ActiveCampaign 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Creating Your First Email Campaign

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Hello there, and welcome to another ActiveCampaign tutorial. I'm Guillerme from the Education team, and in today's video, we're going to be covering the basics of our ActiveCampaign campaigns. I'm going to explain to you all the different types of campaigns that we have, how you can use them to better align with your email marketing strategy. And by the end of this video, you'll be able to have your very first campaign saved. Whether you're new to email marketing or you're just looking to get more out of your campaigns, this is the perfect place to start. Now, if you're ready, open your account and let's get started.

What is a campaign? A campaign is an email that can be either a one-time send or also sent via an automation. There are six different types of campaigns available. The first one is the standard campaign. The standard campaign is a campaign that you can send immediately or you can also send it at a later date. We have a schedule system that you can select the preferences as you wish and send to a specific date and time, for example, your newsletters campaign. Then we have the second type of campaign that is called automated campaigns.

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As the name suggests, automated campaigns are linked to automations. As soon as you select this type of campaign, you're going to be brought into the automation builder where you'll be able to create the flow as you wish. For example, we use automated campaigns to create a drip campaign.

The third type of campaign is the auto responder campaign. We use this campaign when you want to send an immediate response to an action from a user. For example, if they just subscribe to our list and you want to send a welcome email to them, we'll be able to create that by using the auto responder campaign.

The fourth type of campaign is called date-based campaign. As the name suggests, it's based on a specific date. We can use that for birthday coupons. So you have the birthday of your audience saved as a date custom field, and you can select when you want to send that specific campaign. Is it before their birthday, on their birthday, or after their birthday? This is very handy as well if you want to try to get your users to renew their subscription, for example. So you can select the campaign to be sent at a specific amount of time prior to their subscription expires.

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The fifth type of campaign is called the RSS Triggered. This campaign is used a lot by bloggers, so they can update a specific post on their website, and this will generate a campaign that is going to show what are the updates that the blogger is sharing with their audience.

Then we have the last type of campaign that is called the Split Testing Campaign. Split test is really, really important for you to be able to understand better about what resonates with your audience. For example, you can create different versions of the same campaign, one with more images, the other one with more text, and the other one with more buttons, and decide what's going to be the winning factor. Then you can select a percentage to receive version A, version B, and version C, and select which one was more effective, and then send the winning version to the rest of the list. This is a learning journey, and later on, we're going to deep dive into more details of the split testing.

Now, let's practice. Go straight into campaigns, and then we can see all the past campaigns that you have already created or saved. But we are going to create a campaign here.

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In here, you'll be able to select the type of campaign you want to send. Remember, we just discussed the difference in the types. So you'll be able to create here and just name that campaign. For example, I'll call this "summer_sale," and I'm going to hit next.

In here, you'll be able to select what's going to be the subject line and the pre-header text. For example, in here, I'm going to use the element of the personalization tags to personalize the subject line. So I'm going to say, "Hey," I'm going to use their first name, "Our sale is on." And perfect. This is going to populate the first name of my clients, and this is going to be tailored to them.

Furthermore, you'll be able to select what list is going to be receiving that specific campaign. So you can select the list here. So for example, I'm going to send to my master list, or you can select even multiple lists. And if you wish, you can also segment that specific list here. Here is going to show you all the previous segments that you have already created, or you can create a new one as you wish.

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I'm going to, for example, use the segment that I already have created. In here, you can schedule that campaign to a later date. So for example, if I want to send that on a Friday, that's going to be the second of August. And then I can select the time I wish to send the campaign and just set to schedule. Perfect.

Also, just down here, I will be able to select the tracking of that particular campaign. If I want to track open and read, link tracking, reply tracking, link to Google Analytics, and so on.

The next step is going to be the creation of that campaign, the designing of it. So I'm going to click here into Create Email Designer, and it's going to give me a few more options. So I can either use the basic templates here. I can use Designed Templates that are already created for you. You can use our AI feature that's brand new, which is our brand kit, which you can just import your website to as well. We're going to automatically create some templates for you, following your color scheme, using your logo, so on and so forth.

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Really handy. We have some layouts here as well. So how it's going to be structured, that campaign, of the elements you wish and the past campaigns you have already sent as well. For now, let's keep it simple. I'm going to just show you how to create one from scratch.

The right-hand side here is going to show me the structures of the campaign, the blocks that I have, and the saved modules. The blocks in here is really straightforward. It's just drag and drop. So for example, I want to add an image here. I'm going to just drag and drop. I want to add a text underneath that image. I'm going to just hold it, drag, and drop. I want to put a spacer there. I'm going to just drag and drop. And then you'll be able to import the media as you wish to adjust the text structure.

When you click on a specific element of the campaign, one of the blocks, the menu on the right-hand side is going to change. So for example, I clicked into the text block. Automatically, it's going to show me, do I want to change the text color?

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Do I want to change the background color, the alignments, the spacing, the padding? The same happens if I click with the button. So I can select, once someone clicks into the button, where are they going to? So I can add your website here. We can add an action to it, add a tag, subscribe them to a list, add them to an automation. That's going to be up to you how you can design that. And that's all on the designing.

Once you're done with the designing, you can hit the next button. This is going to bring us back to that page we were before, just to make sure and double-check all the information we want. And you can also test the preview.

And there you have it. Congratulations, you have now created your very first campaign, learned more about the different types of campaigns that we have available and when to use them. If you want to be up to date on latest trends, strategies, and best practices, make sure to like, subscribe, and hit the bell button so you're going to be notified when we have another video coming up. If you have any questions about this video, make sure to add them in the comment section below.

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Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time. Subscribe to our channel below for more content like this. And to try ActiveCampaign free for 14 days, visit activecampaign.com.