
You can likewise see whether the conclusion rate has increased or reduced, for how long it considers contacts to reach that objective, and you can browse all contacts to see who did and didn’t reach the goal. ActiveCampaign’s Message Variables is my preferred feature. It conserves me a heap of effort and time, and neither MailChimp nor ConvertKit (update: 9/2020 ConvertKit now has ” snippets”) has an equivalent function.
Let’s say you have the first name of only some of your contacts, which holds true with my list. I generally don’t need a given name to sign up to my list, however in some cases I get a very first name, such as when someone purchases a product. Would not it be good to greet your contacts by name, in the events when you have it? You can do this, but it’s cumbersome.
I’m also filtering for generic terms included by other systems, such as a dash, or “Visitor.” If they have a first name, I say “Hey,” and then their first name. If they don’t, I simply 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 developed a variable that’s just %greeting-hey%. If I have the contact’s name, it appears in the e-mail. If I don’t have the contact’s name, it defaults to “Hey,”. Where Message Variables really conserve me a great deal of time is by allowing me utilize the same automation over and over once again for my webinars, and I can rapidly change 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, offer 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 changes or offer changes.
And here it is in an email. This message variable enables me to easily alter out a countdown timer. I did mention earlier that one of the cons of ActiveCampaign is their email modifying experience. I changed from MailChimp, and MailChimp occurs to have the finest email editing experience. I actually like to send basic emails.
I have actually discovered that extremely tough to do with ActiveCampaign. For some time, I was modifying e-mails in ActiveCampaign’s hybrid editor, which is rather clunky. For a long period of time, I utilized ActiveCampaign’s hybrid HTML and WYSIWYG editor, which was activated by a basic template I developed. The user interface for the HTML editor appears like it was pulled from some complimentary open-source project. .
However, adding images is a little a task. You need to pick them from a file web browser. There’s no drag and drop option. ActiveCampaign’s HTML e-mail editor requires that you make up entirely in HTML. The option to this, if you wish to have control over the HTML, is to edit pure HTML, with a preview on the side.
Including images to ActiveCampaign’s rich full-screen editor is a clunky experience. You require separate text boxes for above and below the image. Lately I have started using ActiveCampaign’s abundant full-screen editor. They have some nice design templates, however I still wish to send out 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 – .
However, with some modifications, I can make my email quite standard. I can make it automatically use up the whole window, and I can tweak the typography to be a little bigger, and have a bit more prominent. The most discouraging part of ActiveCampaign’s rich text editor is including images. Imagine you’ve simply typed out a fantastic email. .
You can’t merely add an image to a block of text. Rather, you need to create 2 blocks of text: one for before the image, and one for after the image. If you’ve made any format modifications, you’ll have to keep an eye on those to stay consistent. That’s something to deal with when you want to include one image, but when you wish to include several, it ends up being a big chore.
They even have a fundamental mage editor where you can crop the image – . MailChimp’s editor is the best I have actually seen in all of the email marketing platforms I’ve tried. You have access to the underlying code, so you can produce a genuinely plain email, supplied you make a basic design template initially.
MailChimp’s built-in image editor is exceptionally effective. You can resize, crop, and add custom text to your images. I miss out on MailChimp’s email-editing experience (). It would save me a little time to have that exact same experience on ActiveCampaign. However the highly-customizable automations I can develop on ActiveCampaign more than offset that potential time cost savings.
ConvertKit’s e-mail modifying experience is extremely plain, but simple to browse. Their design templates are restricted, which is fine with me, however their e-mail modifying experience is somewhat much easier because you can create inline images, and you can produce a totally plain e-mail, and even modify 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 e-mail, and it takes me to the editor for that e-mail. Note that I can’t even Command + Click to open it in another tab. Whether they meant to or not, ActiveCampaign has handicapped Command + Click from the automation editor. If I desired to switch backward and forward between different 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 “Handle Messages” area. 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 brand-new tab to more quickly edit your entire series. . Contrast that with ConvertKit’s Series.
Again, it would conserve me a lot of time to have ConvertKit’s automation e-mail editing experience on ActiveCampaign – . However selecting an email marketing platform is like selecting a partner. 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 segmentation options.
You can combine qualities with an AND/OR operator, and you can blend and match those groups of traits with another AND/OR operator. With MailChimp, you can just segment by AND/OR, however MailChimp’s Pro strategy allows more advanced segmenting, for an extra $199 a month. In my look for the perfect email marketing platform, I saw lots of others, some of which I’ve already mentioned.
ConvertKit. If I weren’t on ActiveCampaign, I would most likely be using ConvertKit. Their automations are a lot easier to develop, though they aren’t as flexible as ActiveCampaign’s, and their divisions alternatives aren’t as sophisticated either. They likewise don’t have goal tracking, or Message Variables. MailChimp. You currently know that I switched from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign.