Marcom Robot review – Succeed with landing pages

Conversion rate is an extremely important factor for many types of businesses, and it’s often achieved through landing pages. This right here is Marcom Robot where you can build landing pages, A/B test them and much more. Let’s check it out.

Here we are in the Marcom Robot platform and as you can see, there’s no overview at the moment. We are thrown directly into the landing pages, but I know that they are working on an overview which we will discuss a bit more in the future section. But here we have an overview of our landing pages. Up here we can see the amount of traffic that we have had and the amount of traffic that we are allowed to have. But let’s dive right in and create our first landing page.

1. Features of Marcom Robot
2. Marcom Robot Pricing
3. Alternatives to Marcom Robot
4. Future of Marcom Robot
5. Pros & Cons using Marcom Robot
6. Last thoughts about Marcom Robot

Features of Marcom Robot

Here you can choose to either start from a blank page or you can choose one of the premade templates that they have made already. I would like to see more templates, but I feel that they are pretty modern. So let’s just use the product launch template right here. Let’s call it Product Launch as it was called. And here we can choose whether we want to add SEO details.

For me, it is not so relevant because this is just a landing page that I will use for a marketing campaign. So it will be on and off. But here you can fill that out. Then you can choose whether it should be search engine indexed, whether it should be a 301 redirect. That is, if you’re using a subdomain for your landing page and whether you want to have email notifications every time there is a new lead.

But for now let’s just create this landing page. So here we are in the builder, and we have different tools to work with. Here we have different sections that we can add. We can add a blog, text, form, image, buttons and different things down here and scrolling down, then you can see the entire design how it is, and we can easily drag and drop these things around. Now, one thing that I’m not a big fan of is that I can drag them exactly how I want them to be placed on the landing page.

This means that let’s say that I always want to have a margin of 20 pixels below all of my subheadings. That is not possible because I have to drag and drop it like this. So, a grid panel in the future would really be a game changer. But you can see it is as easy as this. We can change this to easy like this, and then we have changed a heading, and it’s saved by itself.

But you can always save manually here. Furthermore, here we have a layout and here you can see the different sections. When I click on it, then I’m shown the section, and then we can click on the different panels and the different blocks basically, and we can move them up or down based on what it is we want to do with them. Right now nothing is happening when I click, and I can’t drag and drop it either. But out here we can, of course, drag and drop it around if we want to.

And for each component you press on, you also have a component panel out here. And here you can see the alignment of the X and the Y. You see the height, the width, and, if you want to use rounded corners, how the image should be, the opacity and so forth. Here you can hide it and show it on your mobile if you want to. And we can always see up here how the landing page looks on a mobile.

By clicking on the filter. We can also enable the grid filter here, where we can say whether we want to have three, four, eight or twelve grids. This is an easy way to help us, but it is still not defined. It’s exactly that you need to keep yourself within this grid. But let’s try and add a form out here because we want them to be able to sign up for this form. Right now I have two premade forms, but let’s create a new form, so you can see how this works as well.

So here you can see that we can use the form builder, build a form from HTML, or we can integrate a third party form. For now, I’ll just build a custom form and call it Product launch again. Let’s create it and then let’s fill out the different fields we need. So you can see out here we have different input types. I just need an email.

And let’s say we also need a custom field as well. So we have the email and then the custom field here where we can say something like what is your name? We can also enter a placeholder, but let’s keep this as is. Then we have to submit your form. I will just say sign up for trial just in case here.

Here you can choose whether it should be a single field or it should be a multiple field. And now let’s press Save. You can always preview it. But now let’s go back to our landing page and insert this form we have just built.

So again, just like before, we will take the form, and we’ll drag it over here, and then we will choose our product launch form and basically just add it in. And you can see right now this one is absolute. So it doesn’t move the things around, which can be a bit frustrating and at the moment there is no way for me to make this one relative. It can only be absolute. So I have to basically drag and drop the different elements around in order to be able to basically drag and drop my form around.

