How To Use ACTIVECAMPAIGN LISTS (2022 Tutorial)

In this short tutorial, I'll show you that most marketers have been using lists the wrong way & that you actually only need two lists.
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[@ChrisRodriguezExcel]

ActiveCampaign has a more complex setup than I had anticipated...was expecting "smart lists" similar to Hubspot. But this video managed to help simplify this with best practice use cases. Thank you for this!

[@stephenmccain]

Thank you Max, very helpful!

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey Stephen! Glad it was helpful!

[@LaConyaMurray]

Thank you. This was very helpful.

[@maxvcollenburg]

Happy to hear it was helpful! 🤗

[@HealthglowsNet]

Dear Max, I consider your Active Campaigns tutorial to be a PREMIUM course on how to run email marketing. THANK YOU!

[@maxvcollenburg]

Thanks! Glad you like the tutorials so much! 😄

[@Jandaliy]

The value you provide is unbelievable Thanks a lot

[@maxvcollenburg]

Glad you think so! Any other tutorials you would like to see Mohamad? 😄

[@prod-review6421]

Hey I had a question. You said create only 2 list. But what if a contact already in a list try to buy or get lead magnet. In my case i saw a error message pops " You have selected a list where duplicates are not allowed" what to do in this case??? Thank you

[@delanocronie]

Hi Max, echt een hele mooie en behulpzame tutorial.

[@maxvcollenburg]

Thnx! 😄

[@Piermusic]

So helpful man, dankjewel!!

[@maxvcollenburg]

Happy to hear it's helpful! 😄

[@timothymaggenti717]

Good video, I picked up your cheat sheet, thanks

[@maxvcollenburg]

Glad you like it! Hopefully the cheat sheet is helpful 🙌

[@pandahershey]

Your tutorials are great!

[@maxvcollenburg]

Thanks! Any other new tutorials you would like to see from me? 😄

[@average2freedom431]

Hi Max, great tutorial thank you. You are very good at keeping it simple for us. I am still a bit foggy about tags & segments if people are downloading multiple lead magnets from you. Can you direct me to your best tutorial so my contacts dont get duplicate automations please. Thank you, Lisa 🙋‍♀

[@viveksanghvi5488]

Hey Max! Great video.Thank You.

[@maxvcollenburg]

Glad you like it Vivek! 😄

[@realMartinHamilton]

Matt I noticed the %sender-list-reminder% custom field has dashes. Is this so there is spacing between the words when it populates in the subscribers email? I've got a custom field %name_of_lead_magnet% but in some contacts the words describing the lead magnet aren't spaced. Maybe if I rename the custom field with dashes, the words will always space properly? Thanks.

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey Martin! I don't think it matters if the variable has dashes or not.

[@realMartinHamilton]

@@maxvcollenburg here is the AC tech support response: It looks like your form code is set up correctly but may be parsed differently by different browsers, resulting in the value inserting without spaces :( Unfortunately that isn't something we have control over... So Max I'm seeing most contacts with no spaces and in their emails the sentence is also without spaces. Bummer. If you find a workaround please post. Thx

[@realMartinHamilton]

@@maxvcollenburg I'm using hidden custom fields on forms and writing the values into the html integrate code. To ensure sentences are spaced AC said use an Update Contact action, select the field in drop-down, then type in the sentence with proper spacing. This way if I use the custom field in an email the sentence populates with proper spacing. Thanks for your detailed videos.

[@marketingstory7441]

Thanks Max! Very helpful!

[@maxvcollenburg]

You're welcome! 🙃

[@HoHo-vw4yh]

Hi, Max! Good video! I followed your steps, but I couldnot find the "Manage conditions" that you said at the 13:54 video time. How could I find it? So thanks...

[@maxvcollenburg]

Heyhey! This option only shows up on the plus plan & above unfortunately. So if you're using the lite plan, you won't be able to use conditional content 🙁

[@HoHo-vw4yh]

@@maxvcollenburg Got it, thank you!

