ActiveTrail interview: "Emailing remains an affordable and very powerful tool when used correctly

published on 31/10/2014,

updated on 19/12/2022

It has been a long time since we had a "standard" interview with emailing platform as Badsender did many last year. This time, we propose you to make an opinion on ActiveTrail through its French Director, Caroline Quercy.

The interview

Can you give us a brief history of ActiveTrail? When was the platform founded, by whom, has the business model evolved since the beginning of the adventure?

ActiveTrail was founded in 2004 and subsequently acquired by Real Commerce, an IT group founded in 1999 in Tel Aviv, Israel. RealCommerce Group Ltd. is an Internet-based company specializing in content management, e-commerce, mobile development and digital strategy. ActiveTrail has over 5000 customers worldwide. The application is available in SaaS mode, in several languages: French, German and English. Since the emailing platform was launched in 2004, ActiveTrail has supported companies of all sizes in the marketing communication of their offers and products, as well as in their customer relations. The ActiveTrail platform was launched in France in 2009, targeting a wide range of companies: large enterprises, SMEs and VSEs. The company entered the German market in 2014. ActiveTrail emailing software is available in SaaS mode, with an API and web services. In the early days, only one type of package was available: each company was billed according to its monthly consumption. A written order form was required, and payment was made by bank transfer or cheque only. In recent years, an online payment system has been introduced, and three different offers are available: a monthly package with unlimited shipments, a prepaid package with no expiry date for purchased credits, and the historical offer. The latter, with month-to-month billing based on exact e-mail consumption, has been retained. The advantage of proposing this variety of offers is to be able to adjust exactly to our customers' needs, according to the size of their email file, and their frequency of sending. Around emailing, which remains our core business, the ActiveTrail offering has been enriched by a wide range of complementary marketing tools such as the creation of landing pages, online surveys and SMS text messaging. The user experience of the ActiveTrail platform is constantly evolving, to make it the most pleasant and fluid on the market.

What makes ActiveTrail unique? What distinguishes you from the other players in this very competitive market?

Ease of use and ergonomics are ActiveTrail's top priorities and are a real competitive advantage today. ActiveTrail customers have the easiest email marketing tool on the market today. We have conducted numerous platform tests and ActiveTrail has consistently come out on top.
Another unique feature of ActiveTrail is the quality of its customer service and its constant innovation. Our support team is extremely proactive. You can reach someone on the phone at any time. ActiveTrail is not just another Internet tool: Thanks to the human size of our company, a personal relationship is established with our customers. With a growing international customer base, the ActiveTrail application and telephone support are multilingual.
We cultivate relationships with our clients, however we do not require any financial commitment from them. We spend a lot of time educating our clients on email marketing best practices to improve the effectiveness of their email marketing efforts. This education is done on a daily basis. Our clients appreciate it and remain loyal.
Another specificity is the constant innovation of our tool. We were the first ESP to release fully responsive email templates in mid-2013. A new version of our platform is released several times a month, with constant improvements, sometimes major. We have been using agile and devOps methodology since the beginning. Each request for new functionality by one of our customers is carefully examined by our product and R&D team, and can be the subject of a new development to standardize this new functionality. ActiveTrail is always looking to meet the demands of its customers as closely as possible.
Another important point is the attention we pay to our clients' reputation and the deliverability of their email campaigns. The goal is that each of our clients reaches close to 100% deliverability, and that their reputation keeps on improving. We can afford to choose our clients and refuse to work with some, who do not respect the good practices of emailing.
We perform permanent and daily monitoring of our IP addresses and daily management of our relationships with ISPs. We ensure that our clients respect the rules in force, by monitoring their campaigns and scores, and by constantly educating them.

What are the 3 main challenges for the next few months in the emailing world?

Make automation tools accessible to small and medium-sized businesses
Create platforms that increase engagement with their target audience across multiple channels such as web, email, social media, mobile, etc.
Deliverability, Deliverability, Deliverability,

What are the next evolutions of your platform?

ActiveTrail plans to introduce automation tools, a lead management platform, and actionable analytics. We plan to further improve the integration between the various marketing tools available on the platform to make navigation between the various channel-specific marketing features even more seamless.

Do you offer your customers a "Freemium" mode (free version with reduced features)?

ActiveTrail offers a free and complete version for 30 days. This version allows you to test all the features. The conversion rate from our free accounts to paid accounts is extremely high. When customers test ActiveTrail and see how easy it is to use the service, they continue to use the tool.

Why not use this model?

We don't believe that customers looking for free solutions will ever end up paying for an email marketing solution. We don't try to attract them with a freemium version, and therefore don't offer one. These customers are not ready to make a qualitative investment in an emailing solution.

What do you think of the French emailing market? Is it mature or is there still room for new innovations?

The French market is certainly very mature. But there's always room for innovation and quality work. We must constantly adapt to the new rules introduced by ISPs, and meet our customers' expectations by offering them ever more advanced segmentation possibilities, trigger-marketing and multi-channel marketing. The good health of this market is demonstrated by the constant arrival of new players. These new entrants represent an ongoing challenge, although the quality of their tools remains to be proven.

