3 Types of Ecommerce Automations

Recording of Office Hours hosted by Chris Davis on October 12, 2018. In this session, we showed you three automations any eCommerce business can use. We also learned how to locate contacts based on lead score, and how to build a “pause and resume” newsletter sequence.

Transcript

Chris Davis: 00:00:01 Okay, so let’s pull up these questions, and one thing I need to do is do a new share. Let’s get the whole desktop there so you can see … New. There we go. This is what I’m used to. All right, perfect. Move that over. Great. Let’s start with Juan. On welcome … I’m not sure if I’ve seen your name before, Juan. If so, it’s been a while, so welcome for your first time or welcome back. Either way, welcome. All right. Let’s see.

Juan says, “I’d like to understand how to best use ActiveCampaign for eCommerce. Do you have any guide somewhere?” Yes, Juan, I am glad you asked. Perfect. The education center will be the first best start, and there’s a few. Let me send you the ones that I think would help you out the most. I think this one will help you get started. Then honestly, there’s one on what I would say is segmentation too. All right, so I’m going to give you a couple resources, and here’s how they play together. All right. Yes, these are the two that I want.

One is how to leverage purchase data in ActiveCampaign. This is going to help you just think through how … What you can do with that purchase data once it gets in and then when it comes to segmentation, this is going to be how you sell your products effectively to your audiences and keep selling. I’m going to give you one of these, and then I’m going to go into the initial setup of it as you’ve asked. So I just want to give you those two resources really quick. Juan says, “I basically would love to know how to do the initial setup.” So let’s walk through it.

I don’t have a Shopify account here right now to show you. But this is what you’re going to do, Juan. In fact, I’m going to go over Shopify and WooCommerce, all right? Let’s start with WooCommerce. The first thing that you want to do if … In fact, Juan, let me know if you … Okay, yeah. I was just going to say before I go too deep down that, just thinking automation is perfect, perfect, perfect. So yeah, when I think of automations for eCommerce, you’re really going to have three automations, right?

You’re going to have your three types of automations. You’re going to have one is … Let’s write this down. Three types of eCommerce automations, all right? One is your welcome series. Okay, your welcome series, and this is twofold for prospects. I should say leads. Leads and customers. All right, and the reason why I call it a welcome series is when it’s for leads, it is essentially … It’s a drip sequence letting … And normally, it’s kicked off by a coupon code. So it’s not uncommon to go to a eCommerce website and a popup come or some offer say, “Hey, 10% off your first offer,” right?

When they claim that you want to welcome them into your business by sharing testimonials, social proof, walking them through how your product works. The key here, Juan, for me to you is make it visual. Please do not send emails that are really text-heavy. What we’re seeing the trend in email consumption and really online consumption when it comes to the web is that visual communication is and will be the future of all communication, okay? Like they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words. I think an intelligent graphic, to describe your product or marketing, is maybe not a thousand, but it’s up there, okay?

In your welcome series, think of how you can be using images. I enjoy buying from retailers when they send me emails that have gifts in them. That’s an easy, quick way to get some motion. Make your email stand out. That’s for the lead side. On the customer side, a welcome series is called onboarding, okay? Which I should … Since I have three, I should have broke these up. Welcome series for leads and then two is customer onboarding. But they’re the same thing, right? It’s the same thought. It’s just a different audience, okay?

So you have your leads. You want them to get familiar with you, get comfortable with buying your products. Then you have your customer onboarding, and customer onboarding is totally different, Juan. Customer onboarding is all instructional. Take the marketing off the table, okay? Everybody listening, if you’ve ever purchased a product and it took some instruction, and the first email that they sent you was to upgrade another product, you’re probably going to be get very put off because the purpose of customer onboarding is to get them using your product whether it’s socks or something that you install in the home.

That onboarding experience sets the table for them to buy more things from you, okay? So your customer onboarding is instructional. That is the foundation of it. You want to answer the question, ” I just purchased this now. What do I do with it?” It needs to be clear. Do not leave any guessing, and any guessing in this customer onboarding series, I think what should be prominent in the footer is a link to reach out if they have any questions, and whether that drives them to your support desk or an email straight back to you, you really want to let your customer service shine through your onboarding because again, that’s what people talk about.

They talk about an extraordinary experience. So they’ll, “Hey, I bought from this company, and I was a little confused. I just replied to the email, and I was talking to somebody on the phone, and they walked me through it. In five minutes, I was up and running. I recommend using them.” So that’s the purpose of your customer onboarding. Then the next automation I would say for you, and these are basics. If you get all of these set up in your account, you’re positioned. You’re positioned for good success, all right?

The next one is behavior-based automations. All right. The behavior-based automations are for all accounts. But the power in eCommerce with behavior-based marketing is a web visit, a webpage visit holds more weight in eCommerce than it does on a regular website. You can visit a blog post and be interested in a particular topic, right? You can visit a website and be interested in a certain feature. But when somebody’s on an eCommerce site and they look at a product and then they look at another product similar to that product.

