This post was contributed by Bryce Christiansen of PlusThis.
Tell me if you’ve seen this situation happen before.
You’re on Facebook, and an entrepreneur from one of your Facebook groups posts an elaborate example of a tactic they want to do with ActiveCampaign. They need a system to talk to another system. Furthermore, it needs to update a field and then trigger a tag that starts another automation.
And then the entrepreneur ends the post with something like: “Oh, and I want this to all work natively in ActiveCampaign…no other tools…no third party help…and it should be free…can someone do this?”
The truth is, I used to be this guy.
Why You Need a Tech Stack
I thought every tool was an expense. And it wasn’t until I shifted my mindset into every tool helps me scale that I started to see my business results change.
Tech stacks are growing for small businesses. Gartner, one of the largest research and advisory companies in this space, noted that technology spend accounts for the largest proportion of marketing budgets at 26%. Moreover, 68% of CMOs expect their (already significant) investments to only increase in 2021.
I love my tech stack. Over the last six years, I’ve grown PlusThis from a bootstrapped startup to a multi-million dollar tech company using ActiveCampaign, Zoom, ClickFunnels, PlusThis, Zapier, Facebook, and Leadpages.
There’s no doubt I couldn’t have gotten where we are as a business without it, and PlusThis is at the top of that tech stack list.
What is PlusThis?
PlusThis is a campaign toolkit consisting of 40+ tools and integrations for ActiveCampaign customers. It gives you the power to integrate your favorite tools, add urgency to your offers, and save time with automations.
For example, with Twilio, you can send two-way automated text messages inside of ActiveCampaign for less than a penny a text. Our Zoom and GoToWebinar integrations allow you to send reminders, join links, and follow-up based on attendance. And lastly, for anyone using video, we can trigger follow-up messages based on how long someone watches.
Many of our tools are built around helping you convert more leads into customers. For instance, you can add urgency to your campaigns with countdown timers, expiring offers, smart links, and scarcity triggers. Or you can run surveys and quiz funnels to store the results in fields or apply tags based on their answers.
When we add tools and integrations to PlusThis, it helps the business or entrepreneur grow revenue, save time with a process, or provide a wow experience for a customer.
Here are some popular examples of how ActiveCampaign customers are taking their marketing stack to the next level with PlusThis.
PlusThis Helps You With Growth
- Evergreen Offers: Create genuine evergreen expiring offers with Smart Links and Countdown Timers.
- Facebook/Instagram Retargeting: Retarget your webinar attendees with testimonial ads for your program.
- Deals Automation: Tag a salesperson to reach out to a lead that watched 50% or more of your sales page video.
- Testimonial and Referrals: Send an NPS survey to your customers, then automatically send the highly satisfied customers to a landing page to leave a testimonial or referral.
- SMS Reminders: Send a text message after a consultation call and apply a tag for more follow-up if they click the link to your sales page.
PlusThis Helps You Save Time
- Webinar Automation: Automatically register people for your webinar and apply tags for attendance without having to export and import contacts from Zoom, GoToWebinar, or WebinarJam.
- Easier Automation Filtering: Have automations that branch into 20+ if/else statements? Decision Maker gives you the option to filter people based on multiple rules and keep your automations organized, clean, and easy to follow.
- Survey Integrations: Store survey results and apply tags and automation based on contacts’ answers. No need to manually enter it.
PlusThis Helps You Wow Customers
- Video Triggers: Tag your contacts based on how long they watch any of your videos and deliver an experience that behaves accordingly, like unlocking bonuses for completing a video.
- Document Signing: Get back to leads immediately after they sign a Docusign agreement. Have your deals updated when contracts are completed.
- Interactive Text Messaging: Send SMS messages that are interactive. For example, ask if customers would like to get updates when new t-shirt designs come out. If they respond yes, automatically send a reply that says they’ll be the first to see new designs and have a chance to pre-order and tag them to get updates in ActiveCampaign.
How Stephen Scoggins Uses PlusThis to Grow His Coaching Business
Stephen Scoggins is the founder of The Journey Principles Institute. He runs an online virtual event for $47 to help people access their potential.
After the bootcamp, Stephen has a one-time offer for $997 to join his online training platform. To help drive sales for the program and truly make it a limited-time offer, they use PlusThis Countdown Timers and Smart Links.
