Why you should switch to Encharge as your marketing automation tool if you’re already using HubSpot, Intercom, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, or Sendgrid to send emails?
Chances are that:
- You work for a SaaS (Software as a Service) company.
- You’re currently building your onboarding emails or recreating your whole marketing automation strategy from scratch.
- You’ve landed on one of our user onboarding resources looking for more information on how to convert users.
- And if you’re an established startup you probably already use something like HubSpot or Intercom to send emails.
So why should you care about yet another marketing automation platform?
We built Encharge for the SaaS businesses in mind. We have helped dozens of SaaS companies to create targeted emails that convert more users to customers. Leaders like Landbot, Nifty, and Userbot already use Encharge to double their trial conversion rates.
However, we know that switching your whole marketing automation to a new platform is a tedious job — you have to get the entire team on board, transfer all of your flows, recreate your emails, and import your whole user base. You better have a good reason to switch, right?
We have a few serious reasons why you need to make the move to Encharge. Especially, if you want to convert more free users to paying customers.
Continue reading for a SaaS-focused comparison between your marketing automation tool and Encharge. Just jump to the section that covers the platform that you currently use.
Disclaimer: This is not one of those long-winded tool review posts with enormous tables full of subjective feature comparisons. We have reviewed only the critical features for SaaS companies, especially the companies that want to convert more users to customers. If you’re not a SaaS company or looking for a full-feature table comparison, this guide is not the right guide for you.
Contents
Why you should switch from HubSpot to Encharge?
HubSpot is a common choice for software companies, especially if they get a hold of the first-year startup discount or have a sales-driven onboarding model. It’s the most popular name in marketing automation, so naturally, companies do little to no evaluation before going with HubSpot.
This leads to some painful realizations when they find out their HubSpot bill after the first year and figure out that the platform lacks some critical features needed for SaaS businesses:
“Hubspot’s primary market is not web applications. It’s small to medium businesses, who deliver their solution offline. Take, for example, a marketing agency (I use Hubspot personally), accounting firm, pool installations company…Hubspot is perfect for all of these.
Because of this, it doesn’t allow you to make use of any of that useful behavioural data unless you’re on their Enterprise tier, which starts at £2,624. And even then, the platform falls somewhat shorter than being a perfect fit against other solutions.”
— Andrew Allsop, SaaS marketing expert.
A lot has already been written on the topic by SaaS experts, but I want to elaborate this further. Below are 6 reasons why you should switch from HubSpot to Encharge for your SaaS marketing automation.
Reason 1: Increase your trial conversion rates with action-based onboarding emails.
HubSpot does not support user events unless you’re on their Enterprise plan, which starts at $40,000 a year (screenshot below). In other words, if you use HubSpot for marketing automation and automated emails, you won’t be able to send emails when users do or don’t do stuff in your product.
Here are a few reasons why you must send action-based emails:
- Action-based emails have a 47% higher open rate than time-based email sequences and a 115% higher open rate than newsletters. (Source)
- Action-based emails have a 75% higher clickthrough rate than autoresponders and a 265% higher clickthrough rate than newsletters. (Source)
- Action-based emails Drive 24x More Revenue Per Send — Newsletter emails generate only about $0.04 in revenue per send. Behaviorally triggered emails, on the other hand, generate $0.95 in revenue per send. (Source)
Simply put, action-based emails are the most effective email communication for SaaS companies.
Contrary to HubSpot, Encharge is built with the goal of sending action-based emails that convert free users to paying customers.
When we implemented action-based emails for the online payment platform Payfacile we managed to increase the trial conversion rate with a total of 10.43%.
Reason 2: Target the right users based on what they do.
Without events, you won’t be able to build user and customer segments based on what people do or don’t do in your app.
Let’s say you run a task management tool, and you want to do some retention re-engagement for all customers that haven’t created any projects in the last two months. Because you don’t have any user activity (events) data in HubSpot, you won’t be able to segment those customers or target them with emails.