You see this behavior like, “Okay, they’ve looked at five shoes. I could probably mark them as interested in shoes. I bet if I put a popup on my website with intelligent marketing automation, with a discount. Buy your first pair, get your second pair half off. They’ll probably bite,” right? So that’s why behavior-based marketing is really, really important for eCommerce because it’s going to tell you more firmly what they’re interested in buying from you. All right, so those are the three basic ones.

The nice part is they’re all in the platform. I didn’t want to do that. They’re all in the platform by default, and here’s what I mean, Juan, just to make stuff easier for you. I see your followup. I’m going to answer that one too, but I just want to show you. When you go here and select new automation. Right here, see that? Product interest targeted follow-up, so that’s combining behavior based in the welcome series. But I also have … Where is it? Increase traffic, revenue. I don’t want to do that one.

Oh, how did I forget abandoned cart. Oh my goodness. Who am I? Who am I right now? Let’s do this … welcome series for leads and customers … because I don’t want to change my three. I like three. Judge me later everybody. Then the last one is abandoned cart. I’m sorry. Every eCommerce user is shaking their head at me now and wondering if I am who I say I am. So anyways, these are the three basic ones. You need your welcome series, your behavior based and abandoned cart. Appreciate it, Juan. Over the over 70% of the people will abandon your cart, okay? Abandon their cart on your website especially for the first time.

So it’s great to have this abandoned cart in there. My point is all of these automations are part of recipes in here, okay? So you don’t have to start from scratch at all. I mean, look at this one. On reply, create a task to respond. We were just talking about that if that’s how you wanted it to do your customer services, then reply to the email with any questions or issues. All right, so you had a followup, Juan. Let me get to that and then Matt and then Brandon. So we’ve got a roster today. Let me see, and thank you all for attending office hours.

It’s Friday. I don’t take that lightly. You could be doing anything anywhere, so I appreciate it. Is it a good practice to send the emails from, say, my email address as a personal message? Or should I have automations to go out from a more generic email address? Here is what I’m going to propose to you, Juan. I’ve seen this work really well, and I’m going to explain why I say to do it this way. When you do automation really, really good, people think every email is from you, right?

Initially, you think that’s a good thing until you’re trying to stand out with the personal email, like you want them to know, “I’m taking the time to write this email,” and they just lump it in with all the other emails because they’ve been so good. This is not my own strategy. I can’t remember what marketer I got this from, but it’s similar to disruptive ad displaying on Facebook. What I will recommend you do Juan, and of course, test it out, is all of your regular email should come from the team or the company.

The from email address could be … Well, actually, the from email address is not as important as the name, right? So the name could be … It could be just the name of your company, and it could have a personal signature at the bottom of the email saying “The company team.” Or here, we send emails out that says, “The ActiveCampaign team.” Because this is eCommerce, it’s fine if those are more … What do I want to say? Formal. They’re not formal because you’re going to write very conversational, but they’re more formal in the sense of they’re coming from the company, all right?

So since they come from the company, guess what? That positions you Juan. If you’re the owner of this company, or if you’re working with the owner, that positions you to be able to strategically place when you want an email to come from the owner. Now, that email is going to have a higher perceived value. We do it here everybody. When you get emails from ActiveCampaign or somebody at ActiveCampaign, and then at a certain place, in your journey … I will not dispel where. You’ll get an email from Jason, literally from jason@activecampaign.com.

It says his name, and if you respond they go to him. That email works really … Trust me. Don’t ask me numbers. Just know it works really well. It works well enough for us to be still using it like four or five years later. So with that, I will propose you do that one, okay? Mix in your welcome series and onboarding as from the company but use certain times, certain behaviors, certain points in their journey and have it come from the actual owner, and you’ll see a great response from it.

Yep, no problem, Juan. You’re very welcome. Bill, I see yours too. I see your question too. Welcome, Bill. Just letting you know, I have seen the questions, and all of them are going to get answered today, everyone. So, Matt. Matt’s got one of my favorite last names. I’m typing it, Matt. I’m going to type it. Matt Suess. Who could not like that last name? I’m just … Oh, there’s some different people in the world, but if anyone has an issue with this last name, oh my goodness. All right, how does one upload unsubscribed contacts so that they don’t count against your account total?

So, here’s the good part, Matt. If you go to your dashboard, you’re going to see two numbers, and this is good for everybody. This is a great refresher for everybody because this is not known. This is not known to many people. I don’t know why my contacts are not there. Let me move my contacts. Oh, oh, so let me show … I’m moving fast. If you ever get to your dashboard and something is missing, click this little button. This arrow at the … It’s a drawer arrow, and these are all of the widgets that are not on your dashboard.

So I just clicked on contacts, and you see it appear, and then I just drag it to the top so that’s what I did there. But the reason why I did this is we have all contacts. This is 178. Then we have active contacts. Do you see the difference? There’s roughly a 24-person difference. Guess what, Matt? You’re not charged for inactive contacts. You’re not charged at all so you don’t even have to upload. Once someone unsubscribes, guess what? They stay in your account, but they’re removed from your active contact account.

