A couple quick updates regarding social sharing:

Link only

You can now (additionally) obtain just the link for each social sharing service, instead of just the linked-icon that we provide, so you can apply the link to any text or image in your mailing.

For example, %SOCIALSHARE-FACEBOOK% returns this icon, linked-to the Facebook post page:

If you’d rather use another image, or perhaps just a text link, you can use this alternate personalization tag:

%SOCIALSHARE-FACEBOOK-LINK%

This will return just the URL, as in this example:

http://YOURACCOUNT.activehosted.com/social.php?c=33&m=33&s=76f410bb411339c68d07a4e2ccb16c7a&ref=facebook

This immediately redirects to the Facebook post page:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F12345

Do this for all other social sharing personalization tags as well. (Just append -LINK to the very end.)

Google Reader removed

We’ve also removed the Google Reader/Buzz share icon as “Note in Reader” no longer works, and Buzz no longer exists. In place of this we have included Google+ sharing. You’ll find the “Share on Google+” link in the “Personalize Message” window:

The individual personalization tag for Google+ is %SOCIALSHARE-GPLUS%, and of course %SOCIALSHARE-GPLUS-LINK% will work as well.

Our Shopify and Unbounce integrations have been improved to allow the ability to map more fields into ActiveCampaign. They initially allowed only name and email address to be saved (from your Shopify checkout page, or Unbounce landing page), but now you can choose to map additional fields as well.

Just visit the External Services section of ActiveCampaign, and edit either Shopify or Unbounce. Here you can set up your mappings:

This means more subscriber data coming across for smarter list segmenting and campaign targeting. We plan to include this feature for Wufoo (and future services as well).

We’ve just added integration with Shopify for customers checking-out from your storefront. If they choose to receive email marketing updates, they’ll be added as a new subscriber in ActiveCampaign.

Right now it sends the customer’s name and email to ActiveCampaign, and we hope to expand it soon to allow other fields to be mapped as well.

You configure your Shopify settings within ActiveCampaign in the External Services section:

Each individual ActiveCampaign user can set up a connection to their own Shopify storefront, which adds subscribers to the list(s) of their choosing.

For more specific instructions, please see our help doc.

We’ve just added a new subscriber import source for Heap CRM. Easily connect to your Heap account directly through ActiveCampaign and convert your contacts into subscribers.

To obtain your unique Heap CRM WebHook URL, visit the Help section, and choose “Integration” from the “FAQs About” drop-down:

Campaigns sent to your Facebook-connected lists can now automatically post to any account you manage under your Facebook profile, such as pages and applications:

Simply check each account you wish to send auto-updates to, and the same update will be mirrored to each “wall” on Facebook.

Example profile wall:

Example application/page wall:

Previously auto-posting was limited to only your personal profile, which is not always where you want to extend your email marketing brand, so it makes sense to post to anywhere you manage a presence on Facebook.

Let us know if you have any questions or problems, or if we can improve this feature further.

Adding subscribers to ActiveCampaign can be done in many ways, including importing, database sync, subscription forms, and using the API.

We’ve just established another simple way to add subscribers if you are an Unbounce user. Unbounce makes promotion-specific landing pages extremely easy to set up and monitor, and this integration lets you add new leads directly into ActiveCampaign.

For example, if your Unbounce landing page has a form submission section (for lead capture), you can automatically save the name and email address in ActiveCampaign as a new subscriber!

Here is an example Unbounce landing page with a form that collects a visitor’s name and email address:

Once the person submits the form, their name and email are added to ActiveCampaign as a new subscriber:

Please see our help section for further information, and also the blog post and knowledgebase article on Unbounce.

We’ve just released version 5.3.0, which introduces a completely revamped “Create Campaign” section. We’ve taken your ideas into consideration, and implemented our own fixes and improvements, and have come up with a much more responsive and smarter campaign process.

Here is an overview of some of the major changes with the new campaign process:

• More responsive, cleaner, and updated feel.
• Auto-generation of the text version of your mailing.
• Improved summary page with quicker visibility to important information prior to sending.
• Distinct template categories to better organize similar styles.
• Less steps altogether, with easier navigation between each.

Here are some other smaller (but still important) improvements or changes:

• “Email Messages” section has been removed and is now solely available through the campaign process.
• Recurring campaigns are now part of the Regular Campaign option, and only work in combination with “Fetch from URL” or RSS campaigns (dynamic content).
• There is a new “Text-Only” Campaign.
• You can view more than 50 templates for use in your campaign (previously this was limited).

Here are some screenshots.

Start page:

Message selector page:

Summary page:

The summary page shows a quick overview of everything:

If anything needs attention, it will be highlighted in red, and you can view more details:

Inbox Preview will now show basic results automatically (on the Summary page), and you can still view the entire preview:

The split-test screen has also been greatly improved for ease of use:

Adding and removing messages for your split-test campaign is very simple:

This version is immediately available for downloaded users, and will be rolled-out to hosted users in the coming weeks. Please let us know your thoughts!

We have released Email Marketing 5.2.5, which comes with only one major change (along with some minor bug fixes) – the ability to save your API connection details on the subscriber import page for external sources:

If you import from an external source, such as Salesforce, it can be extremely tiresome to re-enter the connection details each time. This should save you a lot of time, and allow you to use the import process more efficiently.

This feature works per user, meaning each user that logs-in to the admin section can have their own API connection details saved, and they will not see the connection details for other users.

We are continuing to improve the subscriber import page, as well as all aspects of our software, so please let us know if you have any questions, problems, or ideas.

We’ve just released Email Marketing version 5.2.4, and I’d like to cover some of the more notable changes that were made. We primarily spent a lot of time fixing bugs and enhancing various sections for better usability and performance. So you’ll notice very few interface changes, but be assured you’ll want to be using this version for a much better overall experience.

Here are some of the major additions:

- Tactile CRM subscriber import external source connector.

- New API methods for Social Sharing campaign report data and Message Templates.

- Better descriptions and examples for all API methods, including a public reference section.

- New email templates: “Event Template” and “General Business.”

Also, a popular bug was finally fixed. Many users noticed strange “A” characters when previewing email messages – often called “A acute,” and appearing like this:

Á

This issue was heavily reported, and we are happy to have improved our software so that you should no longer see these characters in message previews.

We are constantly improving our Email Marketing product based on customer feedback, and our own development goals, in order to provide you with the best experience possible.

Please feel free to upgrade and let us know what you think!

The release of Email Marketing 5.2.2 includes improved social features, including social media reporting, social subscriber actions, and social list segments. We’ve also improved our campaign auto-post feature when sending campaigns to Twitter and Facebook.

You can now manage your external service settings from a single page:

For each service, you can update the associated application that is used when auto-posting campaigns (shows as the source of the update).

List settings page:

“Create Campaign” process:

Example auto-posts after sending a campaign:

The applications for Facebook and Twitter are also sometimes used to retrieve data for the new “Social Sharing” Campaign Reports page:

The Social Sharing reports page highlights Twitter and Facebook shares from your subscribers. It even captures non-subscriber shares (re-tweets and any other share/mention outside of your subscriber base).

This should give you a good overview of who is talking about your campaign.

Subscribers can easily share to various social networks directly through your email campaign:

When clicking any social network icon in the email message, the subscriber is directed to the appropriate site to submit the update (this occurrence is saved under the Campaign Reports section):

The Facebook “Like” button will direct the subscriber to the public web copy page first, where they actually submit the “Like”:

You can also export the data for your own reports, as well as create list segments and subscriber actions based off it.

Please let us know if you have any questions or problems regarding these new features!