With Encharge, you can build powerful segments based on what people do or don’t do in your app. Check the example below. This is how a segment looks in Encharge if I want to target users that Have created a project but Haven’t created a task:
In HubSpot, you’d be only limited to demographics, website, and forms data.
Reason 3: Save $9,012 per year.
If you use HubSpot’s marketing automation, it means you’re currently on the Professional plan, which starts at $800 per month (billed at $9,600 per year).
Encharge starts at $99 (billed monthly) for up to 2000 contacts.
Yes, of course, HubSpot Professional also includes SEO, blog features, and whatnot, but if marketing automation is purely what you’re paying $9,600 per year, you should reconsider your spending. Remember, HubSpot Professional still does not support SaaS events; only the Enterprise plans do.
Reason 4: Build flows with Stripe and other 3rd party apps from your tech stack.
HubSpot is a great all-in-one marketing tool, but its marketing automation falls short on building flows with 3rd party apps Below are all of the available HubSpot flow triggers. As you can see, there aren’t any triggers from 3rd party apps.
As a SaaS company, you probably use Stripe as your payment provider. For that reason, you may want to send an automated email to the users who become customers, start a trial, or cancel their subscription.
Thanks to our native Stripe integration SaaS companies can trigger flows when a new Stripe trial is started, a new Stripe payment is made, and more. Below are the supported Stripe triggers in Encharge.
Here’s how a basic automation with a Stripe trigger looks in Encharge:
Reason 5: Use the best free CRM in the world with the best marketing automation tool for SaaS.
You probably use HubSpot for many things in your company. It’s so ingrained in your team’s processes that the idea of switching to something else scares you.
I get you.
The good news is that you don’t have to switch everything…
The core of HubSpot is its CRM, and HubSpot has undoubtedly built the best free CRM out there. You also get a free live chat and support tickets.
With that in mind, you can efficiently use HubSpot as your CRM/single source of truth while moving over your automation workflows to Encharge.
Encharge plays well with HubSpot. In fact, we also use HubSpot’s CRM and live chat (check our chat bubble in the bottom right).
Our native integration with HubSpot allows you to:
- Automatically send your HubSpot CRM contacts to Encharge.
- Create new deals in HubSpot when a contact is created or updated in Encharge.
- Update deal stage in HubSpot based on activity in Encharge or other tools in your marketing stack.
Reason 6. Zero-cost migration from HubSpot to Encharge.
Switching to Encharge will be a breeze. We’re going to handle the migration for you and move over your workflows, emails, and contacts. We can also set up the connection between Encharge and your CRM. Learn more about our migration service here.
Ready to switch to better marketing automation for your SaaS and convert more users to customers? Book a quick call with us. Let us learn how you currently use HubSpot and what are your marketing challenges.
Further Reading on HubSpot
Why you should switch from Intercom to Encharge?
Intercom is one of the most popular tools among SaaS companies. You probably use them for their live chat feature.
That said, Encharge offers a better alternative if you aim to build a complete customer journey that turns users into customers.
Here are 5 reasons you should switch from Intercom to Encharge for your email marketing automation.
Reason 1: Build high-converting marketing automation flows with an easy to use visual flow builder.
Intercom offers a feature for sending automated emails but it doesn’t have a visual workflow builder. This means that all of your email campaigns are set up in a dispersed way across the platform. This UX works fine if you’re sending separate email campaigns but quickly becomes a roadblock when you want to design complete customer journeys with multiple different paths.
Encharge takes a different approach. Email automations in Encharge are built as complete customer journeys with an easy to use visual drag and drop flow builder.
In the example below, payment platform Payfacile has designed two different customer journeys for their English and French-speaking customers. Apart from sending an automated email in two different languages, Payfacile adds its users to the right Facebook audience (based on what country the user is from). All that happens automatically and it’s visualized in an easy to understand way thanks to our visual flow builder.
