How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

To start building an automation in ActiveCampaign, begin with a “trigger.” There are a number of methods you can set off an automation, consisting of: When a tag is added When a contact subscribes to a list When a contact submits a kind E-commerce and on-site choices (available in the “Pro” plan) When the contact reaches a specific point in another automation.

From there, you can start constructing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are offered in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send out an e-mail Notify a group member 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 existing automation Post a webhook Subscribe or unsubscribe the contact to/from lists Update contact details Add and get rid of tags Add a note Lead scoring, SMS and website messages, and Facebook Custom Audience management are all “Pro” functions – How To Use Tags In Active Campaign.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more limited. On ConvertKit, you can set off an automation when: The contact submits a kind The contact makes a purchase A tag is contributed to the contact A custom-made field is updated with a certain value From there, you can create Conditions, to inspect whether the contact has a specific tag or custom field value.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

You can likewise create Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Goals, however without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is included or removed The contact buys A date happens A custom-made field is updated with a certain worth You do not develop emails in ConvertKit’s Automations.

For more on how ActiveCampaign compares to ConvertKit, read my ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign comparison. The primary 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 want to construct it. Numerous online marketers develop really simple email sequences 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, but impossible when I was with MailChimp. I don’t do that method. My e-mail course is manually synced with this countdown timer on my website. You have to register by Friday night, and a brand-new course starts each Monday early morning. When I first tried this approach, I was on MailChimp.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

Here’s the automation I utilize to invite brand-new students 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 Use Tags In Active Campaign).” The automation verifies that it’s not Friday. If it’s not Friday, the automation waits till it is Friday. At 11am, it sends a “pump up” e-mail to get the trainees all set for next week’s course, and motivate them to share it with friends.

The contact will start 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 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 exact same email to everyone on my list. I wish to send them the suitable e-mail for their level of engagement – How To Use Tags In Active Campaign. How To Use Tags In 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 Use Tags In Active Campaign

Then it sends a series of e-mails to get them thinking about the webinar, and to encourage them to sign up. If they sign up, they right away hit the “Goal” towards the end of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they don’t register, they get contributed to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. How To Use Tags In Active Campaign.

This enables me to personalize my messaging, in other automations, based upon the contact’s engagement with the webinar. Here’s the WebinarJam integration panel: I can add tags based upon whether the contact signed up, went to, missed, or based upon for how long they remained in the webinar. These tags can then trigger automations within ActiveCampaign.

It costs me cash, and it makes it 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 e-mails to get to individuals who actually desire them! The “Pro” plan of ActiveCampaign has lead scoring integrated in.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

Here’s an automation I received from ActiveCampaign’s library of automations, which I utilize 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 adds brand-new tags for 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, etc Each time they open an e-mail, a separate automation removes them from this automation, gets rid of all of those tags, and starts 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 solution. But, due to the fact that you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, sometimes you need to construct things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has a choice to erase non-active subscribers, which I don’t suggest.

Some customers do not have tracking switched on, so their opens aren’t tape-recorded. Others still want to be subscribed but have actually been hectic. Here’s my reactivation sequence: I send one email asking if they still want 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 confirmation link in the previous email, they have actually currently been eliminated from the automation utilizing a different automation) – How To Use Tags In Active Campaign.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

The automation then unsubscribes them. My e-mails also have a link to a form where they can enter their email address to let me know that they don’t have tracking enabled. This kind includes a tag that I use to filter those contacts out. How To Use Tags In 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 just send out a basic “do you still want my e-mails?” verification.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

You can likewise see whether the completion rate has increased or reduced, the length of time it considers contacts to reach that objective, and you can search all contacts to see who did and didn’t reach the goal. ActiveCampaign’s Message Variables is my favorite feature. It saves me a lots of effort and time, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (upgrade: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” snippets”) has an equivalent feature.

Let’s say you have the first name of just a few of your contacts, which is the case with my list. I usually do not require a very first name to register to my list, but sometimes I get a given name, such as when somebody buys a product. Would not it be good to welcome your contacts by name, in the events 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 given name, I say “Hey,” and after that their very first name. If they don’t, I simply say “Hey there,” (How To Use Tags In Active Campaign). By developing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can quickly change my welcoming according to whether I have the contact’s first name.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

I developed a variable that’s merely %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it appears in the e-mail. If I do not have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables really conserve me a great deal of time is by enabling me use the very same automation over and over again for my webinars, and I can quickly 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 bunch 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 new webinar, I can change each of these variables to match any schedule modifications or deal changes.

And here it remains in an e-mail. This message variable allows me to easily alter out a countdown timer. I did mention earlier that a person of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their e-mail modifying experience. I switched from MailChimp, and MailChimp happens to have the best email editing experience. I actually like to send simple emails.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

I have actually found that really tough to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, I was editing emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is quite clunky. For a long time, I utilized ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was triggered by a fundamental design template I produced. The user interface for the HTML editor appears like it was pulled from some totally free open-source task. How To Use Tags In Active Campaign.

However, including images is a little a task. You need to pick them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop choice. ActiveCampaign’s HTML email editor requires 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 preview on the side.

Adding images to ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is a clunky experience. You require different text boxes for above and listed below the image. Lately I have begun using ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor. They have some good design templates, but I still wish to send the plainest email possible. They do have some plain-looking emails, but they have some degree of very little format, which you can’t eliminate – How To Use Tags In Active Campaign.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

However, with some modifications, I can make my email quite basic. I can make it automatically use up the whole window, and I can modify the typography to be somewhat bigger, and have a bit more leading. The most aggravating part of ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor is including images. Imagine you have actually simply typed out a great email. How To Use Tags In Active Campaign.

You can’t simply include an image to a block of text. Instead, you need to create two blocks of text: one for prior to the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any format changes, you’ll have to watch on those to stay constant. 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 big chore.

They even have a basic mage editor where you can crop the image – How To Use Tags In Active Campaign. MailChimp’s editor is the 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 produce a truly plain e-mail, provided you make a fundamental design template initially.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

MailChimp’s built-in image editor is very effective. You can resize, crop, and add customized text to your images. I miss out on MailChimp’s email-editing experience (How To Use Tags In Active Campaign). It would conserve me a little time to have that same experience on ActiveCampaign. But the highly-customizable automations I can construct on ActiveCampaign more than make up for that potential time savings.

ConvertKit’s e-mail editing experience is extremely plain, however easy to browse. Their design templates are restricted, which is great with me, however their email editing experience is slightly much easier because you can produce inline images, and you can create an absolutely plain email, and even modify the underlying HTML. If you desire to make some quick edits to some emails 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 implied to or not, ActiveCampaign has disabled Command + Click from the automation editor. If I wanted to change backward and forward between various e-mails, I would intuitively be inclined open the exact same automation in various tabs, then open the respective emails from each of those tabs.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

In the Automations area, there’s a “Handle Messages” area. 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 brand-new tab to more quickly edit your whole sequence. How To Use Tags In Active Campaign. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Sequences.

Again, it would save me a great deal of time to have ConvertKit’s automation email modifying experience on ActiveCampaign – How To Use Tags In Active Campaign. However selecting an e-mail marketing platform is like choosing a partner. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Speaking of division, another factor I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has limited division choices.

You can integrate attributes with an AND/OR operator, and you can mix and match those groups of qualities with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can only sector by AND/OR, however MailChimp’s Pro plan allows more sophisticated segmenting, for an additional $199 a month. In my search for the ideal e-mail marketing platform, I saw numerous others, some of which I have actually already mentioned.

How To Use Tags In Active Campaign

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would most likely be using ConvertKit. Their automations are much simpler to develop, though they aren’t as flexible as ActiveCampaign’s, and their segmentations alternatives aren’t as advanced either. They likewise don’t have objective tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You currently understand that I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.