Setting Up Active Campaign

To start constructing an automation in ActiveCampaign, start with a “trigger.” There are a variety of ways you can activate an automation, consisting of: When a tag is added When a contact registers for a list When a contact sends a form E-commerce and on-site options (offered in the “Pro” strategy) When the contact reaches a certain point in another automation.

From there, you can start building the actions in your automation. Some actions that are offered in ActiveCampaign’s automations are: Send an e-mail Inform a group member Wait conditions If/then conditionals Split traffic for screening Skip to other parts of the automation Track goals (The contact can avoid to the goal’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 information Include and remove tags Add a note Lead scoring, SMS and website messages, and Facebook Customized Audience management are all “Pro” features – Setting Up 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 makes a purchase A tag is included to the contact A custom-made field is updated with a particular worth From there, you can create Conditions, to examine whether the contact has a specific tag or customized field worth.

Setting Up Active Campaign

You can also develop Events, which are a bit like ActiveCampaign’s Objectives, however without the reporting. You can track an Occasion when: A tag is included or removed The contact buys A date happens A customized 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 contrast. The primary way I construct my list is through an email course. ActiveCampaign makes it simple for me to build my e-mail course precisely how I ‘d like to construct it. Many online marketers construct very simple e-mail series for their “email courses.” A contact signs up, and after that that contact instantly begins getting lessons.

It was simple to construct with ActiveCampaign, however impossible when I was with MailChimp. I do not do that method. My e-mail course is manually synced with this countdown timer on my site. You have to register by Friday night, and a new course begins each Monday morning. When I initially attempted this methodology, I was on MailChimp.

Setting Up Active Campaign

Here’s the automation I utilize to invite brand-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 (Setting Up 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 out a “pump up” e-mail to get the trainees ready for next week’s course, and encourage 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 out on enrollment for next week’s class. They’ll get the pump up email 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 do not wish to send the very same email to everyone on my list. I want to send them the proper email for their level of engagement – Setting Up Active Campaign. Setting Up Active Campaign. Here’s the automation I utilize to promote an evergreen webinar: First it validates that they haven’t currently acquired the item I pitch in the webinar.

Setting Up 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 instantly struck the “Objective” toward the end of the webinar, and the automation ends. If they don’t register, they get added to an automation promoting a rebroadcast of the webinar. Setting Up 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, participated in, missed out on, or based upon how long they remained in the webinar. These tags can then activate automations within ActiveCampaign.

It costs me cash, and it makes it more most likely that my emails go to spam or Gmail’s promos tab. People 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 lead scoring integrated in.

Setting Up Active Campaign

Here’s an automation I obtained 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 adds a “0 days” tag. As time passes, it includes brand-new tags for 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, etc Each time they open an email, a separate automation eliminates them from this automation, gets rid of all of those tags, and begins this automation over again.

This automation can be frustrating initially, and this is among those cases where I wish ActiveCampaign had a more out-of-the-box solution. However, due to the fact that you can do anything with ActiveCampaign, in some cases you have to build things from scratch. ActiveCampaign has a choice to delete non-active customers, which I don’t suggest.

Some subscribers do not have tracking turned on, so their opens aren’t tape-recorded. Others still desire to be subscribed however have been hectic. Here’s my reactivation series: I send out one email asking if they still wish to be subscribed, and briefly discussing why I keep my e-mail list clean. In one week, I send them another e-mail (if they already clicked on the confirmation link in the previous email, they have actually already been gotten rid of from the automation utilizing a different automation) – Setting Up Active Campaign.

Setting Up Active Campaign

The automation then unsubscribes them. My emails also have a link to a kind where they can enter their email address to let me understand that they don’t have tracking made it possible for. This kind adds a tag that I utilize to filter those contacts out. Setting Up Active Campaign. I utilized to add this tag when they clicked a link, however when people don’t have tracking on, it makes those links not work so dependably! I only send a basic “do you still want my emails?” verification.

Setting Up Active Campaign

You can also see whether the completion rate has increased or decreased, the length of time 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 preferred function. It conserves me a lots of time and effort, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (upgrade: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” snippets”) has an equivalent function.