One thing I did notice is that within Safari it can sometimes get stuck. So just be aware of that. I think if you use Google Chrome you will most likely not experience any of those elements. But you can see over here we have all the different elements that we can insert and right now here there is an element where we need to fill out an image and right now it is just an empty placeholder. So let’s choose an image here.

When you choose an image, you have your own library, and then you have the Unsplash library. So here we’ll just choose an image of a computer right here, and then it will then insert it. See the thing here is that again I have to drag and drop this image to fit exactly into this border. It would be nice if it just did it for me and that is what I mean overall, I feel that I need more help to build these landing pages from the system itself because it is just too customisable at the moment.

But this is how you build different landing pages. Now let’s try and publish and preview it. So here we are previewing the landing page, and it is as we saw from the beginning. You can then see how it looks on tablet and on mobile as well, so you can see it scales very fine, and I didn’t have to think about anything. There are some scrolling issues though that they need to be able to fix but overall I don’t have to think about those elements.

It does it automatically where it pulls them under each other without having to do anything in the design process. So those are the landing pages and the forms as you just saw. We can also create a form from a third party where let’s just try and call this one product launch as well created. And then here we need to add our third party form. This can be MailChimp form, a Sengrid form or something third that you basically just copy and paste into here.

You can see they also mentioned HubSpot and Pardot as well. That is very simple to set up and then all the forms when they’re filled out they will land in here where you will then have an overview of your leads, and you can export it to Excel at the moment. We can also help boost the lead quality when we validate the email. We have some geo tracking and overall just lead enrichment as well. But in order to do this, you need the best plan.

One thing we just skipped was the Gallery, but you saw it just before. So we have our own Gallery with the images we have used, and they have an integration with Unsplash as well. You can always upload your own images that you want to use on the landing pages. So this is basically just an overview like we know it from WordPress for instance, now you can also set up presets in here and within presets it’s basically just a set of colours. So let’s call this one default, and then we can add some colours down here.

So I want to use the red colour here, and it is called default right now. It would be nice if I could add multiple colours in one preset and then be able to use them on the landing page. So all the colours on the landing page change based on my preset, because right now here I still have to manually click on all the different colours I want to use. Just a way to set a primary secondary and a third colour would be a nice way. And, of course, the text colour as well.

But this is just a simple way. We can also set presets for fonts as well. Here, where we create a new font preset, we can only choose the fonts that they have here, which is very, very few would be nice if we could add our own fonts or at least they had some more Google fonts to choose between, but that you can also set here as well. So this is one way for you to basically keep the same font size and the same font all over your landing page. But now let’s move on to the most exciting thing which is the A/B testing. So this is a great way for you to basically try different things. And here what we will do is to create a new A/B test and call it a product launch again and then here we need to choose two pages.

So here I can choose page A, which would be, in theory, the landing page down here. It is a little frustrating, I have to write that in. So for the test purpose here I’ll just enter my own website and then down here I will enter my own website in Danish as well. Just so, we have two different variations. Here we choose whether we want to split it 50/50, 75/25 or something similar, and then we will create it here.

When you set up these A/B testing, you cannot use the Marcom Robot page. So you have to use your own domain for this, which you set up in the settings. So going to the settings here we have the domains and within domains you set up your own domain that you can use for all of your landing pages, and it’s very easy. You just set it up here, add the new domain, and then you need to change your DNS settings here for the CNAME record and the text record as well. So you show that you actually own this domain, and then you can set up your A/B testing.

But one thing they also have down here is integration. And not only do they have APIs and both the key and the documentation, but they also have a Zapier integration. So here you see that we can integrate with Sendgrid, we can integrate with MailChimp, ActiveCampaign and much more. And this is in order to send your leads from the forms all the way over to the third party system that you are using. So this is what I’m talking about when I mean a streamlined workflow, because otherwise you have to manually go into Marcom Robot, export all of your leads and then upload them to whatever system you want to send emails through.

So this is a great and streamlined way for you to have all of your leads in one place. They also have webhooks that you can use. They have a Script Centre and if you experience a lot of spam on your landing pages, you can exclude IP’s down here as well. Just going briefly back to the Script Centre/ within the Script Centre, it’s a good idea to add something like analytics. So let’s say that here we want to use, as it says here, Google Analytics on this page.

