
You can also see whether the conclusion rate has actually increased or decreased, how long it takes for 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 favorite feature. It saves me a lots of time and effort, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (upgrade: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” snippets”) has a comparable feature.
Let’s state you have the first name of only a few of your contacts, which is the case with my list. I normally do not need a first name to sign up to my list, however often I get a first name, such as when someone buys a product. Wouldn’t 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 likewise filtering for generic terms included by other systems, such as a dash, or “Visitor.” If they have a first name, I state “Hey,” and after that their first name. If they don’t, I just state “Hey there,” (). By constructing a Message Variable in ActiveCampaign, I can easily change my welcoming according to whether I have the contact’s given name.
I created a variable that’s just %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it shows up in the email. If I do not have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables actually conserve me a great deal of time is by allowing me use the exact same automation over and over 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 product, deal terms, discount coupon code, and more. Each time I run a brand-new webinar, I can change each of these variables to match any schedule modifications or offer modifications.
And here it is in an email. This message variable enables me to quickly change out a countdown timer. I did mention earlier that one of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their e-mail modifying experience. I switched from MailChimp, and MailChimp happens to have the very best e-mail modifying experience. I really like to send basic emails.
I have actually found that extremely hard to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, I was editing emails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is quite clunky. For a long time, I used ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was set off by a basic template I developed. The interface for the HTML editor appears like it was pulled from some totally free open-source task. .
However, adding images is a little bit of a chore. You need to choose them from a file internet browser. There’s no drag and drop choice. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor requires that you compose completely in HTML. The option to this, if you wish to have control over the HTML, is to modify pure HTML, with a preview on the side.
Adding images to ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor is a cumbersome experience. You need different text boxes for above and listed below the image. Lately I have begun using ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor. They have some good templates, however I still wish to send the simplest email possible. They do have some plain-looking e-mails, but they have some degree of very little formatting, which you can’t remove – .
But, with some changes, I can make my e-mail quite standard. I can make it immediately use up the entire window, and I can modify the typography to be a little larger, and have a little more prominent. The most frustrating part of ActiveCampaign’s abundant text editor is adding images. Imagine you have actually simply typed out an excellent email. .
You can’t just add an image to a block of text. Instead, you need to produce two blocks of text: one for before the image, and one for after the image. If you have actually made any formatting changes, you’ll have to keep an eye on those to remain consistent. That’s one thing to handle when you wish to add one image, but when you desire to include numerous, it ends up being a huge chore.
They even have a standard mage editor where you can crop the image – . MailChimp’s editor is the finest I’ve seen in all of the email marketing platforms I have actually tried. You have access to the underlying code, so you can produce a genuinely plain email, offered you make a basic design template first.
MailChimp’s built-in image editor is extremely powerful. You can resize, crop, and include customized text to your images. I miss out on MailChimp’s email-editing experience (). It would save me a little time to have that very same experience on ActiveCampaign. However the highly-customizable automations I can build on ActiveCampaign more than offset that prospective time savings.
ConvertKit’s email editing experience is very plain, however simple to navigate. Their design templates are limited, which is great with me, but their email modifying experience is somewhat easier in that you can create inline images, and you can create a totally plain email, and even edit the underlying HTML. If you want to make some fast edits to some e-mails in an automation, with ActiveCampaign, it’s cumbersome.
I’ll click on an email, and it takes me to the editor for that email. Keep in mind 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 desired to change backward and forward between various 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.
In the Automations area, there’s a “Manage Messages” location. From here, you can see all of the messages in each of your automations. You can edit each one, or you can Command + Click to open each in a new tab to more easily modify your whole sequence. . Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Sequences.
Once again, it would save me a great deal of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail editing experience on ActiveCampaign – . However selecting an email marketing platform is like picking a partner. ActiveCampaign makes up for it with their Message Variables, more robust automations, and advanced division. Speaking of division, another factor I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign was that MailChimp has restricted segmentation options.
You can integrate characteristics with an AND/OR operator, and you can blend and match those groups of characteristics with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can only 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 many others, some of which I’ve currently mentioned.
ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would most likely be using ConvertKit. Their automations are a lot easier to build, though they aren’t as versatile as ActiveCampaign’s, and their segmentations options aren’t as sophisticated either. They likewise do not have objective tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You already understand that I changed from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.