Adding Unique Links to ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign can send subscription emails to your listeners using custom fields. When someone is added to one of your feeds as a listener, Zapier can pass their subscription link to ActiveCampaign as a custom field. From there, you can send an email to the listener from your own email address, custom designed how you'd like, and it will include their unique link for the feed.

The custom fields work like the %FIRSTNAME% code in ActiveCampaign. It pulls details from their contact information and populates the email to make it custom to them.

Creating the Custom Field

To begin, create a custom field in ActiveCampaign named Subscription Link. Do that by clicking Settings, Manage Fields, Add Field. Type "Subscription Link" as the Field name, and click Add. You can leave the other settings alone.

You should now see the %SUBSCRIPTION_LINK% tag at the bottom of the list of fields.

Adding the Subscription Link Using Zapier

You'll need your ActiveCampaign and Hello Audio accounts connected to Zapier. You can follow these instructions to get started with Zapier: https://help.helloaudio.fm/article/54-getting-started-with-zapier The content below assumes you've set up a Zap following those instructions.

In this example shown here, we have an opt-in form on our website that subscribes listeners to our feed. The Zap starts with the form's trigger then continues to Hello Audio and ActiveCampaign steps.

Your trigger will likely be different. It could be a purchase, or a different lead capture tool, or a webhook for example. All that's needed from the trigger is the listener's email address.

In the Hello Audio step, be sure to choose "False" in the "Send email" section. No email will be sent from Hello Audio. You'll be sending it from ActiveCampaign instead.

In the "Create/Update Contact in ActiveCampaign" step, choose the list, and populate the email address from the content in the trigger. Also, add a tag to identify that the contact went through this Zap. 

Careful! If your Zap's trigger is "Add to list" don't add them to the list again here in this step. That would create an infinite loop. (And watch out for other infinite loops with steps in the Zap causing the trigger to fire.) Instead, leave the list field blank and fill out the other details. You'll know it's blank because it will say "Choose value..." instead of "Master List" like it shows below.

We'll use the tag later to trigger sending the email from ActiveCampaign. In this example, I've added 2 tags: "audio asset challenge" and "webflow signup".

Finally, the important part! 

Click on the "Subscription Link (%SUBSCRIPTION_LINK%)" field and choose the Hello Audio step. Then click "Subscription Page Link". The link should now show in that custom field in Zapier. 

Click Continue then Test & Review. Then turn on your Zap. You are now collecting contacts in ActiveCampaign and adding them to your Hello Audio feed!

Sending the Subscription Link from ActiveCampaign

We'll use an automation to send the email to new listeners. The short answer is to use %SUBSCRIPTION_LINK% as the hyperlink URL in the email. If you're not comfortable with how to do that, the detailed steps below walk through building the automation from scratch.

Find the contact in ActiveCampaign and see that they now have their link in the Subscription Link custom field. They should also have the tag(s) you used in your Zapier step.

To send the email, we'll create an ActiveCampaign automation that's triggered when a contact has the tag added.

Click "Automations" on the left then "Create an automation". Click "Start from scratch" then "Continue"

Choose "Tag is added" as the trigger, then continue.

Type the name of your tag that you used in the ActiveCampaign Zapier step, then Add Start.

Click "Send an Email", then "Create an email". Give it a name and click "Create". 

Choose a template or start from scratch. Then type your email subject and continue.

Write your email (nbd). When you're ready to insert the subscription link, click Personalize, and then click "Contact: Subscription Link".

This adds %SUBSCRIPTION_LINK% to your email's text wherever your cursor was. We'll copy that and paste it into a link.

Highlight the text you'd like to be the link, click the chain icon to make it a link, and paste in %SUBSCRIPTION_LINK% then click OK.

You can delete %SUBSCRIPTION_LINK% from the text of the email. We just used it temporarily to copy from.

When your email is finished, you can click Next at the top-right. Scroll down a bit and send a test email to the contact that went through the Zap. When you receive the email, click the link to make sure it was delivered as expected.

If all looks good, click "Finish" then "Save".

Finish off the automation by giving it a name, clicking + after the email and adding an "End this Automation" step under "Conditions and Workflow", then click "Active" at the top-right.

Done! You are now sending the unique links to each listener from your email address with your customized email :)