ActiveCampaign Automation Tutorial for Beginners (2022)

if you are new to marketing automation then automations in activecampaign can be a bit overwhelming it's one of these features that is actually really easy to use but it can be a bit tricky to start with because they're so flexible so in this tutorial i want to give you a taste of what's possible with automations inside activecampaign and you will also learn how you can build some smart automations by using weight actions if else conditions and also goals so first i want to give you a quick overview of where you can find automations in the automation builder itself and then we're going to create a process or an automation to deliver a lead magnet and onboard new contacts so let's just dive right in so automations you can find under the automation step and then if you already have a few automations you will get a list that looks like this so you have the name of your automation then you have like a little preview like as you can see sometimes it doesn't work but over here you see when that does work and then on the right side you can find your automation stats so you can find how many contacts are currently in the automation how many emails you have inside that automation and also if you have goals inside the automation for example here we have one then you can also find the completion rate of that goal so that you can measure how effective your automations are so let's go ahead and let's create a new automation so to do that you click this button and then you will get a list of templates that you can install if you want i usually like to start from scratch and by the way also everything that we're going to create you can also find below this video in the description and now you will also get a link that you can import these templates with and to do that you have to click this import and automation button but for now we just start from scratch and going to create a new automation so then the first thing that it will ask you is to add star trigger so a star trigger is basically an action that happens and when that action happens then the automation will start so for example we can add a star trigger that when someone subscribes to a list this automation will start but you can also for example start an automation when someone opens a specific email which could also be really cool or when they visit a page on your website or maybe when a tag is added like really lots of possibilities in here so for now i just want to start without the trigger we're going to add that later on so i click here start without a trigger and then it will ask you to add a new action to your automation so this is the first action that will happen inside your automation so this is the yeah basically the action window so what you can do you have some sending options you can send an email you can send a site message you can send an sms or you can send a notification email to yourself when something is happening inside an automation then we have conditions and workflow so you can add a wait action for a certain period of time or until conditions are met we will play around with this in a bit then we have the if else so the if else allows you to basically split the automation up in different paths based on conditions that you set we will also do this in a bit the noise split function is especially handy for a b testing there is a go to action we will also play around with that in a bit and with a go to you can basically push them on to a different part of your automation then we have goals so goals are really handy to measure the effectiveness of your automation but you can also use them to make a contact jump to a certain part in your automation and then there are some actions to start and or and another automation those can also be quite handy then there is a web hook we will not talk about that in this tutorials a little bit more advanced but it basically allows you to post contact data to url of your choice which is sometimes handy to integrate another tool and then we have perform math which allows us to make little calculations inside our automation then we have contacts so we can subscribe someone to one or more lists then there's unsubscribe which does the opposite then we can trigger a conversion we can update a contact so for example they're custom fields we can add a tag we can remove attack we can add a node and then there's also some options for facebook custom audiences and we can also adjust a context score now there are some other options like the crm salesforce or some apps so these are like all integrations so we also talk about that in this tutorial we're going to focus on sending options conditions and workflow and contacts so right now i will not do this i will just close this and then you see what a blank slate looks like so just like an empty automation so the first thing that you need to do in an automation or at least what i like doing is to give it a really clear name so we want to create a lead magnet delivery automation so i would just call this lead magnet delivery between brackets and then we want to deliver an active campaign cheat sheet so a cheat sheet and then i click save and then it's just clear to know when you have like a big list of automation that you know like hey okay this automation is to deliver lead magnets now then here on the right you will find the status so you see that right now it is in draft and then you can also set it to inactive and then when we add some things and when the automation is done we can set it to active so that so that contacts actually start running into this automation now what do we want to do the first thing that i want to do is to add a star trigger so that people go into this automation so what do we want to do is we want to create a really simple form and when people fill out that form we want to trigger this automation so let's do that really quickly so i don't want to go too deep on forms i have a separate tutorial about that in case you're curious about that but here i would call this lead magnet active campaign cheat sheet it's an inline form so that we can put it on our website and then the actions that we want to do is we want