“I subscribed to Encharge because of the limitations I encountered in using Intercom for building email flows. With Encharge, I was able to customize the email sequences the way I wanted to, and link them to one another in a way I wasn’t able to do it with Intercom.”
— Stefan Stinean, founder Inteleagent
Apart from offering flexibility, the visual workflow builder allows you to create relevant customer journeys with your whole marketing stack. Currently supported apps include:
- Salesforce
- HubSpot
- Stripe
- Typeform
- Facebook ads
- Slack
- And Intercom itself. Continue reading to find out how we integrate with Intercom.
Reason 2: Build precise user segments with event properties.
Event properties are the data points your app sends to the marketing automation tool every time someone does something in your app.
Let’s take reference check platform Veremark as an example. This is a list of the event properties that we track when a user Submits a request in Veremark:
- ID of the request
- Number of checks in request criteria
- Does this request include a reference check?
- Does this request include an employment check?
- Does this request include a national ID check?
- Does this request include a criminal record check?
- Does this request include a credit check?
- Does this request include an academic check?
Event properties are critical to record if you want to build precise user segments and automate emails based on them. They allow Veremark to send an email to all of the people that, for example, have Submitted a request that has a reference check.
In Encharge, a segment of these people would look like this (notice the Event property switch):
As stated in the Intercom documentation “It’s currently not possible to filter your customers based on event metadata (event properties), or include it in messages.“
Reason 3: Clear pricing with no hidden fees, and an easy way to Archive inactive users.
Having challenges figuring out how much you’re going to pay for your next Intercom bill? We feel you… We feel you; you need to be a Ph.D. to understand Intercom’s pricing structure.
You won’t get that with Encharge. Our pricing is easy to understand and has no hidden fees. You simply pay for the number of Email contacts in your database.
Want to stay below a certain threshold of users? No problem. You can simply create a flow that automatically Archives people when they become inactive. No more manual weekly contact sweeping.
Every time a person becomes inactive, they get automatically Archived.
Reason 4: Use Intercom’s beautiful live chat with the best marketing automation tool for SaaS.
Has your customer success team already adopted Intercom?
That’s fine!
You won’t need to turn their lives upside down by making them switch to a new tool.
We won’t lie, Intercom has a great looking live chat and easy to use support features. However, it lacks in the email automation department.
The solution?
Keep Intercom for live chat and its inbox and move over your emails to Encharge. That way, you get a great customer success platform (Intercom) with the marketing automation power of visual flows and precise customer segmentation (Encharge).
Thanks to our powerful native integration with Intercom, you can create a seamless customer experience between Intercom and Encharge and other marketing tools with an easy to use visual flow builder:
- Send intercom In-App Messages based on activity in Encharge and other apps in your marketing stack.
- Bring Intercom User and Lead data in Encharge to create precise segments.
- Trigger a customer experience in Encharge when a new Intercom Lead or User is created.
Reason 5. Zero-cost migration from Intercom to Encharge.
Switching to Encharge will be a breeze. We’re going to handle the migration for you and move over your workflows, emails, and contacts. We can also set up the connection between Encharge and your CRM. Learn more about our migration service here.
Ready to switch to better marketing automation for your SaaS and convert more users to customers? Book a quick call with us. Let us learn how you currently use HubSpot and what are your marketing challenges.
Why you should switch from ActiveCampaign to Encharge?
Reason 1: Build precise user segments and automate journeys with event properties.
Event properties are the data points your product sends to the marketing automation tool every time someone does something in your app.
Let’s take reference check platform Veremark as an example. This is a list of the event properties that we track when a user Submits a request in Veremark:
- ID of the request
- Number of checks in request criteria
- Does this request include a reference check?
- Does this request include an employment check?
- Does this request include a national ID check?
- And so on…
Event properties are critical to record if you want to build precise user segments and automate emails based on them. They allow apps like Veremark to send an email to all of the people that, for example, have Submitted a request that has a reference check.
In Encharge, a segment of these people would look like this (notice the Event property switch):
ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, only supports sending one property per event.
In the case of Veremark, they’d only be able to send the ID of the request (or another data point of choice) but not all of the event properties. This severely limits SaaS companies that want to build precise user segments and targeted user journeys.
Reason 2. Easy native integrations with HubSpot, Stripe, and Segment
Using HubSpot, Stripe, or Segment?
Well, ActiveCampaign doesn’t have an integration with HubSpot, and their Stripe and Segment integrations are what they call “Custom” — translated: you need to involve your developer to get them running.
At Encharge, we have built easy native integrations with HubSpot, Stripe, and Segment that every single non-technical person can set up in seconds. Once you connect the tools with Encharge, you can go to our easy to use visual flow builder to build customer journeys with them:
Reason 3. Go with a marketing automation tool built for SaaS companies
ActiveCampaign is cool, it does something for everybody, but it’s not really focused on SaaS.
You can see that in the features they build and the way their customer support handles complex questions related to user events, APIs, and other things important to SaaS (Don’t believe me? Just ask them a question about event properties, for instance).
We built Encharge for you, the growing SaaS business. Our templates are all about onboarding, retention, and user conversion — pre-populated with proven email copy written by top SaaS marketers. Our roadmap is focused on features that will benefit SaaS. Our expertise is all in SaaS, and you get unlimited access to it when you go with Encharge.
Reason 4. Zero-cost migration from ActiveCampaign to Encharge.
Switching to Encharge will be a breeze. We’re going to handle the migration for you and move over your workflows, emails, and contacts. We can also set up the connection between Encharge and your CRM. Learn more about our migration service here.
Ready to switch to better marketing automation for your SaaS and convert more users to customers? Book a quick call with us. Let us learn how you currently use HubSpot and what are your marketing challenges.
Why you should switch from Mailchimp to Encharge?
Mailchimp is the most used email marketing tool among small businesses, but it falls short when it comes to SaaS automation. You’re probably using it to send occasional one-off email blasts to your whole customer base.
Here are 4 reasons why you should graduate from untargeted email blasts with Encharge — the most powerful marketing automation built for SaaS.
Reason 1: Increase your trial conversion rates with action-based onboarding emails.
Action-based emails — emails sent when people do or don’t do things in your app — are the most effective revenue drivers for SaaS businesses:
- Action-based emails have a 47% higher open rate than time-based email sequences and a 115% higher open rate than newsletters. (Source)
- Action-based emails have a 75% higher clickthrough rate than autoresponders and a 265% higher clickthrough rate than newsletters. (Source)
- Action-based emails Drive 24x More Revenue Per Send — Newsletter emails generate only about $0.04 in revenue per send. Behaviorally triggered emails. on the other hand, generate $0.95 in revenue per send. (Source)
One-off email newsletters are great and you should still keep on sending them to stay top of mind with your whole customer base. BUT automated triggered emails are going to be your main growth engine when converting free trial users to customers. Also, they work on autopilot, so once set up, you don’t have to do a whole lot. Simply put, action-based emails are the most effective email communication for SaaS companies.
Contrary to Mailchimp, Encharge is built with the goal of sending action-based emails that convert free users to paying customers.
When we implemented action-based onboarding for the online payment platform Payfacile, we managed to increase the trial conversion rate with a total of 10.43%.
Reason 2: Target the right users based on what they do.
On its smaller and medium plans, Mailchimp doesn’t allow you to segment users based on what they do or don’t do in your product. This could be detrimental to your SaaS.
Let’s say you run a task management tool and you want to do some retention re-engagement for all customers that haven’t created any projects in the last two months.
With Encharge, you can build powerful segments based on what people do or don’t do in your app. Check the example below. This is how a segment looks in Encharge if I want to target users that Have created a project but Haven’t created a task:
In Mailchimp, you’d be limited to demographics, website, and forms data, which might be enough for newsletters but far from enough for automated emails.
