Tag: Sales Automation

  • Must-Have AI Sales Tools for 2025

    What if you could walk into a sales meeting armed with the knowledge of your prospect’s every need, preference, and pain point. Sounds like a salesperson’s dream, doesn’t it? Well, in 2025, this dream is becoming a reality thanks to AI sales tools. We’re witnessing a revolution in how businesses approach sales, with artificial intelligence leading the charge. These tools are game-changers that are reshaping the sales arena, helping teams to work smarter, not harder. But, how exactly are these tools changing the game? Let’s find out!

    AI Writing Assistants for Sales
    Tapping Into Customer Insights
    AI for Meeting Enhancement and Analysis

    AI Writing Assistants for Sales

    Time is money. All of us know it. That’s why AI writing assistants have become indispensable tools for sales teams looking to boost their productivity and effectiveness. These AI-powered solutions are transforming the way salespeople craft their messages, helping them to create compelling content quickly and efficiently.

    Close CRM’s Cold Email Generator

    Website www.close.com
    Rating 4.7
    Free Trial Yes
    Platforms supported Web, IOS/Android
    Must-Have AI Sales Tools - Close CRM
    Close CRM – Best AI Sales Tools

    One of the most time-consuming tasks for salespeople is crafting personalised cold emails. AI cold email generators are changing the game by producing high-quality, tailored messages in a fraction of the time it would take to write them manually. These tools use advanced algorithms to analyse your input and generate emails that resonate with your target audience.

    For instance, Close’s AI-powered cold email generator creates customised templates based on your company’s details and desired call-to-action. It’s important to note, however, that while these tools provide an excellent starting point, adding a human touch is crucial for maximum impact.

    Pricing

    Below are the pricing plans offered by Close CRM:

    Plan Pricing
    Startup $49/Month per user
    Professional $99/Month per user
    Enterprise $139/Month per user

    ChatGPT Plus

    Website www.openai.com
    Rating 4.7
    Free Trial No
    Platforms supported Web, IOS/Android
    Must-Have AI Sales Tools - ChatGPT Plus
    Chat GPT Plus – Best AI Sales Tools

    ChatGPT Plus, the subscription-based version of OpenAI’s popular language model, is making waves in the sales industry. This AI chatbot can help salespeople streamline various aspects of their work, from lead generation to responding to FAQs and introducing products.

    ChatGPT Plus is crazy because of its ability to handle complex queries and provide detailed, context-aware responses. This makes it an invaluable tool for sales teams looking to enhance their customer engagement and make data-driven decisions.

    Pricing

    Below are the pricing plans offered by ChatGPT Plus:

    Plan Pricing
    GPT 4 $20/Month

    Copy.ai

    Website www.copy.ai
    Rating 4.7
    Free Trial Yes
    Platforms supported Web
    Must-Have AI Sales Tools - Copy.ai
    Copy.ai – Best AI Sales Tools

    Copy.ai is another powerful AI writing assistant that’s gaining traction in the sales world. This tool is specifically designed for enterprise-level use cases, including marketing, sales, and content creation. What makes this one stand out is its flexibility and scalability, making it an ideal choice for growing businesses.

    One of Copy.ai’s key features is its ability to generate a wide range of content, from blog posts to sales emails and marketing campaigns. Its model-agnostic design means it can work with various language models, ensuring that your sales team always has access to cutting-edge AI technology.

    Pricing

    Below are the pricing plans offered by Copy.ai:

    Plan Pricing
    Base Free
    Starter $36/Month
    Advanced $186/Month

    Tapping Into Customer Insights

    In the sales domain, understanding your customers is key to success. AI-driven customer insights are transforming the way businesses interact with their clients, offering a level of understanding that was once thought impossible. These tools are helping sales teams to make data-driven decisions, improve customer engagement, and boost sales performance.

    Crystal

    Website www.crystalknows.com
    Rating 4.6
    Free Trial Yes
    Platforms supported Web
    Tapping Into Customer Insights - Crystal
    Crystal – Best AI Sales Tools

    Crystal is the x-factor, even among AI sales tools. It’s like having a crystal ball that reveals the deepest thoughts and desires of your customers. This personality data platform uses machine learning and AI to help you understand your prospects’ characters and communication styles. Crystal’s DISC assessment and LinkedIn extension provide valuable insights into how to effectively communicate with potential clients. It’s particularly useful for small and midsize businesses dealing with a variety of leads. It offers tailored sales strategies for each personality type, and thus – eliminates guesswork and helps sales teams approach leads with confidence.

    What sets it apart is its ability to provide just the right amount of information – nothing more, nothing less. This allows sales professionals to feel prepared before calls, understanding their lead’s communication style, personality, and preferences. It’s a powerful tool for building chemistry with prospects and improving engagement rates.

    Pricing

    Below are the pricing plans offered by Crystal:

    Plan Pricing
    Base Free
    Premium $49/Month
    Business Custom

    Drift

    Website www.drift.com
    Rating 4.4
    Free Trial No
    Platforms supported Web, IOS/Android
    Tapping Into Customer Insights - Drift
    Drift – Best AI Sales Tools

    Drift is another powerful AI sales tool that’s making a mark for itself in the industry. It’s a conversational marketing and sales software that turns website visitors into leads. Using AI-powered chatbots and live chat functionality, Drift helps sales teams stay connected with website visitors in real-time. Drift’s a winner because of its ability to improve lead generation, qualification, and sales engagement. It syncs with CRM software, acting as a lead generator and streamlining the sales process. This real-time engagement with website visitors is particularly valuable for businesses selling enterprise-class software.

    Drift’s AI-powered chatbots enable personalised and real-time interactions with potential customers. This level of personalisation has been proven to drive company revenues significantly. Through a thorough analysis of customer behaviour and interactions, Drift helps businesses craft personalised product recommendations, send targeted marketing messages, and adjust website content and product listings.