to subscribe someone to our list so i have a main list and a customer list i will choose the main list and then another thing that i want to do is i want to add a tag so here i want to say event has been sent active campaign cheat sheet so we can also trigger the automation based on form submission but if you do it based on attack then you also know in their profile when you look at it you see all the tags which are basically like little labels that we apply to a contact right then we see exactly which lead magnets they receive so this is especially handy if you have multiple lead magnets so i use this event has been said active campaign cheat sheet and then i click create and then this is the default form that you get so what i like to do is i just like to remove these titles over here because i like to do it on my website then i also want to remove the full name because i don't want someone's full name i want to have their first name so i go over to standard and then in here a drag over first name so you can just make this real nice i will not go too deep on that again i have a separate tutorial about that in case you want to watch that then on submit what we want to do is we want to open a url so i want to link them to a page on my website so i just come up with something out it's like slash welcome or something i think that's a bit nicer than getting like this little pop-up that just says thanks now then we have the actions right here subscribe to a list edit tag one thing you want to do here opt-in options what i do is i turn off the the double opt-in basically then i click save then i click integrate and then i click save and exit and then we created our form so then now when we add a trigger so we go over to tag is edit continue and then we paste the tag that we just created in here and then you can choose how often you want to run it so you can set it to run once or run multiple times so what that basically is is that when this stack is added then this automation will only run once or when this tag would be added multiple times which is a bit difficult with attack because if they already have the attack they cannot get it a second time but let's say it's an opened email then the automation will start every time an email is opened so for now i'll just leave this to once and then you can also segment the contacts entering this automation so you can for example say okay i only want to start this automation for people that are not currently inside an automation or something so for this we don't need that so we just click add start now then we have to add an action the action that we want to perform right after someone fills out the form gets the tag starts this automation is to send an email so we're going to send an email create an email then i will give this email a name so i have an example email here so i would just call this email checklist for first name and then this is the pipe symbol and then lower so that the person's name will not be capitalized at all it'll be completely in lower case let me click create and then what we have to do is we have to choose a template or build from scratch so i created a template for myself i would also really recommend you to do that if you want the template that i'm about to show you you can also import in the description below to save some time so this is the the template that i'm using it's a very simple template it looks a bit like it's an email from a friend so it's not overly designed so that it doesn't look like a promotion so this is the email that we want to use so i'll just copy this and select here and i just paste it in here and then you see that our email starts with hey first name and then we have the pipe symbol and then in title case so this will converge the first name into a title case so that the first letter of their first name is capitalized and then for people that we do not know the first name of then we just say hey hey and then we say thanks for joining the list glass you found me in this little corner of the internet from now on i will send you one valuable email every tuesday i think you'll like it but in the meanwhile here is the active campaign cheat sheet you asked for download the cheat sheet so this is going to be a link i hope it is helpful to you then we have a signature which is a message of variables like a little snippet that you can make so that you can reuse it and all of your emails also created a separate tutorial about that so you can also watch how to do that and then we have a bs any questions or do you just want to say hi hit reply i would love to hear from you and then we have another unsubscribe message variable so the first thing that we want to do is we want to insert some conditional content because we do not want to show both of this right we only want to show or hey max or hey hey if we do not know the first name so what we do we just click here duplicate content block and then i just delete this then we have that block and then i just duplicate it again and then i say here hey hey and then what i like doing i just say here okay remove and you see now that we have a content block here for text for text for text so if you have separate blocks then we can just set here boom we can say make conditional now one thing that i have to mention this feature is not available on the light plan so if you're using the light blend and unfortunately you cannot use this so here i say make conditional first name i go down here i say first name exists and then to the second one we do the opposite make conditional first name and then we say does not exist and when we hover this you can also see that it says here will show if first name exists will show if first name does not exist and then everything else will be the same and then one thing that i like to do which is also a great example is that we have this text over here thanks for joining the list glad you found me in this little corner of the internet from now and i will send you one email after tuesday so we want to only want to show this to people that are new on our list because imagine that someone is downloading multiple lead magnets multiple freebies they're already on the list for months and then they get an email like this that says thanks for joining the list so what we want to do is we want to insert some conditional content for this so what we do is just we copy this block and then we delete this and then we go up here and then we also have a separate block for this and we also want to set conditional content for that so what we want to do is we want to check if a subscriber just joins the list now how do we do that we want to set up conditional content but unfortunately it's not so easy to check here if someone just got on the list very recently so what we have to do is we have to create another little automation to add attack when they join our list so let's create a new automation and then we hear start again from scratch and then what we want to do is we want to add a trigger to this automation when someone subscribes to any list so here we click subscribes to a list continue so then we say select list any list and we only want to win this one so only the first time when they subscribe to a list then we click add start and then we want to conditions and workflow or contacts and then we want to say add attack and then what i like doing is status new contact click save so then when someone subscribes to our list they get a tag that says status new contact now then what we want to do is we also automatically want to delete that tag again so here we say wait for a specific period of time so then i would say here wait for 30 minutes and then we remove that tag so then we say here state is new contact deck to be removed and then we end the automation so the automation will also end if there is no end automation block it is more like a visual thing for yourself that you're it's like very clear where the automation ends and then i would call this function tech if people attack new contacts click save and then also what you're going to do is we want to make it active so from now on people that subscribe to any list they will get this tag for 30 minutes and then we can use this stack for conditional content inside our email so we go here tag exists status new contact so what we created now this is basically already the email so this will show hey max if we know the first name or like then the first name right or hey hey if we do not know the first name and then the email or like the intro of the email if it is a new contact if it is a new contact so if someone joins in the last 30 minutes we will say thanks for joining the list and if it's not a new contact so then the person does not have the attack then it will only say this here is the active campaign cheat sheet you asked for download the cheat sheet i hope it is helpful to you now one thing that we have to do is we have to insert a link so i have a link here of our active campaign cheat sheet so this is an actual thing if you want you can also go ahead scroll down and import this so then i select this and then here i add a link and that is our email not one more thing we make this bold just a little bit nicer right and then we go over to next and there we will find basically the settings of the email or they call it campaign summary so this is the subject that we set then we have pre-header text so if you want you can change that that's basically the little text that will show after the subject in someone's email inbox now then from who is the email from now maxwell goldenberg and hello.com then the message name so this is just a name for yourself nobody will see this then the address you have to include an address inside your email that will be in the unsubscribe message variable that i just showed you and then we have open and retracting so that we know when someone is opening our emails and also link tracking so that we can track when someone clicks that link and we will also show this in a bit or use this in a bit so it's important that you turn this on reply tracking i would leave to off because if someone replies to your email then they will get like a little warning that says like hey be careful with this email because then there's basically like um i'm not sure what to call it like an active campaign email so that the active campaign can track the emails so i would leave that to often also google analytics i would also turn that for off to now now then we click finish and then we edit our email to our automation so yeah we created the email and we added some conditional content to check if we know the first name or not and also if someone is just new on the list now then there we don't just stop because this is the power of automation of marketing automation because we can send this email and what we can do is we can send another email based on if someone opened the first email so it's really important right they're just new on our list it's really important that they open this email so what you want to do is you want to add a wait action first because we want to give people some time to open the email so we say wait until specific conditions are met and this is really cool so you can just say wait for two days or you can say wait until so wait until the following conditions are met so what we want to do is we want to wait until someone has opened checklist 4 so that's the email we just created or has clicked on a link and then we also say this now why do we check both and that's because activecampaign cannot always track if someone is opening an email because they basically add like a little pixel to the email which is an image so some providers block images and then the pixel will not load but if we would also check if someone clicked a link inside an email then we can be pretty sure if someone opened it or not or at least interacted with it so you want to set this to or and not to end because if you would set it to end and then it could not track if the email was opened but it could track that the link was clicked then it will not work because both of these conditions then have to be met so you set it to or then we click save and then what we have now so you can also say here up to two days that's also important to set because otherwise the contact will basically always wait until they open that first email and then we click save so what do we