Send data to ActiveCampaign

Active Campaign is an automation platform for ecommerce, business-to-consumer, and business-to-business that helps you use email and SMS marketing to reach, nurture, convert, and grow your customer base.

Use Amperity to manage audience lists in ActiveCampaign.

Note

This destination uses the Active Campaign REST API.

Changes to audience lists are not immediately available in ActiveCampaign. Allow for up to 24 hours after the point at which Amperity has finished sending audience updates for them to be available.

This topic describes the steps that are required to send audience lists to ActiveCampaign from Amperity:

  1. Get details

  2. Add destination

  3. Add data template

Get details

ActiveCampaign requires the following configuration details:

Detail one.

The API key for your instance of ActiveCampaign.

Detail two.

The ActiveCampaign API endpoint URL, which is similar to https://<your-account>.api-us1.com/api/3/<resource>.

Note

ActiveCampaign API has the following limitations:

  • API access is rate limited to 5 requests per second.

Detail three.

The name of a user group that exists in ActiveCampaign and has permission to view and interact with the contact list.

Important

You must log into ActiveCampaign as a member of the specified user group to have access to the contact list that is managed by Amperity.

Detail four.

The name of a contacts list in ActiveCampaign. This can be the name of an existing list or a new list.

Detail five.

A query that outputs the fields that must be mapped to the ActiveCampaign contacts.

Add destination

Configure Amperity to send audience lists directly to ActiveCampaign.

To add a destination

Step 1.

Open the Destinations tab to configure a destination for ActiveCampaign. Click the Add Destination button to open the Destination dialog box.

Name, description, choose plugin.

Enter a name for the destination and provide a description. For example: “ActiveCampaign” and “This sends audience lists to ActiveCampaign”.

From the Plugin drop-down, start typing “act” to filter the list, and then select ActiveCampaign.

Step 2.

Credentials allow Amperity to connect to ActiveCampaign.

The credential type is set automatically. You may use an existing credential or you may add a new one.

Choose an existing credential or add credential.

Select an existing credential from the Credential drop-down.

– or –

Select Create a new credential from the Credential drop-down. This opens the Credential dialog box.

Choose an existing credential or add credential.

Enter the name for the credential, and then add a description.

ActiveCampaign has the following settings:

  • The API key for your instance of ActiveCampaign.

  • The ActiveCampaign API endpoint URL, which is similar to https://<your-account>.api-us1.com/api/3/<resource>.

When finished, click Save.

Step 3.

Each destination has settings that define how Amperity will deliver data to ActiveCampaign. These settings are listed under the Settings section of the Destination dialog box.

Settings for ActiveCampaign.

The following settings are specific to ActiveCampaign:

Setting

Description

Group name

The name of a user group that exists in ActiveCampaign and has permission to view and interact with the contact list.

Audience primary key

Select email as the audience primary key. (Amperity only sends a list of email addresses to ActiveCampaign.)

Step 4.

Business users are assigned to the Amp360 User and/or AmpIQ User policies. (Amp360 User allows access to queries and orchestrations and AmpIQ User allows access to segments and campaigns.) A business user cannot select a destination that is not visible to them.

Business users – including users assigned to the DataGrid Operator policy – may have restricted access to PII.

What is restricted access to PII?

Restricted PII access is enabled when the Restrict PII access policy option that prevents users who are assigned to that option from viewing data that is marked as PII anywhere in Amperity and from sending that data to any downstream workflow.

You can make this destination visible to orchestrations and allow users with restricted access to PII to use this destination by enabling one (or both) of the following options:

Allow business users access to this destination.

Note

To allow business users to use this destination with campaigns, you must enable the Available to campaigns option within the data template. This allows users to send campaign results from Amperity to ActiveCampaign.

The other two settings may be configured within the data template instead of the destination.

Step 5.

Review all settings, and then click Save.

Save the destination.

Important

You must configure a data template for this destination before you can send data to ActiveCampaign.