    Both Crystal and Drift showcase how AI sales tools are revolutionising customer insights. They’re helping businesses understand not just what customers say, but what they truly need. This deep understanding leads to more effective sales strategies, improved customer engagement, and ultimately, better sales performance.

    Pricing

    Below are the pricing plans offered by Drift:

    Plan Pricing
    Premium $2,500/Month
    Advanced No set price
    Enterprise Custom

    AI for Meeting Enhancement and Analysis

    When we talk about sales, we kinda know that every interaction counts. AI tools are now stepping up to enhance meeting experiences and provide valuable insights. So, let’s have a look at two game-changing AI sales tools that are revolutionising how we conduct and analyse meetings.

    Fathom

    Website www.fathom.video
    Rating 5
    Free Trial Yes
    Platforms supported Web
    AI for Meeting Enhancement and Analysis - Fathom
    Fathom – Best AI Sales Tools

    Fathom is an AI meeting assistant that has become a postcard product in the sales industry. It’s designed to record, transcribe, highlight, and summarise your meetings, allowing you to focus entirely on the conversation at hand. Fathom hits it out of the park with its lightning-fast AI summaries, which are ready in less than 30 seconds after your meeting ends.

    Moreover, Fathom can automatically sync meeting summaries and tasks to your CRM. This saves users about 20 minutes per meeting, which adds up to a staggering 1.5 weeks a year! It’s no wonder Fathom has been awarded the #1 Highest Satisfaction product of 2024 by G2 out of over 100,000 products.

    Fathom also allows you to share specific clips from your meetings, which is great for dropping context into Slack or other communication platforms. This feature is particularly useful for sales teams who need to quickly share key moments with colleagues or managers.

    Pricing

    Below are the pricing plans offered by Fathom:

    Plan Pricing
    Base Free
    Premium $15/Month per user
    Team Edition $19/Month per user
    Team Edition Pro $29/Month per user

    Loom

    Website www.loom.com
    Rating 4.7
    Free Trial Yes
    Platforms supported Web, IOS/Android
    AI for Meeting Enhancement and Analysis - Loom
    Loom – Best AI Sales Tools

    Loom is another powerful AI tool that’s transforming the way sales teams communicate and analyse meetings. It’s an asynchronous video messaging platform that allows you to record, share, and analyse video messages with ease.

    Loom stands out for its AI Suite, which includes features like Auto Titles, Auto Summaries, and Auto Chapters. These AI-powered tools automatically generate titles, summaries, and chapter breaks based on the content of your video, making it easier for viewers to navigate and understand your message. The tool’s AI capabilities extend to enhancing the quality of your videos too. It can automatically remove filler words like “ums” and “ahs”, and trim out extended moments of silence, helping you sound more polished and professional.

    For sales teams, Loom’s AI-powered features are particularly valuable. The platform can record once and personalise for many, it also helps draft personalised messages to send with your videos, allowing you to reach out to more potential clients faster.

    Pricing

    Below are the pricing plans offered by Loom:

    Plan Pricing
    Starter Free
    Business $12.50/Month per user
    Enterprise No set price

    End Note

    As we wrap up our journey through the AI sales tools that are making it big in 2025, it’s clear that these technologies are not mere fancy add-ons but showstoppers in the sales world. The future of sales is undoubtedly intertwined with AI, but it’s crucial to remember that these tools are meant to enhance human skills, not replace them. As you explore these AI-powered solutions, keep in mind that the human touch remains invaluable in building relationships and closing deals. And speaking of exploration, why not check out StartupTalky’s Instagram channel for some fun content, news, and memes about the startup world? There’s a treasure trove of articles on StartupTalky too, covering everything from AI to business strategies – give them a read to stay ahead of the curve!

    FAQ

    What is sales assistant software?

    AI sales assistant software is a type of technology that uses artificial intelligence to enhance the sales process by automating tasks, analyzing customer data, providing insights, and improving customer interactions to boost efficiency and effectiveness in closing deals.

    What is an example of a consumer insight?

    A consumer insight is a deep understanding of consumer behavior that helps businesses tailor their products or marketing strategies.

    How can AI be used for meetings?

    It can be used for: 

    • Automated Note-Taking
    • Smart Scheduling
    • Task Assignment
    • Engagement Monitoring
    • Meeting Management Assistant

    What is the future of Ai in sales?

    The future of AI in sales will focus on enhancing personalization, improving predictive analytics, automating customer engagement, refining lead scoring, enabling data-driven decision-making, streamlining processes, and continuously learning from interactions to drive sales effectiveness and innovation.

  • Top 6 Marketing Automation Software and Tools in 2024

    Marketing is a very important aspect of any business. If your marketing efforts are in the right direction it can increase your brand awareness and conversion rate. Marketers do a lot of things from strategizing content, capturing and nurturing leads, managing customer information, creating advertising campaigns, scheduling tasks, and a lot more.

    All these tasks require a lot of time and energy. Although if you want to save time and boost your productivity and sales you can use top marketing automation softwares to put these tedious tasks on autopilot.

    In 2021, about 51% of companies were using the marketing automation tool and were able to boost their sales productivity by 14.5%.

    80% of marketers saw an increase in their leads and 77% saw an increase in their conversion rates.

    All these stats show us that you should use this best marketing automation tool in your business. Although finding out a perfect marketing automation tool that matches your business needs is a tough job. Don’t worry we are here to help.

    In this article, we will tell you the 6 best marketing automation tools.

    What is Marketing Automation

    HubSpot Marketing Hub

    Rating 4.4/5
    Categories Email Marketing, SEO and Social Media Advertising
    HubSpot Marketing Hub Software- Automation Marketing Tool
    HubSpot Marketing Hub Software

    When you think of the best marketing automation tool HubSpot comes first to mind. The tool has an immense reputation in the market. Using this tool you can streamline your entire business workflow in a single place. No need to switch between different software!

