Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

To start developing an automation in ActiveCampaign, start with a “trigger.” There are a number of ways you can set off an automation, including: When a tag is added When a contact signs up for a list When a contact sends a kind E-commerce and on-site options (available in the “Pro” strategy) When the contact reaches a specific point in another automation.

From there, you can begin constructing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are readily available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send an e-mail Inform a staff member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for testing Skip to other parts of the automation Track goals (The contact can skip to the goal’s location in the automation.) Start or end another automation, or end the present automation Post a webhook Subscribe or unsubscribe the contact to/from lists Update contact information Add and remove tags Include a note Lead scoring, SMS and website messages, and Facebook Custom-made Audience management are all “Pro” features – Active Campaign Associate Product Manager.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more restricted. On ConvertKit, you can trigger an automation when: The contact submits a form The contact makes a purchase A tag is contributed to the contact A custom field is upgraded with a specific value From there, you can develop Conditions, to inspect whether the contact has a particular tag or customized field value.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

You can also develop Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Goals, however without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is added or gotten rid of The contact purchases A date happens A custom field is upgraded with a particular worth You don’t create e-mails in ConvertKit’s Automations.

For more on how ActiveCampaign compares to ConvertKit, read my ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign comparison. The primary way I construct my list is through an email course. ActiveCampaign makes it simple for me to develop my e-mail course precisely how I want to develop it. Lots of marketers construct extremely basic email series for their “email courses.” A contact register, and then that contact right away begins getting lessons.

It was easy to construct with ActiveCampaign, but difficult when I was with MailChimp. I do not do that approach. My e-mail course is manually synced with this countdown timer on my site. You need to sign up by Friday night, and a brand-new course begins each Monday early morning. When I initially attempted this approach, I was on MailChimp.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

Here’s the automation I utilize to invite new trainees to my Style Pitfalls course. There’s a couple of things going on here: The automation sends all contacts a “welcome email (Active Campaign Associate Product Manager).” The automation confirms that it’s not Friday. If it’s not Friday, the automation waits till it is Friday. At 11am, it sends out a “pump up” e-mail to get the trainees all set for next week’s course, and motivate them to share it with good friends.

The contact will start getting lessons the following Monday morning. If it is Friday and after 7pm, the contact missed enrollment for next week’s class. They’ll get the pump up email the following Friday morning, and lessons the Monday after that. It was difficult for me to automate this with MailChimp.

When I run a webinar, I do not wish to send the same e-mail to everyone on my list. I wish to send them the suitable email for their level of engagement – Active Campaign Associate Product Manager. Active Campaign Associate Product Manager. Here’s the automation I use to promote an evergreen webinar: First it confirms that they have not already acquired the product I pitch in the webinar.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

Then it sends out a series of emails to get them interested in the webinar, and to motivate them to sign up. If they sign up, they right away struck the “Goal” towards completion of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they don’t register, they get included to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. Active Campaign Associate Product Manager.

This allows me to customize my messaging, in other automations, based upon the contact’s engagement with the webinar. Here’s the WebinarJam integration panel: I can add tags based upon whether the contact signed up, attended, missed, or based upon how long they remained in the webinar. These tags can then trigger automations within ActiveCampaign.

It costs me cash, and it makes it most likely that my e-mails go to spam or Gmail’s promos tab. People who do not open my emails make it harder for other e-mails to get to individuals who actually desire them! The “Pro” strategy of ActiveCampaign has actually lead scoring constructed in.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

Here’s an automation I received from ActiveCampaign’s library of automations, which I use to tell which contacts aren’t engaging with my emails. When a contact subscribes, this automation includes a “0 days” tag. As time passes, it includes new tags for 7 days, thirty days, 60 days, etc Each time they open an email, a different automation eliminates them from this automation, removes all of those tags, and starts this automation over again.

This automation can be overwhelming in the beginning, and this is among those cases where I want ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box option. However, because you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, sometimes you have to develop things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an option to delete non-active subscribers, which I don’t advise.

Some customers do not have tracking turned on, so their opens aren’t recorded. Others still desire to be subscribed however have actually been hectic. Here’s my reactivation series: I send one email asking if they still desire to be subscribed, and briefly explaining why I keep my e-mail list clean. In one week, I send them another e-mail (if they already clicked on the confirmation link in the previous email, they’ve already been eliminated from the automation utilizing a separate automation) – Active Campaign Associate Product Manager.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

The automation then unsubscribes them. My emails likewise have a link to a type where they can enter their email address to let me know that they don’t have tracking allowed. This form includes a tag that I utilize to filter those contacts out. Active Campaign Associate Product Manager. I used to add this tag when they clicked on a link, but when people do not have tracking on, it makes those links not work so reliably! I only send a simple “do you still desire my e-mails?” verification.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

You can also see whether the completion rate has increased or reduced, how long it takes for contacts to reach that objective, and you can search all contacts to see who did and didn’t reach the goal. ActiveCampaign’s Message Variables is my favorite function. It conserves me a lots of time and effort, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (update: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” snippets”) has a comparable function.

Let’s say you have the very first name of just some of your contacts, which is the case with my list. I generally do not need a given name to sign up to my list, however often I get a given name, such as when someone buys a product. Wouldn’t it be nice to greet your contacts by name, in the events when you have it? You can do this, but it’s cumbersome.

I’m likewise filtering for generic terms included by other systems, such as a dash, or “Visitor.” If they have a very first name, I say “Hey,” and after that their very first name. If they don’t, I simply say “Hey there,” (Active Campaign Associate Product Manager). By developing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can quickly alter my welcoming according to whether or not I have the contact’s very first name.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

I produced a variable that’s merely %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it appears in the email. If I don’t have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables actually conserve me a lot of time is by enabling me use the exact same automation over and over again for my webinars, and I can rapidly alter out all of the information.

Here are variables for a webinar I run called “Bust Through Creative Blocks.” You can see I have a bunch of different variables here, such as the date and time of the webinar, the rate of the item, offer terms, voucher code, and more. Each time I run a new webinar, I can change each of these variables to match any schedule changes or offer modifications.

And here it is in an email. This message variable allows me to easily alter out a countdown timer. I did discuss earlier that one of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their email editing experience. I switched from MailChimp, and MailChimp occurs to have the best e-mail editing experience. I really like to send simple e-mails.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

I’ve discovered that very tough to do with ActiveCampaign. For awhile, I was modifying e-mails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is rather cumbersome. For a long time, I used ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was triggered by a basic design template I created. The user interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some complimentary open-source job. Active Campaign Associate Product Manager.

Nevertheless, adding images is a bit of a task. You need to choose them from a file internet browser. There’s no drag and drop alternative. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor needs that you compose totally in HTML. The alternative to this, if you desire to have control over the HTML, is to edit pure HTML, with a sneak peek on the side.

Including images to ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is a cumbersome experience. You require different text boxes for above and listed below the image. Lately I have actually begun using ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor. They have some great design templates, however I still want to send out the plainest e-mail possible. They do have some plain-looking e-mails, however they have some degree of very little format, which you can’t remove – Active Campaign Associate Product Manager.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

But, with some changes, I can make my email quite basic. I can make it instantly use up the entire window, and I can modify the typography to be somewhat bigger, and have a bit more leading. The most frustrating part of ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is adding images. Imagine you’ve just typed out a fantastic email. Active Campaign Associate Product Manager.

You can’t simply add an image to a block of text. Rather, you have to create two blocks of text: one for before the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any format modifications, you’ll have to watch on those to stay constant. That’s something to handle when you desire to include one image, however when you want to include several, it becomes a big task.

They even have a basic mage editor where you can crop the image – Active Campaign Associate Product Manager. MailChimp’s editor is the finest I’ve seen in all of the email marketing platforms I have actually attempted. You have access to the underlying code, so you can produce a really plain e-mail, supplied you make a standard design template first.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

MailChimp’s integrated image editor is incredibly powerful. You can resize, crop, and include customized text to your images. I miss out on MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Active Campaign Associate Product Manager). It would save me a little time to have that very same experience on ActiveCampaign. But the highly-customizable automations I can construct on ActiveCampaign more than offset that potential time cost savings.

ConvertKit’s email modifying experience is really plain, but easy to navigate. Their design templates are limited, which is great with me, however their e-mail modifying experience is a little simpler because you can create inline images, and you can create a completely plain email, and even modify the underlying HTML. If you wish to make some fast edits to some emails in an automation, with ActiveCampaign, it’s troublesome.

I’ll click on an email, and it takes me to the editor for that e-mail. Note that I can’t even Command + Click to open it in another tab. Whether they meant to or not, ActiveCampaign has handicapped Command + Click from the automation editor. If I desired to switch backward and forward in between different emails, I would intuitively be inclined open the very same automation in various tabs, then open the respective e-mails from each of those tabs.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

In the Automations section, there’s a “Manage Messages” area. From here, you can see all of the messages in each of your automations. You can modify each one, or you can Command + Click to open each in a brand-new tab to more easily modify your entire sequence. Active Campaign Associate Product Manager. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Sequences.

Once again, it would conserve me a lot of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail editing experience on ActiveCampaign – Active Campaign Associate Product Manager. But picking an email marketing platform resembles picking a partner. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Speaking of segmentation, another reason I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has actually restricted segmentation choices.

You can combine characteristics with an AND/OR operator, and you can mix and match those groups of qualities with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can just segment by AND/OR, however MailChimp’s Pro plan permits more sophisticated segmenting, for an extra $199 a month. In my search for the ideal e-mail marketing platform, I saw many others, a few of which I have actually already discussed.

Active Campaign Associate Product Manager

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would most likely be utilizing ConvertKit. Their automations are much easier to build, though they aren’t as flexible as ActiveCampaign’s, and their segmentations alternatives aren’t as advanced either. They also don’t have goal tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You currently understand that I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.