How To : Send Emails With ActiveCampaign – For Beginners
Emailing all contacts one by one would send me to an asylum!
There are limits to how many people you can email at once from your Gmail, Yahoo or…i dunno AOL inbox.
If you want to run a successful business, you know that time is money, and being able to email market to new and past customers is crucial.
Being in a ‘chain gang’ by emailing them one by one is a recipe for disaster.
Let’s dive into how to use ActiveCampagin for Email marketing.
In this video I will show you how to add contacts to your ActiveCampaign account, how to Draft an Email from scratch, and how to then properly send it.
I’ll cover best practices so anyone at any level can dive in.
You’ll need to have an ActiveCampaign account handy, so if you need one, I have a link here.
Before we jump in, we need to do a bit of groundwork.
Let’s call this Segmentation.
Say you have 100 email addresses that you have. Who are they? Are the contacts, are they customers? Do you have their complete first and last names? Phone numbers? Do you know what they want to be emailed about? This is all crucial information, and let me tell you why. When we add these people into active campaign, we need to make sure they are properly identified with tags.
Using these tags, we can make sure the right email is going to the right person. In a later video, I’ll show how we can ensure new contacts are tagged automatically, but let’s keep it simple for now
First, let’s add all your current email addresses to a spreadsheet. Here is the example I will be using, you can download it here. I’m going to jump to my computer, so we’ll do it together.
We have First Name, Last Name, email address, and phone number. I have a few tabs too, such as contacts and customers. After filling out these sheets, we export them as CSV files, and save them to a desktop.
Jump into Active Campaign, we first create two tags, one for people who where on the ‘contacts’ tab and one for the customer tab. We then go to ‘Contacts’ tab in ActiveCampaign, and click on the ‘IMPORT’ button. Once the new page loads, we will click the blue Import From File button.
We select our CSV file from the drop down, and in the next page, we select the master contacts lsit, the tag they will be applied with (contacts in this example) and I also check the ‘update current contacts; to ensure I never make any duplicates.
I then click import.
For any other tabs, simply repeat the process. We mainly want to make sure we have all the email contacts into Active campaign properly formatted and with some basic segmentation, so you can easily email just customers or just contacts. With that said, let’s make an Email
Creating and Sending a Camapgin Email with ActiveCampagin
Click the email button, and then Head to Campaigns. Click on the blue Create A Campaign Button.
You’ll need to name this Email. I typically recommend a naming convention of Subject Line, Date it will be Sent, and if possible, to who.
Down here select ‘Standard.’ I personally use the rest of these options in the automation builder. We are just going to make a simple campaign for now to get up and running.
After clicking Next, We need to select our master contact list. When we do, using the menu below, we can select the tag to create the segment.
After doing so, let’s click Next
When it comes to designing an email, we are given a few options. HTML i a completely blank slate, you need to have knowledge of coding an email from the ground up
Text only can be useful if deliverability is crucial. Text only emails are very basic, no images, not text formatting, just text.
This does help with getting into the right tab when an email sends, so you may typically see these used for transactional emails.
The less ‘stuff’, like images, formatted text and hyperlinks, the better.
Thats a whole other can of worms that I’ll cover in another video.
Typically, I use one of the designers. Let me show you both.
Design An Email In ActiveCampaign
After selecting, you can start completely scratch, or use a template. Using the Newsletter template, we see we need to add a subject line.
This is the first text a person will see in their inbox, so make sure it is eye-catching and draws interest.
If I am just drafting an email, I typically just use NA. Just make sure to change it.
So, the email is pretty plain. Let’s change it.
On the right hand side, we have structures and blocks. Structures come first, then blocks gone inside the structures.
For example, this structure will place a block in the middle, while the evenly divided structure will have to blocks side by side.
When it comes to blocks, I typically just use image and Text, and sometimes a well-placed button. To save time, I typically format one of each.
For example, I’ll format this button to be purple, and to have a larger font. If I want to use this button elsewhere, I simply duplicate it. It makes creating emails a lot faster.
Same with Text blocks. I’ll copy/paste in my email contact, as shown, then i’ll format it. If I need more text in the email, i’ll duplicate it.
To make this even easier, I’ll save the structure, the module so i can easily use it agian in other emails.
Let me speed through this real quick.
I added my company heading, image, some text and the button links out to a YouTube video.
Let’s look at the classic designer
Classic Designer in ActiveCampaign
I’ve been using ActiveCamapgin for 5 years, so I’m pretty familiar with it. Like last time, i’ll select the newsletter template as an example.
The main difference between Classic and Current is that there is no ‘structure’ tab, it is right in the blocks.
I input my content the same way, I format my buttons the same, I even duplicate and save them roughly the same way.
If you are using the classic builder, and you want to achieve the ‘column effect’, I recommend adding a block in, and placing it beside a current block.
Make sure that the green line goes smaller, if the green line is full width, it will make the entire email two columns.
Email Summary
Ok great, so we have an email drafted….now what!
On the summary Tab, this is where we do a few final checks.
First, We need to update the subject and preview lines. I also make sure the email address and reply to are filled out.
Not having a reply to an email address is a surefire way to have email end up in spam.
Under options, I always have the open / click tracking switching on so I can view email performance later. Below you can also schedule the email, I always do.
And with pressing the Blue schedule button, you have successfully setup your first email. Wasn’t that hard.
Let me show you a quick tip
A fast way to make emails is to duplicate them at the campaign level. Sure, you will need to change your email targeting, but this is a fast way to create multiple campaigns for different segments
Now comes to fun part, crafting an email strategy for new contacts, creating newsletters for those contacts, and creating a weekly cadence.
If this is your first time getting into email marketing for a client or for your business, make sure to subscribe
I’ll be diving into Active Campaign, Email marketing, Facebook ads Zapier and more every week. Below, make sure to join my newsletter so you’ll be the first to know of new free trainings on my website.
Let’s break this jailhouse rock.
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