    Using its easy-to-use visual editor you can make targeted workflows for your email campaigns or multi-stage journeys. Its advanced segmentation allows you to decide which audience will get enrolled in which workflows and when.

    The tool provides you with customizable email templates that you can use to write personalized emails with no coding skills. Automate your email campaigns, generate more leads and move your prospects further down the funnel. To send emails to the right people at the right time HubSpot gives you numerous triggers, conditions, and action parameters.

    HubSpot Marketing Hub goes beyond traditional email or SMS automation and provides you with all the tools and utilities through which you can score leads, rotate leads to sales, set up webhooks, and automate data transfer from one team to another.

    Your team will automatically receive notifications if a user performs an important action like putting up a business query in your forum. This will help your team to quickly message the users and convert them into customers.

    HubSpot also provides you with a set of SEO and blog tools. You can set up a drip campaign, manage your social media, build Al-powered live chat, and create forms and landing pages all in one place. The tool integrates with other HubSpot solutions which makes it a killer deal.

    You will also get access to HubSpot Academy where you can learn how to use the tool efficiently and easily. As you can see HubSpot is a stellar marketing automation tool.

    Plan Pricing ($/month)
    Starter $45
    Professional $800
    Enterprise $3200

    Oracle Eloqua

    Rating 3.9/5
    Categories Email marketing campaigns and sales lead generation
    Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation Tool
    Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation Tool

    Oracle Eloqua is an all-in-one marketing tool using which you can nurture your leads, get detailed analytics, automate workflows and manage cross-channel B2B marketing campaigns. Segment your users based on web visits, specific attributes, interests, and geography.

    You can easily create campaigns using its drag-and-drop editor. Get stats on what users are doing on your website in real time. Along with this, you can use SMS messaging to send event reminders, product updates, or to get feedback.

    Lead scores are updated in real-time across multiple campaigns based on customer profiles. For accurate lead scores, the tool analyzes the most recent activity of the user and adjusts the scores in real-time.

    Oracle Eloqua has built-in Al that suggests what action you should take for each contact. Find your best-performing products and content. Using Eloqua’s account engagement scoring, find the most engaged users.

    Automate your email campaigns, improve your subject lines using the Al suggestions and find the best time to send emails. Build responsive emails, landing pages, and forms without the need to learn HTML code. Save blocks of content that you often use so you can use them in future campaigns.

    Create dynamic content for your landing pages and emails that adapts and personalizes the messaging based on the user’s behavioral pattern and location. After launching the campaign analyze metrics such as email opens, clickthroughs, form submissions, and more.

    To help your brand in increasing sales, Eloqua will automatically identify and prioritize top-tier accounts that show high-buying opportunities. Get detailed statistics on your dashboard and analyze usage metrics like bulk API activity, native CRM activity, email sends, form submissions, page views, and much more. Monitor and compare all your campaigns.

    Plan Pricing ($/month)
    Basic $2,000
    Standard $4000

    Pardot

    Rating 3.9/5
    Categories Email automation and lead management
    Pardot by Salesforce – perfect marketing automation tool

    If you are in a B2B business then Pardot by Salesforce is a perfect marketing automation software to handle your business operation effectively. Using this automation tool, you can build relationships with your customers and boost your revenue. Pardot provides you with real-time sales alerts, prospect activity tracking, and sales campaign tracking.

    Using the drag-and-drop editor you can build landing pages and forms. Get highly profitable leads using Pardot’s automated lead-scoring functionality. Put your common marketing and sales tasks on autopilot.

    Market Automation Tool – Pardot by Salesforce

    Create dynamic campaigns that adapt to each customer’s activity and buying signals and move them further in the sales funnel. Using built-in sales alerts and assignment triggers your sales team can contact the prospects at the right time.

    Segment your audience based on their preferences and send the right email at the right time using Pardot’s intuitive email editor. The platform has an in-built SPAM analysis tool that will check your email copy against common spam filters.

    Personalize your email copy based on the prospect’s score, grade, title, industry, and job. You can also perform email A/B testing to understand which of your content is resonating more with your target audience.

    The visual reports help you analyze the ROI of your campaigns and empower you to maximize your marketing efforts. Using the engagement and lifecycle reports you can understand your sales performance and analyze where your prospects are getting stuck in the funnel.

    Plan Pricing ($/month)
    Growth $1,250
    Plus $2,500
    Advanced $4,000

    SendinBlue

    Rating 4.5/5
    Categories Email Campaigns, CRM
    SendinBlue Marketing Automation Tool
    SendinBlue – Best Marketing Automation Tool

    Using SendinBlue you can automate all of your tedious marketing efforts, capture leads, segment your audience and send the right message at the right time using email and SMS.

    You can set up a workflow and build a set of rules that triggers an action that you want to take for your prospects. This includes automatically sending emails and SMS, organizing contacts into different lists, and updating your database in real time. Automate lead scoring and perform A/B split testing.

    Set up a CRM in no time and upload all the information that you have about your contacts directly into the CRM contact profile. Create and assign tasks to your teammates and set up deadlines using the CRM.

    Create custom landing pages and forms without any coding skills. Choose from 40+ responsive email templates and easily edit your emails easily using the drag-and-drop editor. Personalize your email copy by adding your prospect’s name to the text.

    You can also use prospects database attributes to make your email more personalized. For example, if you know that a particular contact loves the color yellow you can show different product images with yellow color in the background.

    Segment your contacts list based on the prospect’s preferences, previous engagement or purchase history, and socio-economic or geographical characteristics. You can automatically update your contacts list based on actions your contacts take on your website and email.

