Fact: If you don’t test ActiveCampaign automations and forms, they likely will not work quite the way you them to.
And if you go live to your contacts with something that isn’t working, it wastes time, costs money, and feels truly horrible.
And if you don’t know how to troubleshoot in ActiveCampaign you won’t be able to fix the errors you find in testing.
This blog covers the really essential bits of how to test and troubleshoot in ActiveCampaign, so you don’t be stuck waiting on ActiveCampaign support, or crying and banging your head on the desk when things aren’t working how you want, or scraping your dignity off the floor when it all fell down on launch day.
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Create real contacts to use for testing in ActiveCampaign
I have this invisible friend.
Well, actually there are five of them, and I can’t live without them.
Horatio Bellows (yes, really) and his chums are my secret army of insider-spies, crash-testing everything I build in ActiveCampaign automations and integrations.
They share the same slightly unusual first name (sorry any Horatio’s reading this!) so that I can find them all fast in any environment.
You can see my Horatio’s in action as part of my free Accelerated ActiveCampaign training
Why five? It’s not too many, and not too few. I can remember or keep a note of who is testing which path or version, and I have enough to run several scenarios in the same testing batch.
Each of them has their own email inbox (I use free gmail accounts) so I can step into their shoes properly, and see how things look through their eyes.
Their email accounts are even set up on my mobile and iPad, so we can pretend Horatio is on the move. Just like a real life person, catching up on email or trying to buy stuff while watching the kids at the park, or waiting for a train.
So you’ll need some names (be relatively sensible – trust me, it gets embarrassing fast if you have to contact support for your rudely named test contact that seemed hilarious at the time….)
And for each name, an email account. Don’t use your own domain – that’s like pretending you’re not with those people all dressed exactly like you on a group trip – nobody will be fooled. Free Gmail does the job nicely.
Prepare test runs so you can troubleshoot your ActiveCampaign automations
As always, prep is the key to success.
In any scenario, you will want Horatio and chums to behave like real contacts in your system.
So think about what the starting position is for this test run. You’re rigging the game, basically, to steer it in the direction you need to test.
If you’re troubleshooting, aim to mirror the contact that ran into trouble. Sometimes you can figure it out by looking at the original contact, but many times it’s easier to find the fault if you rig up your buddy Horatio.
Here are some questions to help get your contact test runs set up correctly:
- What tags should be on (or NOT on) the contact before the test starts?
- Do you need to delete them completely from ActiveCampaign so they behave like a new contact?
- Do you need to delete their user login or a previous booking from an integrated system?
- What field values need to be in Horatio’s contact record?
Often they get user-logins on websites, or accounts on learning platforms too. You’ll need to rig those up too.
Sometimes you will need to start a couple of contacts from the same set-up, and then have them each do a different thing, so that you can test different paths through your process.
Pro tip: If you’re testing an automation with triggers and don’t want anyone else to stumble in while you’re testing, set it to only run for contacts that contain “Horatio” in their email address, by using the “segment trigger” options in the trigger. You will also need to set it to allow multiple runs whilst you’re testing if it’s normally set to run once only.
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Use a different device or incognito browser window for each Horatio. This means the cookies don’t get in such a muddle, and link tracking or auto login stuff is less likely to go haywire.
Set them off, keeping a note of who is testing what (pencil on notepad is my favoured method).
Look with their eyes and use their inbox to view and interact with forms, pages, emails and so on. You’ll see things differently when you wear their hat properly.
Remember these are real people, with busy lives and limited attention spans, and many things competing for their eyeballs and wallets.
At the same time, watch with your auto-magician hat on, looking at how things unfold for the contact in ActiveCampaign.
Have their contact page open, and refresh now and again to see how far they get. If it’s an integrated thing, keep an eye on the other places too.
You may need to skip “wait 1 day” type steps for your testers in automations, to speed things along.
When a test run results in Horatio hitting the crash-barrier, stop the run (or let it finish if it’s nearly done), figure out what caused the crash, fix that, reset the scene, and go again from the top.
Rinse and repeat until the winner’s flag goes up and all Horatio testers are safely home.
Pro tip: Each individual contact can only take 10 runs through any given automation per day
Get troubleshooting tips from ActiveCampaign consultant Kay Peacey
- Save Horatio and friends’ names and email addresses to a text expander or auto-correct and use that to enter them when testing. You will get very weary of typing them otherwise, and more to the point, you will miss-type them, wasting a ton of time.
- Be patient – ActiveCampaign works on 15-minute cycles for lots of things, as do many integrations. So refresh the page, but not frantically every 10 seconds. Go make a cuppa, have a stretch and then check.
- For testing things involving dates, like where automation triggers, goals, if/else or waits involve date values, you may need to rig the automation conditions to use dates within your testing time (say the next few days) so that you can check they work as expected.
- Use 100% discount coupons if possible to test purchase processes – most systems will let you create private coupons – or create a test product with nominal price if you need a live payment test.
- Let your team or clients know that the Horatios are with you and are safely ignored, and do clean up after them if they leave a mess.
Get the best & fastest help for testing and troubleshooting in ActiveCampaign
Kay Peacey has years of experience fixing issues with ActiveCampaign automations and integrations.
And you can get direct access to have Kay support you with testing and troubleshooting as needed, in the ActiveCampaign Academy.
No more frustration, no more waiting days for the ActiveCampaign support desk to get back to you and not fix it anyway. In the ActiveCampaign Academy you get direct, expert & effective help from the moment you need it, no messing about. And we teach best practice for ActiveCampaign too, so you’re less likely to run into trouble in the first place – winner!
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