Active Campaign Forms

To start constructing an automation in ActiveCampaign, begin with a “trigger.” There are a variety of methods you can set off an automation, consisting of: When a tag is included When a contact registers for a list When a contact sends a form E-commerce and on-site choices (available in the “Pro” plan) When the contact reaches a particular point in another automation.

From there, you can begin building the actions in your automation. Some actions that are readily available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send out an email Notify an employee Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for screening Skip to other parts of the automation Track goals (The contact can avoid to the objective’s location in the automation.) Start or end another automation, or end the existing automation Post a webhook Subscribe or unsubscribe the contact to/from lists Update contact details Add and remove tags Include a note Lead scoring, SMS and website messages, and Facebook Custom-made Audience management are all “Pro” functions – Active Campaign Forms.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more restricted. On ConvertKit, you can set off an automation when: The contact sends a type The contact buys A tag is contributed to the contact A custom field is updated with a specific worth From there, you can create Conditions, to inspect whether the contact has a specific tag or custom field value.

Active Campaign Forms

You can also produce Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Objectives, but without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is included or gotten rid of The contact purchases A date takes place A custom field is updated with a specific worth You do not develop e-mails in ConvertKit’s Automations.

For more on how ActiveCampaign compares to ConvertKit, read my ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign comparison. The main method I construct my list is through an email course. ActiveCampaign makes it easy for me to construct my e-mail course precisely how I wish to construct it. Many online marketers develop really basic email sequences for their “e-mail courses.” A contact register, and then that contact immediately begins getting lessons.

It was easy to construct with ActiveCampaign, however impossible when I was with MailChimp. I don’t do that method. My e-mail course is manually synced with this countdown timer on my website. You need to register by Friday night, and a new course begins each Monday early morning. When I initially attempted this approach, I was on MailChimp.

Active Campaign Forms

Here’s the automation I use to welcome brand-new students to my Style Pitfalls course. There’s a couple of things going on here: The automation sends out all contacts a “welcome e-mail (Active Campaign Forms).” The automation verifies that it’s not Friday. If it’s not Friday, the automation waits up until it is Friday. At 11am, it sends out a “pump up” e-mail to get the trainees prepared for next week’s course, and encourage 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 registration 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 do not desire to send the very same e-mail to everyone on my list. I wish to send them the proper e-mail for their level of engagement – Active Campaign Forms. Active Campaign Forms. Here’s the automation I use to promote an evergreen webinar: First it confirms that they haven’t already acquired the product I pitch in the webinar.

Active Campaign Forms

Then it sends out a series of emails to get them thinking about the webinar, and to motivate them to register. If they register, they immediately struck the “Goal” towards completion of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they don’t register, they get added to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. Active Campaign Forms.

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

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

Active Campaign Forms

Here’s an automation I obtained from ActiveCampaign’s library of automations, which I utilize to tell which contacts aren’t engaging with my emails. When a contact subscribes, this automation adds a “0 days” tag. As time passes, it includes brand-new tags for 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, etc Each time they open an email, a different automation removes them from this automation, removes all of those tags, and starts this automation over again.

This automation can be frustrating initially, and this is among those cases where I want ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box option. But, due to the fact that you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, sometimes you have to develop things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has a choice to erase inactive subscribers, which I don’t suggest.

Some subscribers don’t have actually tracking switched on, so their opens aren’t tape-recorded. Others still desire to be subscribed however have been hectic. Here’s my reactivation sequence: I send out one e-mail asking if they still want to be subscribed, and briefly discussing why I keep my email list clean. In one week, I send them another e-mail (if they already clicked the verification link in the previous e-mail, they have actually currently been eliminated from the automation utilizing a separate automation) – Active Campaign Forms.

Active Campaign Forms

The automation then unsubscribes them. My e-mails likewise have a link to a kind where they can enter their email address to let me understand that they don’t have tracking made it possible for. This kind adds a tag that I utilize to filter those contacts out. Active Campaign Forms. I utilized to add this tag when they clicked on a link, but when individuals don’t have tracking on, it makes those links not work so reliably! I just send out an easy “do you still desire my e-mails?” verification.

Active Campaign Forms

You can likewise see whether the completion rate has actually increased or decreased, the length of time it takes for contacts to reach that objective, and you can browse all contacts to see who did and didn’t reach the goal. ActiveCampaign’s Message Variables is my preferred feature. It saves me a load of time and effort, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (update: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” bits”) has a comparable feature.

Let’s state you have the given name of just a few of your contacts, which is the case with my list. I normally do not need a very first name to register to my list, but in some cases I get a very first name, such as when someone purchases a product. Would not it be great to welcome your contacts by name, in the cases when you have it? You can do this, however it’s cumbersome.

I’m also filtering for generic terms included by other systems, such as a dash, or “Visitor.” If they have a given name, I state “Hey,” and then their given name. If they do not, I simply state “Hey there,” (Active Campaign Forms). By constructing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can easily alter my welcoming according to whether or not I have the contact’s very first name.

Active Campaign Forms

I developed a variable that’s just %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it appears in the e-mail. 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 allowing me utilize the very same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can quickly 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 lot of different variables here, such as the date and time of the webinar, the cost of the product, deal terms, coupon 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 change out a countdown timer. I did discuss earlier that a person of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their e-mail editing experience. I switched from MailChimp, and MailChimp takes place to have the finest email editing experience. I truly like to send out simple e-mails.

Active Campaign Forms

I’ve discovered that really difficult to do with ActiveCampaign. For awhile, I was modifying emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is rather clunky. For a very long time, I used ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was set off by a basic design template I produced. The user interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some totally free open-source project. Active Campaign Forms.

Nevertheless, including images is a little a task. You need to choose them from a file browser. There’s no drag and drop choice. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor needs that you make up entirely in HTML. The option to this, if you desire to have control over the HTML, is to edit pure HTML, with a preview on the side.

Including images to ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor is a clunky experience. You require separate text boxes for above and listed below the image. Lately I have actually started using ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor. They have some great templates, however I still want to send out the plainest email possible. They do have some plain-looking e-mails, but they have some degree of very little formatting, which you can’t remove – Active Campaign Forms.

Active Campaign Forms

But, with some changes, I can make my e-mail pretty standard. I can make it automatically take up the whole window, and I can modify the typography to be a little larger, and have a little more prominent. The most frustrating part of ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is adding images. Imagine you have actually simply typed out a terrific e-mail. Active Campaign Forms.

You can’t merely add an image to a block of text. Rather, you have to create two blocks of text: one for prior to the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any format changes, you’ll need to keep an eye on those to stay consistent. That’s something to handle when you desire to include one image, however when you want to add a number of, it becomes a huge chore.

They even have a basic mage editor where you can crop the image – Active Campaign Forms. MailChimp’s editor is the very best I have actually seen in all of the email marketing platforms I’ve attempted. You have access to the underlying code, so you can produce a truly plain email, offered you make a basic design template first.

Active Campaign Forms

MailChimp’s integrated image editor is exceptionally powerful. You can resize, crop, and include customized text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Active Campaign Forms). It would save 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 potential time cost savings.

ConvertKit’s e-mail modifying experience is very plain, however easy to navigate. Their templates are limited, which is great with me, but their email modifying experience is slightly much easier because you can create inline images, and you can produce a totally plain email, and even edit the underlying HTML. If you desire to make some fast edits to some e-mails 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 implied to or not, ActiveCampaign has disabled Command + Click from the automation editor. If I wished to change back and forth between different emails, I would intuitively be inclined open the same automation in various tabs, then open the respective e-mails from each of those tabs.

Active Campaign Forms

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

Once again, it would save me a lot of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail modifying experience on ActiveCampaign – Active Campaign Forms. But selecting an e-mail marketing platform resembles selecting a partner. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Mentioning segmentation, another reason I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has limited division alternatives.

You can integrate attributes with an AND/OR operator, and you can blend and match those groups of characteristics with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can only section by AND/OR, nevertheless MailChimp’s Pro strategy enables more advanced segmenting, for an additional $199 a month. In my look for the best email marketing platform, I saw many others, a few of which I have actually currently discussed.

Active Campaign Forms

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would most likely be using ConvertKit. Their automations are a lot easier to construct, though they aren’t as flexible as ActiveCampaign’s, and their divisions options aren’t as advanced either. They also do not have goal tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You already know that I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.