    Get detailed email marketing stats and using the in-built Al find the best time to send emails to each recipient. Visually see how your recipients interact with your email using the email heat map functionality.

    Send bulk SMS marketing campaigns to your contacts directly from your database. You can also send transactional SMS order confirmations, shipping updates, password reset, and much more.

    Install a chatbox on your website and answer your user’s questions via Sendinblue Chat Inbox. You can even see on which page of the website the user is currently on directly from the chat box. You can directly use the Facebook ads tool inside SendinBlue.

    Plan Pricing ($/month)
    Lite $25
    Premium $65

    EngageBay

    Rating 4.6/5
    Categories Email Campaigns, Sales Automation, CRM
    Engagebay automation marketing software
    Engagebay automation marketing software

    Most of the tools on this list focus on automating marketing and sales efforts. But, EngageBay automates your support system as well. This allows you to provide top-notch after-sales service to your customers.

    You can set up live chat software on your website. Whenever users initiate a chat your sales team would be instantly notified. Find all the tickets raised by your customers on your dashboard. You can set up standard responses for the tickets. Create support groups based on department or skills and direct your support tickets to the right support groups.

    From the live chat itself you can find out customers’ locations, total pages visited and time spent on the website. Get powerful stats on support tickets and understand what common problems your customers are facing.

    Using EngageBay’s CRM you can send leads from marketing to the sales team, automate your workflow and data entry, schedule meetings, create follow-ups for each lead, and do much more.

    Every interaction with your customer like emails, calls, and meetings gets automatically recorded in the system and presented to you in a timeline format.

    Using the drag-and-drop visual builder you can create marketing and sales workflows. Automate lead scoring based on email opens, link clicks, website visits, etc.

    Create drip email campaigns and personalize emails with contacts’ names, companies, locations, interests, and more. Get notified when users open your email or click a specific link and engage with your customers at the right time to increase the conversion rate.

    Landing pages and forms can also be created easily. You can also send push notifications. Set up pop-ups on your website and show them to your customers when they are about to leave the website.

    Automatically segment your customer’s list based on what actions they take or do not take. Tag customers based on behavioral patterns and run smart personalized marketing campaigns.

    Plan Pricing ($/month)
    Basic $11.99
    Growth $33.99
    Pro $79.99

    ActiveCampaign

    Rating 4.6/5
    Categories Email Marketing, Automation, and CRM
    Active Campaign- Marketing Automation Tool
    ActiveCampaign- Marketing Automation Tool

    ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation (CXA), which combines transactional email, email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM categories.

    If you are specifically looking to automate your email marketing efforts then ActiveCampaign is for you. Most of the marketing automation softwares on this list will help you in automating your email campaigns but, Active Campaign takes email marketing to the next level.

    ActiveCampaign allows you to send a wide variety of emails to your customers: broadcast emails, triggered emails, targeted emails, transactional emails, scheduled emails, and email autoresponders.

    Using the drag-and-drop editor you can create beautiful email campaigns within a few minutes. Segment your audience based on their personal interests, job function, geographic location, website visits, email clicks, products purchased, quiz results, and time since the last purchase.

    You can automatically add tags to your list based on what pages or links they clicked on your website or email.

    Set up forms on your website and collect customers’ personal information, preferences, and more through standard and custom fields. Show forms at the right time based on the user’s behavioral pattern and interests. You can automate email sequences so that as soon as the form is filled the customers will get a series of emails that will nurture them to buy your products.

    Send personalized emails with customers’ personal information like name, city, preferences, purchase history, and a lot more. Active Campaign has 6 email deliverability best practices to ensure that your email lands in the subscriber’s inbox.

    To achieve the highest email deliverability the tool will automatically review and remove inactive email addresses. It has pre-built automation and re-engagement campaigns that help you in engaging with your customers constantly. The tool has an in-built spam checker as well.

    You can easily send double-opt-in emails to your customers to make sure only the interested ones get added to your email list. Notify your team to follow up with high-value leads.

    Plan Pricing ($/month)
    Lite $29
    Plus $49
    Professional $149

    Conclusion

    As you can see all of the tools will help you in automating your work but, you shouldn’t choose a software randomly. You need to understand your business needs, budget, and technical expertise to find out the right tool. Since most of the tools come with a free trial, you can use and test them first and once you are satisfied you can buy them.

    FAQs

    What is the difference between marketing automation and CRM?

    Marketing automation helps you to generate and score leads and automates your digital campaigns and email marketing efforts. On the other hand, CRM helps you to track leads and convert them into customers.

    What is the most common use of marketing automation?

    Marketing automation tools are majorly used for generating leads, automating email marketing, social media posting and ultimately increasing the conversion rate.

    What is marketing automation software?

    Marketing automation software streamlines the marketing processes used to support digital marketing campaigns.

    Are there any free marketing automation tools?

    Some market automation tools that offer a free trial or free plan include MailChimp, HubSpot, and Zoho.

  • ActiveCampaign: Leader in Customer Experience Automation

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by ActiveCampaign.

    In this modern era, every business is striving to provide a better customer experience to their targeted customers. Customer experience is a term used to define the sum of experiences that people have during the whole product or service cycle.

    Usually, enterprises find it challenging to control how customers feel about their relationship with their products or services. It is when customer experience automation tools and software come in handy.

    ActiveCampiagn is a Chicago-based private company that offers software for customer experience automation (CXA) to small and medium-sized businesses worldwide. Let’s dive in to learn more about ActiveCampaign- its startup story, founders, funding, growth, and more details.