So if any of you were ever wondering, “What am I being charged for,” because you wanted to assess if you’re reaching the threshold and potentially going to have to pay more, go to your contacts and select active, okay? You’re going to be charged for the 154, not the 178. That may seem like, “Why would you do that?” But think about it. Not everybody uses it. You’re charged per the people you can email. That’s how it works. But guess what? Not everybody emails their contacts. For that, you actually get free contacts in ActiveCampaign, okay? So if a contact is in your account and they are not active, you don’t have to pay for them.

But guess what? Website tracking still works. They can still enter automations and do lead scoring. They can still do all of that. It’s just if an inactive … I clicked on contact because I wanted to show you the second place where you can go. If you on contacts, and you do status active, it’s going to give you the same thing, okay? So these inactive folks … Can I do inactive? Okay, unconfirmed. Here’s what I want to do. Unsubscribe. You’re not paying for them, and you’re not paying for the other inactives. I probably have a few bounced in here. Two bounces. How was it … Oh yeah, I’ve made those emails up and unconfirmed.

I have a few, so there’s a combination. So anyways, if they’re inactive, they can still go through automations. But if they encounter an automation with an email send action, they’ll skip over it. This is huge. This is why I’m so glad you asked this question, Matt. This is huge because a lot of you have businesses that could greatly benefit from you managing the contacts more efficient. Maybe you do trade shows. Maybe you are a brick and mortar, and you have a lot of people coming through and it’s just hard to keep track.

A lot of businesses believe it or not are still using Outlook’s address book or a Google spreadsheet to manage their contacts. It’s terrifying to me just saying it. I just got the shivers. But this is the reality for a lot of small businesses. So you can leverage our CRM. Then the bonus would be, yes, you could potentially email them. But no, you can do scoring, lead scoring. You can do stages and pipelines. I mean, there’s all kind of stuff you can do with inactive contacts that you’re not paying for.

So all of those unsubscribed contacts met, don’t even worry about them. Do not even worry about them because you won’t be charged. Matt says, “Got you. But I’m moving from a different platform, and they wanted to add my unsubscribes here in AC.” Okay. Yeah, Matt. If you’re doing that … No, no, no. Okay, all right. Let me put this up as a followup. I see where your thought process is going. Here’s what I would say. He says, “Do they go into exclusions?” We do have an exclusion list. You see this everybody where it says Manage Exclusions? The thing is if you were to add … Click here Add. Oh, of course. Anyways, if you were to add these … If you were to upload your contacts as to, like an unsubscribed list and then select that list and hit Add. It would add them all to the exclusion list. Here’s the problem with the exclusion list though. Once they’re on this list, they can’t receive any communication from you. Even if they opt in, you have to manually remove them from the exclusion list. So what I would recommend doing is this. I would not upload your unsubscribed contacts, all right? Unless you’re managing them in a different way.

If you did do it, just tag them as unsubscribed so that you don’t email them. In fact, I will go a step further just to keep things clean. I’d just create a list for your unsubscribed contacts. Here’s what I would do. Take that unsubscribed list. Create a custom audience and put a few dollars into getting some advertising in front of them to get them to opt into a new offer of yours that adds them automatically to ActiveCampaign. That’s a very quick way of cleaning up your list. So any of you listening, if you have a list that’s questionable, do not upload questionable contacts.

Even if you have, in Matt’s case, you know people have unsubscribed. What I would do is upload that list to your advertising platform of choice. It could be Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google, whatever, and put some messaging in front of those leads and allow them to opt back in. A lot of times, it just was bad timing. Maybe your messaging wasn’t relevant to them, and you don’t know where they’re at. So it’s very hard to get them to re-engage via email once they’ve unsubscribed. So now, being able to put something in front of them brings you back to the top of their mind and allows them to cleanse themselves. Quote-unquote, “Cleanse themselves,” and be on your list as a clean contact again.

So try that out. Try that out, man. I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other questions. All right. “How can I search for contacts based on their score?” Yes. So glad you asked another great question. I get spoiled, I tell you with these questions. All right, so you’re going to do that via the segment builder. The segment builder or the advanced search is accessible when you click on Contacts and you go to Search Contact and select Advanced Search. Now, I can select the condition.

If I go down to … What is it? Is it in Deals, I think? No, it’s not in Deals. I forget. I haven’t used this one in a while. I think it’s Contact. Oh no, no, no. It’s Custom Fields, and my score should appear down here. Let me see. I got a couple scores. What’s the name of one of my scores? I guess Score. I probably literally named it Score for this very reason. Just let me make sure. I’m pretty sure it’s Score. All right, we’ll see. Score is greater than 50. I want to make sure though. What did I name it? Do I have one named score?