have now the form will be submitted the tag will be added this automation will start they get this email in which the checklist will be delivered and then we wait until they opened our email or click the link inside our email for up to two days so when someone opens the email or clicks the link in the email they will continue right away if they do not engage with this email so if they did not open or click then they will wait for up to two days now then what we want to do is we want to add an if else to our automation so we want to split the automation based on if someone opened it or not so what we do we just repeat the same conditions that we also set in the wait action so we say here has opened we select the email or has clicked on a link and then we also select our email and we leave this to any link and then we click add and i think this is where activecampaign really is amazing that we can do all this that we can split the automation based on if they did that action or not and then based on that perform a different action so if the contacts match the following conditions they will follow the yes path and otherwise they will follow the no path so what we want to do is we want to resend the same email if they did not open or did not click the link inside that email so then we go over to no and we click sending options send in email what we do is click create a new email and then i like to call this resend checklist um first name lower create so again this is just a name for yourself so that you can see in the automation what the email is for it is not the subject of the email and then what you can do you can either create a whole new email where it may be another text but what i just want to do i want to go over to past campaigns and i want to use the email that we just created and then maybe we want to give it a different um subject so let's call this activecampaign checklist just like that and then we click continue and then what you see because we clicked the past campaign and selected the past campaign is that we get the previous email also so then you don't have to create this whole thing again then if you want you can change maybe some sentences in there so i don't do that right now i just go over to next and then we set our campaign summary so our settings basically so we just check that it's the subject okay from okay is the address set yes open and retracting link tracking enabled yes both of these great and then by the way what is also really handy is that you get like a little spam check this active campaign will check like a few things like if you are using certain words that are known as like spam words so you see in this case that it's passed that check so that's a good thing so then we click finish and then we click save over here and then you see right now that this is edit now then we want to repeat the same thing basically so here we want to say wait until specific conditions are met so then what we want to do is has opened and what i like to do is i still like to check if they open the first email because maybe we resend the email and then in the meantime or maybe they missed the recent but they opened the first email i just add them both so here i say has clicked checklist any link or has opened our recent email or has clicked on a link recent and then we click save and click save again and then what you could do you could just like let them wait in there forever or we can say again wait for up to maybe seven days and if they then still did not open it then maybe we want to unsubscribe them from our list so what do we do is if else and then we check in has opened then the first email or has clicked on a link and then we say okay first email or has opened our recent campaign or has clicked on a link inside our recent campaign and then we click add and then we have two paths again so what i like doing i would just here end this automation if they open it and then when they open this or the first email they will continue right away they go into the if else the if else will check okay did they open any of these two emails or did they click a link is that any of these two emails if yes what i like to do is i used to use go to another action so you can also in this case use end this automation but imagine you have like some kind of follow-up here for people that opened it then you can just use the go to another action to drag it somewhere else and then if not what you can do is you can just use unsubscribe from your lists but just imagine they maybe have already been on your list for a while but they only did not open these two emails so it's again to check with the if else if they have opened any emails so then we say how would you like to split this automation has opened any campaign or email or has clicked on any campaign any link yet so it's just like a double check so it's like important with marketing automation that you think these things true like if you would unsubscribe someone here maybe they're already on your list for a while they opened other emails just not these two emails so if they have opened any campaign or have clicked any link i just end this automation and if not then we know okay this is just like a bad lead they did not open any of our emails so then we just say unsubscribe from our list and then you can unsubscribe them from all your lists or from your main list so in this case i will just click here main list click save and then i would also end this automation so that is how you deliver a lead magnet and resend it let's now take it to the next level so what i want to do is i want to add another automation and this is going to be our onboarding automation so we're going to do this really quickly we're also not going to write any emails i just want to show what you could do after you delivered that lead magnet so we created new automation or we're going to create a new automation so we start again from scratch and then we start without a trigger and then for now we're also not going to add a new action and then i'm going to call this onboarding new contacts so what is really important and what is also so cool about marketing automation is that you can send people just like newsletters