We love working with ActiveCampaign because they are always working hard on updating their platform, giving you access to better features and helping you achieve your marketing goals.
A couple of months ago, we took a look at their new email designer, which we are delighted has now been rolled out to all ActiveCampaign accounts. As an ActiveCampaign customer you will now be presented with the choice of designer you would like to use when you create a new campaign.
Choosing the “Classic” builder allows you to continue to work the way you are used to, while “Early Access” launches the new designer. There are still some of the features missing from the Classic designer, such as the Product Block, but they are continually updating it, so we don’t think it will be long before that option is available.
In order to provide all accounts with the new email designer, they also updated the Content Manager, which provides a centralised place to access and manage all the media you use across ActiveCampaign. With the ability to add folders, you can also make sure your images are stored in a more logical, structured way. You can access the Content Manager under the Campaigns menu.
A fresh new navigation experience
In addition to these exciting enhancements, today (7th July 2022) ActiveCampaign are also due to start rolling out their updated navigation. They have changed the look of the menu bar completely, switching from a dark grey to a clean, bright blue.
More importantly though, the menu items have been regrouped in a more logical way, meaning you will be able to access your most used areas in ActiveCampaign more easily, saving you time.
Image courtesy of ActiveCampaign
Without having been able to try it out yet, as we wait for it to hit our account, it does look to be very easy to navigate around. However, there are a couple of things to note for the experienced ActiveCampaign users among you:
- The Deals icon is no longer a ‘$’ but rather is not represented as three columns, representing the Deal Stages.
- Managing Lists and Fields are now nested under the Contacts menu, meaning you can find everything to do with contacts in one place.
- Reports are now available in each section, meaning you can access the relevant metrics that much more easily.
New Form fields available
The navigation within the Form Builder also changed recently, giving you additional fields to choose from as well as cleaning up the display.
As before, when creating a Form in ActiveCampaign you can choose between the Standard fields – which includes the default fields of full or first/last name, phone number as well as the Header, Image and HTML code fields – as well as any Custom contact fields. The user interface has been updated though to display these all underneath each other now though, with Standard fields at the top of the list, rather than having to toggle between the two.
While this is not a huge thing, having all your fields shown in one view is really helpful and speeds finding the right fields up, simply because you are not switching back and forth between the two tabs.
Fields already on the form are greyed out as they were before, and you can still search your Custom fields so that you do not have to scroll through them to find the right one.
Additionally though, if you scroll below the Contact contact fields, you will now discover the new “Account Fields” section.
As you would expect from any decent CRM, ActiveCampaign not only allows you to create Contact records, but also organisation records, which you can assign your contacts to. ActiveCampaign described these organisation records as “Accounts”. Up until now, it was not possible to add the Account fields to a form, meaning it was more difficult to collect company information from your clients. This enhancement removes that limitation, meaning those of you who work B2B can gather that all important company data, allowing you to personalise your campaigns in an even more informed way.
As you can see, the fields are split into three sections, Required, Standard and Custom. Under Required Fields you will only see “Account Name”. Please note though, this field is not required for all forms. It is just a field that, if you add it to the Form, will always be a required field. You are unable to make it an optional field.
All the other fields, whether Standard or Custom, can be turned into required fields by ticking the box in the field options, as with the Contact fields.
Here to help
Are you looking for a CRM with robust marketing features? Do you have a manual sales process that could benefit from some task automation? Or do you have an ActiveCampaign account but are not sure you are getting the most out of it?
Please get in touch. We would love to help you achieve your business goals. Call us on 01889 280010 or email hello@zephi.co.uk.
