Gravityform Active Campaign

To begin developing an automation in ActiveCampaign, start 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 type 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 building the actions in your automation. Some actions that are available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send out an e-mail Alert a team member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for testing Avoid to other parts of the automation Track goals (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 information Add and remove tags Add a note Lead scoring, SMS and site messages, and Facebook Custom Audience management are all “Pro” features – Gravityform Active Campaign.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more restricted. On ConvertKit, you can activate 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 examine whether the contact has a certain tag or customized field worth.

Gravityform Active Campaign

You can likewise develop Occasions, 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 buys A date happens A custom field is updated with a particular worth 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 primary way I construct my list is through an e-mail course. ActiveCampaign makes it easy for me to develop my e-mail course exactly how I want to construct it. Numerous online marketers construct extremely simple email sequences for their “e-mail courses.” A contact register, and then that contact right away begins getting lessons.

It was simple to develop with ActiveCampaign, but difficult 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 register by Friday night, and a new course starts each Monday morning. When I first attempted this methodology, I was on MailChimp.

Gravityform Active Campaign

Here’s the automation I utilize to welcome new students to my Design Pitfalls course. There’s a few things going on here: The automation sends out all contacts a “welcome email (Gravityform Active Campaign).” The automation verifies that it’s not Friday. If it’s not Friday, the automation waits until it is Friday. At 11am, it sends a “pump up” email to get the students all set for next week’s course, and motivate 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 registration for next week’s class. They’ll get the pump up email the following Friday 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 very same email to everyone on my list. I want to send them the suitable email for their level of engagement – Gravityform Active Campaign. Gravityform Active Campaign. Here’s the automation I use to promote an evergreen webinar: First it confirms that they have not already bought the product I pitch in the webinar.

Gravityform Active Campaign

Then it sends out a series of emails to get them thinking about the webinar, and to encourage them to register. If they sign up, they instantly hit the “Goal” towards completion of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they don’t sign up, they get included to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. Gravityform Active Campaign.

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 include tags based upon whether the contact registered, attended, missed out on, or based upon the length of time they remained in the webinar. These tags can then activate 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. People who don’t open my e-mails make it harder for other emails to get to individuals who truly desire them! The “Pro” strategy of ActiveCampaign has actually lead scoring constructed in.

Gravityform Active Campaign

Here’s an automation I obtained 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 adds a “0 days” tag. As time passes, it includes brand-new tags for 7 days, 1 month, 60 days, etc Each time they open an email, a separate automation removes them from this automation, gets rid of all of those tags, and starts this automation over once again.

This automation can be overwhelming in the beginning, and this is among those cases where I wish ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box service. But, because you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, often you have to build things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an option to erase non-active customers, which I do not suggest.

Some customers don’t have actually tracking turned on, so their opens aren’t taped. Others still wish to be subscribed however have been busy. Here’s my reactivation sequence: I send out one email asking if they still desire to be subscribed, and briefly explaining why I keep my e-mail list tidy. In one week, I send them another email (if they currently clicked on the verification link in the previous email, they’ve already been gotten rid of from the automation utilizing a different automation) – Gravityform Active Campaign.

Gravityform Active Campaign

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 know that they don’t have tracking allowed. This type adds a tag that I use to filter those contacts out. Gravityform Active Campaign. I used to include this tag when they clicked on a link, however when people don’t have tracking on, it makes those links not work so reliably! I only send out a basic “do you still want my emails?” confirmation.

Gravityform Active Campaign

You can also see whether the completion rate has increased or decreased, how long it considers 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 preferred feature. It conserves me a lots of time and effort, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (update: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” bits”) has an equivalent function.

Let’s state you have the very first name of just some of your contacts, which is the case with my list. I typically don’t require a very first name to sign up to my list, but sometimes I get a very first name, such as when someone purchases a product. Would not it be great 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 then their given name. If they do not, I simply say “Hey there,” (Gravityform Active Campaign). 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.

Gravityform Active Campaign

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 save me a lot of time is by enabling me use the very same automation over and over again for my webinars, and I can rapidly change out all of the information.

Here vary 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 rate of the item, offer 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 changes.

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

Gravityform Active Campaign

I have actually discovered that very hard to do with ActiveCampaign. For awhile, I was modifying emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is rather cumbersome. For a very long time, I utilized ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was activated by a standard template I produced. The interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some free open-source job. Gravityform Active Campaign.

However, including images is a bit of a task. You need to select them from a file browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor needs that you compose completely in HTML. The alternative 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 rich text editor is a cumbersome experience. You require separate text boxes for above and listed below the image. Recently I have actually begun using ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor. They have some great templates, but I still want to send the plainest email possible. They do have some plain-looking e-mails, however they have some degree of minimal format, which you can’t eliminate – Gravityform Active Campaign.

Gravityform Active Campaign

However, with some adjustments, I can make my email quite basic. I can make it immediately use up the whole window, and I can tweak the typography to be slightly bigger, and have a little bit more prominent. The most frustrating part of ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor is including images. Imagine you’ve simply typed out a fantastic email. Gravityform Active Campaign.

You can’t merely 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’ve made any format modifications, you’ll need to watch on those to stay consistent. That’s one thing to deal with when you wish to include one image, however when you want to add a number of, it becomes a big task.

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

Gravityform Active Campaign

MailChimp’s built-in image editor is incredibly effective. You can resize, crop, and add custom text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Gravityform Active Campaign). 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 make up for that possible time savings.

ConvertKit’s email editing experience is extremely plain, however simple to browse. Their design templates are limited, which is fine with me, but their email editing experience is somewhat much easier in that you can develop inline images, and you can produce a totally plain e-mail, 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 cumbersome.

I’ll click an e-mail, and it takes me to the editor for that e-mail. Note that I can’t even Command + Click to open it in another tab. Whether they implied to or not, ActiveCampaign has handicapped Command + Click from the automation editor. If I desired to switch back and forth in between various e-mails, I would intuitively be inclined open the very same automation in numerous tabs, then open the respective e-mails from each of those tabs.

Gravityform Active Campaign

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 edit every one, or you can Command + Click to open each in a brand-new tab to more easily modify your whole sequence. Gravityform Active Campaign. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Sequences.

Once again, it would conserve me a great deal of time to have ConvertKit’s automation email modifying experience on ActiveCampaign – Gravityform Active Campaign. However selecting an e-mail marketing platform resembles picking a spouse. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Mentioning division, another reason I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has restricted segmentation alternatives.

You can integrate 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 enables more sophisticated segmenting, for an extra $199 a month. In my search for the ideal e-mail marketing platform, I saw many others, some of which I have actually currently pointed out.

Gravityform Active Campaign

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would probably be using ConvertKit. Their automations are a lot easier to develop, though they aren’t as flexible as ActiveCampaign’s, and their divisions alternatives aren’t as sophisticated either. They also don’t have objective tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You currently know that I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.