A last word to conclude?

Emailing remains an affordable and very powerful tool, when used correctly, with advanced segmentation tools, trigger-marketing functionalities and respect for best practices. Combined with our landing pages, online survey and SMS tools, our easy-to-use email marketing platform is the most complete on the market, and at extremely attractive rates. If you'd like advice on how to get the most out of your email marketing tool, check out our blog.

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The author

Jonathan Loriaux

I've been involved in email marketing for over ten years, and my career path began on the technical side (email campaign integration) before moving on to sales (as an eCRM expert) and finally marketing consultancy. For the past 9 years, I've been the author of the Badsender.com blog. Emailing isn't just an expertise, it's truly become my passion, which is why Badsender is now my main activity, with the creation of an emailing consulting business linked to the site.

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6 responses

Charles Boone

11 years ago

Hello Jonathan, hello Caroline,

Thanks for this interview, it's always nice to read Badsender articles 🙂

Activetrail I knew mostly for the ads I see lately.

I have to admit that I have a bug about the 100% of deliverability present in the commercial speech. It is often used as a magic argument by those who have borderline practices and therefore I find it a pity that Activetrail uses the same type of marketing argument. I have been saying for years that 100% deliverability does not exist (for information, in November 2010 I already spoke about my reaction to the 100% deliverability argument: http://www.snipemail.com/le-mot-du-jour/une-delivrabilite-garantie-a-100-pourcent.html )
Only the philistines (also called pigeons by some commercials) don't know this.
If you don't hunt pigeons, why go around in hunting clothes with a rifle in your hand and corn in your bag? Clothes don't make the man, but they do contribute to the first impression we can make, don't they?

When I read on the site: (on the page http://www.activetrail.fr/fonctionnalites/envoi-emailing/delivrabilite-100 )
"Deliverability is the percentage of your emails that will be seen by your recipients"

and just below :
"Our solution - nearly 100% deliverability guaranteed by ActiveTrail"

finally at the bottom:
"We are constantly monitoring the latest technological advances, in order to maintain our 100% deliverability rate, and not lose a single point.

Or in your ads: "With ActiveTrail, 100% of your emails arrive in your readers' Inbox. What do you say?"

At this reading, I tell myself that there are only 2 possibilities:
1) Activetrail has indeed found a magic recipe and manages to deliver 100% of its emails inbox and I don't know by which technology all readers read their mails. I say hats off to them because how do you know how a message was placed with the ESPs and ISPs and how do you know that it is in the inbox and not in another folder. I don't know.

2) It's all marketing blah blah blah and as they say: "promises are only made to those who believe them".
And there it is a pity because this argument is often discriminating in a choice (you are announced 100 % of deliverability ? Run Forrest !!!), except for the philistines of which we already spoke.

Let's be clear, I'm not judging the solution, just this point in the marketing pitch that in my opinion puts you on the wrong side of the fence with an argument so big that it discredits all other points.
BACHER

11 years ago

I will say just one thing: agree to "100%" 🙂 with Charles.... and if ever it is the first possibility, namely, the magic recipe you found you are welcome to EMDay to expose it to us in front of all the little world of email marketing!
Quercy

11 years ago

I totally agree. I understand that some of our ads make you react. There is no magic recipe. And there is a nuance: 100% deliverability remains an objective. Deliverability has to be worked on a daily basis, and on a case by case basis for each customer : respect of best practices, work on the file according to the behavior over time, etc. We are committed to providing quality support to our customers, in order to achieve the best possible result for each of them. We achieve this with an extremely high customer loyalty rate.
dov

11 years ago

I know Activetrail, and contrary to the blabla of the other "Big companies in the emailing" they are much more powerful and the deliverability is really very good. After 100% or other that do not inflate a little its figures on an ad or an article.

But the reaction of Charles boon makes me think more of jealousy than an intelligent answer!!!
Charles Boone

11 years ago

Dov and Quercy,
I've been on the emailing scene long enough to fight against the bad practices of users but also those of the companies in the field and/or their salesmen so that my rant won't be taken for jealousy 🙂

I don't question the quality of their tool or their service, I don't have any hindsight on that. On the other hand, I do shoot a bazooka at their communication because it is comparable to that of the bad actors. If you want to be part of the serious players of emailing in France, it is not compatible with these fanciful claims of 100% deliverability. And there is no point in playing on nuances or words. If you display this in your ads, you are in fact on the wrong side of the fence and will be assimilated to the racketeers.
If you work well, then communicate on your actions, your case studies, make demos, events, webinars, etc., but don't fall into the mire of 100% deliverability or moldy benchmarks. Since when is it a weak point for an ESP to be "Very strict on the quality of the database"?
The prospect who reads this may wonder "Is this one of your strong points since you are largely 1st in this benchmark?" and think that this does not bode well...

Either you want to be clean and then you will also be clean in your com and rectify these slips, or it is perhaps your positioning and targeting that are so, then do not change anything and let's all go our way. In either case things will be clear for everyone 🙂
Florian from emailing.fr

9 years ago

Thanks for sharing!