    ActiveCampaign – Company Highlights

    Company Name ActiveCampaign
    Headquarters Chicago, Illinois, United States
    Primary Industry Software Development
    Founders Jason VandeBoom
    Founded In 2003
    Website Activecampaign.com

    ActiveCampaign – About
    ActiveCampaign – Founders and Team
    ActiveCampaign – Startup Story
    ActiveCampaign – Mission and Vision
    ActiveCampaign – Name, Logo, and Tagline
    ActiveCampaign – Business Model
    ActiveCampaign – Products and Services
    ActiveCampaign – Challenges Faced
    ActiveCampaign – Funding and Investors
    ActiveCampaign – Mergers and Acquisitions
    ActiveCampaign – Patents and Trademarks
    ActiveCampaign – Growth
    ActiveCampaign – Awards and Achievements
    ActiveCampaign – Competitors
    ActiveCampaign – Future Plans

    ActiveCampaign – About

    ActiveCampaign is a cloud software platform that offers customer experience automation, apps & integration, custom objects, machine learning, services, mobile app, and developer resources. It combines transactional email, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation, and CRM categories.

    The company is known for serving technology, education, non-profit, small businesses, fitness, real estate, entertainment & events, and travel & hospitality industries in 170 countries. It has 5 more premises in the US, Australia, Brazil, and Ireland. Moreover, it integrates with over 850 applications, including Slack, Facebook, Salesforce, WordPress, Shopify, and Gmail.

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    ActiveCampaign – Founders and Team

    Founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign, Jason VandeBoom has also founded BoardChair. He possesses multiple skills including marketing, email marketing, online marketing, strategic partnerships, product management and development, SaaS, and web marketing.

    Furthermore, the company employs more than 1050 employees at all its premises.

    Jason VandeBoom - Founder, ActiveCampaign
    Jason VandeBoom – Founder, ActiveCampaign

    ActiveCampaign – Startup Story

    Founded by Jason VandeBoom in 2003, ActiveCampaign commenced its journey as a consulting firm and was then established as an on-premises software provider to help small and medium-sized businesses automate their marketing tasks and manage contacts.

    The company later transitioned from on-premises software to a software-as-a-service business, the main focus of which is to automate marketing and sales.

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    ActiveCampaign – Mission and Vision

    The mission of the company is to help growing businesses connect and engage meaningfully with their targeted customers. When it comes to the vision statement, ActiveCampaign accelerates the growth of each company with only an automation platform designed for providing better customer experiences.

    Furthermore, it is looking forward to emerging as the renowned leader and fastest-growing marketing and customer experience platform, recognized for creating a new category that replaces traditional and enterprise-focused platforms. Additionally, the company focuses on creating a global ecosystem of entrepreneurs and growth-minded businesses.

    ActiveCampaign – Name, Logo, and Tagline

    ActiveCampaign Logo
    ActiveCampaign Logo

    ActiveCampaign follows a unique representation of using its logo with different colors. Primarily the company uses its logo in white color when displayed on dark background. And when it’s displayed on a light background, it uses primary blue as the base color.

    Getting Started with ActiveCampaign

    ActiveCampaign – Business Model

    ActiveCampaign connects every tool and channel that an organization uses in its business for engaging customers at each stage of the customer lifecycle. This platform collects data from email marketing, digital advertising, website, and social media to tailor personalized touchpoints with the organization’s contacts while ensuring that the marketing is effective and engaging.

    The company automates the marketing and sales channel so that a firm can focus on the personal touches for its business to stand out and ensure that it hasn’t missed any step with its targeted customers.

    ActiveCampaign – Products and Services

    The products and services of the company are classified into 4 categories – marketing, sales, e-commerce, and transactional. Marketing offers multiple solutions- marketing automation, email marketing, site tracking, landing pages, personalization, and forms.

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    CRM, sales automation, lead scoring, win probability, and inbox extensions are covered in the Sales category. The E-commerce category allows integration with several e-commerce apps and the Transactional category offers access to email API, SMTP email, email delivery, transactional email templates, and inbound emails.

    ActiveCampaign – Challenges Faced

    Some features that ActiveCampaign still needs to work on are the platform’s email editor and occasional slow performance. Moreover, customers find it difficult to edit multiple emails in automation and they have to build everything – identifying inactive contacts, delivering lead magnets, or adjusting granular subscription preferences- from scratch.

    ActiveCampaign – Funding and Investors

    ActiveCampaign has been able to raise a total of $360 million over 3 funding rounds. Furthermore, the company’s latest funding round – Series C Round was undertaken on April 21, 2021, in which it raised a total of $300 million. It is backed by multiple investors and the main ones are Tiger Global Management, Dragoneer Investment Group, Silversmith Capital Partners, and Susquehanna Growth Equity.

    Date Round Number of Investors Money Raised Lead Investor
    April 21, 2021 Series C 4 $240 million Tiger Global Management
    January 28, 2020 Series B 2 $100 million Susquehanna Growth Equity
    October 11, 2016 Series A 1 $20 million Silversmith Capital Partners

    ActiveCampaign – Mergers and Acquisitions

    It acquired two companiesPostmark and DMARC Digests. Postmark offers transactional email services and DMARC Digests is recognized for offering email authentication and monitoring service. Both these service offerings enhance ActiveCampaign’s capability to offer CRM along with transactional messages with sales and market automation.

    ActiveCampaign – Patents and Trademarks

    It has 4 registered trademarks categorized into the ‘Scientific and technological services’ class.

    ActiveCampaign – Growth

    In 2022, the annual revenue of ActiveCampaign hit $165 million with 65% YOY. the platform’s pricing is $180 per year with its current valuation worth $3 billion. Talking about the company’s customer base, it has more than 140K active users and is serving over 180K businesses. The monthly app download growth is estimated to be 9.06%. Moreover, the employee count has increased by 13%.

