AdRoll Review - Marketing Made Easy

What Is AdRoll?

To put it simply, it’s an all-in-one marketing tool for your ecommerce business, with extra emphasis on online ads. From email marketing, to social media campaigns, to web ads, AdRoll lets you conduct your campaigns from one place. The tool has loads of cool features to capture new leads, increase engagement, and automate workflows to help you grow your business.

AdRoll Pros & Cons

Pros

• Branded emails - A built-in email building tool with plenty of editing options and over 200 templates gives you the freedom to make unique emails with specific branding. A user-friendly interface means you can do all this without having to write a single line of code

• Audience insights - Adding the “AdRoll Pixel” to your own personal webpage gives you an extensive insight into how people interact with your store or site. What did people click on? Where did they come from? What device did they access from? By answering all these questions and more, you can use the data to better your campaigns

• Scheduled targeting - Setting up automated email sequences with time and/or event triggers gives you the power to capture audiences at the right time for increased interactions. I’ll get into how this can benefit you later on

• Easy to use - On creating your account, you’ll be given a setup checklist and step-by-step walkthrough to set up your AdRoll pixel and start your campaigns. The interface is easy to navigate and a help bot is available for any quick queries

Cons

• Account limitations - Instead of having an automatically adjustable price plan, if you go over the dedicated monthly email allowance for the plan you’re on then that’s it! You won’t be able to send any more emails until the next month's billing starts, which could be a pretty big setback

• Add-on for extra emails - While the pricing plan starts you off at 20,000 emails per month, this might not be enough for a lot of people. There is the option to pay for additional emails, but this can end up very costly compared to other market alternatives

Who Is AdRoll Recommended For?

This platform gives you an all-in-one system for your email marketing, automation and ad campaign needs. If you’re wanting to take advantage of online ad campaigns, you can budget on your level. With this service, the higher your budget, the most you’ll probably end up getting.

Who Is AdRoll Not Recommended For?

If you’re a small startup, you might find yourself priced out of the main ad service they offer (budget must be a minimum of $10 daily) and the amount they charge for more emails per month. This can make it quite unsuitable to those with bulk email sending needs.

AdRoll Pricing

The pricing is split into 2 subscription plans, Starter and Growth. For email marketing, the main difference in pricing depends on the volume of emails you’re sending per month. The “Growth” option costs $25 for the base plan, with the possibility of adding more emails at an extra cost. 

If you’re utilizing their ad service, there’s some additional costs not included in the price plan. So I’d recommend researching this before jumping in.

Cancellation / Refund Policies

AdRoll has a no refund policy for any subscriptions to its plans. If you’re wanting to cancel, you can do so at any time and your subscription will continue until the end of the contracted date.

AdRoll Features

Many features are available here for an array of marketing purposes. While their services do revolve largely around online ad placement, for the purpose of this review, I’ll be concentrating on the email marketing features on offer.

·       Email Templates

With a library of over 200 templates freely available to you, you’ll be able to find something for any of your marketing needs. This will act as a basis for you to implement your own creativity and branding in the easy to use drag-and-drop editor. No coding required!

·       Opt-In Forms / Landing Pages

Being able to create and integrate your own opt-in forms and landing pages lets you capture those potential new leads and increase your customer base. You’re able to customize these with your own messages and backgrounds with the built-in editor, although this is quite limited.

·       Ease of Use

A central dashboard gives you a place where you can easily view the health of your different campaigns. Different features are quickly accessible and there are quick links to various learning resources and a help bot widget within your hub so you can search any queries directly.

·       Lead Capture

Opt-in forms can be integrated at different stages of a visitor’s journey on various platforms. This captures new leads at a time when they’re most engaged, whether that be during a purchase or after being on your page for a set amount of time. Signup information is then imported into your contact lists where you can automate the start of their journey.

·       Tracking & Reporting

Emails are automatically tracked and reports are made available so you can easily see various stats on different campaign performances. These reports are editable so you only display the information that’s useful to you.

·       Resource Center

A large library of learning resources is accessible to anyone through their site, or through your own hub. These include blogs, podcasts, tutorials and general tips on how to improve your campaigns and get the best out of the tool. All the info to turn you into a marketing whizz in no time!

·       A/B Testing

Making sure your email campaigns are effective is important to drive engagement. A/B testing allows you to create variations on the same message, test out a few to gauge which is most effective, then send that one on to the rest of your contacts for maximum delivery.

FEATURES SCORE: 3.5/5

AdRoll Automation Features

Being able to automate processes is essential when integrating an email marketing tool into your ecommerce platforms. Luckily, AdRoll gives you plenty of opportunities to automate a number of processes.

Email marketing automations - You’ll be able to set up emails that are scheduled by different triggers. Abandoned cart reminders, onboarding emails, scheduled drip campaigns and promotional emails are all great ways to increase your ROI, and all are available to you here.

AdRoll Pixel - Adding this invisible feature to your site will automatically track the number of useful interactions. Seeing how your customers interact with your platform gives you great insight.

AdRoll Software Integration

AdRoll is able to integrate seamlessly with major ecommerce platforms Shopify and WooCommerce, with the ability to integrate your signup forms and contacts here and across many other platforms easily.

If you’re wanting to integrate with a CRM account, that’s also a possibility with some of the leading platforms out there. Other complementary functions such as advanced reporting are available to integrate through a reporting API, so there really is a good range of possibilities. 

AdRoll Alternative Brands

Omnisend - With a focus on marketing through a number of different channels, this tool has the means to expand your campaigning potential outside of just email on more advanced plans. If you’re just after emailing though, you can get that on the free plan with 15,000 emails per month.

Sendinblue - Starting as a simple marketing tool, Sendinblue has been constantly expanding its platform to give you more and more possibilities. It now acts as an all-in-one platform for all of your business marketing needs with plenty of features for you to utilize.

EmailOctopus - Some marketing tools can be very bulky, which might not be ideal for everyone. This tool gives you some top email design capabilities but manages to still keep it simple, with an excellent customer support team to help you get on your way.

Conclusion

For a platform not just confined to email marketing, but with various different features for increasing your marketing potential, AdRoll has everything you need to get going. The service they provide for remarketing ads could also be a great addition to your tool belt to enhance your email marketing.