See, I don’t have one named score. Tricky, tricky. 30-Day Email Engagement. Let’s see. That’s the one I want to look for. I’ll just type in 30. 30-day Email Engagement. There we go. So select that. That’s my score. If it’s greater than 15, and then you hit search. When you do that, that’s going to allow you to find everybody who has a score greater than 15. Or if you’re looking for that specific score, you just select “Is.” Yep, you can do that at any time, and here’s … You want to see something cool? This is something to think about, Matt.

Everybody, everybody, take advantage of this simple automation, okay? Well, I’m going to use an existing one. Your clock still says 29 minutes … Let me stop sharing and then let me share again. Thanks for letting me know. Share again. Oops. I think I shared the wrong desktop. Share this one. All right. Let me know if that share is updated. I don’t want to you all to miss out.

Brandon, let me know. Is it updated now? My clock should say 1:32. Let me know. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for looking out for me. Let’s say this. Any point in the journey … Let’s do this. Julie’s waitlist, and here is … After I add them to the waitlist, they’ve gone through this automation XYZ. I can do a check here, right? And do if … do 30 because I don’t know where 30-Day Email Engagement is. 15. If it’s yes, I can notify somebody on the team, right? So I could do it within an automation as they’re going and be able to notify someone on my team the minute they reach a threshold.

Extremely powerful, extremely powerful because if you’re scoring, if you’re doing any form of scoring, and your scoring is intentional … Matter of fact, let me give you all this because lead … The idea of lead scoring may be a bit new to you. But everybody should be using it in some shape or form. All right, lead scoring best practice, the only framework you need to get started. I personally spend a lot of time on this one. I’m putting it in the chat for you. This is going to help you understand lead scoring. We have links to lead scoring 101 or lead scoring 102.

But here, I help you. We help you determine if you’ve never done lead scoring, I give you a framework here of how to assign points, which values, which thresholds and everything. So in this example when someone reaches 100 points, they’re a hot lead. I want somebody to reach out to them immediately. In the automation, I could be checking after certain actions or look at this. I can add a trigger. Where is it? Where are you? Come on. Look at that. Score changes, see that? It changes above 99. Add it.

You know what? That’s confusing. I want to build my own automation. I’m going to call it hot leads. I’m going to call it … Who asked this? I’m going to call it Matt’s Hot Leads is the name of this one. Matt Hot Leads. It almost sounds like a food truck out here. Okay, so score changes, and this is the score we’re looking at. It’s above 99 because it changed to 100. We’re going to do it one time. I don’t need you right now. Matt’s hot leads. Sounds like a product too. Now, when they hit 100, they’ll start this automation, and then you can have it notify someone, right?

Or let’s combine them, Juan. Is Juan still with me? Yep, Juan still here. Check this out, Juan. Maybe I’m lead scoring. I’m giving them points when they open emails, visit certain product pages. Watch this. I can use this. Maybe they’ve spent a certain amount, I’m giving them a score every time they purchase. They get 25 points every time they purchase. They’ve made four purchases. After somebody has spent $100 in your establishment, you want to add them to the VIP program.

So now, this start trigger is just waiting patiently, twiddling its thumbs like, “Okay, have you broke 100? Have you broke 100?” Fourth purchase comes in, this triggers, and what do they get? Send an email. Welcome to VIP, all right? So now, they get this email that says, “You’re not part of the VIP club,” which means all of your purchases, you’ll now get whatever. Whatever they get with the VIP club. This is a way where you can both statically look at contacts who have exceeded a threshold. We can do it the static way by just clicking on Contacts and going into search, advanced search and then typing in the name of our lead score.

Then the “is 100.” This is the static way. Then using it as a start trigger is the dynamic way. So, very powerful stuff to incentivize people to keep buying if you’re in the eCommerce. But for you, Matt, in your case, if you want to know exactly where people are, you can do it both ways. This doesn’t have to be external. Again, when someone breaks a threshold, we could notify someone internally and say, “Hey, so-and-so just broke 100. Reach out to them in the next two days.” We found that when you do that, sales skyrocket, right? So you could do that as well.

All right, and then let me keep going here so I get them all. Bill, I see yours. Let me just make sure I didn’t skip it. Brandon, okay. Let me get yours, Brandon, and then Bill, I’m coming to you. Brandon. Brandon, I don’t know if I’ve seen your name before. I’ve seen both your first and last name are … I’ve seen. Why did I put your last name? But I don’t think I’ve seen them together on office hours. So welcome, Brandon. Okay, so, “I’m new, so I am looking at starting with a new customer of AC. As starting as a new customer, what I would like to do is deliver business and marketing consultation via a newsletter.” Nice.

“I would like to be able to allow a reader to choose their own adventure. Is it possible to allow a user to take a detour using a trigger from a main campaign and take a 10-day side course campaign and then get inserted back into the main list where they left off?” So yeah, pause and resume is the functionality that you’re talking about, and pause and resume can be a bit tricky. I would say if you’re just getting started, I would say getting started is from level one to five, and pause and resume is probably level eight or nine.