    ActiveCampaign – Awards and Achievements

    ActiveCampaign has garnered a myriad of prestigious awards as the leader in its industry. Some recent awards that the company earned are:

    • Best Email Marketing Tool & Best Email deliverability 2023 by ToolTester
    • 2022 Chicago Top Workforces by Chicago Tribune
    • 2022 Tech Cares Award Winner by TrustRadius
    • 2022 APPEALIE SaaS + Software Award Winner by APPEALIE
    • Best Companies for Remote Workers 2022 by Quartz
    • Cloud 100 by Forbes
    • 2022 Sales and Marketing Technology Awards by The Intelligence Group
    • The Top 100 Software Companies of 2022 by The Software Report

    ActiveCampaign – Competitors

    Some of its main competitors are:

    • AVADA Email
    • ConvertKit
    • GetResponse
    • HubSpot
    • Mailchimp
    • Klaviyo
    • Constant
    • MailerLite

    ActiveCampaign – Future Plans

    ActiveCampaign is committed to its customer success and will continue to utilize the resources required for making Postmark a winning solution for small and medium businesses. Moreover, the product-first company plans to continue investing in and prioritizing its roadmap for innovation.

    FAQs

    What tools does ActiveCampaign offer for customer experience automation?

    ActiveCampaign offers email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, messaging, and personalized content tools for customer experience automation.

    Does ActiveCampaign offer mobile app support?

    Yes, ActiveCampaign offers mobile app support for both iOS and Android platforms. The app provides access to managing contacts, sending campaigns, viewing analytics, and updating deals on the go.

    What are the challenges faced by ActiveCampaign?

    Some features that ActiveCampaign still needs to work on are the platform’s email editor and occasional slow performance.

  • Success Story of Outplay: The New-Age Sales Outreach Platform to Help You Book More Meetings

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Outplay.

    The sales team plays a crucial role in any business. Increasing annual sales and profit is the core focus of any business. With the evolution of automation in business processes, the scope of the sales industry is continuously changing. Businesses are leveraging sales and marketing automation tools to quantify their marketing campaigns and workflows. Sales engagement platforms are one example of automating sales activities. A Sales engagement platform helps businesses in streamlining the communication of the sales team to their customers.

    Outplay is an Indian-American SaaS (Software as a Service) company headquartered in San Francisco, United States. The company offers a sales engagement platform that helps businesses to prospect efficiently and reach their revenue goals faster. Read to know about Outplay, its founders, the startup story, solutions it provides, funding, and more.

    Outplay – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Outplay
    Headquarters San Francisco, United States
    Industry Software
    Founders Ram Papineni and Laxman Papineni
    Founded 2019
    Total Funding Raised $9.3 Million
    Website outplayhq.com

    Outplay – About
    Outplay – Industry
    Outplay – Founders and Team
    Outplay – The Idea and Startup Story
    Outplay – Vision
    Outplay – Products
    Outplay – USP
    Outplay – Marketing Strategy
    Outplay – Funding
    Outplay – Growth
    Outplay – Competitors
    Outplay – Tools Used in the Company
    Outplay – Recognition and Achievements
    Outplay – Future Plans

    Outplay – About

    Outplay is a new-age sales engagement platform that combines multi-channel outreach and sales automation to help sales teams hit their revenue goals.

    The company’s core belief is to always deliver top-notch services to their customers, along with stellar support. It believes in providing meaningful opportunities for their employees to grow in, at all levels and takes pride in sharing all their wins, thoughts, and failures openly across the team. Its mission is to help salespeople achieve their dreams.

    Outplay – Industry

    Outplay is part of the Sales Software Industry. The company is rapidly expanding and bringing in more customers from the SMB market.

    Outplay – Founders and Team

    Outplay Founders
    Outplay Founders

    Brothers Ram and Laxman Papineni co-founded Outplay in the year 2019  in Wilmington, Delaware. Laxman is the CEO of the company while Ram serves as its CTO.

    Ram and Laxman have always been building things together. Ever since they were little boys, the idea of building something of their own fascinated them – anything that was creative, or would help people around them. Being brothers, both of them understood each other’s plus points early on. Ram was more interested in building platforms/tools, and Laxman was more inclined toward connecting with people and sharing stories. That’s how their current roles fit perfectly with their personalities and goals.

    Outplay currently has over 100 employees, and offers the most flexible work culture that helps in delivering a sense of belongingness to the employees and makes them create a proper work-life balance. Outplay sees its employees as the most important assets in the company, and does everything possible to make them feel comfortable and seen. They believe that it’s only when the employees’ needs are met, that they can continue building a world-class product.

    Coming to the hiring part, the company is able to bring in a lot of its employees through the simple means of referrals. Its existing employees – the Outplayers as they are commonly known, are always eager to share the openings within their network. And when they bring in someone, they’re rewarded for it. Apart from that, we’re also big on campus drives to hire college freshers, helping them start their professional journey with Outplay.

    Outplay – The Idea and Startup Story

    Outplay Logo
    Outplay Logo

    The whole idea of offering a Sales Engagement Platform began with blogging. Ram and Laxman’s first venture was a blogging network. That’s where Ram and Laxman learned about start-ups and what goes behind running one. They started their first startup called AppVirality – a referral marketing software that was backed by shoppingmode Microsoft Accelerator.

    During their first start-up stint, they realized the importance of sales and charted down how they could make it better for all the sales folks out there. They had 2-3 of their friends who left their jobs to join them at AppVirality first, which then morphed into Outplay. Together all of them sat through hours to build the right framework, get a few investors interested, and started pitching Outplay to people who were looking for a switch.

    Outplay – Vision

    Outplay’s short-term vision is to get good brand recognition and generate substantial revenue from the SMB market.

    Its long-term vision is to become a household name for large enterprises and expand fully to regions like ASEAN and APAC. Outplay aspires to become the No. 1 sales engagement platform in the world.

