Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

To start building an automation in ActiveCampaign, begin with a “trigger.” There are a number of ways you can activate an automation, including: When a tag is added When a contact subscribes to a list When a contact submits a kind E-commerce and on-site alternatives (readily available in the “Pro” strategy) When the contact reaches a certain point in another automation.

From there, you can begin developing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are offered 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 objectives (The contact can avoid 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 eliminate tags Add a note Lead scoring, SMS and site messages, and Facebook Customized Audience management are all “Pro” functions – Merge Contacts In Active Campaign.

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

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

You can likewise produce Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Goals, however without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is added or eliminated The contact buys A date happens A customized field is upgraded with a certain value You don’t create 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 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 series for their “email courses.” A contact register, and then that contact right away starts getting lessons.

It was simple to build with ActiveCampaign, but impossible when I was with MailChimp. I do not do that technique. My email course is by hand synced with this countdown timer on my site. You have to register by Friday night, and a new course starts each Monday early morning. When I first attempted this approach, I was on MailChimp.

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

Here’s the automation I utilize to welcome new students to my Style Pitfalls course. There’s a couple of things going on here: The automation sends out all contacts a “welcome email (Merge Contacts In Active Campaign).” 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” e-mail to get the trainees prepared for next week’s course, and motivate them to share it with friends.

The contact will start getting lessons the following Monday 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 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 wish to send the very same email to everyone on my list. I wish to send them the appropriate email for their level of engagement – Merge Contacts In Active Campaign. Merge Contacts In Active Campaign. Here’s the automation I use to promote an evergreen webinar: First it verifies that they have not currently purchased the item I pitch in the webinar.

Merge Contacts In 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” toward the end of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they do not sign up, they get included to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. Merge Contacts In 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 combination panel: I can add tags based upon whether the contact signed up, participated in, missed out on, or based upon how long they stayed in the webinar. These tags can then set off automations within ActiveCampaign.

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

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

Here’s an automation I got from ActiveCampaign’s library of automations, which I use to tell which contacts aren’t engaging with my emails. When a contact subscribes, this automation includes a “0 days” tag. As time passes, it includes brand-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 starts this automation over again.

This automation can be overwhelming initially, and this is one of those cases where I wish ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box option. But, because you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, sometimes you have to construct things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has a choice to delete inactive customers, which I do not advise.

Some customers do not have tracking switched on, so their opens aren’t tape-recorded. Others still desire to be subscribed but have been busy. Here’s my reactivation sequence: I send out one e-mail asking if they still want 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 confirmation link in the previous e-mail, they’ve already been eliminated from the automation utilizing a separate automation) – Merge Contacts In Active Campaign.

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

The automation then unsubscribes them. My emails likewise have a link to a kind where they can enter their e-mail address to let me know that they do not have tracking enabled. This form includes a tag that I use to filter those contacts out. Merge Contacts In Active Campaign. I used to add this tag when they clicked a link, however when people do not have tracking on, it makes those links not work so reliably! I just send out a simple “do you still want my emails?” confirmation.

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

You can also see whether the completion rate has increased or reduced, the length of time 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 effort and time, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (update: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” snippets”) has a comparable feature.

Let’s state you have the very first name of only a few of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I usually do not need a given name to register to my list, however often I get a very first name, such as when somebody buys a product. Wouldn’t it be nice to welcome your contacts by name, in the events when you have it? You can do this, but it’s cumbersome.

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 then their given name. If they do not, I just state “Hey there,” (Merge Contacts In Active Campaign). By developing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can easily alter my greeting according to whether I have the contact’s given name.

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

I developed a variable that’s just %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 truly save me a great deal of time is by allowing me utilize the exact same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can quickly 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 cost 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 changes or offer changes.

And here it is 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 editing experience. I switched from MailChimp, and MailChimp happens to have the very best e-mail editing experience. I truly like to send out basic e-mails.

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

I have actually discovered that extremely difficult to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, I was modifying emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is rather cumbersome. For a long period of time, I utilized ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was set off by a basic design template I developed. The interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some complimentary open-source project. Merge Contacts In Active Campaign.

However, including images is a little bit of a chore. You have to pick them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor requires that you make up entirely 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 full-screen editor is a clunky experience. You need separate text boxes for above and below the image. Recently I have started using ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor. They have some great design templates, however I still desire to send the simplest email possible. They do have some plain-looking e-mails, however they have some degree of minimal format, which you can’t remove – Merge Contacts In Active Campaign.

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

But, with some adjustments, I can make my e-mail pretty fundamental. I can make it instantly take up the whole window, and I can tweak the typography to be a little larger, and have a bit more leading. The most frustrating part of ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor is adding images. Imagine you’ve just typed out a great e-mail. Merge Contacts In Active Campaign.

You can’t just add an image to a block of text. Rather, you need 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 stay consistent. That’s one thing to deal with when you want to include one image, however when you wish to include numerous, it ends up being a big chore.

They even have a standard mage editor where you can crop the image – Merge Contacts In Active Campaign. 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 develop a genuinely plain e-mail, provided you make a basic template first.

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

MailChimp’s integrated image editor is incredibly effective. You can resize, crop, and add custom text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Merge Contacts In Active Campaign). 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 make up for that prospective time cost savings.

ConvertKit’s email editing experience is extremely plain, however easy to navigate. Their design templates are restricted, which is fine with me, however their e-mail modifying experience is a little easier because you can develop inline images, and you can create a totally plain e-mail, and even edit the underlying HTML. If you wish to make some fast edits to some e-mails in an automation, with ActiveCampaign, it’s cumbersome.

I’ll click 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 suggested to or not, ActiveCampaign has handicapped Command + Click from the automation editor. If I wanted to switch backward and forward in between numerous e-mails, I would intuitively be inclined open the same automation in different tabs, then open the particular emails from each of those tabs.

Merge Contacts In 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 edit every one, or you can Command + Click to open each in a brand-new tab to more easily modify your entire sequence. Merge Contacts In Active Campaign. 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 – Merge Contacts In Active Campaign. However picking an email marketing platform is like selecting a spouse. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced division. Speaking of segmentation, another reason I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has limited segmentation choices.

You can integrate attributes with an AND/OR operator, and you can mix and match those groups of traits with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can only section by AND/OR, however MailChimp’s Pro strategy permits more sophisticated segmenting, for an additional $199 a month. In my look for the ideal e-mail marketing platform, I saw numerous others, some of which I’ve already discussed.

Merge Contacts In Active Campaign

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would most likely be using 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 advanced either. They also do not have goal tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You already understand that I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.