or you can create this like pre-aligned customer experience of emails that will be sequenced and sent to people some people also call this like dripping emails so what we do is we add an email here and then when you say something like welcome so you have to think this a bit true obviously so here we say welcome and then you can add your email write something like really nice in there for people that are new in your list so here click save and exit for now so that's really handy so this is something that i like to do is to sometimes build out the automation first and then write and add all the emails now then what you could do is you could for example just say okay wait for two days and then we send another email so then we just say okay and i call this my story so maybe you want to tell why you do what you do how you want to help that person and then i click here save and exit it again and then you can basically create a whole sequence like this and you can also add if else again to check maybe if they open these emails if not then you can also do something again so that is basically how you can create a little onboarding sequence of emails now but how do people get into this onboarding now i'm glad you're asking so what we can do is we can start this automation from our lead magnet automation so if we go back over here before we end this automation what we can do is we can say start an automation and then we can select our onboarding automation so i think for that we quickly have to activate it to refresh the page because otherwise sometimes the automation cannot find the other automation so if that is the case then just refresh the pages and then we'll see if it shows up so we go over to conditions and workflow start an automation then we go down here and i just quickly type onboarding and then you see here that we have onboarding new contacts that's the one we just created and then we click save and then the onboarding will start but one thing that we have to check again is okay what if someone would download multiple lead magnets we do not want to start the onboarding multiple times for them right so what we could do is we can add another if else so we can say if else has entered automation onboarding so i really like to do it this way click add and then if they have entered the onboarding automation that will follow the yes path and otherwise it will follow the other path you see that these two got like mixed up here now it's like a little bug so if you have that again just refresh the page and then you'll probably see that from then it will be fine so you see here now that the order is all right so we want to start only the onboarding for people that have not entered the onboarding yet and then we click here end and then it's very important we go to we drag over to this if else so what have we created so we created a form and then when someone submits this form the attack will be added to their profile and the tag will trigger this automation then inside this automation an email will be sent with in this case the cheat sheet that email has some conditional content in it in which we check okay do we have the first name or not and are they new on our list or not then we wait until they interact it with this email so if they opened it or clicked a link in it and then after that we checked within if else okay did they open it or click the link if yes we just continue over here if not then we continue over here and if they did not interact with that first email then we will just resend the same email with a different subject and again you can also just do something different there and then we have another wait until where we wait until they interacted with the first email or they waited with the second email and then one thing that i see that we forgot to do is we have to set a time limit here as well because otherwise people will be stuck in there forever so it will wait for up to seven days so people would do interact with any of these two emails they will continue right away and if they did not interact with it they will continue after seven days and then within if else we check okay did they interact with any of those emails if not then instead of just unsubscribing them we want to double check okay did they open any campaign or any link if yes we just end the automation and then if not we unsubscribe them from our main list or you can even unsubscribe them from all your lists so we just do that to make sure that maybe they were already in other automations maybe they're in your list for a while and they just didn't open these two emails then we really do not want to subscribe these people right now if they interacted with the first email they continue over here or if they interacted with the second email they will also continue over here with the go to other action and then we just check did they enter our onboarding automation if yes we do not want to add them a second time if not we want to add them to our onboarding automation and with our onboarding automation we just sent the sequence of some emails and if you want you can also go really crazy in there with if else's and personalization so yeah i hope this helped you to understand how automations in activecampaign work like i'm really excited about this because i think it's incredibly cool what you can do with this so yeah if you like this tutorial give it a little thumbs up and also remember all the examples that i just showed you you can find in the description below so you can just import them change to your own needs maybe also play a bit around with it and if you have any questions just leave them in the comments below i will reply to every single comment

Channel: Max van Collenburg

Views: 10,723

Keywords: activecampaign automation tutorial, activecampaign automation, activecampaign automations, activecampaign tutotial, activecampaign, active campaign, active campaign automations, how to use activecampaign, activecampaign automations tutorial 2021, activecampaign automation tutorial 2021, activecampaign for beginners, marketing automation, max van collenburg

Id: c3C4fV-P0Wk

Length: 31min 41sec (1901 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020