    Outplay – Products

    Outplay Product
    Outplay Product

    Outplay currently offers one product, which is a sales engagement platform that helps salespeople journey through their goals with ease, removing unnecessary clutter and providing top-class features to help enhance their outreach every step of the way. The product has a sleek UI that helps sales reps navigate between various tasks and sequences with ease, and also helps them hit their targets on time, with proper prioritization and automation.

    Outplay – USP

    Outplay’s USP includes multi-channel outreach which is a mix of channels like email, phone, SMS, social media, and magic chat – a webchat box that is launched when a prospective customer clicks on an email link. Apart from this, they also provide access to top-notch features such as multi-channel outreach, smart sales sequences, real-time sales insights, website, and email tracking, the ability to set activity triggers, and powerful analytics among others.


    Top 5 Best No-Code Automation Tools and Platforms 2022
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    Outplay – Marketing Strategy

    Outplay launched an eBook as part of its marketing efforts and was able to create a lot of buzz in the market. The ebook is titled ‘30 Sales Teams Share Their Sales Sequences’ and contains a list of full-fledged sales sequences from top companies like Drift, Hubspot, Vidyard, etc. along with 30+ sales sequences from hyper-growth companies.

    Outplay – Funding

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    3rd March 2021 Seed funding $2 Million Sequoia Capital
    21st July 2021 Series A $7.3 Million Sequoia Capital

    Outplay’s series A funding which was in July 2021, helped the company successfully expand its operations, increase its workforce to 100+ employees, and work towards building features for its current and future customers, by understanding its current needs and issues.

    Outplay – Growth

    The company currently operates in the US and Indian markets. It has users spread over both regions.

    Outplay – Competitors

    Some of the top competitors of Outplay are:

    • Outreach
    • Salesloft
    • Klenty
    • Yesware
    • Reply.io
    • Mixmax
    • Mailshake
    • Lemlist

    Outplay – Tools Used in the Company

    Few tools that help accelerate the startup are:

    • Hubspot
    • Gong
    • Salesforce
    • Slintel
    • Sales Navigator
    • Seamless
    • Lusha

    Top 16 Best Sales Prospecting Tools to Use in 2022
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    Outplay – Recognition and Achievements

    The company’s recent funding news made it to Times Square, New York – announcing how Outplay raised $7.2 Million, Series A. Apart from that, its podcast ‘The Hype is Real’ was added to Sequoia’s Surge Academy.

    Outplay – Future Plans

    Since artificial intelligence is the future, especially of SaaS platforms, Outplay is also infusing AI into its sales platform. This step will simplify the lives of sales reps even further.

    Its users already have access to a feature that can magically write their sales sequences with the power of AI, but the future will see them making the AI capabilities more stronger and robust. With the company’s sole focus being on the USA for now, it wishes to expand towards ASEAN and APAC countries in the near future.

    FAQs

    When was Outplay founded?

    Outplay was founded in 2019 in Wilmington, Delaware.

    Who are the founders of Outplay?

    Ram Papineni and Laxman Papineni are the founders of Outplay.

    Who are the top competitors of Outplay?

    Some of the top competitors of Outplay are:

    • Outreach
    • Salesloft
    • Klenty
    • Yesware
    • Reply.io
    • Mixmax
    • Mailshake
    • Lemlist
  • How to convert your Instagram leads through a WhatsApp link?

    With over 2 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp has become a go-to instant communication platform for B2B and B2C brands. However, beyond the purveyor of internal communication, WhatsApp can also be used to convert Instagram leads. Amazing, isn’t it?

    Well, actually, it is a no-brainer. With 44% of people using Instagram for their weekly shopping, there ought to be a process that streamlines the communication flow and facilitates personalized marketing. What better way to convert these hot leads through WhatsApp chat?

    Believe it or not–a WhatsApp link is the fastest way to solve your potential customer’s doubts or extend additional support. By communicating through WhatsApp, customers feel heard, preventing last-minute abandonment as their query chain has been cut-short.

    Before we get into more details, let’s understand what it means for your business.

    1. WhatsApp Link for Instagram at a Glance
    2. How to convert your Instagram leads through a WhatsApp link?
    3. Benefits of converting Instagram leads through a WhatsApp link

    A WhatsApp link directs your Instagram profile visitors to a WhatsApp conversation. This means that you can chat with your potential customers anytime and anywhere, with business updates, promotional messages, feedback, query resolution, and surveys.

    In addition to sending messages, you can exploit this feature for your business’ advantage by sending videos, voice messages, product images, and documents directly from the app and fulfilling your customer’s assistance requests.

    Along with this, businesses can streamline their messages and take advantage of WhatsApp’s automatic responses, chatbot, and organizational tools to scale up their contact points while solidifying their customer base.

    So, is adding a WhatsApp link on Instagram fruitful for converting leads?

    A big yes–the customers will just be a click away from shooting their queries.

    • They won’t have to wait for days to get their doubts solved
    • The conversion cycle gets shorter by leveraging a quick redressal system

    Now, with these advantages at hand, let’s see how you can convert your Instagram leads through a WhatsApp link.

    How to convert your Instagram leads through a WhatsApp link?

    How to Link WhatsApp to Instagram

    There are three ways to convert your Instagram leads through WhatsApp link:

    By adding a WhatsApp button on your Instagram business account

    WhatsApp Business Linkage on Instagram
    WhatsApp Button on Instagram
    • Click ‘Edit profile’ visible on your Instagram Bio
    • Select contact options
    • Click on WhatsApp
    • Enter the number associated with your WhatsApp and submit the verification code

    Now, the WhatsApp button should appear, facilitating all your Instagram leads to get in touch with your company.

    Through boosted posts

    Post Boost on Instagram to WhatsApp
    Instagram Post Boost
    • Add your WhatsApp number to the ‘Contact Options’ on your Instagram business profile
    • Choose an existing post whose reach you’d like to amplify
    • Click on the blue button, select messages, and WhatsApp
    • Set a goal, budget, duration, and audience for your ad
    • Review your objectives and click on ‘create your ad.’
    • Once approved, your ad will be live in 24 hours.