It’s a tricky one just because you have to have your automations mapped out and you have to have your path mapped out. So here’s what I would say. This is what I would say for you, Brandon. You’re giving away a newsletter, so what’s easy for you … I’m going to create an automation for you just because I like creating automations. It’s going to be a form on your website, right? So they’re going to submit a form. Then when they submit a form … Ooh, that sounds negative. A walkthrough. When they submit that form, what you want them to get is a confirmation for your newsletter, all right? Newsletter confirmation. All right. So they get this.

In this newsletter confirmation, you’re going to have something like this. Welcome. I can type my promise. Tell me what you like. Okay. Tell me what you like, and you’ll have this email that pretty much says, “Welcome. Thank you so much.” Look, start with a personal whatever. Then you can say, “Learn … Learn.” Oh my goodness. Slow down, Chris. Learn about advertising. Learn about marketing. Learn about consulting, right? So maybe these are all separate links.

But based on what they click, it’s going to determine their path with your business. So, ads. Just copy that. So maybe that link is ads. This link is for marketing and then this link is for consulting, right? You’ve got this way to allow them to choose their own adventure by clicking a link, all right? Depending on which link they click, what I didn’t do is we’re going to have an action, and you can even add a tag based on their interest. Interesting, ads, right? You could do something like that and then use that tag to segment them.

So this email is going to go out. Here’s what you can do. Watch this. I’m going to save this one. At this point, if they don’t do anything in this newsletter … Let me say Brandon’s Custom Path. Let’s do that. Brandon’s Custom Path. So maybe they get the newsletter confirmation and whatever else. You’re just dripping out emails, wait one week, and then they’ll get newsletter number one. Letter number one, okay? So let’s just build it. I’m going to show you how to do this. I’m not going to give you the baby version.

After one week, what you’ll do is you’ll go in here and do a conditions and if-else. What you’re looking for is have they … You’re going to put this before every email before it goes out. Have they been sent? Okay? Has been sent newsletter number one, okay? If they have been sent newsletter number one, do not send them newsletter number one. Move that over. Instead, go to the next one, right? After they get newsletter one … I’m just going to do this twice. You’ll get it, and then the last piece is going to put it all together. Wait one week. Copy single action, all right.

If they’ve received newsletter number one, you need to now go check and see if they’ve received newsletter number two. Okay, newsletter number two. This is going to be really cool. Just stick with me, Brandon. I promise this is going to make sense in a second, in a second, all right? So you get the logic though. The logic is they get the email newsletter. Wait for a week. Do they match the following conditions? Let me see. There’s one thing that I want to do. Has been sent newsletter number one? Nope, so send them newsletter number one.

Oh, they already got newsletter number one, so skip sending it and check and see if they’ve received newsletter number two. If they haven’t, send them that one. All right, so this is the pause and resume. The only thing I need … All right. So that’s part one. I’ll say, “Main,” okay? No, I want to call this Brandon’s Newsletter Main, and then I’m coming to your question, Bill. Thanks for hanging in there. So this is your first automation. You need a second automation because what you want to do … Here’s what you want to do Brandon is once they click a link here, you want to send them down their own path.

Like you said, let them choose their own adventure, okay? If they do that, here’s what I want to do. Watch this. This is going to be cool. I’m going to call this Brandon’s Ads Adventure, this one, and this starts … Watch this. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Clicks a link in an email. All right. Any email? No. The newsletter confirmation, any link? No, the ads link. Oh man, I’m getting really excited here. Calm down, Chris. All right. So now, you can send them something like this is internal.

Welcome to Your Ads Journey. All right. Here we go. Essentially, this entire automation could be that journey. But here’s the key. Here’s the key. Don’t miss. Brandon’s Ads Adventure. B-A-A, “Baa.” That’s my very terrible sheep, I think that was. Look at this, BAA. That’s the name of this automation. So, when they click that link, the ads link, they start their adventure in advertising or whatever you call it, right? But here’s the thing. What I want to do is before they get started, end other automation. So I want to end the automation that they’re currently in because I don’t want them to begin both, right? Where is this, Brandon? Where are you? Brandon newsletter. So stop where they’re at in Brandon’s newsletter and then let them come down this journey, all right? So maybe the ads journey goes. Wait for three days. Send the email. I’m only going to do two emails just to iterate the point, reiterate the point. Adventure. Add adventure day three. Something like that. I don’t know. Who cares? All right.

Whenever they’re done with this, whenever they’ve achieved the goal. So for instance, let’s say this. Right at the end, you want to check if they bought, okay? That’s the whole purpose of splitting up this path is to see if they purchased. All right. If they did purchase, yes, then you want to do something else. But if they didn’t purchase, guess what you want to do. You want them to resume where they left off in the newsletter. So where is it? Brandon newsletter. This is the pause and resume. Stop now, do this, and when I’m done, start again.

But if I were to do this as is, like let’s say they already received newsletter number one, they would come in and get the confirmation email, wait for a week and all that. So I don’t necessarily want them to start over in this automation. I want them to start right here so that they can resume whichever newsletter they left off on. The last thing that we’ll need to do, Brandon, and if this is … I know I’m going a little deep, Brandon, but I feel like this is a good example to use to illustrate it.

So what we’re going to do … Check this out. I’m going to use a goal and say already saw welcome, and this is going to be actions. Has been sent the Welcome. Newsletter confirmation and save, okay? Below the contact’s position, and here’s the key. Continue anyway. That is the key everyone. Most of the time when I build goals, it’s wait. It’s wait until they meet the conditions. But the reason why this is continue anyway is because when someone fills out the form for the first time, there’s no way for them to even achieve this.

When this is sent, actually, sending this … Oh, wait a minute. Actually sending this is going to have them jump down. So what do I want to do? What do I want to do? But the purpose is I want them to come down here and miss this email. But how I have it set up right now is the first time through since they received this email. They won’t wait for a week before they get it, so that means I just need to put the “wait for a week,” probably right here. But then I don’t want them to wait for the week that has been in here before.

This is the thought process everybody. This is literally the working through the automation piece that many of us just don’t spend enough time with, and Bill, I have not forgot about you. I’m coming to you. Just let me solve this last piece really quick. It’s all about the condition. It’s all about the condition. What condition do I want to use? Oh, I got it. Oh, listen, listen, listen, listen. Has started newsletter. Watch this. Maybe, maybe. No, I don’t think I can do that because what I wanted to do was I was going to use this action. I was going to use, “Has entered.” Where is it? Has entered automation.

But the second you fill out the form, you’ve entered the automation, so let me think here. You know what we can do? We can game this. We can game it. We can game it. Watch this. I’ll go here and then I’ll just … I don’t want to make it too complicated though. Let me think this through because before I add them back … Oh, I do know a way. I do know a way. Oh man. I know a way that’s really good. I’m just going to describe it.

I would have a controller automation that once they’re through with this journey, instead of going back into the newsletter, they would go into the controller. What the controller would do is determine what it would give … It would give them the criteria for this goal. That sounds confusing. Forget I said that because I don’t have time to walk through that. We’re going to get them to resume, all right? So they come back in here, and they’re added. I don’t want them to get this newsletter confirmation if they’ve already received it, all right?

What I want to say is that’s actually okay. The worst case is they’re going to wait a week. I’m okay with that everybody. I really am. I’m okay with that, so I’m going to put my “wait a week” here because I just don’t have time to think through it, but you guys get where I’m going. What happens is this goal … so if they’ve never been through this before, they’re going to come here. They’re going to get this newsletter. They’re going to go through this goal and they’re going to wait a week. That’s their first time, all right?

Their second time, like let’s say they clicked a link here. So when they click that link, this automation stops their journey. It stops them dead in their tracks because they clicked that link, and then it gives … It starts them on another journey. When they’re done with this journey because they … Now, they’ll never go back if they purchased because the whole purpose of customizing the journey is to get them to take end action. They only come back if they haven’t bought, so we can give them ongoing communication.

Now, they haven’t add them back to the newsletter automation. So now, they come back for a second time. But guess what? This goal fires because it knows that you’ve already been sent this welcome email. So you immediately skip that and then you skip for a week. Then you come and get your newsletter. What you could do is right here, you can send a transitional email that says, “Next week, you’ll get the latest newsletter,” right? You can use this email to get them ready. So before they get added, you’re sending them emails like, “Hey, thank you so much for learning about advertising. Just want to let you know next week, you’ll start getting our newsletter filled with X, Y, and Z.”

It’s like the same version of this email but just a little more targeted since you know where they’re at. Now, you’ve primed them that in one week, they’re going to get the next issue of your newsletter. Then you add them in there because you know when you add them. This goal is going to achieve, and they’re going to wait a week. So you’re making good on your word, and guess what? If they already saw number one, newsletter number one after a week, they go. Have you seen it? Yes. Okay, have you seen number two? Nope. You get that one immediately.

All right, so let me do this. Let me share these with you, Brandon. I’m going to put them in the chat. The links to the automation, I’m going to put them in the chat for you. So, share. All right. This one is … Yeah, Juan. It’s cool, isn’t it? Brandon’s … Which one is this? Newsletter Main. Yeah, no problem at all, Juan. No problem at all. That is what it is. That’s what we’re here for. Oh sorry, Brandon. I spelled your name wrong. I was typing too fast in the chat. Forgive me for that one. Then ads adventure. Let me give you this one.

Everybody else, you’re free to download these as well. Yeah, you’re very welcome, Brandon. Brandon’s Ads Adventure. There’s automation for that one. So both of those are in there. Import them, play around with them, and do tell how it works out. This is just the beginning, Brandon. I feel like I gave you just enough to get the juices flowing, right? So now you’ll be looking at this and thinking it through and mapping some stuff out on paper and on a whiteboard to make sure it does what you need it to do.