Let’s say you have the very first name of only a few of your contacts, which is the case with my list. I usually don’t require a given name to sign up to my list, but often I get a very first name, such as when somebody purchases a product. Would not it be good to welcome your contacts by name, in the events when you have it? You can do this, but it’s cumbersome.

I’m likewise filtering for generic terms included by other systems, such as a dash, or “Guest.” If they have a given name, I state “Hey,” and then their given name. If they don’t, I simply state “Hey there,” (Setting Up Active Campaign). By developing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can quickly alter my greeting according to whether I have the contact’s given name.

Setting Up Active Campaign

I created a variable that’s merely %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it reveals up in the e-mail. If I don’t have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables actually conserve me a lot of time is by enabling me use the exact same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can quickly alter 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 cost of the item, deal terms, coupon code, and more. Each time I run a brand-new webinar, I can change 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 easily change out a countdown timer. I did mention earlier that one of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their email editing experience. I changed from MailChimp, and MailChimp happens to have the very best e-mail editing experience. I truly like to send simple emails.

Setting Up Active Campaign

I’ve found that very tough to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, I was modifying 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 standard template I developed. The interface for the HTML editor looks like it was pulled from some totally free open-source job. Setting Up Active Campaign.

However, adding images is a little bit of a chore. You need to pick them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML email editor needs that you make up totally in HTML. The alternative to this, if you wish to have control over the HTML, is to modify pure HTML, with a sneak peek on the side.

Adding images to ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor is a clunky experience. You require different text boxes for above and below the image. Lately I have begun utilizing ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor. They have some great design templates, however I still wish to send the simplest email possible. They do have some plain-looking emails, but they have some degree of very little formatting, which you can’t get rid of – Setting Up Active Campaign.

Setting Up Active Campaign

However, with some changes, I can make my e-mail quite fundamental. I can make it immediately take up the entire window, and I can tweak the typography to be a little bigger, and have a bit more prominent. The most aggravating part of ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor is including images. Imagine you have actually just typed out a great e-mail. Setting Up 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 prior to the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any format modifications, you’ll need to keep an eye on those to remain consistent. That’s something to deal with when you wish to add one image, but when you desire to include a number of, it ends up being a huge task.

They even have a basic mage editor where you can crop the image – Setting Up Active Campaign. MailChimp’s editor is the best I have actually seen in all of the e-mail marketing platforms I have actually tried. You have access to the underlying code, so you can create a really plain e-mail, supplied you make a standard design template initially.

Setting Up Active Campaign

MailChimp’s integrated image editor is incredibly powerful. You can resize, crop, and add customized text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (Setting Up 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 offset that potential time cost savings.

ConvertKit’s e-mail editing experience is very plain, however simple to browse. Their templates are restricted, which is great with me, but their email editing experience is somewhat simpler because you can produce inline images, and you can create an absolutely plain e-mail, and even modify the underlying HTML. If you want to make some quick edits to some emails in an automation, with ActiveCampaign, it’s troublesome.

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 indicated to or not, ActiveCampaign has handicapped Command + Click from the automation editor. If I desired to change backward and forward 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.

Setting Up Active Campaign

In the Automations area, there’s a “Handle 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 edit your whole sequence. Setting Up Active Campaign. Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Sequences.

Once again, it would save me a great deal of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail modifying experience on ActiveCampaign – Setting Up Active Campaign. However picking an e-mail marketing platform is like selecting a spouse. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced division. Mentioning segmentation, another factor I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has limited division choices.

You can integrate characteristics with an AND/OR operator, and you can blend and match those groups of qualities with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can just section by AND/OR, however MailChimp’s Pro strategy permits more advanced segmenting, for an extra $199 a month. In my look for the perfect e-mail marketing platform, I saw numerous others, a few of which I’ve already pointed out.

Setting Up Active Campaign

ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would probably be utilizing ConvertKit. Their automations are much simpler to build, though they aren’t as flexible as ActiveCampaign’s, and their segmentations options aren’t as advanced either. They likewise do not have goal tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You already understand that I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.