Active Campaign List Import

To begin constructing an automation in ActiveCampaign, begin with a “trigger.” There are a number of methods you can activate an automation, consisting of: When a tag is added When a contact signs up for a list When a contact sends a type E-commerce and on-site options (readily 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 offered in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send out an e-mail Inform a staff 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 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 information Add and get rid of tags Include a note Lead scoring, SMS and website messages, and Facebook Customized Audience management are all “Pro” functions – Active Campaign List Import.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more limited. On ConvertKit, you can trigger an automation when: The contact sends a form The contact buys A tag is added to the contact A custom field is updated with a specific value From there, you can produce Conditions, to check whether the contact has a specific tag or custom-made field value.

Active Campaign List Import

You can also produce Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Objectives, however without the reporting. You can track an Occasion when: A tag is added or removed The contact purchases A date happens A custom-made field is updated with a particular value You do not develop emails in ConvertKit’s Automations.

For more on how ActiveCampaign compares to ConvertKit, read my ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign comparison. The main way I develop my list is through an e-mail course. ActiveCampaign makes it simple for me to build my e-mail course precisely how I ‘d like to construct it. Many marketers develop really basic email sequences for their “email courses.” A contact signs up, and then that contact immediately starts getting lessons.

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

Active Campaign List Import

Here’s the automation I use 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 e-mail (Active Campaign List Import).” The automation verifies 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 encourage them to share it with good friends.

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

When I run a webinar, I don’t desire to send the same email to every individual on my list. I wish to send them the proper email for their level of engagement – Active Campaign List Import. Active Campaign List Import. Here’s the automation I use to promote an evergreen webinar: First it verifies that they haven’t currently purchased the item I pitch in the webinar.

Active Campaign List Import

Then it sends a series of e-mails to get them thinking about the webinar, and to motivate them to sign up. If they register, they right away struck the “Objective” toward the end 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 List Import.

This enables me to personalize 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 signed up, attended, missed out on, or based upon how long they remained in the webinar. These tags can then trigger automations within ActiveCampaign.

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

Active Campaign List Import

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 e-mail, a separate automation removes them from this automation, eliminates all of those tags, and begins this automation over once again.

This automation can be overwhelming initially, and this is among those cases where I wish ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box solution. But, since you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, sometimes you have to construct things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an alternative to delete non-active subscribers, which I don’t recommend.

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

Active Campaign List Import

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

Active Campaign List Import

You can likewise see whether the completion rate has actually increased or decreased, how long it takes for 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 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 given name of just a few of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I normally don’t need a very first name to sign up to my list, but sometimes I get a given name, such as when somebody buys an item. Wouldn’t it be nice to welcome your contacts by name, in the cases when you have it? You can do this, but it’s troublesome.

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

Active Campaign List Import

I developed a variable that’s simply %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it appears in the e-mail. If I do not have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables truly save me a lot of time is by enabling me utilize the same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can quickly alter out all of the information.

Here vary 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 price of the item, deal terms, coupon code, and more. Each time I run a new webinar, I can alter each of these variables to match any schedule modifications or deal modifications.

And here it remains in an email. This message variable enables me to quickly change 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 occurs to have the very best email editing experience. I really like to send basic emails.

Active Campaign List Import

I’ve discovered that really tough to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, 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 standard template I produced. The interface for the HTML editor appears like it was pulled from some totally free open-source project. Active Campaign List Import.

However, including images is a bit of a task. You have to pick them from a file internet browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML email editor needs that you compose entirely in HTML. The alternative to this, if you want to have control over the HTML, is to modify pure HTML, with a preview on the side.

Including images to ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is a cumbersome experience. You need separate text boxes for above and listed below the image. Recently I have actually begun utilizing ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor. They have some great templates, but I still want to send the plainest e-mail possible. They do have some plain-looking emails, but they have some degree of minimal format, which you can’t eliminate – Active Campaign List Import.

Active Campaign List Import

But, with some modifications, I can make my e-mail quite standard. I can make it immediately use up the whole window, and I can modify the typography to be slightly bigger, and have a bit more leading. The most frustrating part of ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor is adding images. Picture you’ve simply typed out a great email. Active Campaign List Import.

You can’t just include an image to a block of text. Instead, you need to create 2 blocks of text: one for prior to the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any formatting changes, you’ll have to keep an eye on those to remain consistent. That’s something to handle when you want to include one image, but when you wish to include several, it becomes a big task.

They even have a standard mage editor where you can crop the image – Active Campaign List Import. 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 really plain email, offered you make a basic design template initially.

Active Campaign List Import

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

ConvertKit’s email modifying experience is very plain, but simple to browse. Their templates are restricted, which is great with me, but their e-mail modifying experience is a little much easier in that you can produce inline images, and you can produce a totally plain e-mail, and even modify the underlying HTML. If you want to make some quick edits to some emails in an automation, with ActiveCampaign, it’s cumbersome.

I’ll click on an e-mail, 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 meant to or not, ActiveCampaign has handicapped Command + Click from the automation editor. If I wished to switch back and forth in between various emails, I would intuitively be inclined open the very same automation in different tabs, then open the particular emails from each of those tabs.

Active Campaign List Import

In the Automations section, there’s a “Handle Messages” area. 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 edit your entire series. Active Campaign List Import. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Series.

Once again, it would conserve me a great deal of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail editing experience on ActiveCampaign – Active Campaign List Import. However selecting an e-mail marketing platform resembles picking a partner. ActiveCampaign makes up for it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Speaking of division, another reason I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has limited segmentation options.

You can combine attributes with an AND/OR operator, and you can mix and match those groups of traits with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can just segment by AND/OR, nevertheless MailChimp’s Pro plan enables more sophisticated segmenting, for an additional $199 a month. In my look for the perfect e-mail marketing platform, I saw lots of others, a few of which I’ve currently discussed.

Active Campaign List Import

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 segmentations 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.