In the offer email, leads can click the link to access the sales page for the special offer. The cool thing about the link is that it’s a PlusThis Smart Link. So, that link only goes to the sales page if they click it within 24 hours of the virtual event ending. Otherwise, it goes to his regular offer page.
The PlusThis countdown timer is dynamic, driving home the point that the offer will expire and adding urgency for attendees to make a decision.
Stephen calls PlusThis a must-have add-on for these two tools alone.
“My customers know that when I do a 24 hour offer, it really expires after 24 hours. And this builds trust along with our client base. That’s how to best use PlusThis, that’s how we use it, make sure to do the same,” says Stephen.
How PlusThis Works With ActiveCampaign
PlusThis integrates directly with ActiveCampaign, making it easy to use for specific marketing efforts.
Want a sweet Countdown Timer for your next sale? No problem, just configure your timer in PlusThis, then we’ll give you the embed code to copy in your email or website.
Want to register someone for a webinar if they fill out a form on your site? Configure where you want to store the join links, what tags you want to apply when people attend, or other details. PlusThis gives you a URL you can copy and paste into ActiveCampaign’s automation builder to trigger PlusThis to register someone.
Why You Should Consider PlusThis, Even If You Hate Addons
1. Get 40+ tools and integrations in one package
The analogy I like to give is that you can think of ActiveCampaign as Batman. It’s strong, robust, and capable of doing plenty on its own. However, sometimes Batman likes to carry around his utility belt to pull out a Batarang, grapple, or other tools when the situation arises. That’s the role we try to fill with PlusThis.
2. PlusThis adds new tools and exclusive ActiveCampaign additions regularly
As an integration partner, we get to know the software we connect with really well.
For example, our ActiveCampaign customers love the Deals feature; however, it didn’t have a way to automatically adjust the stages or update fields. Within a few days, we were able to create a tool to solve this.
3. PlusThis’ support has a deep understanding of ActiveCampaign
We have tools that play inside the automation builder, email templates, deals, and contact records. So, to support our customers, we need to know how to help ActiveCampaign customers.
4. Get access to the same tools the experts use to create world-class customer experiences
One of my favorite things to do each year is to connect with our expert customers like Frank Kern, Grant Cardone, Mari Smith, and Daymond John. I learn how they use our tools, so we can pass those strategies on to our customers. We collect these strategies in a PDF download we call Campaigns of the Titans.
Top Ways ActiveCampaign Customers Use PlusThis
There are hundreds of ways to use the tools in PlusThis, but here are a few popular use cases.
1. Advanced SMS for appointment reminders and text to opt-ins
PlusThis adds advanced automated SMS, so you can store replies in fields, collect leads with a text to opt-in, or send conditional messages based on their responses.
Many customers like to use text in their appointment reminders. Instead of just sending a boring one-way reminder, our customers have their appointments confirm they’re coming by replying with a yes or no. Based on the text they send, we can trigger a follow-up message in ActiveCampaign.
2. Webinar registration and reminders
PlusThis has integrations with the top webinar platforms, including Zoom, GoToWebinar, WebinarJam, and EverWebinar. PlusThis handles registration and follow-up directly in ActiveCampaign passing join links and start times.
3. Video tracking and tagging based on how long someone watched
Our Video Triggers tool has quickly become a must-have feature for ActiveCampaign customers. Using PlusThis, you can trigger a follow-up based on how long someone watches one of your videos.
We use this feature with our webinar replays to quickly find our hottest leads. When we finish a webinar or make one available on-demand, we use Video Triggers to help us follow up automatically with those who consume 75% or more of the video.
4. Move leads to different Deal stages in ActiveCampaign automatically
When a consumer makes a purchase, you shouldn’t have to change their stage in Deals from Open to Won manually. Instead, the Deals tool in PlusThis can be triggered from an ActiveCampaign automation to move the contact’s stage to the appropriate option automatically.
Wow Your Customers With ActiveCampaign & PlusThis
PlusThis is an essential piece of the small business toolkit. PlusThis wants to make it easy for you to try, so every new customer gets a free 30-day trial. Join ActiveCampaing and PlusThis to create a memorable customer experience.