[@GregSandersonuk]

Really helpful Max, thank you. Very clear. Wish I'd seen this six months ago, I've got 32 lists - aaaaah! I've got a last click automation running, but any tips on ways to merge/clean? You may have a video on this, sorry if I've missed it!

[@maxvcollenburg]

Haha oooch, that's a lot of lists! I've a whole separate tutorial about how to keep your list clean, be sure to check that one out 🙃 To merge them, I think I would create a simple automation with a bunch of if/elses that subscribers contacts to different lists (and maybe applies some tags) depending on the conditions that you set.

[@hectorbbueso6450]

I like how you explain, Thanks!

[@maxvcollenburg]

Thanks! Happy to hear 😄

[@nickgrote8098]

Hi Max! Just subscribed to the list (duh). Something you might advise me on. Do you perhaps have good ways to track your current and past customers? What happens when they are being put into the 'won' category? I run a B2B service business where we have to re-active customers every few months. Any tips?

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey Nick! An idea would be to create a date custom field called "Last Purchase" or "Last Project Date", and set that to the date you last worked with that customer. Then, you can run an automation that starts X months after the date inside that custom field. Hope that helps 🙃

[@therealmarknelson]

what do you do if you have more than one free resource,

[@maxvcollenburg]

You use tags/custom fields instead of lists 🙃

[@MichaelFrancis222]

Good stuff

[@maxvcollenburg]

Thanks!

[@TheUmmahFightCamp]

I have my emails in my email account and on paper!! How to I get them into activecampaign?

[@maxvcollenburg]

Depending on how many email addresses we're talking about, I think I would create a simple Google Sheet with two columns; 1) Name 2) Email Address Then, after you added everything to the Google Sheet, you can export it as a .csv file that you can use to import everyone to ActiveCampaign 🙃 Hope that helps you into the right direction!

[@candicecapelle5169]

That's awesome but I still can't figure out how to send a specific campaign only to people with some tags (without doing an automation because there is no trigger) :(

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey Candice! When sending out the campaign, you can select a list & make a segmentation group. The segmentation for that should be the tag 😄 And did you know you can also manually bulk add people to an automation? Go to contacts » select which tag people should have » bulk edit » add to automation. Hope that helps!

[@mansiwasan698]

Hey Max I had a query. Can we add fields in Status section under Contacts

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey Mansi! I'm not sure what you mean with status section?

[@3Ariadna1]

Great video Max! What do you thing about your tip for Engagement Treshold if I use Campaigns for Newsletter in AC? Is some possibility to add "math" for that? Or do you always make new newsletter email and put it in automation every week? Thank you :)

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey Zuzana! Yes, this is a bit different with campaigns. Personally, I'm always using automations to send my emails because I don't send so many one-off emails. But a workaround would be to create a simple automation that one has one action; add 1 to the engagement threshold. And then, you'll add all the contacts that you just broadcasted to to this automation.

[@3Ariadna1]

@@maxvcollenburg Thank you for idea, I can try that a see how it Works. 👍

[@georgem579]

Hi Max, you use 2 lists, Customer and Main list. Do ALL your contacts go onto the main list as well as customer list? Or are they completely separate lists

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey George! Good question! Everyone is always only in one list. So if someone that is one the Main List becomes a customer, I move them to the Customers list and unsubscribe them from the Main List 🙂

[@johnm100]

@@maxvcollenburg I do the same Max and awesome video as usual. One little annoying bugger is when people checkout to buy and become a customer, but use a different email. This happens way more often than I would have thought. Then their non customer email is always getting pitched and they are essentially doubled up in the system. I know ActiveCampaign is not a magic mind reader and HAS to use an email as a unique identifier but it’s still annoying because I have an inaccurate customer journey for many people...it appears that they just appear instantly as a customer. If I find these duplicate contacts I usually use AC to merge them into the customer email. Any thoughts on this Max?

