automation. Learn what your peers say about AI, lean teams, and proving ROI.

Learn More
]]> How to Turn Customers Into Brand Advocates and Build Loyalty  https://act-on.com/learn/blog/how-to-turn-customers-into-brand-advocates-and-build-loyalty/ Fri, 23 May 2025 17:11:52 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501282

Prospects are shopping for your products and services, comparing them to those of competitors, and trying to decide which one best solves their problem. It’s not always an easy choice. Want to know what often becomes the tipping point? Brand advocacy.

We see it all the time in B2C. You’re shopping for a new product, read a bunch of glowing five-star reviews, and decide to take the leap. As marketers know, the same thing happens in the B2B world too.

After dealing with frustrating email deliverability issues, a marketer might attend a webinar on how to improve performance. They hear a real customer story about solving the exact problem they’re facing—and suddenly they see themselves in that story. That moment becomes the tipping point.

So how do you create more of those moments and improve brand advocacy? It might seem tricky, but with a smart brand advocacy program, you can start planting the seeds that turn more customers into loyal, enthusiastic supporters.

What is Brand Advocacy?

Brand advocacy is when customers, employees, or partners voluntarily promote a brand because they genuinely value its products, services, or mission. This support often takes the form of word-of-mouth, social media posts, or reviews, and is seen as more trustworthy than traditional advertising.

Advocates can significantly influence others’ buying decisions, helping to boost brand credibility, loyalty, and organic growth while reducing marketing costs.

Build Brand Advocacy with Customer Shout-Outs 

Have you checked in with your sales or customer success teams lately? Ask if they’ve gotten any recent customer high-fives. Better yet, set up a centralized place to collect this feedback as it comes in. At Act-On, we use a dedicated “voice of the customer” Slack channel where team members regularly share wins, shout-outs, and other helpful insights. You might hear things such as:

“Your onboarding process was hands-down the easiest I’ve ever gone through.”

“Your team fixed our issue in under an hour. Huge thank you for your support!”

“We finally hit our Q1 goals, and your product played a big role in that.”

With the customer’s permission, turn that feedback into quotes you can use across your marketing, including social media graphics that highlight wins, email campaigns that build trust, or sales materials that help your team close deals. It’s an easy way to turn those everyday conversations into powerful social proof that builds trust and moves prospects closer to a yes. 

Bonus tip: Ask if some of those customers would be willing to record a quick video testimonial about their experience. You can check out some of our examples here. 

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Co-create Content That Places the Spotlight on Your Customer 

Your customers are experts in their fields, making them the perfect partners for co-creating thought leadership. Invite them to coauthor a blog post, join you on a webinar, or be featured in a customer spotlight on your website.

For example, Act-On recently hosted a webinar in its Debunk’d series where Chelsea from Station Casinos joined the panel to share tips about email marketing myths that hold teams back. The session gave Station Casinos a platform as an industry leader, while naturally showing how Act-On supports that success behind the scenes. You can check out the entire session on demand. 

However, it’s important to remember to focus on your customer’s ideas and expertise. They’re the hero of the story, and you’re the friendly supporting character. When done well, this approach creates authentic customer advocacy and shared thought leadership that naturally lead to brand advocacy.

Turn Customers Into Brand Advocates with Quick Customer Q&As 

We love case studies—and chances are that you do too. But let’s be honest, they can come with a bit of red tape, layers of approval, and at least one pass through legal. A fun and simple alternative to mix into your content is a quick Q&A. It’s brand advocacy and social proof minus the long review cycles. 

Ask if your customer is open to answering a few short questions by email. With their approval, you can turn their responses into mini-testimonials for your website, marketing emails, and social content. It’s an easy way to capture great results and repurpose them across channels.

a smiling woman holds a clipboard and speaks about her brand advocacy program.
Building great customer relationships isn’t just about warm and fuzzies, it’s part of a brand advocacy program that turns customers into brand advocates!

Ask Your Customers to Serve as References 

When your prospects are weighing multiple options, they need something compelling to help them make a decision. One of the best ways to win them is through customer references.

Start by checking in with your sales team to identify your “superfan” customers. Ask if they’d be open to serving as a reference for potential buyers. Then, when a prospect is ready, make the connection.

These conversations can be incredibly helpful. Prospects get to ask questions they might not feel comfortable asking a salesperson, hear honest feedback, and learn more about your solution from someone who’s actually using it.