    Instagram stories is a great way to boost the brand reach and sales. And adding a WhatsApp link on Instagram stories highlights is one of the great personalized way to display things as you can help the user with their query by directly landing them on WhatsApp.

    To add links to Stories you need to fulfill following criteria first:

    • You need an Instagram business account.
    • You got to have more than 10k followers.
    WhatsApp Link on Instagram Story Procedure
    WhatsApp link on Instagram Story
    WhatsApp Icon and Link on Instagram Story Highlights
    WhatsApp Link with Icon on Instagram

    Create a new story. Upload a WhatsApp icon image with an aspect ratio 9:16 and post it a story and insert your WhatsApp link within the story.  

    For e.g- Open the link chain and enter the URL:

    api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=Your number (followed by your phone number in the international format)

    View the published story and save the story as an Instagram Highlight.

    Name the highlight Chat on WA or something similar.

    Building a contact list

    By converting leads through WhatsApp links, you no longer need to bid adieu to your customer after the order has been delivered. Instead, you can build a long-term relationship.

    Through this method, you can optimize your contact list and even import all the contacts to a CRM and send messages to your customers in bulk. This way, once the prospect has approached you via Instagram, you can save their contact details and directly engage with them even after their order has been successfully delivered.

    Seamless user-experience

    A grave concern of customers before buying a high-end product: What if it doesn’t work well? People are anyway skeptical about the purchase, and having no provision for direct communication makes the decision-making process even harder.

    By converting your leads through WhatsApp, your customers rest assured that the brand will be just a message in case of any dispute with the product quality. You can automate customer support queries in case of high sales.

    You can also leverage WhatsApp list messages and custom replies to address FAQs with a faster response time and use the opportunity to strike a meaningful conversation with your customers throughout the journey.

    Maintaining retention span

    With dozens of new products launching every day, it is tough to maintain your audience’s retention span. They make one scroll on Instagram, and boom, another brand is displaying their ad. What to do in this scenario?

    Once you’ve enticed the prospects through your product offerings on Instagram and redirected them to WhatsApp, half of your work is done. Now, you need to provide them regular updates regarding their order and give them a reason to buy from you again.

    Send feedback forms, give intimation regarding new product launches and build a strong relationship that increases their retention span.

    While you do that, make sure:

    • You keep the communication short and to the point
    • Don’t spam your customers with frequent messages
    • Reinforce your messages with videos, pictures, social proofs, etc. wherever required
    • Make it personalized and quirky

    Upsell and cross-sell

    WhatsApp has an incredible open rate of 99%. Once the prospect has bought any of your product/services, you can send(after getting their permission) product catalogs, new launch details, discount offers, and upsell or cross-sell your products.

    For instance, if you’re sending them order updates, use the opportunity and recommend other products to them. The idea is to use what they have already purchased as an indicator to know what else they might be interested in.

    Here’s an example of such a message focused on cross-selling:

    Hey Priyanka,

    Your black dress has been delivered. Hope it looks great on you!

    But, we think your picture-perfect look would be incomplete without our perfect pair of heels. Click on the link below and check out our latest collection of heels available at a 10% discount with express delivery.

    This way, you would know their preferences and also get a chance to sell your other products to the same customer base.

    Building a sustainable brand

    Compared to simply adding your website link in the bio where your prospects can leave a message via a form or email, putting your WhatsApp link redirects them to an opportunity to receive a response from you instantly.

    Your response and brand loyalty go hand in hand. According to a recent report from Gartner, customers are more likely to stick with a brand long-term when their service expectations are met.

    This signifies that if your communication is top-notch, you can get an influx of leads into your inbox and recurring purchases–thereby building a sustainable brand. So, build a robust and quick communication system through WhatsApp and strike while the iron is hot to en-cash the opportunity and maintain their attention while it is still fresh.

    Efficient buying process

    With social commerce on a boom, Instagram has become a HubSpot for generating sales. Over 130 million users engage with shopping posts on a monthly basis, proving that this app is useful for driving both product awareness and sales.

    However, selling is just the tip of the iceberg to being in the game for the long term. You need to provide a seamless user experience and solve any of their objections quickly before they move on to another brand. And diverting your traffic to WhatsApp helps with that.

    Through WhatsApp, your customers can communicate with your brand, send in their queries, and make the purchase–all in relatively less time. This makes the entire buying process more efficient and transparent.

    Conclusion

    Holding a stellar value proposition for your brand would all be in vain if you don’t provide an eccentric customer experience. And placing a WhatsApp link on your Instagram profile does precisely that. You no longer need to scout for another messaging platform or chase potential customers through DMs to close the deal. Just add the link-generating feature; if your price and offering excite your prospects, they’ll directly reach out to you.

    The feature also creates credibility and trust for your brand because:

    • They feel a direct connection as WhatsApp symbolizes a personalized form of marketing
    • They can chat with your brand–that gives them a sense of security for investing their money at a credible place

    Moreover, with the tracking function, you can track the efficacy of this feature and use the metrics as a base for making decisions related to advertising budgets, branding, and inventory. Whether you’re a small business owner or a well-established brand, converting Instagram leads through WhatsApp will be an effective investment for you.

    FAQs

    1- How to create a click-to-chat link for WhatsApp?

    You can create click-to-chat link,  by using the following link, entering the WhatsApp phone number after the ‘=’: api.whatsapp.com/send?phone= .

    2- How one can use WhatsApp for Business?

    WhatsApp business can be use for showcasing Product catalogue, communicate with others, provide good customer service.

    3- How do I create WhatsApp QR code for ?

    You can create WhatsApp QR code using free QR code generator by entering the country code without the + symbol, followed by the WhatsApp phone number.