Acuity Active Campaign

To begin constructing an automation in ActiveCampaign, start with a “trigger.” There are a number of methods you can set off an automation, including: When a tag is added When a contact signs up for a list When a contact submits a form 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 constructing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are readily available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send an email Inform a staff member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for screening Skip to other parts of the automation Track objectives (The contact can skip 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 Include and get rid of tags Add a note Lead scoring, SMS and website messages, and Facebook Custom Audience management are all “Pro” features – Acuity Active Campaign.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more limited. On ConvertKit, you can trigger an automation when: The contact submits a kind The contact buys A tag is contributed to the contact A custom-made field is upgraded with a particular worth From there, you can produce Conditions, to check whether the contact has a specific tag or custom-made field worth.

Acuity Active Campaign

You can also create Events, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Goals, but without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is included or eliminated The contact makes a purchase A date takes place A custom field is updated with a certain value You do not create emails in ConvertKit’s Automations.

For more on how ActiveCampaign compares to ConvertKit, read my ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign comparison. The main way I construct my list is through an email course. ActiveCampaign makes it easy for me to construct my email course precisely how I wish to construct it. Numerous online marketers construct very simple e-mail sequences for their “e-mail courses.” A contact register, and then that contact instantly starts getting lessons.

It was simple to develop with ActiveCampaign, but impossible when I was with MailChimp. I don’t do that method. My email course is by hand synced with this countdown timer on my site. You need to sign up by Friday night, and a new course begins each Monday morning. When I initially attempted this approach, I was on MailChimp.

Acuity Active Campaign

Here’s the automation I utilize 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 email (Acuity Active Campaign).” The automation validates that it’s not Friday. If it’s not Friday, the automation waits until it is Friday. At 11am, it sends a “pump up” e-mail to get the students prepared for next week’s course, and motivate them to share it with good friends.

The contact will start getting lessons the following Monday morning. If it is Friday and after 7pm, the contact missed out on 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 wish to send the exact same e-mail to every individual on my list. I desire to send them the proper email for their level of engagement – Acuity Active Campaign. Acuity Active Campaign. Here’s the automation I utilize to promote an evergreen webinar: First it confirms that they have not already bought the item I pitch in the webinar.

Acuity Active Campaign

Then it sends a series of emails to get them thinking about the webinar, and to encourage them to sign up. If they register, they right away hit the “Goal” 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. Acuity Active Campaign.

This enables 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, attended, missed out on, or based upon how long they remained in the webinar. These tags can then set off automations within ActiveCampaign.

It costs me money, and it makes it more 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 truly want them! The “Pro” strategy of ActiveCampaign has actually lead scoring built in.

Acuity Active Campaign

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

This automation can be frustrating at first, 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 need to build things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an alternative to delete inactive subscribers, which I don’t recommend.

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

Acuity Active Campaign

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 know that they do not have tracking enabled. This kind includes a tag that I use to filter those contacts out. Acuity Active Campaign. I used to include this tag when they clicked on a link, however when people do not have tracking on, it makes those links not work so dependably! I only send out a simple “do you still want my emails?” verification.

Acuity Active Campaign

You can also see whether the completion rate has increased or decreased, how long it considers contacts to reach that objective, 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 conserves 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 say you have the given name of just some of your contacts, which is the case with my list. I usually do not require a given name to sign up to my list, however sometimes I get a first 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, however it’s cumbersome.

I’m also filtering for generic terms added by other systems, such as a dash, or “Visitor.” If they have a first name, I say “Hey,” and then their given name. If they don’t, I just state “Hey there,” (Acuity Active Campaign). By developing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can quickly change my greeting according to whether or not I have the contact’s given name.

Acuity Active Campaign

I produced a variable that’s merely %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 really save me a great deal of time is by enabling me utilize the same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can quickly 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 bunch of different variables here, such as the date and time of the webinar, the price of the item, offer terms, discount coupon code, and more. Each time I run a new webinar, I can change each of these variables to match any schedule changes or deal changes.

And here it is in an email. This message variable allows 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 changed from MailChimp, and MailChimp occurs to have the best email modifying experience. I actually like to send out simple e-mails.

Acuity Active Campaign

I have actually discovered that extremely hard to do with ActiveCampaign. For awhile, I was modifying e-mails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is quite cumbersome. For a very long time, I utilized ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was set off by a fundamental template I produced. The user interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some totally free open-source project. Acuity Active Campaign.

However, adding images is a bit of a chore. You need to select them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML email editor requires that you make up entirely in HTML. The alternative to this, if you wish to have control over the HTML, is to modify pure HTML, with a preview on the side.

Including images to ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor is a cumbersome experience. You need separate text boxes for above and below the image. Recently I have actually begun using ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor. They have some good design templates, but I still desire to send the simplest e-mail possible. They do have some plain-looking e-mails, however they have some degree of minimal format, which you can’t get rid of – Acuity Active Campaign.

Acuity Active Campaign

But, with some modifications, I can make my e-mail quite basic. I can make it instantly take up the entire window, and I can modify the typography to be somewhat larger, and have a little bit more prominent. The most aggravating part of ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor is including images. Picture you have actually simply typed out an excellent e-mail. Acuity Active Campaign.

You can’t merely add an image to a block of text. Instead, you have to create two blocks of text: one for before the image, and one for after the image. If you’ve made any formatting modifications, you’ll need to watch on those to remain constant. That’s something to handle when you want to include one image, but when you want to include numerous, it becomes a huge task.

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

Acuity Active Campaign

MailChimp’s integrated image editor is very effective. You can resize, crop, and include custom text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Acuity Active Campaign). It would save me a little time to have that very same experience on ActiveCampaign. However 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 really plain, but easy to browse. Their templates are restricted, which is fine with me, but their email modifying experience is slightly simpler in that you can produce inline images, and you can produce an absolutely plain e-mail, 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. Keep in mind 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 desired to switch backward and forward in between numerous e-mails, I would intuitively be inclined open the very same automation in various tabs, then open the particular emails from each of those tabs.

Acuity Active Campaign

In the Automations section, there’s a “Manage 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 modify your entire sequence. Acuity Active Campaign. 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 – Acuity Active Campaign. However selecting an email marketing platform resembles picking a spouse. ActiveCampaign makes up for it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced division. Mentioning division, another reason I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has actually limited segmentation alternatives.

You can combine qualities 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 sector by AND/OR, nevertheless MailChimp’s Pro plan permits more advanced segmenting, for an extra $199 a month. In my search for the ideal e-mail marketing platform, I saw numerous others, some of which I’ve currently mentioned.

Acuity Active Campaign

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would probably be using 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 sophisticated either. They likewise don’t have goal tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You already know that I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.