Nurture Your Existing Customers to Improve Retention

Last—but definitely one of our favorites—is nurturing your existing customers to improve retention through customer marketing. After all, when your customers are successful, they’re more likely to be satisfied and spread the word, right? These automated programs also give you the chance to strengthen relationships and create powerful cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

Add existing customers to automated nurture campaigns that share helpful, relevant resources. And when it makes sense, include content that supports their success or introduces products and services that can help them continue reaching their goals.

For example, Georgia United Credit Union created a “next best product” cross-sell program. Using each member’s profile, the team segmented messaging based on current products and sent personalized offers through email. After launching the program, they saw thousands of new products sold and a 96 percent spike in application volume.

You can track engagement, identify customers who are a good fit for upselling or cross-selling, and move them into campaigns that help them explore new options and build loyalty. 

Expanding Forward 

Marketers today are working in an exciting time. With all the technology and automation tools available, we can build strategies that drive brand advocacy and scale them pretty quickly. 

Remember those quotes you collected from your sales team? You can reuse them again and again on social media. And those automated sequences you set up? Keep adding fresh customer quotes and Q&A responses to keep the momentum going while the technology does the heavy lifting.

The key is to experiment with these strategies, find out what delivers the best results, and use automation to reach, grow, and strengthen your customer relationships at scale.

Want to better understand how to turn customers into brand advocates throughout their journey? Download the complete guide to learn how to start building stronger relationships with your customers. 

eBook

2025 Act-On Marketing Technology Insights: Doing More With Less

Marketing teams are being asked to do more with less. Get key insights from our 2025 report on the future of B2B marketing automation. Learn what your peers say about AI, lean teams, and proving ROI.

Learn More
]]> Marketo vs Eloqua: Features, Flaws & the Better Choice https://act-on.com/learn/blog/marketo-vs-eloqua-comparing-the-cost-of-enterprise-complexity/ Thu, 15 May 2025 17:09:21 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501273

When enterprise teams evaluate marketing automation solutions, it often comes down to the Marketo vs Eloqua showdown. These two legacy platforms have a combined 40+ years on the market, but a lot has changed since their founding — not always for the better. 

Once independent innovators, both platforms are now small pieces in the vast portfolios of tech giants Adobe and Oracle. And according to longtime customers, it shows: users report steep declines in service quality and user experience while costs continue to rise.

Don’t let legacy platforms rest on their laurels. Choosing the right marketing automation platform (MAP) makes a huge impact on your team’s performance — so let’s go beyond the usual feature comparisons and consider what real users and marketing automation experts have to say.

Advantages of Marketo vs Eloqua 

Both platforms position themselves as enterprise powerhouses, but each has its distinct strengths and weaknesses. Marketo’s primary advantages over Eloqua are relative: it’s cheaper, and its learning curve isn’t quite as steep. 

Eloqua is widely considered the most expensive MAP on the market and requires massive enterprise resources (like marketing ops, IT support, implementation specialists, and outside consultants) to implement over several months, plus weeks of training to learn campaign basics. 

“Eloqua is not intuitive and rather hard to learn. It is a tool that needs to be known and managed by dedicated IT specialists.” – Irina M., Marketing Manager

Compared to Eloqua, Marketo is more affordable and easier to implement — but as we’ll discuss in a minute, that’s not saying much. 

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Advantages of Eloqua vs Marketo

While Eloqua’s complexity makes it harder to use, that’s also where it outperforms Marketo — supporting enterprise needs for multinational, multichannel, and multi-brand organizations. 

“If you want to set up complex nurture workflows, Eloqua has the edge there. Its Campaign Canvas makes this process far easier than daisy-chaining together smart campaigns in Marketo. [Marketo’s] built-in nurture engagement programs are very basic and can only execute emails on a linear basis.” – G2 verified user

Since Eloqua comes with a hefty price tag, it’s probably not worth the investment for organizations that don’t require this level of complexity to achieve their marketing goals. 

