How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

You can also see whether the conclusion rate has actually 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 function. It conserves me a lots of effort and time, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (update: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” bits”) has a comparable feature.

Let’s state you have the given name of just some of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I typically don’t require a first name to sign up to my list, however sometimes I get a given name, such as when somebody purchases a product. 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 cumbersome.

I’m likewise filtering for generic terms added by other systems, such as a dash, or “Visitor.” If they have a first name, I state “Hey,” and after that their very first name. If they do not, I simply state “Hey there,” (How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists). By constructing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can easily alter my greeting according to whether I have the contact’s given name.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

I produced a variable that’s merely %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 truly save me a great deal of time is by enabling me utilize the very same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can quickly change out all of the details.

Here vary 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 cost of the item, deal 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 modifications.

And here it is in an email. This message variable enables me to quickly change out a countdown timer. I did discuss earlier that one of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their email editing experience. I switched from MailChimp, and MailChimp takes place to have the finest email editing experience. I actually like to send easy e-mails.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

I have actually discovered that very difficult to do with ActiveCampaign. For awhile, I was modifying emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is rather clunky. For a long time, I utilized ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was activated by a basic design template I developed. The interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some complimentary open-source job. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

However, including images is a bit of a chore. You need to choose them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop alternative. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor requires that you make up totally in HTML. The option 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 rich text editor is a clunky experience. You require separate text boxes for above and below the image. Lately I have started using ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor. They have some nice templates, however I still desire to send the simplest e-mail possible. They do have some plain-looking emails, but they have some degree of minimal format, which you can’t eliminate – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

However, with some modifications, I can make my email pretty fundamental. I can make it immediately take up the whole window, and I can tweak the typography to be somewhat bigger, and have a little bit more prominent. The most frustrating part of ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor is adding images. Envision you’ve just typed out a fantastic email. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

You can’t just include an image to a block of text. Instead, you have to develop 2 blocks of text: one for prior to the image, and one for after the image. If you’ve made any formatting modifications, you’ll need 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 wish to include several, it becomes a big chore.

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

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

MailChimp’s integrated image editor is exceptionally effective. You can resize, crop, and add custom text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists). It would conserve me a little time to have that very same experience on ActiveCampaign. However the highly-customizable automations I can build on ActiveCampaign more than offset that prospective time cost savings.

ConvertKit’s email editing experience is very plain, however simple to browse. Their templates are restricted, which is fine with me, however their email editing experience is somewhat simpler because you can develop inline images, and you can develop an absolutely plain e-mail, and even modify the underlying HTML. If you desire 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 email. 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 wanted to change backward and forward in between various e-mails, I would intuitively be inclined open the same automation in different tabs, then open the particular e-mails from each of those tabs.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

In the Automations section, 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 series. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Series.

Once again, it would conserve me a lot of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail editing experience on ActiveCampaign – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. But choosing an email marketing platform is like selecting a partner. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced division. Mentioning segmentation, another reason I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has actually limited segmentation choices.

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 just sector by AND/OR, however MailChimp’s Pro strategy permits more sophisticated segmenting, for an additional $199 a month. In my search for the perfect email marketing platform, I saw numerous others, a few of which I’ve already discussed.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

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

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

To begin developing an automation in ActiveCampaign, start with a “trigger.” There are a variety of ways you can trigger an automation, consisting of: When a tag is added When a contact subscribes to a list When a contact sends a kind E-commerce and on-site choices (readily available in the “Pro” plan) When the contact reaches a particular point in another automation.

From there, you can start developing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send an email Notify a staff member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for testing Avoid to other parts of the automation Track objectives (The contact can skip to the objective’s place 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 remove tags Include a note Lead scoring, SMS and site messages, and Facebook Custom-made Audience management are all “Pro” features – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more restricted. On ConvertKit, you can set off an automation when: The contact sends a type The contact purchases A tag is included to the contact A custom field is updated with a certain value From there, you can develop Conditions, to examine whether the contact has a particular tag or customized field worth.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

You can also develop Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Goals, but without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is included or gotten rid of The contact makes a purchase A date happens A customized field is updated with a certain worth You don’t produce e-mails in ConvertKit’s Automations.

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

It was easy to construct with ActiveCampaign, but difficult when I was with MailChimp. I do not do that method. My e-mail course is by hand synced with this countdown timer on my website. You have to register by Friday night, and a brand-new course starts each Monday morning. When I first attempted this methodology, I was on MailChimp.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

Here’s the automation I use to welcome brand-new students to my Design Pitfalls course. There’s a couple of things going on here: The automation sends all contacts a “welcome email (How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists).” The automation validates 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” 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 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 same email to every person on my list. I desire to send them the appropriate email for their level of engagement – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. Here’s the automation I use to promote an evergreen webinar: First it verifies that they have not already acquired the product I pitch in the webinar.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

Then it sends out a series of emails to get them thinking about the webinar, and to encourage them to register. If they register, they immediately hit the “Goal” toward the end 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 Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

This allows 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 include tags based upon whether the contact signed up, participated in, missed out on, or based upon for how long they stayed in the webinar. These tags can then activate automations within ActiveCampaign.

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

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

Here’s an automation I received from ActiveCampaign’s library of automations, which I utilize to tell which contacts aren’t engaging with my e-mails. When a contact subscribes, this automation adds a “0 days” tag. As time passes, it adds brand-new tags for 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, etc Each time they open an email, a different automation eliminates them from this automation, eliminates all of those tags, and begins this automation over 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 solution. But, due to the fact that you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, often you have to build things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has a choice to erase non-active subscribers, which I don’t suggest.

Some customers don’t have actually tracking turned on, so their opens aren’t taped. Others still wish to be subscribed but have been busy. Here’s my reactivation series: I send one e-mail asking if they still want to be subscribed, and briefly describing why I keep my email list clean. In one week, I send them another e-mail (if they currently clicked the verification link in the previous email, they’ve already been removed from the automation using a different automation) – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

The automation then unsubscribes them. My e-mails also have a link to a kind where they can enter their e-mail address to let me understand that they don’t have tracking allowed. This type includes a tag that I utilize to filter those contacts out. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. I utilized to add this tag when they clicked a link, but when people do not have tracking on, it makes those links not work so reliably! I only send out an easy “do you still desire my e-mails?” confirmation.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

To begin developing an automation in ActiveCampaign, start with a “trigger.” There are a variety of methods you can set off an automation, consisting of: When a tag is added When a contact signs up for 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 specific point in another automation.

From there, you can begin developing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send out an e-mail Alert a staff member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for screening Avoid to other parts of the automation Track objectives (The contact can skip to the goal’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 details Add and eliminate tags Add a note Lead scoring, SMS and site messages, and Facebook Custom Audience management are all “Pro” functions – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more restricted. On ConvertKit, you can activate an automation when: The contact submits a type The contact buys A tag is included to the contact A custom-made field is updated with a certain value From there, you can develop Conditions, to examine whether the contact has a certain tag or custom-made field value.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

You can also create Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Goals, but without the reporting. You can track an Occasion when: A tag is added or eliminated The contact makes a purchase A date happens A custom-made field is upgraded with a certain worth You don’t develop 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 e-mail course. ActiveCampaign makes it easy for me to construct my e-mail course exactly how I ‘d like to construct it. Lots of marketers develop really simple email sequences for their “email courses.” A contact register, and then that contact immediately starts getting lessons.

It was easy to build with ActiveCampaign, but difficult when I was with MailChimp. I don’t do that technique. My email course is manually synced with this countdown timer on my site. You need to register by Friday night, and a new course begins each Monday morning. When I initially tried this method, I was on MailChimp.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

Here’s the automation I utilize to invite brand-new students to my Design Pitfalls course. There’s a few things going on here: The automation sends out all contacts a “welcome email (How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists).” The automation confirms that it’s not Friday. If it’s not Friday, the automation waits till it is Friday. At 11am, it sends a “pump up” email 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 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 impossible for me to automate this with MailChimp.

When I run a webinar, I don’t desire to send out the same e-mail to everyone on my list. I desire to send them the suitable e-mail for their level of engagement – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. Here’s the automation I utilize to promote an evergreen webinar: First it confirms that they haven’t already acquired the item I pitch in the webinar.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

Then it sends out a series of e-mails to get them interested in the webinar, and to motivate them to register. If they sign up, they immediately struck the “Goal” towards completion of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they do not sign up, they get added to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

This enables 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, participated in, missed, or based upon for how long they remained in the webinar. These tags can then trigger automations within ActiveCampaign.

It costs me money, and it makes it more most likely that my e-mails go to spam or Gmail’s promotions tab. Individuals who do not open my e-mails 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.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

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 adds new tags for 7 days, thirty 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 again.

This automation can be overwhelming at first, and this is among 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, in some cases you need to develop things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an alternative to erase non-active customers, which I do not recommend.