Add data template

A data template defines how columns in Amperity data structures are sent to downstream workflows. A data template is part of the configuration for sending query and segment results from Amperity to an external location.

To add a data template

Step 1.

From the Destinations tab, open the menu for a destination that is configured for ActiveCampaign, and then select Add data template.

This opens the Add Data Template dialog box.

Step 1

Enter the name of the data template and a description. For example: “ActiveCampaign” and “Send audience lists to ActiveCampaign.”.

Step 2.

Verify business user access to queries and orchestrations and access to segments and campaigns.

A business user may also have restricted access to PII, which prevents them from viewing and sending customer profile data.

Step 2.

If business user access was not configured as part of the destination, you may configure access from the data template.

Important

To allow business users to use this destination with campaigns, you must enable the Available to campaigns option. This allows users to send campaign results from Amperity to ActiveCampaign.

If you enable this option, the data extension settings require using campaign name and group name template variables to associate the name of the data extension to your campaign.

Step 3.

Verify all configuration settings.

The following settings are specific to ActiveCampaign:

Setting

Description

List name

The name of a contacts list in ActiveCampaign. This can be the name of an existing list or a new list.

Enable verbose logs

Select this option to return a log file that contains a list of email addresses that were not accepted by ActiveCampaign.

Step 4.

Review all settings, and then click Save.

Save the data template.

After you have saved the data template, and depending on how you configured it, business users can send query results to Active Campaign and/or send campaigns to ActiveCampaign.

Workflow actions

A workflow will occasionally show an error that describes what prevented a workflow from completing successfully. These first appear as alerts in the notifications pane. The alert describes the error, and then links to the Workflows tab.

Open the Workflows page to review a list of workflow actions, choose an action to resolve the workflow error, and then follow the steps that are shown.

Step one.

You may receive a notifications error for a configured ActiveCampaign destination. This appears as an alert in the notifications pane on the Destinations tab.

Review a notifications error.

If you receive a notification error, review the details, and then click the View Workflow link to open this notification error in the Workflows page.

Step two.

On the Workflows page, review the individual steps to determine which step(s) have errors that require your attention, and then click Show Resolutions to review the list of workflow actions that were generated for this error.

The Workflow page, showing a workflow with errors.
Step three.

A list of individual workflow actions are shown. Review the list to identify which action you should take.

Choose a workflow action from the list of actions.

Some workflow actions are common across workflows and will often be available, such as retrying a specific task within a workflow or restarting a workflow. These types of actions can often resolve an error.

In certain cases, actions are specific and are shown when certain conditions exist in your tenant. These types of actions typically must be resolved and may require steps that must be done upstream or downstream from your Amperity workflow.

Amperity provides a series of workflow actions that can help resolve specific issues that may arise with ActiveCampaign, including:

Step four.

Select a workflow action from the list of actions, and then review the steps for resolving that error.

Choose a workflow action from the list of actions.

After you have completed the steps in the workflow action, click Continue to rerun the workflow.

Invalid credentials

The credentials that are defined in Amperity are invalid.

To resolve this error, verify that the credentials required by this workflow are valid.

  1. Open the Credentials page.

  2. Review the details for the credentials used with this workflow. Update the credentials for ActiveCampaign if required.

  3. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

Invalid group name

A user group defines which set of users within ActiveCampaign have permission to interact with contacts in a contact list. For example: managing tags, defining list exclusions, or running campaigns.

When the name of the user group defined in Amperity does not match the name of a user group defined in ActiveCampaign, Amperity will be unable to update the list of contacts for a contact list and a workflow action will be shown.

To resolve this error, verify the name of the user group in ActiveCampaign, and then update the data template in Amperity for the correct name of the user group.

  1. Log in to ActiveCampaign as a user assigned who is assigned to the Admin permission.

  2. Verify the name of the user group and/or create a user group with the name that is required by this workflow.

  3. Verify the name of the user group that is defined in the data template used by this workflow. Update this value if required.

  4. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry.