Active Campaign Chrome Extension

To begin constructing an automation in ActiveCampaign, begin with a “trigger.” There are a number of methods you can trigger an automation, consisting of: When a tag is included When a contact registers for a list When a contact submits a form E-commerce and on-site alternatives (offered in the “Pro” plan) When the contact reaches a certain point in another automation.

From there, you can begin developing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are readily available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send an e-mail Alert a staff member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for testing Avoid to other parts of the automation Track goals (The contact can skip to the objective’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 details Include and remove tags Add a note Lead scoring, SMS and site messages, and Facebook Custom Audience management are all “Pro” features – Active Campaign Chrome Extension.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more restricted. On ConvertKit, you can trigger an automation when: The contact submits a type The contact purchases A tag is included to the contact A custom field is upgraded with a certain worth From there, you can develop Conditions, to check whether the contact has a particular tag or custom field worth.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

You can likewise produce Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Goals, however without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is added or removed The contact purchases A date occurs A customized field is updated with a particular worth You don’t produce e-mails in ConvertKit’s Automations.

For more on how ActiveCampaign compares to ConvertKit, read my ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign contrast. The primary method I develop my list is through an e-mail course. ActiveCampaign makes it easy for me to construct my email course exactly how I want to build it. Numerous marketers build extremely basic email series for their “e-mail courses.” A contact register, and then that contact right away starts getting lessons.

It was easy to construct with ActiveCampaign, however difficult when I was with MailChimp. I don’t do that approach. My email course is by hand synced with this countdown timer on my website. You need to sign up by Friday night, and a new course begins each Monday morning. When I first attempted this method, I was on MailChimp.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

Here’s the automation I use to welcome new students to my Style Pitfalls course. There’s a couple of things going on here: The automation sends all contacts a “welcome email (Active Campaign Chrome Extension).” The automation confirms that it’s not Friday. If it’s not Friday, the automation waits until it is Friday. At 11am, it sends out a “pump up” e-mail to get the trainees ready for next week’s course, and motivate them to share it with buddies.

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

When I run a webinar, I don’t desire to send out the exact same e-mail to every person on my list. I want to send them the proper email for their level of engagement – Active Campaign Chrome Extension. Active Campaign Chrome Extension. Here’s the automation I use to promote an evergreen webinar: First it confirms that they have not already bought the item I pitch in the webinar.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

Then it sends a series of e-mails to get them interested in the webinar, and to motivate them to register. If they sign up, they right away struck the “Goal” toward completion of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they do not sign up, they get included to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. Active Campaign Chrome Extension.

This allows me to tailor my messaging, in other automations, based upon the contact’s engagement with the webinar. Here’s the WebinarJam integration panel: I can include tags based upon whether the contact signed up, participated in, missed out on, or based upon the length of time 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. Individuals who don’t open my emails make it harder for other emails to get to individuals who really desire them! The “Pro” strategy of ActiveCampaign has actually lead scoring integrated in.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

Here’s an automation I received from ActiveCampaign’s library of automations, which I use to inform which contacts aren’t engaging with my emails. When a contact subscribes, this automation includes a “0 days” tag. As time passes, it adds brand-new tags for 7 days, 1 month, 60 days, etc Each time they open an email, a different automation eliminates them from this automation, removes all of those tags, and begins this automation over again.

This automation can be frustrating at first, and this is among those cases where I wish ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box solution. However, because you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, often you have to construct things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an option to erase inactive subscribers, which I do not advise.

Some customers do not have actually tracking switched on, so their opens aren’t taped. Others still wish to be subscribed however have actually been busy. Here’s my reactivation series: I send one e-mail asking if they still wish to be subscribed, and briefly discussing why I keep my email list clean. In one week, I send them another email (if they already clicked on the confirmation link in the previous e-mail, they have actually currently been gotten rid of from the automation using a different automation) – Active Campaign Chrome Extension.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

The automation then unsubscribes them. My e-mails also have a link to a kind where they can enter their email address to let me know that they do not have tracking made it possible for. This type includes a tag that I use to filter those contacts out. Active Campaign Chrome Extension. I utilized to include this tag when they clicked a link, but when individuals do not have tracking on, it makes those links not work so dependably! I just send out a simple “do you still want my e-mails?” confirmation.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

You can likewise see whether the completion rate has actually increased or decreased, for how long it considers contacts to reach that goal, and you can browse 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 effort and time, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (update: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” snippets”) has an equivalent feature.

Let’s state you have the given name of only a few of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I normally don’t need a first name to sign up to my list, however in some cases I get a very first name, such as when somebody purchases an item. Wouldn’t it be nice to greet your contacts by name, in the cases when you have it? You can do this, however it’s troublesome.

I’m also filtering for generic terms included by other systems, such as a dash, or “Guest.” If they have a first name, I say “Hey,” and then their given name. If they do not, I just say “Hey there,” (Active Campaign Chrome Extension). By building a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can easily change my welcoming according to whether or not I have the contact’s given name.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

I developed a variable that’s merely %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it shows up in the e-mail. If I don’t have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables truly conserve me a great deal of time is by enabling me use the exact same automation over and over again for my webinars, and I can quickly alter out all of the details.

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

And here it remains in an email. This message variable allows me to quickly alter out a countdown timer. I did discuss earlier that a person of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their e-mail modifying experience. I changed from MailChimp, and MailChimp happens to have the finest e-mail editing experience. I actually like to send out basic e-mails.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

I have actually discovered that very hard to do with ActiveCampaign. For awhile, I was editing emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is quite clunky. For a very long time, I utilized 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 task. Active Campaign Chrome Extension.

Nevertheless, adding images is a bit of a task. You need to select them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor requires that you make up completely in HTML. The alternative to this, if you wish to have control over the HTML, is to edit pure HTML, with a preview 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. Recently I have actually begun using ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor. They have some nice templates, but I still want to send out the plainest email possible. They do have some plain-looking e-mails, but they have some degree of minimal format, which you can’t remove – Active Campaign Chrome Extension.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

However, with some modifications, I can make my email pretty basic. I can make it immediately take up the entire window, and I can fine-tune the typography to be somewhat larger, and have a little more leading. The most aggravating part of ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is including images. Imagine you have actually just typed out a terrific email. Active Campaign Chrome Extension.

You can’t merely add an image to a block of text. Instead, you need to create two blocks of text: one for prior to the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any formatting modifications, you’ll need to keep an eye on those to remain constant. That’s something to handle when you wish to include one image, however when you desire to add numerous, it ends up being a huge task.

They even have a basic mage editor where you can crop the image – Active Campaign Chrome Extension. MailChimp’s editor is the very best I have actually seen in all of the email marketing platforms I have actually attempted. You have access to the underlying code, so you can develop a really plain e-mail, supplied you make a standard template initially.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

MailChimp’s built-in image editor is very effective. You can resize, crop, and include custom-made text to your images. I miss out on MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Active Campaign Chrome Extension). It would conserve me a little time to have that very same experience on ActiveCampaign. But the highly-customizable automations I can develop on ActiveCampaign more than offset that possible time cost savings.

ConvertKit’s email editing experience is very plain, however easy to browse. Their templates are restricted, 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 totally 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 email. Note that I can’t even Command + Click to open it in another tab. Whether they meant to or not, ActiveCampaign has disabled Command + Click from the automation editor. If I wished to switch back and forth between different emails, I would intuitively be inclined open the exact same automation in different tabs, then open the respective emails from each of those tabs.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

In the Automations section, there’s a “Manage Messages” location. 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 new tab to more easily edit your entire series. Active Campaign Chrome Extension. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Sequences.

Once again, it would save me a great deal of time to have ConvertKit’s automation email modifying experience on ActiveCampaign – Active Campaign Chrome Extension. However selecting an email marketing platform resembles selecting a spouse. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Mentioning division, another reason I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has actually limited segmentation alternatives.

You can combine attributes with an AND/OR operator, and you can mix and match those groups of characteristics with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can only segment by AND/OR, however MailChimp’s Pro strategy enables more sophisticated segmenting, for an extra $199 a month. In my look for the perfect email marketing platform, I saw numerous others, a few of which I have actually already mentioned.

Active Campaign Chrome Extension

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would most likely be utilizing ConvertKit. Their automations are much simpler to construct, though they aren’t as versatile as ActiveCampaign’s, and their divisions alternatives aren’t as advanced either. They also do not have objective tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You currently understand that I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.