Some subscribers do not have actually tracking turned on, so their opens aren’t tape-recorded. Others still wish to be subscribed but have been busy. Here’s my reactivation series: I send out one e-mail 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 currently clicked on the verification link in the previous e-mail, they have actually currently been gotten rid of from the automation utilizing a separate automation) – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

The automation then unsubscribes them. My e-mails likewise have a link to a kind where they can enter their e-mail address to let me understand that they don’t have tracking allowed. This type adds a tag that I use to filter those contacts out. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. I utilized 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 dependably! I only send an easy “do you still want my e-mails?” confirmation.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

You can also see whether the conclusion rate has actually increased or reduced, 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 objective. ActiveCampaign’s Message Variables is my preferred function. It saves 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 say you have the given name of just some of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I generally do not need a given name to register to my list, but often I get a very first name, such as when somebody purchases an item. Wouldn’t it be nice to greet your contacts by name, in the events 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 “Guest.” If they have a given name, I say “Hey,” and after that their given name. If they don’t, I just state “Hey there,” (How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists). By building a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can quickly alter my greeting according to whether I have the contact’s given name.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

I created a variable that’s simply %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it appears in the email. If I don’t have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables truly conserve me a great deal of time is by allowing me utilize the exact same automation over and over again for my webinars, and I can quickly 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 rate of the product, deal terms, voucher code, and more. Each time I run a brand-new webinar, I can alter each of these variables to match any schedule changes or deal modifications.

And here it is in an e-mail. This message variable allows me to quickly alter out a countdown timer. I did point out earlier that one of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their email editing experience. I switched from MailChimp, and MailChimp takes place to have the very best e-mail editing experience. I really like to send simple e-mails.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

I’ve discovered that very tough to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, I was modifying emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is quite cumbersome. For a long period of time, I used ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was triggered by a basic template I produced. The user interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some free open-source task. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

Nevertheless, including images is a little a chore. You have to select them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML email editor needs that you compose totally in HTML. The alternative to this, if you want to have control over the HTML, is to edit pure HTML, with a preview on the side.

Adding images to ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor is a clunky experience. You need different text boxes for above and below the image. Recently I have started utilizing ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor. They have some great design templates, but I still want to send out the plainest e-mail possible. They do have some plain-looking emails, however they have some degree of very little formatting, which you can’t remove – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

However, with some modifications, I can make my email pretty fundamental. I can make it immediately take up the entire window, and I can tweak the typography to be slightly bigger, and have a bit more prominent. The most frustrating part of ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor is adding images. Imagine you have actually just typed out an excellent e-mail. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists.

You can’t merely add an image to a block of text. Rather, you have to produce 2 blocks of text: one for before the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any formatting changes, you’ll need to keep an eye on those to stay constant. That’s something to handle when you wish to include one image, however when you desire to add numerous, it ends up being a big task.

They even have a fundamental mage editor where you can crop the image – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. MailChimp’s editor is the finest I’ve seen in all of the e-mail marketing platforms I have actually attempted. You have access to the underlying code, so you can produce a genuinely plain e-mail, provided you make a standard design template initially.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

MailChimp’s built-in image editor is very effective. You can resize, crop, and include customized text to your images. I miss out on MailChimp’s email-editing experience (How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists). It would save me a little time to have that exact same experience on ActiveCampaign. But the highly-customizable automations I can construct on ActiveCampaign more than offset that possible time cost savings.

ConvertKit’s e-mail editing experience is really plain, however simple to browse. Their design templates are restricted, which is great with me, however their e-mail editing experience is slightly much easier in that you can develop inline images, and you can produce an absolutely plain email, and even edit the underlying HTML. If you wish to make some quick 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 e-mail. Note that I can’t even Command + Click to open it in another tab. Whether they indicated to or not, ActiveCampaign has handicapped Command + Click from the automation editor. If I wished to switch back and forth in between numerous e-mails, I would intuitively be inclined open the very same automation in different tabs, then open the respective emails from each of those tabs.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

In the Automations section, there’s a “Manage Messages” area. 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 brand-new tab to more easily edit your whole sequence. How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Series.

Again, it would conserve me a lot of time to have ConvertKit’s automation email editing experience on ActiveCampaign – How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists. However choosing an email marketing platform is like choosing a partner. ActiveCampaign offsets 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 restricted division options.

You can combine characteristics with an AND/OR operator, and you can blend and match those groups of traits with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can just section by AND/OR, nevertheless MailChimp’s Pro strategy allows more sophisticated segmenting, for an additional $199 a month. In my look for the ideal e-mail marketing platform, I saw many others, a few of which I’ve already discussed.

How To Use Active Campaign Auto Lists

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 divisions choices aren’t as sophisticated either. They likewise don’t have objective tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You currently understand that I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.