Features & Fine Print

Both platforms come with a lot of functionality, provided you pay for all the requisite top-tier packages and add-ons. But take these differences into consideration:

  • Campaign building: Most users say Marketo’s Smart Campaigns are more straightforward but less flexible than Eloqua’s Campaign Canvas. Eloqua visualizes complex, multi-directional decision-based campaigns in one location, while Marketo requires breaking workflows into multiple smaller campaigns.
  • Form capabilities: Marketo offers more flexibility with forms, allowing users to create and sort picklists directly without creating new objects. Eloqua requires creating separate picklists for each dropdown variation.
  • Data management: Especially for Oracle users, Eloqua provides more robust data handling with unlimited API calls, while Marketo users face API limits and data synchronization challenges. However, Marketo offers more custom fields on lead records (Eloqua caps at 250).

Common Flaws

What do these platforms have in common? Customer complaints around total cost, support, and user experience. 

1. Cost transparency

Both platforms come with significant costs beyond their already-expensive base subscriptions. Marketo’s pricing increases with database size and add-on features, while Eloqua limits core functionality and contact volumes at its lower pricing tiers. And both platforms’ complexity typically requires outside consultants and certified experts, driving up total cost of ownership. 

“Marketo has a lot of pain points. The email and landing page editors are nearly useless and we have to employ outside tools to build templates which is an added expense… to get the full value we have hired consultants because Marketo support is not helpful – another added expense.” – Gabriella W.

“[Eloqua] training that’s worthwhile is very expensive. The platform itself is also quite costly for what you get compared to other similar platforms.” – G2 verified user, financial services

Do More with Less: How Lean Marketing Teams are Thriving

The ‘do more with less’ pressure is on. With 85% of marketing teams having 10 or fewer people, it’s time for a new playbook. On Wednesday, September 18th at 10:00 am PT, join Act-On’s marketing and product experts to learn how to turn your small team into a strategic superpower. Discover practical strategies to amplify your impact and prove the ROI leadership demands.

Learn More

2. Strategic customer support

With each platform, customers complain that support — especially beyond entry-level troubleshooting — has noticeably declined post-acquisition. Adobe’s catch-all support teams lack marketing automation expertise, while Oracle’s revised portal-based system doesn’t win many fans. 

“There have been times when I’d need to go back and forth with the [Marketo] agent in order to explain something again and again until they understand.” – Pavel I.

“The [Eloqua] customer success team has shown a significant decline over the last few years. We are a large account and with the constant re-org that occurs, we’ve lost the “white gloves” we have had for the last 12 years and have seen engagement only to “buy this, or that, or upgrade to this” but consistent unresponsiveness to our daily needs.” – Gartner reviewer, Sr. Manager of Marketing Automation

3. User experience

Since their acquisitions, both platforms show signs of neglect. Users report inconsistent interfaces, dated features, and a lack of response to longstanding feature requests. While Marketo may be marginally easier to use than Eloqua, both tools make even daily tasks unnecessarily complex.  

“The [Eloqua] UI is inconsistent across the platform. It’s pretty obvious that there are some tools that haven’t been updated in a long time.” – Tyler Haire, marketing automation consultant

“Uploading and tracking files and images, email building, webinar events — everything lacks the intuitive user experience that many of Marketo’s competitors have.” – G2 verified user, information technology and services 

Marketo vs Eloqua: The Final Verdict

Neither Marketo nor Eloqua deliver a user-friendly marketing automation solution, and both require significant investment in resource, training, and support. 

But given these two legacy options, think about: 

  • Eloqua if you’re a large enterprise with complex multi-brand or multinational campaign needs, have dedicated IT resources, and can justify the highest price tag in marketing automation.
  • Marketo if you need enterprise-grade capabilities but don’t require Eloqua’s level of complexity, and still have budget for specialists and add-on features to work around limitations.  

The truth is, these legacy platforms no longer represent the latest and greatest in marketing automation. Rather than settling for dated interfaces and declining support, consider working with a partner who doesn’t treat marketing automation as a side project. Act-On delivers sophisticated, enterprise-ready marketing automation with the innovation, ease of use, and dedicated support your team deserves. Learn more about how Act-On stacks up against Marketo and Eloqua.

]]> How Marketers Can Tackle CCPA Compliance with Less Stress https://act-on.com/learn/blog/how-marketers-can-tackle-ccpa-compliance-with-less-stress/ Fri, 09 May 2025 21:11:21 +0000 https://act-on.com/?p=501252 As a marketer, your days are likely packed. And let’s be honest, some days are more packed than others. Picture this: On one of those especially full days, you get a request from a consumer saying, “Stop marketing to me and, by the way, delete every last piece of personal data you’ve ever collected about me.” Every last piece. That could be a lot of data.But how much time will that take? And more importantly, are you meeting CCPA compliance?