But this is the foundation of customizing the customer journey, and you’ll be able to build upon this, man, so I’m excited. I’m excited about that for you. So thanks. Thanks so much for asking that. And Bill, told you I was coming for you, Bill. Bill, listen. You hung in there, man. I really appreciate you, really appreciate you staying to the end. These questions have been so good, I just didn’t want to rush them. I have no doubt that yours is the same. All right.

“I would like to send an email and see who clicks on a link in the email message and to see who visits my webpage. How would I do that? I’m thinking this is a campaign, not an automation. Not sure. I would like to do this to my list on a weekly basis and see who’s engaging.” Bill, I love this question. I love this question. All right, so I’m going to go step by step. Whenever you send an email whether it’s in the campaign, as a campaign or an automation, we track all the link clicks and all of the opens. So that is going to be just standard.

What you’ll want to do, Bill, is go into new automations and make sure you have engagement tagging part one and part one in your account, because those are the two that are going to allow you see who’s engaging on a weekly basis. If I go into part one, what we’ll see is that … I wanted to do part two first. I’m sorry. That actually should be part one. But I want to do is … Look at this. When anyone reads an email, clicks on a link or visits the page, I want to take them out of my engagement, wait for 15 minutes and put them back in. So this is that reset. That’s reset.

This is what we just kind of walk through with Brandon, that reset, that pause and resume, right? So now that you know what this one looks like, let’s go see the automation that you’re … I’m doing this wrong everybody. I’m sorry. So we’re in here. Let’s go see what this automation looks like just by clicking View Automation. We’ll see they get added, and they get all their engagement tags. After seven days, they’re no longer active, so we remove the recent activity. After 21 days, we say they haven’t engaged in 21 days.

After 30 days, not engaged in 30 days. Then after 30 more days, not engaged in 60. So now, Bill, every time, you can go into your account at any point every week and see where people are at, right? The ones who haven’t engaged and the ones that did, all right? Now, in order for website tracking to work, you have to click on this gear for settings, go to tracking and then copy and paste this tracking code. Put it on your website in the header and then put the name of your URL. Put your URL, your .com, .net, whatever. Put that here and click Add.

So now, you can monitor easily who’s clicking. If you send it … If you want to see it at a top level, go into our reports and look at this. We have campaign reports, and you can see all of your campaigns through a certain duration of time, how they performed. All the emails that you sent. You can see how they performed here. If you want to go into automations, you can go to automation performance. This is also going to tell you how your emails within your automations are performing — open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribes.

The last piece that you would need is that engagement tagging to see who is clicking on those links. If there’s a very important link … because all links are not equal, right? If there’s a really important link, I would advise you do something similar to like we did with the lead scoring and create an automation. I’m going to call this one Bill’s Important Links. If there’s one that’s really important, clicks on a link. You can determine any link, whatever. Let’s do … I just did this one on newsletter confirmation.

Yeah, so if there’s one link that’s greater than the next, you could just set up a automation separately from it to that. Whenever someone clicks that link, something happens. Okay, so that’s how you would do those things where you can achieve everything that you’ve asked in your question, and Bill has a followup. Let me answer this followup and then I’ll let you all go. I don’t want to hold you too long on a Friday.

Okay, here we go, and I’m going to answer both of these for you, Bill. All right. Also do email sent directly from Gmail, logged into … Oh, also do emails sent directly from Gmail, logged into ActiveCampaign. I think so as long as you have the Chrome browser, the ActiveCampaign Chrome browser. Don’t quote me on that. You have to try it out and probably hit up support. But let me put the Chrome browser in the chat for you all. That’s the link if you’re not … If you’re using Chrome, please do this because it’s going to pull in … You see that? It pulls in the entire contact profile right in your inbox.

When you have it integrated, I believe it opens our track in ActiveCampaign, Bill. But like I said, don’t quote me on it. I have to test it out. But you see this? Look, opened this message a few seconds ago. In ActiveCampaign, so it may work the other way. But install it and test it out. I’m pretty sure it works that way though, all right? Bill says how do I know if I should do a campaign or an automation for his weekly type update email. If it’s something that is a weekly newsletter that you’re sending live, like this is being created every week, like right now, send that as a campaign. Send it as a campaign.

If you want to, you can take that. So what is very smart, and what I’ve seen people use is maybe they’ve sent a newsletter out for a year, and they knew that they wanted to emulate that going forward because they’re not going to be able to keep creating content every year. They send in one a month, and they’re saving these emails into an automation, okay? At the end of the year, they make the automation live so that when somebody fills out the form, the newsletter that they receive, the first one is actually the first one of the prior year. But they don’t know. They don’t know they made that because the lead wasn’t on the year prior.

The content is made evergreen, and they can go through that whole experience automated. That’s worked really well. I’ve done something like that in fact for a daily email that I was sending. I saved them all and then put it on a website. Now, everybody can fill out the link and just go through it at their pace. So, that’s how you could do both. But if you’re sending out a newsletter, send it out as a campaign. We send our newsletters out as campaigns. Automations are more so for when you want to take what you’ve done that’s worked and automate it.

