Active Campaign Headquarters

To start constructing an automation in ActiveCampaign, start with a “trigger.” There are a variety of ways you can trigger an automation, including: When a tag is included When a contact subscribes to a list When a contact submits a kind E-commerce and on-site options (readily available in the “Pro” plan) When the contact reaches a certain point in another automation.

From there, you can begin constructing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are offered in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send an email Inform a team member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for screening Skip to other parts of the automation Track goals (The contact can skip to the goal’s place 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 information Include and get rid of tags Add a note Lead scoring, SMS and site messages, and Facebook Custom-made Audience management are all “Pro” functions – Active Campaign Headquarters.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more limited. On ConvertKit, you can activate an automation when: The contact submits a kind The contact makes a purchase A tag is contributed to the contact A custom field is upgraded with a certain worth From there, you can produce Conditions, to inspect whether the contact has a particular tag or customized field value.

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You can also develop Events, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Goals, however without the reporting. You can track an Occasion when: A tag is added or gotten rid of The contact purchases A date happens A customized field is upgraded with a certain value You do not create e-mails in ConvertKit’s Automations.

For more on how ActiveCampaign compares to ConvertKit, read my ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign contrast. The main way I build my list is through an email course. ActiveCampaign makes it simple for me to build my email course exactly how I want to construct it. Many marketers develop very easy email series for their “email courses.” A contact register, and after that that contact immediately starts getting lessons.

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

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Here’s the automation I utilize to invite new trainees to my Style Pitfalls course. There’s a few things going on here: The automation sends all contacts a “welcome e-mail (Active Campaign Headquarters).” The automation confirms that it’s not Friday. If it’s not Friday, the automation waits till it is Friday. At 11am, it sends a “pump up” e-mail to get the trainees prepared for next week’s course, and motivate them to share it with 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 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 the exact same email to everyone on my list. I wish to send them the appropriate email for their level of engagement – Active Campaign Headquarters. Active Campaign Headquarters. Here’s the automation I utilize to promote an evergreen webinar: First it validates that they haven’t already acquired the item I pitch in the webinar.

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Then it sends out a series of e-mails to get them thinking about the webinar, and to encourage them to sign up. If they register, they right away hit the “Objective” toward completion of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they do not register, they get added to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. Active Campaign Headquarters.

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 include tags based upon whether the contact registered, 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. Individuals who don’t open my e-mails make it harder for other emails to get to the people who truly want them! The “Pro” plan of ActiveCampaign has lead scoring developed in.

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Here’s an automation I got 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 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 separate automation eliminates them from this automation, eliminates all of those tags, and begins this automation over again.

This automation can be frustrating in the beginning, and this is among those cases where I wish ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box solution. But, because you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, often you need to build things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has a choice to delete inactive customers, which I do not advise.

Some subscribers don’t have tracking turned on, so their opens aren’t taped. Others still desire to be subscribed but have been hectic. Here’s my reactivation series: I send one email asking if they still want to be subscribed, and briefly describing why I keep my e-mail list tidy. In one week, I send them another e-mail (if they already clicked the confirmation link in the previous email, they have actually already been removed from the automation using a different automation) – Active Campaign Headquarters.

Active Campaign Headquarters

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

Active Campaign Headquarters

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

Let’s state you have the given name of only some of your contacts, which is the case with my list. I typically don’t need a given name to register to my list, however sometimes I get a given name, such as when someone purchases a product. Wouldn’t it be great to greet 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 added by other systems, such as a dash, or “Guest.” If they have a first name, I state “Hey,” and then their given name. If they don’t, I just state “Hey there,” (Active Campaign Headquarters). By developing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can quickly alter my greeting according to whether or not I have the contact’s first name.

Active Campaign Headquarters

I produced a variable that’s simply %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 enabling me use the exact same automation over and over again for my webinars, and I can rapidly change 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 various variables here, such as the date and time of the webinar, the price of the item, offer terms, voucher code, and more. Each time I run a brand-new webinar, I can alter each of these variables to match any schedule modifications or offer changes.

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

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I’ve found that really difficult to do with ActiveCampaign. For awhile, I was editing e-mails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is rather clunky. For a long time, I utilized ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was activated by a standard design template I developed. The user interface for the HTML editor appears like it was pulled from some totally free open-source job. Active Campaign Headquarters.

Nevertheless, including images is a little a chore. You have to choose them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML email editor requires that you compose completely in HTML. The option to this, if you want to have control over the HTML, is to edit pure HTML, with a sneak peek 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 begun utilizing ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor. They have some nice design templates, but 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 eliminate – Active Campaign Headquarters.

Active Campaign Headquarters

But, with some modifications, I can make my email pretty standard. I can make it automatically use up the entire window, and I can modify the typography to be slightly larger, and have a bit more prominent. The most frustrating part of ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor is adding images. Picture you have actually just typed out a terrific email. Active Campaign Headquarters.

You can’t simply include an image to a block of text. Rather, you have to create 2 blocks of text: one for before the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any format changes, you’ll have to keep an eye on those to stay constant. That’s one thing to deal with when you desire to include one image, however when you wish to include numerous, it becomes a big task.

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

Active Campaign Headquarters

MailChimp’s built-in image editor is exceptionally powerful. You can resize, crop, and add customized text to your images. I miss out on MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Active Campaign Headquarters). It would save me a little time to have that same experience on ActiveCampaign. But the highly-customizable automations I can build on ActiveCampaign more than make up for that prospective time savings.

ConvertKit’s e-mail modifying experience is very plain, but simple to navigate. Their design templates are restricted, which is fine with me, however their e-mail modifying experience is a little easier because you can produce inline images, and you can create a completely plain email, and even modify the underlying HTML. If you want to make some fast edits to some e-mails in an automation, with ActiveCampaign, it’s troublesome.

I’ll click 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 backward and forward between different emails, I would intuitively be inclined open the same automation in different tabs, then open the respective e-mails from each of those tabs.

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

Once again, it would conserve me a lot of time to have ConvertKit’s automation email editing experience on ActiveCampaign – Active Campaign Headquarters. But choosing an e-mail marketing platform resembles picking a spouse. ActiveCampaign makes up for it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced division. Speaking of segmentation, another reason I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has actually limited division options.

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 sector by AND/OR, nevertheless MailChimp’s Pro strategy permits more advanced segmenting, for an extra $199 a month. In my look for the perfect email marketing platform, I saw many others, a few of which I have actually currently discussed.

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