sales-activecampaign

What this skill does

# ActiveCampaign Platform Help

Help the user with ActiveCampaign platform questions — from Automations and Email Marketing through CRM/Deals/Pipelines, Lead Scoring, SMS, WhatsApp, Landing Pages, Forms, Site Tracking, Transactional Email, Segmentation, Reporting, and AI/Active Intelligence. ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one marketing automation and CRM platform, founded in 2003 by Jason VandeBoom. Chicago-based, 180K+ businesses, 700+ employees. Offers email, SMS, WhatsApp, landing pages, lead scoring, deals/pipelines, and 900+ integrations.

## Step 1 — Gather context


If `references/learnings.md` exists, read it first for accumulated knowledge.

Ask the user:

1. **What area of ActiveCampaign do you need help with?**
   - A) Automations — visual workflow builder (triggers, branching, goals, split actions, wait steps)
   - B) Email Marketing — campaigns (broadcasts), A/B testing, conditional content, predictive sending
   - C) CRM / Deals / Pipelines — customizable pipelines and stages, deal tracking, tasks, win probability
   - D) Lead Scoring — AI-powered contact and deal scoring, multiple scoring models
   - E) SMS — automated SMS in workflows, SMS campaigns, two-way SMS
   - F) WhatsApp — WhatsApp messaging channel in automations
   - G) Landing Pages — 56 templates, drag-and-drop builder, form integration, custom domains
   - H) Forms — inline, floating bar, modal, floating box, conditional fields
   - I) Site Tracking — track website visits per contact, trigger automations based on site behavior
   - J) Transactional Email — Postmark-powered transactional email add-on
   - K) Segmentation — tag-based, list-based, engagement-based, behavioral, deal-based
   - L) Reporting — campaign analytics, automation reports, deal reports, attribution, custom reports
   - M) AI / Active Intelligence — predictive content, predictive sending, autonomous marketing workflows
   - N) Conversations — live chat and chatbot (legacy, being sunset)
   - O) API / Integrations — REST API, webhooks, 900+ integrations
   - P) Account / Billing — plans, pricing, contact-based billing
   - Q) Something else — describe it

2. **What's your role?**
   - A) Small business owner / solopreneur
   - B) Email / lifecycle marketer
   - C) Developer / engineer
   - D) Agency / freelancer
   - E) Sales / revenue operations
   - F) Other

3. **What are you trying to accomplish?** (describe your specific goal or question)

**If the user's request already provides most of this context, skip directly to the relevant step.** Lead with your best-effort answer using reasonable assumptions (stated explicitly), then ask only the most critical 1-2 clarifying questions at the end — don't gate your response behind gathering complete context.

Note: If the user needs a specialized skill, route them there with a brief explanation of why that skill is a better fit.

## Step 2 — Route or answer directly

If the request maps to a specialized skill, route:
- General email marketing strategy / best practices -> `/sales-email-marketing`
- Cross-platform email deliverability (not ActiveCampaign-specific) -> `/sales-deliverability`
- Email open/click tracking strategy -> `/sales-email-tracking`
- Lead scoring strategy / models (not ActiveCampaign-specific) -> `/sales-lead-score`
- Connecting ActiveCampaign to other tools via middleware -> `/sales-integration`
- Klaviyo-specific questions -> `/sales-klaviyo`
- Customer.io-specific questions -> `/sales-customerio`
- Mailchimp-specific questions -> `/sales-mailchimp`
- Postmark-specific questions -> `/sales-postmark`

Otherwise, answer directly from platform knowledge using the reference below.

## Step 3 — ActiveCampaign platform reference

**Read `references/platform-guide.md`** for detailed module documentation, pricing, integrations, and data model.

*You no longer need the platform guide details — focus on the user's specific situation.*

## Step 4 — Actionable guidance

Based on the user's specific question:

1. **Building an automation workflow with lead scoring**:
   1. Navigate to Automations > Create an Automation > Start from Scratch (or choose a template)
   2. Set the trigger — e.g., "Submits a Form" for a lead capture form, or "Tag is Added" for a specific lead source tag
   3. Add an action to adjust the contact's lead score: Contacts > Adjust Score > select your scoring model and add points (e.g., +10 for form submission)
   4. Add a wait step: "Wait for conditions" > wait until the contact's lead score reaches your threshold (e.g., score >= 50)
   5. Add an if/else condition: check the contact's score — if score >= 50, route to the "sales-ready" path; otherwise, continue nurturing
   6. On the sales-ready path: create a deal in your pipeline (Actions > CRM > Add a Deal), assign it to a sales rep, send a notification email to the rep
   7. On the nurture path: send a series of educational emails with wait steps between them, adding lead score points for each email opened (+5) or link clicked (+10)
   8. Add a goal: "Deal is Won" — contacts who purchase skip ahead to the end of the automation
   9. Monitor: check automation reports for contacts entered, goal completion rate, and average time to goal

2. **Setting up a CRM pipeline with sales automation**:
   1. Navigate to Deals > Pipelines > Add Pipeline
   2. Define your stages — e.g., "New Lead", "Qualified", "Proposal Sent", "Negotiation", "Won", "Lost"
   3. Set stage widths (win probability) — each stage represents a percentage likelihood of closing (e.g., New Lead = 10%, Qualified = 30%, Proposal = 60%)
   4. Create custom deal fields for your business: deal source, product interest, contract length, etc.
   5. Build automations triggered by deal events:
      - "Deal Stage Changes to Qualified" > send a personalized email to the contact, create a task for the sales rep to schedule a call
      - "Deal Stage Changes to Proposal Sent" > wait 3 days > if deal is still in "Proposal Sent" stage, send a follow-up email and notify the rep
      - "Deal is Won" > add a "Customer" tag, move to onboarding automation, send a welcome email
      - "Deal is Lost" > add a "Lost Deal" tag, wait 30 days, send a re-engagement email
   6. Set up deal task templates: standard tasks for each stage (e.g., "Schedule discovery call" when entering Qualified stage)
   7. Monitor: use deal reports to track pipeline value, win/loss rates, and average deal duration per stage

3. **Creating a conditional content email campaign**:
   1. Navigate to Campaigns > Create a Campaign > Standard
   2. Select your target list or segment
   3. In the email designer, add a content block and click "Make Conditional"
   4. Define the condition: e.g., "Contact tag contains VIP" > show a VIP-exclusive offer; otherwise, show a standard offer
   5. Add multiple conditional blocks in the same email — e.g., different product recommendations based on custom fields (industry, product interest, location)
   6. Use dynamic personalization tags: `%FIRSTNAME%`, `%DEAL_VALUE%`, or any custom field with fallback values for missing data
   7. Set up A/B testing: test up to 5 subject line variants — ActiveCampaign sends each variant to a percentage of your list, then sends the winner to the rest
   8. Enable predictive sending (Pro+): let ActiveCampaign determine the optimal send time for each individual contact
   9. Review and send: preview conditional content for different contacts, verify personalization renders correctly, and schedule or send

## Gotchas

> *Best-effort from research — review these, especially items about plan-gated features and integration gotchas that may be outdated.*

1. **CRM is a PAID ADD-ON — "Pipelines" ($68/mo) or "Sales Engagement" (Pro+). Don't assume CRM features are included in base plans.** The Starter and Plus plans do not include CRM/deals/pipelines by default. You must purchase the "Pipelines" add-on ($68/mo, B2C-oriented) or upgrade to Pro with the "Sales Engagement" bundle (B2B-focused). If your use