What is CCPA?

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was designed to protect consumer data, requiring companies to be fully transparent about how they collect, share, and use consumer information. You can dive deeper using our CCPA Compliance Checklist here, but targeting key areas can help make compliance easier and faster, especially on those days when adding one more thing to your to-do list feels like overload.

CCPA vs. GDPR: What’s the difference?

Both are privacy laws designed to safeguard consumer data, but they target different groups. GDPR applies to businesses collecting data from EU citizens, focusing on consent and data protection. CCPA, on the other hand, applies to California residents, emphasizing consumer rights like accessing and deleting personal data. Both regulations require companies to maintain transparency and uphold accountability when handling consumer information.

A woman at an airport lounge gets some work done on her laptop.
Understanding CCPA compliance requirements is worth the effort even for the busiest marketing team.

Key CCPA Requirements

A. Access, Deletion, and Opt-Out Requests

A customer might contact you wanting a detailed list of everything you’ve ever collected about them. Next, they might ask if you’re sharing or selling their data with third parties. Oh, and they’d also like you to delete it.

Fun, right?

Under the CCPA requirements, consumers have the right to make these requests, and managing them can be time-consuming. That’s why it’s helpful if your technologies and tools make compliance easier. For example, the right marketing automation tool can help you track, manage, and fulfill these requests without the chaos. Reporting features, like audit trails, also give you a way to prove your CCPA compliance.

B. Understanding Disclosure Requirements 

Generating leads is a big part of a marketer’s job, and of course, that includes collecting data. After all, how can you send that brand-new white paper or a link to join a webinar without gathering at least a little information? But CCPA compliance means visitors need to know exactly what you’re collecting, why you need it, and how you’re going to use it.

As a result, you need to keep your privacy policy updated and make sure those updates are included everywhere it appears. Tools can help make this easier and support CCPA compliance.

For example, marketing automation software can allow for customizable consent capture forms and help consumers understand how you collect and use their data. It also makes it easier to segment and track consumer preferences and consent so you can properly honor opt-in or opt-out requests. Tracking and analysis tools show what’s being collected, how it’s used, and where it’s shared, helping you keep your privacy policy up to date.

Do More with Less: How Lean Marketing Teams are Thriving

The ‘do more with less’ pressure is on. With 85% of marketing teams having 10 or fewer people, it’s time for a new playbook. On Wednesday, September 18th at 10:00 am PT, join Act-On’s marketing and product experts to learn how to turn your small team into a strategic superpower. Discover practical strategies to amplify your impact and prove the ROI leadership demands.

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As a marketer, you know the drill. The key to higher open rates is talking about what your customers care about most, and that requires personalization. But to deliver it, you need data. And that’s where things can get tricky, because collecting that data must be done compliantly.

Take cookies, for example. Under CCPA requirements, you need to notify users about your cookie practices, get explicit consent to collect their data, and provide an easy way for them to opt out. 

Compliance becomes much easier if you let technology handle some of the work for you. With automation, you can easily offer a clear cookie consent option on your website, in emails, and on landing pages, making it easy for users to manage their preferences. 

Where to Start with CCPA Compliance in 2025? 

There’s a lot to know about CCPA compliance requirements, and unfortunately, it’s not a “set it and forget it” task. If you’re just getting started, a great way to begin is by diving deeper into the regulations (we created a CCPA Compliance Checklist). Then, consider the following:

  1. Audit your data. Perform a quick data audit to determine what information you’re collecting about consumers and how it’s being used.
  2. Review your privacy policies. When was the last time you updated them? Confirm that your policies are clear and concise and align with current CCPA requirements.
  3. Get your team up to speed. Make sure your marketing team understands the regulation and knows how to handle data requests properly.
  4. Make your tools work for you. If you use technologies like marketing automation, check that your solution supports CCPA compliance requirements. (Fun fact: Act-On’s marketing automation platform is built with CCPA compliance in mind, and it’s also fully HIPAA compliant).

While working through these steps, you might also want to revisit your General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance if you collect data from EU consumers. There’s significant overlap between CCPA vs. GDPR, so compliance with one will help bring you closer to compliance with the other.

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