Let’s press next and here we can see that it will send the events for the following button clicks, text links, form submissions and variant tracking. And this is for the A/B testing. So here you just enter your Analytics tracking. And at the moment, it is not supporting Google Analytics 4. So you have to use Google Analytics Universal or the Tag Manager as well.

You can also insert a custom script and, in this case, you can use Google Analytics 4. Or you can use the Facebook Pixel as well. So that is overall the Marcom Robot platform, where you can build landing pages, A/B test them and create a streamlined workflow for all of your leads to be sent to a third party system.

Marcom Robot Pricing

Now let’s discuss the pricing. They do have a free plan, very limited. Even though you get almost all the functionality except for A/B testing, you only have 500 visitors per month, which seems like a lot maybe to you, but when you start sending traffic to your landing page, and you test it yourself, and you visit it, then you will quickly see yourself having used those 500 visitors. Luckily, they have paid plans where you get more visitors. But even though if you take the most expensive plan here, you have 30,000 visitors, you have unlimited landing pages and this is not 30,000 visitors per landing page, this is in total.

So if you have 100 landing pages, then it’s only 300 visitors per landing page. And then you will quickly see it come to an end. So I hope that we will see these limits increase.

Alternatives to Marcom Robot

Now, the first alternative to Marcom Robot, as I see it, is Unbounce. And Unbounce to me, is probably the number one choice on landing pages because Unbounce is just possible to do anything. They have all the integrations needed, they have all the forms we can build and the way we can build our landing page is much more extensive, and I feel it is much easier compared to Marcom Robot even though within Marcom Robot we can customise it more because we can literally drag and drop it is exactly where it is we want it to be within Unbounce we have this grid field that we need to work with which could be a good idea also to have within Marcom Robot.

The other alternative is Instapage and I feel Instapage is very close to Unbounce though when we have these two Unbounce and Instapage they are a lot more expensive compared to Marcom Robot. But you do also get more functionality, more visitors and, overall, just a better, more refined product. So it does make sense. So it is really up to you whether you want to have this product where you have full customisability, then you need to go with Marcom Robot. But if you want a more mature product where everything has been defined for you, then take a look at Unbounce or Instapage.

Future of Marcom Robot

Now let’s take a look into the future because Marcom Robot really have a feature packed roadmap. First off then they’re working on a dashboard overview which basically explains itself for us to get an overview of our landing pages, the amount of visitors we have and just the leads overall. How is it going? Then they’re working on shared sections. This means that we can build a section on a landing page and then save it, so we can then reuse it on other landing pages and, overall, just build landing pages much faster.

Furthermore, they also allow for form templates. So imagine that you reuse the same form, or you have maybe bits and pieces of different types of forms you want to use. Then you can build it together as a form template and reuse it, so you again can build landing pages much faster. Then they are working on a cookie consent banner and this is, of course, most highly needed because it is per law in Europe at least that we need to have this banner in order to be able to use cookies. So if we can’t insert analytics on our landing pages it really makes it difficult for us to know how it is exactly going.

And last but not least, they are working to overall improve their UX builder, make it easy to undo our different mistakes and just make it easier to build landing pages. Hopefully we’ll see a grid panel in this process as well.

Pros & Cons using Marcom Robot

After using Marcom Robot, I really like it’s possible to customise the landing page down to pixels and then the Zapier integration is really a game changer and the team behind is trying to build multiple products into one. Though I really want them to improve that the images are not served in next generation format, which is not a positive thing for our loading time and then the customisation is not always a good idea. I would like to have a grid panel.

Last thoughts about Marcom Robot

Building landing pages is crucial in order to succeed with your marketing. Being able to test multiple variations of your landing pages and have a streamlined flow is key to success. I want to give Marcom Robot four stars. Even though their roadmap is packed, I really feel they have great functionality and their ability to A/B test the landing pages.

That’s my review.