So if sending 12 campaigns has worked, now, take those campaigns and put them in an automation. Delay between them and use that. Use that as a means of new leads coming in being able to have a system in place that’s going to send out those emails automatically for you. So, lots to chew on there, lots to chew on it, and you all asked amazing questions today, amazing questions. We’re at our 2:00 spot. Oh, thank you so much, and Bill, I see your other question. Let me see. “Do campaigns deliver differently than automation emails?” Nope, they don’t.

“What if I did an email blast directly from Gmail?” Oh, yes. All right. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me answer this really quick, just really, really quick. We’re in overtime everybody. I’ll be done in two minutes. “Do campaign emails deliver differently than automation emails?” No, no. It’s all based on your contact’s engagement frequency with your email. So if they’re always opening, and they’re always replying, clicking links, automations emails and campaign emails, they’re one and the same. You can’t game the system by getting higher deliverability by campaigns than through automations.

They all send from the same server. So that’s that. Also, what if I did an email blast directly from Gmail? Do not do that because what’ll happen is if you do an email blast from Gmail, there’s no way for people to unsubscribe and tell you to stop. Gmail will start seeing and lowering your deliverability themselves. Then when they see an email being sent on your behalf, Gmail and other providers. So even though you’re sending an email from ActiveCampaign, it’s going to look at your name and say, “Hey, look. This person spammed over here. Don’t let that through.”

So yes, if you do email blasts via Gmail, that’s one of the fastest way to really kill your deliverability, which I know that’s not what you’re trying to do, Bill. Stay away from that. If you have an email blast, send it as a campaign and continue to engage. “I’m worried about my email looking creepy with a long link or email address, trying to look personal.” Yeah, if that’s a huge issue, click on Settings. What you could do, you’re going to need a developer. But go to Developer. No, go to Domains and set up your custom domain, okay? Set it up.

You’ll need your DNS records, CNAME stuff, very, very technical stuff. But then the link … then the email will not show from ActiveCampaign ad … this long string. It will show from your server. So if that’s your big concern, you can definitely do that and put your domain in here, and it will send from your server. Again, your server has to have better deliverability than ours, or you still have the issue of running in the spam. Right now, I don’t think many people are looking at that long-form email address link. It’s not going to scare people like you think.

It’s up to you to see if the effort is worth it though to create a custom domain alias or to continue to use ours. Just getting started out, I recommend using ours until someone does have an issue with it. So yep. If it does, if that is a thing, then yeah. Go through it, Bill. Do it. Add your server in there. So, in my Gmail inbox. It is separating there. Oh, what is it separating, Bill? It’s separating what? It’s separating the campaign from the automations or is it separating from your domain? Just let me know real quick. Worst case, too, Bill, I would also recommend reaching out to support because there may be something with your specific. I had a friend using ACA, and it says, “Blasts from AC does not go to primary inbox.” Oh, yeah, that’s a tough one. There are so many variables. I don’t know who they’re sending that blast to. Are they sending it to mini lists? Are they sending it to a segment? Are the people engaged? Are they unsubscribed? Did he import the list or did he grow it organically? Yeah, very hard, very hard to leverage a broad experience like that from a friend.

You need to use it for yourself, get your own stats on it and figure out what works. So yeah. For instance, Bill is saying, “It goes to his updates inbox and not the primary.” That could have everything to do with his domain authority. Perhaps he’s sending more salesy marketing emails. I don’t know. Maybe he’s not nurturing. Maybe he is nurturing. There’s so much that goes in the email deliverability that it’s impossible to leverage someone else’s experience for yourself.

The only way to test, add yourself and a few friends that have different email addresses of a variety and add them to a test list in ActiveCampaign, send a campaign to that list and see where it lands. The best way though that you’re going to have success getting deliverability, not to turn this into a deliverability session, but you need to be sending email consistently that is consistently getting opened. If you do that, you don’t have anything to worry about forever. So, all right. Thank you so much.

Bill, don’t hesitate. Reach out to support in the meantime. If you still have other questions, they can walk you through all of it. We have a lot of resources, or you could do a one-on-one activecampaign. com/training if you want somebody to help you walk through it and figure it out too. So with that being said, thank you all for attending. Those of you watching the replay, thank you for attending. It’s been amazing fielding such wonderful questions from such wonderful people and business owners. So I hope you all have a great week.

Remember, office hours is every Tuesday at 9:00 AM, Friday at 1:00 PM, and you can attend as many as you like, okay? You are all very welcome for attending this. Thank you. You’re telling me thank me, but thank you for attending and asking those questions. Office hours is great because you all are courageous and determined to answer these questions to help move along in your business. So hopefully, I will see you on the next office hours, 9:00 AM, Tuesday. Until then, have a great weekend, and automate responsibly.