Active Campaign Gmail

To begin developing an automation in ActiveCampaign, begin with a “trigger.” There are a variety of methods you can activate an automation, consisting of: When a tag is included When a contact subscribes to a list When a contact sends a form E-commerce and on-site alternatives (offered in the “Pro” plan) When the contact reaches a specific point in another automation.

From there, you can start developing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are readily available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send out an email Inform a group member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for screening Avoid to other parts of the automation Track objectives (The contact can avoid to the goal’s location in the automation.) Start or end another automation, or end the current automation Post a webhook Subscribe or unsubscribe the contact to/from lists Update contact details Add and eliminate tags Include a note Lead scoring, SMS and site messages, and Facebook Custom Audience management are all “Pro” features – Active Campaign Gmail.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more limited. On ConvertKit, you can trigger an automation when: The contact sends a type The contact makes a purchase A tag is added to the contact A customized field is upgraded with a certain worth From there, you can create Conditions, to examine whether the contact has a specific tag or custom field worth.

Active Campaign Gmail

You can also develop Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Goals, but without the reporting. You can track an Occasion when: A tag is added or gotten rid of The contact buys A date occurs A customized field is upgraded with a particular value You do not produce emails 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 easy for me to construct my e-mail course exactly how I want to construct it. Many marketers develop extremely simple email series for their “email courses.” A contact register, and then that contact right away starts getting lessons.

It was simple to build with ActiveCampaign, however difficult when I was with MailChimp. I do not do that method. My email course is manually synced with this countdown timer on my site. You have to register by Friday night, and a new course begins each Monday morning. When I first attempted this approach, I was on MailChimp.

Active Campaign Gmail

Here’s the automation I use to invite new students to my Design Pitfalls course. There’s a couple of things going on here: The automation sends out all contacts a “welcome e-mail (Active Campaign Gmail).” The automation validates 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 prepared for next week’s course, and encourage them to share it with pals.

The contact will begin 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 impossible for me to automate this with MailChimp.

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

Active Campaign Gmail

Then it sends a series of emails to get them interested in the webinar, and to encourage them to sign up. If they register, they instantly hit the “Objective” towards the end of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they don’t sign up, they get added to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. Active Campaign Gmail.

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 registered, participated in, missed, or based upon for 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 emails 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 the individuals who actually want them! The “Pro” plan of ActiveCampaign has lead scoring developed in.

Active Campaign Gmail

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

This automation can be overwhelming at first, and this is one of those cases where I want ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box option. However, due to the fact that you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, sometimes you have to develop things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an alternative to erase non-active customers, which I don’t recommend.

Some customers do not have actually tracking turned on, so their opens aren’t taped. Others still desire to be subscribed but 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 tidy. In one week, I send them another email (if they currently clicked the confirmation link in the previous e-mail, they have actually already been removed from the automation using a different automation) – Active Campaign Gmail.

Active Campaign Gmail

The automation then unsubscribes them. My e-mails also have a link to a type where they can enter their email address to let me understand that they don’t have tracking allowed. This form adds a tag that I use to filter those contacts out. Active Campaign Gmail. I utilized to add this tag when they clicked on a link, however when individuals do not have tracking on, it makes those links not work so dependably! I just send a simple “do you still want my e-mails?” verification.

Active Campaign Gmail

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

Let’s state you have the given name of only some of your contacts, which is the case with my list. I usually don’t need a very first name to register to my list, but often I get a very first name, such as when somebody 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, however it’s cumbersome.

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

Active Campaign Gmail

I produced a variable that’s simply %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it appears in the email. If I do not have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables actually conserve me a great deal of time is by allowing me utilize the exact same automation over and over again for my webinars, and I can rapidly change out all of the details.

Here vary 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 price of the product, offer 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 changes.

And here it remains in an e-mail. This message variable enables me to easily alter out a countdown timer. I did point out earlier that a person of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their e-mail editing experience. I changed from MailChimp, and MailChimp occurs to have the very best email modifying experience. I really like to send easy emails.

Active Campaign Gmail

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 long period of time, I used ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was set off by a fundamental template I developed. The user interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some free open-source project. Active Campaign Gmail.

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

Adding images to ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is a clunky experience. You need separate text boxes for above and listed below the image. Recently I have started using ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor. They have some nice templates, however I still wish to send out the simplest e-mail possible. They do have some plain-looking e-mails, but they have some degree of minimal formatting, which you can’t get rid of – Active Campaign Gmail.

Active Campaign Gmail

However, with some adjustments, I can make my e-mail pretty basic. I can make it immediately take up the whole window, and I can modify the typography to be slightly bigger, and have a little more leading. The most discouraging part of ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is adding images. Imagine you’ve simply typed out a great e-mail. Active Campaign Gmail.

You can’t simply add an image to a block of text. Rather, you need to produce two blocks of text: one for before the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any formatting changes, you’ll have to watch on those to stay constant. That’s one thing to handle when you wish to include one image, but when you wish to include a number of, it ends up being a big chore.

They even have a fundamental mage editor where you can crop the image – Active Campaign Gmail. MailChimp’s editor is the very best I have actually seen in all of the email marketing platforms I’ve tried. You have access to the underlying code, so you can develop a genuinely plain email, supplied you make a basic template initially.

Active Campaign Gmail

MailChimp’s built-in image editor is very powerful. You can resize, crop, and include customized text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Active Campaign Gmail). It would conserve me a little time to have that exact same experience on ActiveCampaign. However the highly-customizable automations I can build on ActiveCampaign more than offset that prospective time savings.

ConvertKit’s e-mail modifying experience is really plain, however simple to navigate. Their templates are limited, which is fine with me, but their e-mail modifying experience is a little much easier in that you can develop inline images, and you can create a totally plain email, and even edit the underlying HTML. If you wish to make some fast edits to some emails in an automation, with ActiveCampaign, it’s cumbersome.

I’ll click an email, and it takes me to the editor for that e-mail. Keep in mind that I can’t even Command + Click to open it in another tab. Whether they indicated to or not, ActiveCampaign has disabled Command + Click from the automation editor. If I wished to change backward and forward between various e-mails, I would intuitively be inclined open the same automation in various tabs, then open the particular e-mails from each of those tabs.

Active Campaign Gmail

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 quickly modify your entire sequence. Active Campaign Gmail. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Series.

Once again, it would conserve me a great deal of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail modifying experience on ActiveCampaign – Active Campaign Gmail. However picking an email marketing platform is like selecting a spouse. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Speaking of division, another factor I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has actually limited division 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 section by AND/OR, nevertheless MailChimp’s Pro strategy allows more advanced segmenting, for an extra $199 a month. In my look for the perfect e-mail marketing platform, I saw lots of others, some of which I’ve already mentioned.

Active Campaign Gmail

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would most likely be utilizing ConvertKit. Their automations are much simpler to develop, though they aren’t as flexible as ActiveCampaign’s, and their segmentations options aren’t as sophisticated either. They likewise do not have goal tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You already understand that I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.