Questions Within Email Active Campaign

To start developing an automation in ActiveCampaign, begin with a “trigger.” There are a variety of ways you can activate an automation, consisting of: When a tag is included When a contact subscribes to a list When a contact submits a type E-commerce and on-site alternatives (available in the “Pro” plan) When the contact reaches a certain point in another automation.

From there, you can start developing the actions in your automation. Some actions that are readily available in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send out an e-mail Notify an employee 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 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 – Questions Within Email Active Campaign.

Contrast with ConvertKit‘s Automations, which are more minimal. On ConvertKit, you can activate an automation when: The contact submits a kind The contact buys A tag is contributed to the contact A customized field is upgraded with a specific worth From there, you can create Conditions, to check whether the contact has a certain tag or custom-made field worth.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

You can also create Occasions, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Objectives, however without the reporting. You can track an Event when: A tag is included or removed The contact buys A date occurs A custom field is updated with a certain worth You don’t create emails in ConvertKit’s Automations.

For more on how ActiveCampaign compares to ConvertKit, read my ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign comparison. The primary way I construct my list is through an email course. ActiveCampaign makes it simple for me to build my email course exactly how I ‘d like to develop it. Lots of marketers build really basic e-mail sequences for their “email courses.” A contact signs up, and then that contact instantly starts getting lessons.

It was easy to build with ActiveCampaign, but 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 have to register by Friday night, and a brand-new course starts each Monday early morning. When I first tried this method, I was on MailChimp.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

Here’s the automation I use to invite new trainees to my Style Pitfalls course. There’s a couple of things going on here: The automation sends out all contacts a “welcome email (Questions Within Email 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” e-mail to get the trainees all set for next week’s course, and encourage them to share it with buddies.

The contact will begin 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 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 want to send out the same email to every person on my list. I wish to send them the proper e-mail for their level of engagement – Questions Within Email Active Campaign. Questions Within Email Active Campaign. Here’s the automation I utilize to promote an evergreen webinar: First it confirms that they haven’t currently acquired the item I pitch in the webinar.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

Then it sends a series of e-mails to get them interested in the webinar, and to motivate them to sign up. If they sign up, they right away hit 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. Questions Within Email 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 include tags based upon whether the contact signed up, attended, 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 most likely that my e-mails go to spam or Gmail’s promotions tab. People who don’t open my e-mails make it harder for other e-mails to get to the people who truly want them! The “Pro” plan of ActiveCampaign has lead scoring integrated in.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

Here’s an automation I got from ActiveCampaign’s library of automations, which I use to inform which contacts aren’t engaging with my emails. When a contact subscribes, this automation includes a “0 days” tag. As time passes, it includes new tags for 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, etc Each time they open an email, a different automation removes them from this automation, removes all of those tags, and starts this automation over once again.

This automation can be frustrating initially, and this is one of those cases where I wish ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box option. But, due to the fact that you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, sometimes you need to construct things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has an option to delete inactive subscribers, which I don’t suggest.

Some subscribers do not have tracking switched on, so their opens aren’t taped. Others still want to be subscribed however have actually 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 clean. In one week, I send them another e-mail (if they currently clicked the verification link in the previous e-mail, they have actually already been gotten rid of from the automation using a separate automation) – Questions Within Email Active Campaign.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

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

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

You can also see whether the conclusion rate has actually increased or decreased, for how long 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 favorite function. It conserves me a lot of time and effort, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (upgrade: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” bits”) has a comparable feature.

Let’s say you have the given name of just some of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I normally don’t require a very first name to sign up to my list, but often I get a given name, such as when somebody buys a product. Wouldn’t it be great to greet your contacts by name, in the events 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 after that their given name. If they don’t, I simply say “Hey there,” (Questions Within Email Active Campaign). By developing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can quickly alter my greeting according to whether or not I have the contact’s first name.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

I produced a variable that’s simply %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it shows 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 same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can rapidly alter out all of the information.

Here are variables 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 remains in an email. This message variable enables me to easily change out a countdown timer. I did point out earlier that one of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their email editing experience. I changed from MailChimp, and MailChimp takes place to have the very best email editing experience. I really like to send out easy emails.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

I’ve found that extremely tough to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, I was editing 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 basic template I developed. The interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some totally free open-source project. Questions Within Email Active Campaign.

Nevertheless, adding images is a little bit of a chore. You have to pick them from a file browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor needs that you make up completely in HTML. The option to this, if you wish to have control over the HTML, is to edit pure HTML, with a preview on the side.

Including images to ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor is a clunky experience. You require separate text boxes for above and listed below the image. Recently I have started using ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor. They have some good templates, but I still wish to send the plainest e-mail possible. They do have some plain-looking e-mails, but they have some degree of minimal format, which you can’t remove – Questions Within Email Active Campaign.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

However, with some adjustments, I can make my email pretty basic. I can make it automatically take up the entire window, and I can fine-tune the typography to be a little larger, and have a little more leading. The most discouraging part of ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor is including images. Picture you have actually simply typed out a great e-mail. Questions Within Email Active Campaign.

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

They even have a basic mage editor where you can crop the image – Questions Within Email Active Campaign. MailChimp’s editor is the finest I have actually seen in all of the email marketing platforms I’ve attempted. You have access to the underlying code, so you can develop a really plain e-mail, supplied you make a fundamental design template first.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

MailChimp’s built-in image editor is very powerful. You can resize, crop, and add custom-made text to your images. I miss out on MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Questions Within Email Active Campaign). It would save 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 modifying experience is extremely plain, however simple to navigate. Their templates are restricted, which is great with me, but their email modifying experience is a little easier in that you can produce inline images, and you can create an absolutely 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 troublesome.

I’ll click on 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 indicated to or not, ActiveCampaign has handicapped Command + Click from the automation editor. If I wished to change backward and forward between numerous 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.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

In the Automations area, there’s a “Manage 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 new tab to more quickly edit your entire sequence. Questions Within Email Active Campaign. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Sequences.

Again, it would conserve me a lot of time to have ConvertKit’s automation email editing experience on ActiveCampaign – Questions Within Email Active Campaign. But picking an email marketing platform is like selecting a spouse. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced division. Mentioning division, another reason I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has actually limited division choices.

You can combine characteristics with an AND/OR operator, and you can mix and match those groups of qualities with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can just segment by AND/OR, however MailChimp’s Pro plan permits more advanced segmenting, for an additional $199 a month. In my search for the best email marketing platform, I saw lots of others, a few of which I’ve already mentioned.

Questions Within Email Active Campaign

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