The ActiveCampaign integration is available on all Thinkific plans, including the free plan.
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Thinkific is a widely recognized platform for building and distributing online learning experiences. For the essential task of email marketing, a specialized tool is necessary, and many creators turn to ActiveCampaign for this purpose.
When you connect ActiveCampaign and Thinkific, you unlock a robust system for automating your email campaigns and sales sequences.
So, what are the specific steps involved?
This comprehensive tutorial will guide you through every step of establishing the connection between Thinkific and ActiveCampaign. Additionally, we will explore potential applications and demonstrate how to maximize the benefits of this dynamic pairing.
Let’s dive right in.
Thinkific’s intuitive course creation tools allow you to develop engaging online educational content effortlessly. The platform comes equipped with essential marketing and sales capabilities, enabling you to advertise and monetize your courses without friction.
While Thinkific does include some fundamental email communication options, like sending out mass messages, it isn’t designed to provide a complete suite of advanced email marketing instruments.
ActiveCampaign steps in to fill this particular need. Through its features, you can cultivate and maintain strong connections with your audience by designing highly-specific, individualized email sequences. Moreover, it empowers you to establish numerous automated workflows, which greatly streamline your marketing initiatives.
Connecting Thinkific and ActiveCampaign allows for a seamless flow of student information from your school to your marketing platform. You can then leverage this information to organize your audience into distinct groups and set up automated email workflows.
Combining the power of these two systems opens up several practical applications:
Importantly, this integration is accessible across every Thinkific subscription level, even if you are using the complimentary starter plan.
With that covered, let’s proceed with the integration process!
ActiveCampaign provides a complimentary trial period, allowing you to explore its full range of features before committing to a paid subscription. To begin your free trial, you can visit the ActiveCampaign website and simply provide your email address to get started.
Upon creating your account, you will be brought to the main dashboard. To proceed, you will need to locate your specific API Key and API URL.
To access this information, select the settings icon, which appears as a cogwheel, near the bottom of the left-hand menu. Within the settings area, navigate to the Developers tab. On this screen, you will find both your API URL and your API key ready for use.
Now, return to your Thinkific administrative area. From the main menu, find the Apps tab and click the button to enter Thinkific’s app store. Once there, search for the ActiveCampaign application and proceed to install it.
When the installation completes, you will be automatically brought to the app’s settings page. Here, you will see the required fields for entering your API key and URL. Go ahead and paste that information in, then head back to ActiveCampaign and find your way to the Site Tracking tab.
In the Domains Safelisted section, you will need to authorize your Thinkific site by clicking the add button and entering its web address.
Directly below this, you will locate the tracking code area; you should copy this code snippet.
Next, return to your Thinkific dashboard. Within the ActiveCampaign app’s configuration window, paste the tracking code you previously copied.
After that, a minor adjustment to the code is necessary. You will need to insert the line vgo(‘setEmail’, Thinkific.current_user.email); into the Tracking Code box. This specific line of code should be positioned right before the vgo(‘process’); line.
For a clear visual guide, please consult the image provided below.
Before we can proceed to the next phase, two more pieces of information are required: the event key and the ACTID key. These credentials can be found inside your ActiveCampaign account, specifically on the Site Tracking tab within the Event Tracking area.
Your Event Key will become visible as soon as you toggle the status switch to the “on” position.
To uncover the ACTID key, you will need to select the Event Tracking API link, which will cause a new pop-up window to appear on your screen.
With both the key and the ID copied, make your way back into your Thinkific account.
Once again, navigate to the Apps area and select the ActiveCampaign Settings. Continue scrolling down the page to the Events section, where you will find two distinct fields: one designed for your Event key and the other for your ACTID key.
After populating these fields with the required information, you will be able to utilize the available event triggers. These triggers can be communicated to ActiveCampaign to initiate a wide array of automated responses.
The events you can track within Thinkific encompass the following actions:
To enable these events in ActiveCampaign, simply activate the corresponding toggle switch and then click the “Create Events” button for each one. After you have done this, you will see individual events for every course appear within your ActiveCampaign platform.
Once these actions are triggered, the corresponding information is sent directly to ActiveCampaign.
As an illustration, when a learner finalizes a course purchase, ActiveCampaign logs that specific event, enabling you to automatically deliver an onboarding email series. In addition to these standard events, you can harness ActiveCampaign’s site-tracking capabilities to better understand your website visitors and their behaviors. This can be applied in numerous valuable ways:
Finally, the ActiveCampaign-Thinkific connection permits you to transfer custom field data between the platforms. To ensure this works properly, you are required to create custom fields in both Thinkific and ActiveCampaign, making sure they have identical names.
By default, ActiveCampaign includes a standard field group known as General Details.
You will want to establish a distinct group for the custom fields originating from Thinkific. This can be done by navigating to the Contacts tab and then selecting Fields.
Following that, you will want to select the Contacts tab, which is positioned at the top of the page. Over on the right-hand portion of your screen, you should then click on the Add Group option.
To set up the group, provide it with a relevant name. After it has been named, you can proceed to include your desired custom fields within this newly created group.
And that completes the process! You have successfully linked Thinkific with ActiveCampaign and are now fully equipped to design your initial marketing automation workflow for your Thinkific school.
In this next part, we will provide a concise walkthrough on how to build a marketing automation directly within ActiveCampaign.
For this example, let’s assume your goal is to deliver an email sequence to learners who have registered for a free preview of your Thinkific course. The initial step is to access the Automations tab from the sidebar on the left side of your ActiveCampaign interface. Then, from the upper-right corner of the screen, select Create an Automation.
From the subsequent screen, select “Start from Scratch” and then click the “Continue” button.
You will then be presented with the option to choose a trigger. For automations related to your Thinkific school, the correct trigger to select is Event is Recorded.
Once that is selected, you can specify the particular event that will initiate the workflow. In this instance, you would select the one corresponding to Enrolled in Free Trial for your course.
Once the trigger is in place, the automation becomes active. The subsequent step involves choosing a follow-up action, which in this case is to dispatch an email to these students. To add an email, click the plus sign in the automation builder and select Send an Email from the Sending Options tab.
ActiveCampaign offers a highly adaptable email creation tool complete with pre-designed automation recipes and a wide array of personalization capabilities, allowing you to design emails with ease. This same procedure can be duplicated to construct an entire sequence of emails.
Now, to effectively manage the contact’s journey, it is beneficial to introduce a goal within your automation. A goal operates similarly to a trigger, but its primary function is to immediately move a contact to that specific point in the sequence, causing them to skip any preceding actions.
For the purpose of our example, the goal will be a user completing a purchase of the course, which will stop them from getting any more promotional messages.
To implement a goal within your automation, click on the plus symbol located below the final step in your existing workflow. From the options presented in the Conditions and Workflow tab, simply select Goal.
To set the goal, click the drop-down menu inside the condition box, choose Site and Event Data, and then select the event named Event: Product Purchased — Your Course.
At this stage, you can enhance your automation by incorporating additional emails for onboarding your new course participants. These messages can offer information on how to get into the course, instructions for getting the Thinkific mobile app, and any other details you feel are essential.
And your automation can conclude after this series of messages. To stop the automation, head to Conditions and Workflow, and simply click on End This Automation.
The image that follows provides a visual representation of what the automation looks like with every step we have configured.
The last action required is to click on the Active button located in the top-right corner of the automation builder, and your setup will be complete.
You can apply a similar process to construct automations for other common situations:
Once more, these examples showcase only a few of the many ways you can automate your processes and refine your communication by connecting ActiveCampaign with Thinkific.
ActiveCampaign extends its functionality far beyond being a simple email marketing tool. It is, in fact, a comprehensive multi-channel marketing solution that incorporates CRM features, thereby offering a broad spectrum of potential applications.
We will now quickly explore some of the additional tasks you can achieve by harnessing the power of this versatile platform.
ActiveCampaign’s communication tools are not limited to email; the platform also enables you to send both SMS and WhatsApp messages to your audience by integrating with other specialized services.
For example, you could dispatch a bulk text SMS to your students with a timely reminder about an upcoming live session. Alternatively, you could greet new learners with a welcoming WhatsApp message.
An additional strategy for utilizing ActiveCampaign is to build forms within the platform itself and then deploy them on your Thinkific website. This approach enables you to capture new leads directly from your Thinkific school, with their data being automatically sent to ActiveCampaign.
The form creation tool is highly adaptable, giving you the ability to incorporate numerous field types, including unique custom ones. You can also design different styles of forms, such as those that are embedded directly into a page or appear as pop-up windows.
To embed a form onto a Thinkific page, you must click the Integrate button located in the top-right section of the form builder. Then, simply copy the code provided and paste it into the appropriate Thinkific page.
By harnessing ActiveCampaign’s CRM capabilities, you can skillfully cultivate and maintain your student connections in a way that goes far beyond simple email marketing. The system allows you to gather essential details about your contacts, monitor their engagement, and design tailored learning journeys based on their unique activities and interests.
From dispatching highly specific follow-up messages and overseeing a system to rank your prospects, to setting up automated, individualized sales funnels, ActiveCampaign’s integrated CRM functionality proves to be an invaluable asset for your online education business.
In this walkthrough, we have detailed how the ActiveCampaign and Thinkific combination functions and have demonstrated several practical applications showing how your online courses can gain from this powerful integration.
By linking these two platforms, you can effectively automate your marketing initiatives and student correspondence, ensuring that all your outreach is both precisely targeted and deeply personalized.
We are confident that this guide has been valuable to you. If you aren’t currently utilizing Thinkific or ActiveCampaign, feel free to begin a complimentary trial with the buttons below.
And if you have any questions, leave us a comment below.
To integrate the two platforms, you need the API key, API URL, event key, and ACTID key from your ActiveCampaign account. Then install the ActiveCampaign app from Thinkific’s App Store and paste these values into the corresponding fields in the app settings.
You can pass new student sign-ups, free previews, course enrollments, course completions, and new orders from Thinkific to ActiveCampaign.
Kaydence Tranter serves as the senior content writer at sellingonlinecoursesguide.com, where she crafts authoritative content that helps course creators build and scale their online education businesses. Her writing expertise helps transform complex course creation and marketing concepts into clear, actionable guidance for the platform's audience.
Selling Online Courses Guide is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. However, this doesn’t influence our reviews or product listings. All opinions are based on our tests and personal experience with a product/service.
Copyright © 2024 by SellCoursesOnline
Kaydence Tranter serves as the senior content writer at sellingonlinecoursesguide.com, where she crafts authoritative content that helps course creators build and scale their online education businesses. Her writing expertise helps transform complex course creation and marketing concepts into clear, actionable guidance for the platform’s audience.
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