How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

To begin developing 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 form E-commerce and on-site options (readily available in the “Pro” strategy) 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 readily available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send an email Inform an employee 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 present automation Post a webhook Subscribe or unsubscribe the contact to/from lists Update contact details Include and remove tags Add a note Lead scoring, SMS and website messages, and Facebook Customized Audience management are all “Pro” features – How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more minimal. On ConvertKit, you can set off an automation when: The contact submits a form The contact makes a purchase A tag is added to the contact A custom field is upgraded with a certain value From there, you can develop Conditions, to inspect whether the contact has a specific tag or customized field value.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

You can also develop Events, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Objectives, however without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is added or gotten rid of The contact buys A date occurs A customized field is updated with a particular worth You don’t produce emails 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 e-mail course. ActiveCampaign makes it simple for me to construct my email course precisely how I ‘d like to build it. Numerous marketers develop extremely basic e-mail series for their “e-mail courses.” A contact register, and then that contact right away starts getting lessons.

It was simple to develop with ActiveCampaign, however difficult when I was with MailChimp. I do not do that approach. My email course is manually synced with this countdown timer on my website. You need to register by Friday night, and a brand-new course begins each Monday early morning. When I initially tried this methodology, I was on MailChimp.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

Here’s the automation I utilize to welcome new trainees to my Design Pitfalls course. There’s a couple of things going on here: The automation sends out all contacts a “welcome email (How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign).” The automation verifies 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 trainees prepared for next week’s course, and motivate them to share it with pals.

The contact will start getting lessons the following Monday morning. If it is Friday and after 7pm, the contact missed 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 don’t wish to send the very same email to every person on my list. I desire to send them the suitable email for their level of engagement – How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign. How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign. Here’s the automation I utilize to promote an evergreen webinar: First it verifies that they haven’t already acquired the product I pitch in the webinar.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

Then it sends a series of e-mails to get them thinking about the webinar, and to encourage them to register. If they register, they instantly hit the “Objective” towards completion of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they do not register, they get included to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign.

This allows 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, participated in, 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 most likely that my emails go to spam or Gmail’s promotions tab. People who do not open my emails make it harder for other emails to get to the people who truly desire them! The “Pro” strategy of ActiveCampaign has lead scoring constructed in.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

Here’s an automation I received from ActiveCampaign’s library of automations, which I use to inform which contacts aren’t engaging with my e-mails. When a contact subscribes, this automation adds 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 different automation eliminates them from this automation, gets rid of 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 want ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box solution. But, since you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, in some cases you need to build things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an alternative to delete inactive subscribers, which I do not advise.

Some subscribers do not have actually tracking switched on, so their opens aren’t taped. Others still desire to be subscribed however have been busy. Here’s my reactivation series: I send out one email asking if they still wish to be subscribed, and briefly describing why I keep my e-mail list tidy. In one week, I send them another email (if they currently clicked the verification link in the previous email, they’ve currently been eliminated from the automation using a separate automation) – How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign.

How To Add A Contact List To 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 understand that they do not have tracking allowed. This form adds a tag that I use to filter those contacts out. How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign. I utilized to include this tag when they clicked on a link, but when people do not have tracking on, it makes those links not work so dependably! I only send a basic “do you still desire my e-mails?” verification.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

You can also see whether the completion rate has actually increased or decreased, the length of time it takes for 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 saves me a lots of effort and time, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (update: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” snippets”) has a comparable function.

Let’s state you have the given name of just some of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I generally don’t require a given name to sign up to my list, however sometimes I get a very first name, such as when somebody buys a product. Would not it be nice to greet your contacts by name, in the cases when you have it? You can do this, but it’s troublesome.

I’m likewise filtering for generic terms included by other systems, such as a dash, or “Visitor.” If they have a given name, I state “Hey,” and then their first name. If they do not, I simply state “Hey there,” (How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign). By developing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can easily change my greeting according to whether or not I have the contact’s very first name.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

I produced a variable that’s simply %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it reveals up in the e-mail. If I do not have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables actually conserve me a lot of time is by allowing me utilize the exact same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can rapidly change out all of the details.

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 price of the product, offer terms, coupon code, and more. Each time I run a brand-new webinar, I can change 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 quickly alter out a countdown timer. I did mention earlier that one of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their e-mail editing experience. I switched from MailChimp, and MailChimp takes place to have the finest email modifying experience. I actually like to send out basic e-mails.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

I’ve found that very hard to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, I was modifying emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is rather clunky. For a long time, I used ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was activated by a standard design template I created. The interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some free open-source job. How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign.

However, adding images is a little bit of a chore. You have to select them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop choice. ActiveCampaign’s HTML email editor needs that you compose 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.

Adding images to ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor is a cumbersome experience. You require different text boxes for above and listed below the image. Recently I have started using ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor. They have some nice 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 formatting, which you can’t get rid of – How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

But, with some adjustments, I can make my e-mail pretty standard. I can make it immediately take up the entire window, and I can modify the typography to be somewhat bigger, and have a little more leading. The most discouraging part of ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is adding images. Picture you’ve simply typed out a great e-mail. How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign.

You can’t simply include an image to a block of text. Rather, you have to create two blocks of text: one for before the image, and one for after the image. If you’ve made any format changes, you’ll need to keep an eye on those to remain constant. That’s something to deal with when you desire to add one image, however when you desire to add a number of, it becomes a huge chore.

They even have a fundamental mage editor where you can crop the image – How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign. MailChimp’s editor is the very best I’ve seen in all of the email marketing platforms I’ve attempted. You have access to the underlying code, so you can create a really plain email, provided you make a fundamental design template initially.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

MailChimp’s integrated image editor is exceptionally powerful. You can resize, crop, and include custom-made text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign). It would conserve me a little time to have that 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, however simple to navigate. Their design templates are limited, which is fine with me, however their e-mail modifying experience is somewhat easier because you can develop inline images, and you can develop a completely plain e-mail, and even edit 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 on 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 implied to or not, ActiveCampaign has disabled Command + Click from the automation editor. If I desired to switch backward and forward in between different emails, I would intuitively be inclined open the exact same automation in different tabs, then open the particular emails from each of those tabs.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

In the Automations area, there’s a “Manage Messages” location. 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 quickly edit your entire series. How To Add A Contact List To 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 – How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign. But selecting an e-mail marketing platform is like picking a partner. ActiveCampaign makes up for it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Speaking of segmentation, another reason I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has restricted division alternatives.

You can integrate qualities with an AND/OR operator, and you can blend and match those groups of characteristics with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can just section by AND/OR, nevertheless MailChimp’s Pro plan enables more sophisticated segmenting, for an additional $199 a month. In my search for the best e-mail marketing platform, I saw numerous others, some of which I have actually currently discussed.

How To Add A Contact List To Active Campaign

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 flexible as ActiveCampaign’s, and their segmentations choices aren’t as advanced either. They likewise do not have objective tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You already know that I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.