[@maxvcollenburg]

Yes, I have the same issue! It happens often that people purchase with a different email. I always merge them into the customer email when I notice it, but often I don't notice that very quickly. Would somehow be nice if ActiveCampaign recognized that a contact has the same first name and is using the IP address, and that it notifies you when it found a match. A small trick that I'm using to prevent that people get the same product pitched again, is to use site tracking to check if the contact ever visited the checkout success page for that product. That way, even if they purchased with a different product, it's a bit more likely that you can track who already purchased it. Hope that helps!

[@johnm100]

@@maxvcollenburg Oh wow, that's a great idea Max! I like this. Here's what I am thinking: I'll add a custom field for "product x thank-you page" and simply store the date a contact visits that page. Then I'll cross reference customer purchase timestamps with the date stored in the custom field. I'm just thinking out loud here (haven't tested yet) but that should give me very good idea of who purchased with a different email and is doubled-up in the system. That way even if they have changed their name it still should be conclusive enough...and would be absolutely foolproof if I could also cross reference their ip addresses. This is all assuming that the activecampaign cookie continues to track the non-customer email through the purchase process. I use memberpress and not sure how that portion of the tracking will work. I'll have to test. I've built a bunch of custom scripts that tie into activecampaign's API to automate lots of little problems like this...I think I'll have to add this "duplicate finder" feature too!

[@idiotu668]

Tags are confusing. I need to separate contacts per State. Each Form is unique for each State so I was going to just create a New List and Form per State. Is this the best way to do this?

[@maxvcollenburg]

Heyhey! I think the best way would be to use a multiple-choice custom field. That way, you can easily sort in which state people are based. I would not recommend to use lotssss of lists for this.

[@idiotu668]

@@maxvcollenburg I can't figure out if you PERSONALLY just don't like multiple lists or having multiple list won't work!

[@maxvcollenburg]

@@idiotu668 technically it works. There's many different ways you can use to segment your audience. I'm just sharing what I think is easiest to manage & keep track off. If lists make more sense to you, go for it 🙂

[@idiotu668]

@@maxvcollenburg thank you sir...

[@chrisanderson1876]

What app were you using to reveal your notes as you went along? That was a neat visual trick. Much prefer that to a PowerPoint.

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey Chris! Glad you like it! In this video I used Workflowy, but I recently switched to Notion. Very similar, but much more possibilities 🙃

[@chrisanderson1876]

@@maxvcollenburg thanks so much!

[@SharkyIno]

Hey Max, awesome video! Just want to clarify: for automations we can use tags but let's say we want to send a campaign to a group of people. So we can only use a list, right? We can segment it but we can't send a campaign to a group of tags. Thank you in advance for your answer.

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey Sharky! You can! 🙃 When you create a campaign, you first select a list, and then you can create a segment of people with a specific tag. So then, the campaign will be send to everyone on the list you selected that has the tag 🙃

[@SharkyIno]

@@maxvcollenburg yes, I get it. What I meant is that I can't send it to segment of people who are not in the list. So we always need a list to send a campaign

[@maxvcollenburg]

@@SharkyIno yes! People need to be subscribed to a list to be able to receive emails 🙃 That's why I would usually use a Main List & Customer List, and do all the other segmentation with tags and custom fields.

[@SharkyIno]

@@maxvcollenburg got it. Now it's super clear! thank you!

[@maxvcollenburg]

@@SharkyIno great! 😄

[@joannekatepielago5177]

Hi Max, I am confused what to put on the List URL. I am creating this list for my optin page. Should I use the optin page URL or the landing page URL? Thanks!

[@maxvcollenburg]

Hey Joanne! The list URL is used for for compliance purposes. You will want to type your company's website in this field 🙂

[@joannekatepielago5177]

@@maxvcollenburg I see. Okay thank you. What will happen if we'll not use the company's website? Can we still edit the link URL later?

[@floralscraft]

My site doesn't show lists, where do i find it

[@ayothomas7975]

Can I have more than 1 list for multiple brands

[@maxvcollenburg]

Yes, you can. But usually, it's not recommended to run multiple brands from one account as things can get mixed up.

[@maxvcollenburg]

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