Do you care whether people open the emails you send them?
Of course you do (but if you don’t yet, head to our deliverability blog right now)
You also care whether they click your links, or reply to you, because this email activity is a major indicator of contacts who will buy your product or service.
But knowing whether they have ever opened, clicked or replied to an email isn’t enough on its own.
You also need to know when they opened, clicked or replied to an email. And when they were last sent an email too.
If you’re an ActiveCampaign user and want to know the answers to any of these, read on – this blog is for you:
- who hasn’t opened anything in the past three months?
- is this lead magnet bringing in good leads, or rubbish ones?
- which contacts can I delete to get my contact limit down before renewal?
- find me all the contacts who didn’t click anything while my sale was on.
Follow these steps to know WHEN ActiveCampaign email engagement happened
Watch Kay Peacey on time windows for email activity in ActiveCampaign
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Know what email activity is tracked by ActiveCampaign automatically
ActiveCampaign tracks some email engagement activity on autopilot for you. It shows up as contact activity, and you can use it in the conditions editor for:
You don’t have to do anything to collect this email activity in most cases – ActiveCampaign does all the work for you.
Hooray for ActiveCampaign!
Four things ActiveCampaign tracks when you send an email
- when an email is sent
- when an email is opened
- when a link in an email is clicked
- when an email is replied to
Sends and Opens are tracked for all emails automatically.
For link click tracking, just toggle it on in the email settings.
For reply tracking, you can also toggle it on in the email settings – but only use this if you really need to.
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Learn why email engagement is important to know about
Here’s the short version of why you need to know about, and monitor, email engagement – for more details go learn about how to stay out of the spam folder.
Four reasons you need to monitor email activity in ActiveCampaign
- contacts who don’t engage make you look bad – as if no one cares about your emails
- sending emails to lots of disengaged contacts will hurt your deliverability
- contacts who don’t engage are much less likely to spend money with you
- in ActiveCampaign you pay for every subscribed contact, so disengaged contacts cost you money
By monitoring email activity to see who is engaged, and dealing with them when they stop being engaged, you can keep deliverability up, ActiveCampaign costs down, and focus your attention on contacts who bring in revenue for better ROI from ActiveCampaign.
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Understand email activity time windows in ActiveCampaign
There are three options to choose from any time you want to have ActiveCampaign pull up contacts who have done (or have not done) email activity.
The Time Window options allow us to get specific about when the email activity happened.
Three Time Window options for email activity tracking in ActiveCampaign
- In the last x days / weeks / months / years
- Between x date and y date
- Ever
There’s a ton more detail on exactly how these behave in ActiveCampaign’s help doc – like whether dates are inclusive, and which timezone is used.
I know they’re called time windows – but let’s be honest – they’re really date windows.
You can use each time window option with any of the email activities that are tracked, in most places in ActiveCampaign.
Note: At time of writing, it’s not available in automation triggers, or in conditional content.
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Solve problems using email activity time windows in ActiveCampaign
OK – this all looks lovely, but how will this help you get things done faster, spend less on ActiveCampaign, and make more sales?
Here are some common use cases to get you started – for lots more, join the ActiveCampaign Academy, and we’ll get specific on ways this can help you in your business to have better ROI from ActiveCampaign.
Three great use cases for email activity time window in ActiveCampaign
- Find contacts who have not clicked a link in any email they were sent the past 6 months, so I can delete them and get my contact limit down fast
- Check on new leads from this lead magnet after 30 days – if they haven’t clicked anything in that time, tag them so I can see which lead magnets are bringing in poor leads
- Search for subscribed contacts who have not been sent any emails in the past two weeks so I can see where we are missing opportunities to connect with people
- Show me who was in our big launch promo but didn’t click a single thing during the launch period so we can analyse what they have in common, and do better next time
You get the idea…
Email activity time windows opens up a lot of power for identifying specific bunches of contacts so you can look at them, count them, and decide what to do with them.
And that means you can pay less for your ActiveCampaign account, make more revenue from higher quality contacts, and increase ROI from ActiveCampaign. Winner!
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Keep this in mind for email activity in ActiveCampaign
A couple of words of warning for how you use and interpret email activity, and use it to make decisions.
Email engagement isn’t the only engagement that matters in ActiveCampaign
Email is a big deal, but don’t forget about site visits, purchases, community engagement, app visits, social engagement and messaging…
Use integration to bring other activity into ActiveCampaign, and watch that too.
Engagement Monitoring is still as important as always, and should be set up with care for your specific business. For help with this, join the ActiveCampaign Academy for our flagship Better Engagement and Deliverability training.
Be aware of Apple Mail Privacy Protection affecting ActiveCampaign Open tracking
Apple MPP means a lot of Open activity cannot be tracked using ActiveCampaign (or any other email platform).
Opens should always be used with other activity tracking for decision-making use cases.
For full training and support with the impact of Apple MPP on email engagement monitoring and contact cleanup, join the ActiveCampaign Academy
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Fast, effective training & support for ActiveCampaign users everywhere
Get more help with email engagement in ActiveCampaign
In the ActiveCampaign Academy we will give you the best practice moves, and support you to work faster, better and with less stress in ActiveCampaign.
Our courses are so good that ActiveCampaign team members do them, and our resources are effective, easy to follow, and fast to consume – no fluff, no filler.
Office Hours live calls with Kay, and our private member community, give you plentiful access to ask anything, any time, and get the help you need right away.
So come on in to the ActiveCampaign Academy, and you’ll have Kay Peacey and the Slick Business team, and all your lovely fellow members, to guide you every step of the way to fabulousness with ActiveCampaign.
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