Active Campaign Saved Responses

To begin constructing an automation in ActiveCampaign, start with a “trigger.” There are a variety of ways you can set off an automation, including: When a tag is added When a contact signs up for a list When a contact sends a kind E-commerce and on-site alternatives (available in the “Pro” strategy) When the contact reaches a specific point in another automation.

From there, you can begin building the actions in your automation. Some actions that are available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send out an email Notify a team member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for testing 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 current 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 site messages, and Facebook Custom Audience management are all “Pro” features – Active Campaign Saved Responses.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more minimal. On ConvertKit, you can trigger an automation when: The contact sends a kind The contact makes a purchase A tag is added to the contact A custom-made field is upgraded with a specific value From there, you can produce Conditions, to inspect whether the contact has a certain tag or custom-made field worth.

Active Campaign Saved Responses

You can likewise produce Events, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Objectives, however without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is added or removed The contact buys A date occurs A custom-made field is upgraded 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 comparison. The main way I build my list is through an email course. ActiveCampaign makes it simple for me to develop my e-mail course exactly how I want to build it. Numerous marketers develop very basic email series for their “e-mail courses.” A contact register, and after that that contact right away starts getting lessons.

It was simple to build with ActiveCampaign, however impossible when I was with MailChimp. I do not do that technique. My e-mail course is by hand synced with this countdown timer on my site. You need to register by Friday night, and a brand-new course starts each Monday early morning. When I initially attempted this methodology, I was on MailChimp.

Active Campaign Saved Responses

Here’s the automation I use to invite brand-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 Saved Responses).” The automation confirms that it’s not Friday. If it’s not Friday, the automation waits up until it is Friday. At 11am, it sends a “pump up” email to get the students ready for next week’s course, and encourage them to share it with good friends.

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 impossible for me to automate this with MailChimp.

When I run a webinar, I do not desire to send the exact same email to every individual on my list. I desire to send them the appropriate e-mail for their level of engagement – Active Campaign Saved Responses. Active Campaign Saved Responses. Here’s the automation I utilize to promote an evergreen webinar: First it verifies that they have not currently purchased the product I pitch in the webinar.

Active Campaign Saved Responses

Then it sends a series of emails to get them interested in the webinar, and to motivate them to register. If they register, they instantly hit the “Objective” towards completion of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they don’t register, they get contributed to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. Active Campaign Saved Responses.

This allows me to tailor 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 stayed in the webinar. These tags can then trigger automations within ActiveCampaign.

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

Active Campaign Saved Responses

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 brand-new tags for 7 days, thirty days, 60 days, etc Each time they open an email, a different automation removes them from this automation, removes all of those tags, and begins this automation over again.

This automation can be overwhelming in the beginning, and this is one of those cases where I want ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box service. However, due to the fact that you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, sometimes you have to construct things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an option to erase inactive customers, which I don’t suggest.

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

Active Campaign Saved Responses

The automation then unsubscribes them. My emails also have a link to a type where they can enter their e-mail address to let me know that they don’t have tracking enabled. This kind adds a tag that I utilize to filter those contacts out. Active Campaign Saved Responses. I used to add this tag when they clicked a link, but when individuals don’t have tracking on, it makes those links not work so reliably! I just send out a simple “do you still desire my emails?” verification.

Active Campaign Saved Responses

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

Let’s state you have the very first name of just a few of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I usually don’t need a given name to register to my list, however sometimes I get a given name, such as when someone buys a product. Would not it be nice to welcome 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 added by other systems, such as a dash, or “Visitor.” If they have a given name, I say “Hey,” and then their very first name. If they don’t, I simply say “Hey there,” (Active Campaign Saved Responses). By constructing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can quickly change my greeting according to whether or not I have the contact’s given name.

Active Campaign Saved Responses

I created a variable that’s simply %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it shows up in the email. If I don’t have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables actually save me a lot of time is by enabling me use the same automation over and over again for my webinars, and I can rapidly change out all of the details.

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 cost of the item, offer terms, voucher code, and more. Each time I run a brand-new webinar, I can change each of these variables to match any schedule changes or deal modifications.

And here it is in an email. This message variable allows me to easily alter out a countdown timer. I did discuss earlier that one of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their email modifying experience. I changed from MailChimp, and MailChimp occurs to have the very best email editing experience. I truly like to send simple emails.

Active Campaign Saved Responses

I’ve discovered that extremely difficult to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, I was editing emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is quite clunky. For a very long time, I used ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was set off by a basic template I produced. The interface for the HTML editor appears like it was pulled from some complimentary open-source task. Active Campaign Saved Responses.

Nevertheless, including images is a little bit of a chore. You need to pick them from a file browser. There’s no drag and drop choice. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor requires that you compose completely 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.

Adding images to ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor is a clunky experience. You need separate text boxes for above and listed below the image. Lately I have begun using ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor. They have some great design templates, however I still wish to send out the plainest e-mail possible. They do have some plain-looking emails, however they have some degree of minimal format, which you can’t remove – Active Campaign Saved Responses.

Active Campaign Saved Responses

However, with some adjustments, I can make my e-mail pretty fundamental. I can make it automatically use up the whole 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 abundant full-screen editor is including images. Envision you’ve simply typed out a terrific e-mail. Active Campaign Saved Responses.

You can’t just include an image to a block of text. Instead, you have 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 deal with when you wish to include one image, however when you want to include a number of, it becomes a huge chore.

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

Active Campaign Saved Responses

MailChimp’s integrated image editor is very effective. You can resize, crop, and include customized text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Active Campaign Saved Responses). It would conserve me a little time to have that very 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 email editing experience is extremely plain, but simple to navigate. Their templates are restricted, which is fine with me, but their email editing experience is a little much easier because you can develop inline images, and you can create a totally plain e-mail, and even modify 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 email. 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 switch backward and forward in between different e-mails, I would intuitively be inclined open the exact same automation in different tabs, then open the particular emails from each of those tabs.

Active Campaign Saved Responses

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 edit each one, or you can Command + Click to open each in a new tab to more quickly edit your entire sequence. Active Campaign Saved Responses. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Series.

Once again, it would save me a great deal of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail editing experience on ActiveCampaign – Active Campaign Saved Responses. But choosing an email marketing platform is like selecting a partner. ActiveCampaign makes up for it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Mentioning segmentation, another reason I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has actually limited division options.

You can integrate qualities with an AND/OR operator, and you can blend and match those groups of traits with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can only section by AND/OR, nevertheless MailChimp’s Pro plan allows more advanced segmenting, for an extra $199 a month. In my search for the best e-mail marketing platform, I saw numerous others, some of which I’ve already discussed.

Active Campaign Saved Responses

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would probably be utilizing ConvertKit. Their automations are a lot easier to build, though they aren’t as versatile as ActiveCampaign’s, and their divisions alternatives aren’t as advanced either. They likewise don’t have goal tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You currently understand that I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.