
You can also see whether the conclusion rate has increased or reduced, for how long it considers contacts to reach that goal, and you can search 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 time and effort, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (upgrade: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” snippets”) has a similar feature.
Let’s say you have the first name of just some of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I normally do not require a given name to sign up to my list, however sometimes I get a given name, such as when somebody buys a product. Would not it be good to welcome your contacts by name, in the cases 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 state “Hey,” and then their first name. If they do not, I just say “Hey there,” (). By constructing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can easily change my greeting according to whether I have the contact’s very first name.
I created a variable that’s just %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it reveals up in the e-mail. If I do not have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables truly conserve me a lot of time is by allowing me utilize the exact same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can rapidly alter 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 rate of the item, deal terms, 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 changes.
And here it is in an e-mail. This message variable enables me to easily change out a countdown timer. I did discuss earlier that a person of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their email editing experience. I changed from MailChimp, and MailChimp takes place to have the finest e-mail modifying experience. I truly like to send simple emails.
I’ve discovered that extremely tough to do with ActiveCampaign. For awhile, I was editing e-mails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is rather clunky. For a long period of time, I used ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was set off by a basic design template I created. The user interface for the HTML editor appears like it was pulled from some totally free open-source job. .
However, adding images is a bit of a chore. You have to choose them from a file browser. There’s no drag and drop choice. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor needs that you compose completely in HTML. The alternative to this, if you desire to have control over the HTML, is to modify pure HTML, with a preview on the side.
Including 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 using ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor. They have some nice design templates, however I still want to send the simplest email possible. They do have some plain-looking emails, however they have some degree of minimal format, which you can’t remove – .
However, with some adjustments, I can make my e-mail pretty standard. I can make it automatically use up the whole window, and I can fine-tune the typography to be slightly larger, and have a little more prominent. The most discouraging part of ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is including images. Imagine you have actually just typed out a terrific email. .
You can’t just add an image to a block of text. Instead, you need to create two blocks of text: one for before the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any format changes, you’ll need to keep an eye on those to remain consistent. That’s something to deal with when you wish to include one image, however when you want to include a number of, it becomes a huge chore.
They even have a basic mage editor where you can crop the image – . MailChimp’s editor is the very best I have actually seen in all of the e-mail marketing platforms I have actually attempted. You have access to the underlying code, so you can produce a truly plain e-mail, supplied you make a basic design template first.
MailChimp’s built-in image editor is very powerful. You can resize, crop, and add custom-made text to your images. I miss MailChimp’s email-editing experience (). It would conserve me a little time to have that very same experience on ActiveCampaign. But the highly-customizable automations I can construct on ActiveCampaign more than make up for that possible time cost savings.
ConvertKit’s email editing experience is extremely plain, but simple to navigate. Their templates are restricted, which is fine with me, but their e-mail editing experience is slightly easier in that you can develop inline images, and you can develop a totally plain email, and even edit the underlying HTML. If you wish to make some fast edits to some emails in an automation, with ActiveCampaign, it’s troublesome.
I’ll click on 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 meant to or not, ActiveCampaign has disabled Command + Click from the automation editor. If I wanted to change back and forth between numerous e-mails, I would intuitively be inclined open the exact same automation in numerous tabs, then open the respective e-mails from each of those tabs.
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 edit every one, or you can Command + Click to open each in a brand-new tab to more easily modify your entire series. . Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Sequences.
Once again, it would conserve me a great deal of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail editing experience on ActiveCampaign – . However choosing an e-mail marketing platform resembles selecting a partner. ActiveCampaign offsets it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced segmentation. Mentioning division, another factor I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has restricted division options.
You can combine qualities with an AND/OR operator, and you can mix and match those groups of traits with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can just sector by AND/OR, nevertheless MailChimp’s Pro strategy enables more advanced segmenting, for an additional $199 a month. In my search for the best e-mail marketing platform, I saw numerous others, a few of which I have actually already pointed out.
ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would most likely be using ConvertKit. Their automations are much easier to develop, though they aren’t as versatile as ActiveCampaign’s, and their divisions alternatives aren’t as sophisticated either. They also don’t have goal tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You already understand that I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.