Reason 3: Build high-converting marketing automation flows with an easy to use visual flow builder.
Yes, you can send automated marketing emails with Mailchimp, but even if you decide to go that way you’re stuck with a hard to use interface. Mailchimp doesn’t offer a visual workflow builder. This means that all of your emails are spread across the whole platform. This UX works ok if you’re sending a few automated emails but quickly becomes a roadblock when you want to design complete customer journeys with multiple paths.
Encharge takes a different approach. Email automations in Encharge are built as complete customer journeys with an easy to use visual drag and drop flow builder.
In the example below, reference check software Veremark has set up an onboarding flow that triggers when a user has signed up.
Reason 4. Easy native integrations with your marketing stack
At Encharge, we have built easy native integrations with the following tools used by SaaS companies:
- Stripe
- Segment
- Typeform
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- Facebook ads
- Slack
- Webhooks
- Zapier
Rather than being focused on the small business or eCommerce like Mailchimp, our integrations are built with the high-growth SaaS companies in mind. Once you connect a tool to your Encharge account, you can easily build visual customer journeys with things that happen in that tool:
Reason 5. Zero-cost migration from Mailchimp to Encharge.
Switching to Encharge will be a breeze. We’re going to handle the migration for you and move over your templates, emails, and contacts. Learn more about our migration service here.
Ready to switch to better marketing automation for your SaaS and convert more users to customers? Book a quick call with us. Let us learn how you currently use HubSpot and what are your marketing challenges.
Why you should switch from Sendgrid to Encharge?
Sendgrid is an email sending infrastructure platform built for developers and transactional emails. If you’re sending your marketing emails with Sendgrid, here are 4 reasons why you should switch to Encharge — a tool built for SaaS marketers.
Reason 1. Take control of your emails and grow your startups without the development bottlenecks.
Sendgrid is built for developers, and it works through APIs that only developers understand. If you’re currently sending your onboarding, retention or any other marketing emails through Sendgrid, it most likely means that they have been set up by your developers, not you.
Every time you’d like to make a change to your emails, you need to edit the email’s HTML code. Every time you need to add a new email to your onboarding, you have to go to your developers and ask them to do that.
Don’t you hate it when you, the marketer, have zero control over your automated email campaigns?
Avoid the development bottleneck that is slowing your growth. Switch to Encharge — a marketing automation platform built for marketers and non-technical people.
Once the initial setup of events is done in Encharge, you have full control of what emails you send to your users and when.
Reason 2: Build high-converting marketing automation flows with an easy to use visual flow builder.
Yes, you can send automated marketing emails with Sendgrid, but even if you decide to go that way you’re stuck with a hard to use interface. Sendgrid doesn’t offer a visual workflow builder. This means that all of your emails are spread across the whole platform. This UX works ok if you’re sending a few automated emails but quickly becomes a roadblock when you want to design complete customer journeys with multiple paths.
Encharge takes a different approach. Email automations in Encharge are built as complete customer journeys with an easy to use visual drag and drop flow builder.
In the example below, reference check software Veremark has set up an onboarding flow that triggers when a user has signed up.
Reason 3. Easy native integrations with your marketing stack
At Encharge, we have built easy native integrations with the following tools:
- Stripe
- Segment
- Typeform
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- Facebook ads
- Slack
- Webhooks
- Zapier
Every single non-technical person can set up these integrations in seconds. Once you connect the tools with Encharge, you can go to our easy to use visual flow builder to build customer journeys with them. No developers needed!
Reason 4. Zero-cost migration from Sendgrid to Encharge.
Switching to Encharge will be a breeze. Let us handle the migration from your Sendgrid account for you and move over your email templates, and contacts. Free of charge. Learn more about our migration service here.
Ready to switch to better marketing automation that gives you more control in the growth of your SaaS? Book a quick call with us. Let us learn how you currently use Sendgrid and what are your marketing challenges.
