Another marketing automation provider is diving deeper into the space with enhancements to its platform.

Act-On Software, a Beaverton, Ore- basedprovider cited by Forrester as one of the top in the industry, added capabilities today that officials there say give marketers flexibility and control to customize individual user experiences and reports based on unique business processes.

This time last year Act-On added inbound marketing capabilities and a new mobile app.  

Why Act-On

Providers are jumping into this space fast. Some have already established a presence, such as Marketo and Eloqua.

Why Act-On, we asked? What separates them from the pack? Atri Chatterjee, chief marketing officer for Act-On, cited a few reasons why his team's capabilities stand out.

digital marketing, Act-On's Enhancements Focused on Reporting, Responsive Design

"Our capabilities are focused on the small marketing team," he told CMSWire. "It's not about providing all the features in the universe, but more of what is the right set needed for our target market."

To do this, Act-On works closely with customers and prospects to understand what they are trying to achieve, he said. 

"We design for marketers who do not have IT support and must be able to run the system on their own," Chatterjee said. "For example, our Funnel Reports provide the right level of capability for the marketer -- a real time, configurable view of their marketing process -- that is usable out of the box. Most other systems provide this with a general purpose analytics tool that is far more expensive and needs to be customized to solve the marketer's problem."

He called the platform "simple, yet powerful."

"Most customers remark about the sheer capabilities that are provided in our deceptively simple user experience," Chatterjee added.

What They Added

Act-On provides a single platform with multiple application capabilities. 

"We do not restrict the functional capabilities of our platform based on price," he said. "Instead customers pay more or less based on capacity they use -- number of active contacts that they are marketing to --versus the features they use. This only reinforces our philosophy of encouraging the customer to use the functionality we provide without putting up artificial barriers."

New marketing automation capabilities added today include: 

  • Funnel Reports: Takes continuous snapshots of information in order to measure the overall flow and velocity of leads, track prospects through important conversion points and compare results across different time periods. Uses data from multiple sources, including the Act-On Marketing Automation Platform (MAP), CRM systems and other external sources of data. 
  • Customizable UI & Dashboard: Helps marketers better manage their marketing assets by organizing them into groups, selecting favorites and accessing most needed items. Configures dashboards into an instrument panel to view campaigns or performance reports. 
  • Responsive Design Content Management Editor: Content editor that allows marketers to create responsive and adaptive content on any device type. The new palate based editor enables marketers to create campaigns without having HTML and/or CSS (cascading style sheets) knowledge. 
  • New Integration Architecture and Expanded Integrations: Provides integration with external systems for all major CRMs, including MS Dynamics, Sugar, NetSuite and Salesforce.com. The addition of a Google Chrome plug in to its growing list of email connectors allows for trackable messages through corporate email systems like Gmail, Google Apps and Microsoft Outlook -- all the while using Act-On stationary.