Would you launch a rocket without fuel?
Of course not – Then don’t launch your automation until you test it!
Over the years of working with numerous ActiveCamapaign accounts, I have created my own testing ‘system’ to make sure automation are ready to go for the big launch.
Let’s be real.
Nothing, is more embarrassing than having a customer inbox full of complaints, or miss-fired emails.
In this video, I am going to show you a few different ways to Test Active Campaign automation.
I’ll be testing out a few different parts of an activecampagin automation,like triggering the automation, triggering goals, checking email sends, and how to have just a test contact go through an automation.
First, create a test email account. An easy way is to simply put +1 in your email address, like mine would be dane+1@rockstarintegrator.com.
You can do multiple numbers for multiple tests, even ‘assign’ certain test email addresses so you can test out different outcomes that your automation can produce.
Furthermore, you can view any emails you receive in your inbox for a final quality control measure.
Here is the automation I’ll be Testing out. It’s a simple lead magnet to CTA automation.
We have emails, timers, we have goals, split logic, we have a webhook. Special note, I currently do not have a trigger on it, and I’ll explain why later
We got stuff to test!
If you want to follow along or mess with this yourself, I have shareable automation below in the comments, or go to rockstarintegrator.com/get-automated to add this to your ActiveCampaign account.
That’s one of the reasons I love ActiveCampaign, it super easy to share tech like this to get a ‘headstart.’
Don’t have ActiveCampagin? Go to rockstarintegrator.com/getactive to start your free trial today
Let’s get it!
Manually Add A contact to an Active Campaign Automation
This one is pretty simple. Once you have created your test email account, and have them loaded into ActiveCamaign, add them to an automation.
First, click on their profile.
In the Automation section, click the Add button, and simply select the automation.
If the automation does not show up, make sure it is LIVE before adding the contact in.
Since there is no trigger to this automation, this one of the easy ways to ensure that a test contact can go through the automation, without other contacts following suit.
Typically, on the right-hand side, you can see the contact history once they enter an automation, and what emails they may receive.
Okay great, but if the contact will be added to the automation because a tag is added?
I got you
Test ActiveCamapgin Automaions with a Trigger Tag
Automation can be triggered by when a tag is added, not only internally from ActiveCampaign, but externally from another software.
Webinarjam, Kajabai, Zapier, these softwares can add tags to a profile in Activecampagin
If I want to test out this connection, this integration, i’ll create a test tag.
This tag will be applied from by third-party software. Once the tag is applied, it will kick off the automation.
A typical example I have used is when a person has opted in for a lead magnet from Manychat and Zapier.
I’ll create a very distinct ‘Test’ tag in ActiveCamapgin, and use it as the Automation trigger.
I’ll then configure the flow in Manychat, and the Zap in Zapier, so that a new optin is added to Manycaht, they get added and tagged in ActiveCampaign
Doing this allows me to test that the flow is working, the integration is working, and contacts are being tagged and added to an automation.
Before going live, I removed the test tag in both Activecamapgin, Manychat and Zapier, and reconfigured the integration for the new tag.
Whether we add a contact manually or from a trigger tag, since we have a ‘working’ test email address, we can also confirm that an email is sent off correctly too!
Skip Wait Timers in An Automation
Ok great, so we can get a test contact in from either manually adding them in, or from a third-party app.
But these wait timers…..I’m doing going to wait around all day.
This is why creating a test email address is so important. Let me show you how to ‘skip’ through an automation
First, go back to the contact profile in Active campaign, and click on the automation they are in. In the pop-up window, you’ll see a ‘VIEW’ Button.
Clicking this will take you to a contact journey view of the automation. You can see exactly what steps they have been through, and where they are next.
To have contacts ‘skip’ wait timers, simply scroll to where they are, have click skip.
Note: This will move the contact through the next part of the automation immediately. If there is any if/than logic that you need to setup, or goals to configure. Do those first
Luckily, I have set this up, so let’s test them!
Test Out Goals in an Active Campaign Automation
Testing out logic trees is pretty basic, if a contact has a certain attribute, such as a certain tag, they go down that path.
Goals are tricker.
Goals in ActiveCampaign allow contacts to ‘jump’ right to it once something has happened. Say for example, if someone is in this automation, and they book a call, getting that ‘call booked’ tag will jump them over there.
But how do we test this? Let me show you!
First, this goal is configured as such, if a contact has this tag, while they are anywhere in the auction, jump them here. This is my preferred setup for a jump goal.
Say this automation is asking people to book a phone call, there is no point having them ‘wait’ in the automation, especially if you want them to receive a post-booking call email.
The if/than logic would take too long to long to filter over, so jumping is the best.
I recommend having two tabs open, one with the test contacts profile, and one of the test contacts journey.
In the test contacts profile, add in the new tag that would trigger the jump goal.
To make sure it works, let’s head back over the the customer journey tab, and start refreshing the page. You may have to refresh the page a few times.
As you can see, the contact achieved the goal, and they promptly head to the next step.
The next steps involves one of my favorite Saas softwares. Let’s get Zapping
Test Out Goals in an Active Campaign Automation
In our automation, we saw that after the jump goal, we have a webhook to activate.
While I am using Zapier for this example, you can use any type of webhook.
With a webhook, it’s all about what data is being sent out from ActiveCampaign. Since I have a Zapier webhook installed, and the contact has passed the webhook, lets go to Zapier and make sure the data was sent over correctly
In Zapier, a webhook will have example data and test data. I never use the example data, since at times the ‘real’ data will come in as different fields.
Zapier has gotten much better about this, but I’m going to keep it simple. In zap I simply press ‘Test’, and we can see the test contacts info displayed.
This is support important, since now that we can confirm we have the right data i Zapier, we can easily sync up its fields in the next zapier zap.
For example, I have the data being added to a Google Calendar event. It is so much easier being able to use the test contacts information since we can clearly see its the right email address.
In Zapier, I run a test, and we can see this test contact has been added to this Google Calendar event.
That means, when a person books a call, they will jump to the Active campaign goal, and then be added via webhook to a Google Calendar event
And that is how you can launch an automation wiht confidence. Testing each part of automation is so crucial, whether it be for your business or a clients
To recap, we tested an automation by adding a contact in, having a tag add them in, confirming an email was sent, skipped wait timers, triggered jump goals, and then tested a webhook.
Sound like a lot? It is! Need an extra hand for your project, head over to rockstarintegrator.com/book-services to have a call with me so we can discuss your next project.
Again, I have a link to the automation we test right here, and you can subscribe to my newsletter below!
Recent Comments