Four Great Uses for ActiveCampaign

Carl Taylor | July 1, 2019

ActiveCampaign is so much more than an email marketing tool. These are the four ways you can use it to improve your campaigns.

A visit to ActiveCampaign’s website shows that they put email marketing front and centre. A combined CRM and marketing platform, it uses automation to make running your campaigns easier.

And it works.

The platform’s ideal for anyone who’s looking to create in-depth email campaigns. It provides a host of templates and makes it possible to send amazing personalised emails. Plus, it automates so many processes that it can save you many hours of work.

As a result, you get to spend more time with your clients and working on your business.

However, this focus on email marketing has its detriments. Namely, many who use the platform don’t realise just how much potential it has. ActiveCampaign is so much more than an email marketing tool. If you use it to its fullest, it can help with everything from split testing to audience segmentation.

That’s the focus of this article. Here are four uses for ActiveCampaign that aren’t immediately obvious. Each one can help you to get more out of the platform.

Use #1 – Split Testing Your Email Automations

How many times have you created an email campaign that you thought hit the spot only to see mediocre results?

It’s a common problem. Email is such a difficult area these days as people get bombarded with information from so many sources. If your emails don’t hit the mark, they don’t get opened. And if they do get opened, they don’t get anybody to click through to your website.

You end up scratching your head and wondering why. Most email marketing platforms provide you with raw data. But they don’t help you to figure out what the problem is when your campaigns don’t go well.

ActiveCampaign is different for a simple reason. They’ve built a split testing feature into their email automations.

It’s very simple to use. Just build an email automation as you normally would. ActiveCampaign then offers you the chance to conduct automated split testing. Select this option and the platform creates a ton of variations on your original email. You’ll see subtle changes in subject lines, email content, and even when the platform sends the email.

Best of all, you receive all of the data from each email type. Over time, you build up a data pool that shows you exactly what works and what doesn’t. You may see that sending emails at a certain time leads to a higher open rate. Or, you may see that people prefer shorter subject lines over long ones. Perhaps emails that start with a question work better?

As the split test goes on, you collect more and more data. Eventually, you end up with enough information to create an email that hits all of the high spots without any of the lows.

Ultimately, that leads to higher open and conversion rates.

Use #2 – Creating Conditional Content

There’s nothing more impersonal than an email that’s clearly been sent to thousands of other people. These generic emails tend to turn people off rather than guide them further down your funnel.

Personalisation is the way to go when it comes to your email campaigns. With ActiveCampaign, you can create conditional content that builds the personal connection.

Creating conditional content involves setting parameters to alter an emails content based on various settings. For example, you could use ActiveCampaign to create tags for every product on your website. If a user demonstrates a preference for a particular product, you could use an automation to tag them with the product tag.

This would plug them into an email campaign in which they receive content based on the product they’ve show an interest in.

You can make any piece of content you create on ActiveCampaign conditional. Just click the Gear Icon and select the ‘Make Conditional’ option. You can then select an appropriate tag, which ensures only customers who share that tag see the content.

Use #3 – Lead Scoring

Every coach has hit the same problem with their leads. There are a ton that you receive that just don’t go anywhere. While your qualification process aims to weed the bad leads out, plenty still get through.

Even when you’re getting good leads, it’s easy for them to get lost in the system. You don’t know how each lead’s progressing. As a result, you can’t figure out which marketing messages you need to send out to them.

In the end, this leads to a lot of wasted time. You have to keep checking leads to figure out where they are in your funnel. Plus, you end up losing good leads due to sending the wrong content at the wrong time.

That’s without mentioning all of the time you waste on the bad leads.

ActiveCampaign’s lead scoring functionality can help you here.

You can create a scoring system based on the actions that a lead takes.

For example, you could award a point to any lead that subscribes to your newsletter. Leads that reply to your email get a further five points. If they attend an event or express interest in a product, they get a further ten points.

You assign more points to the more desirable actions.

The key here is that you get to see which leads are hottest at a glance. A lead with a ton of points has engaged with you at several touchpoints and should be the focus of your sales team. A lead that’s been in the system for a month and gained no points is a cold lead. They may get discarded or sent into a final automation that aims to make them hot.

Scoring is a great way of showing you where you need to dedicate your marketing and sales resources.

Use #4 – Handling Order Fulfilment

Whether you’re running an e-commerce store or selling coaching packages via a website, order fulfilment can be a pain.

You’ve got to keep track of who ordered and when. From there, you need to manage the picking and shipping if it’s a physical item. Plus, you have to process payment.

There may also be several third parties that you have to work with along the way. For example, you may have to communicate information to a warehouse and a logistics company to get the order processed.

All of this takes valuable time and it’s easy to miss a step when you’re doing it manually.

With ActiveCampaign, you can create an automation to handle this for you.

Link the CRM to your website and create an automation that makes a deal every time someone orders from you.

Then, you plug that customer into a deal pipeline that sends emails at various stages. These might include the following:

  • Order Placed – The customer’s ordered something from the website. They get plugged into the deal pipeline and receive an email thanking them for their order. Any suppliers also receive an email informing them of the order.
  • Picked – The order’s labelled and ready to go. The customer receives another email, possibly containing a tracking code from your supplier.
  • Shipped – The customer receives another email to let them know their purchase is on-route to them.
  • Delivered – You receive a notification when the customer confirms delivery. They also receive an automated message to confirm. This is an important step as it allows you to catch any issues in the process.

Beyond this, you can then plug the customer into a separate follow-up campaign. This could cater to aftercare, provide information about their new product, or turn them on to other products.

Clients love to receive communication and confirmations from the people they buy from. Use ActiveCampaign to handle your order processing so you can automate everything.

So Much More Than Marketing

As you can see, ActiveCampaign offers you so much more than an email marketing tool.

You can use it to determine where leads are in your funnel. You can split test your automations and use plugins to create a content management calendar.

Plus, creating deals in ActiveCampaign lets you handle a range of business processes.

Are you using ActiveCampaign to its full potential?

Follow this link to start using ActiveCampaign today.

Automation Agency can also help you to implement these tasks and so much more. Download our ActiveCampaign task ideas list today and send a task to the Concierge Service when you’re ready.

Or perhaps you’re not sure if we’re a good fit for you? If that’s the case, have a chat with our Right Fit Chatbot to see if we can help you.

About the author 

Carl Taylor

Carl Taylor is the Founder & CEO of Automation Agency. For the past 10 years Carl has been building businesses and marketing them online through the use of Sales Funnels, Email Marketing Automation, Landing Pages, and Wordpress Websites. Carl is also a #1 author and highly sought after speaker and consultant whose work has impacted thousands of businesses across various industries worldwide.

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