As an avid ActiveCampaign user, I’m familiar with their automation system. For years now, I’ve used their platform to nurture my prospects and get them to the next stage of awareness.
However, Saravanan and I just upgraded to the professional plan in ActiveCampaign – and I’m blown away!
How We’re Using The New ActiveCampaign Features To Drive Sales
Nic Peterson talks about the need to bracket prospects into three buckets.
#1 – Not a good fit. These are people who aren’t good prospects.
#2 – Good for later. Folks who are in lower stages of awareness, or aren’t ready to buy yet.
#3 – Good for now. People who are a great fit, you know you can solve their problem, and can identify that they’re ready to become a customer … they just need the right push.
When you can successfully bracket list members into these three buckets, you’ll be able to both market to them more effectively and convert more of them into sales.
We’re using ActiveCampaign’s lead scoring system to help us quickly and accurately identify who belongs in the “good for now” and “good for later” buckets so we can make better marketing decisions.
The ActiveCampaign Lead Scoring System Allows Us To See Who Is Closest To The Sale
ActiveCampaign’s lead scoring system watches every action (or inaction) a list member makes and scores them based on that action.
Points are awarded based on the value of that action.
For example … if they open an email, they get three points.
Visiting a checkout page gets ten points.
Watching through a 2 hour webinar? Fifty points.
The more actions they take, the more likely they are to eventually become a customer.
However, points expire! Most of our points expire after 21-30 days. This means that if a lead visits a checkout page today, 30 days from now ActiveCampaign takes away the points from that action.
This means if you have a high score – you’ve been really active and are a hot prospect!
We set a pretty high bar for our “Good fit now” bucket … 80 points.
In order to qualify for this special list and campaign series, you need to be dedicated.
80 points ought to be dedicated enough!
That means you (likely) watched the webinar, visited the checkout page several times, and watched several of our other videos.
And considering that it takes us an average of 7-14 days to turn a prospect into a sale, 80 points is a good starting point.
Of course, we just set that number for the first time. If not too many people reach that goal we will try 60 and adjust from there.
Before we go any further, let’s take a look at some of the elements of our system we have setup …
Our Email Marketing System At 30,000 Feet.
As with all great campaigns, you need a traffic source.
I’m a Facebook ads pro who has been writing and managing ads for 7 years.
So I created a series of ads that get us webinar leads for $4 a piece. If you want to know how I do that, check out my Facebook ads guide.
Once a user signs up for the webinar Saravanan and I produced for our Rank and Rent Mastery Program, they are immediately signed up for the first email series and introduced to our world.
Our first series is about 45 days long.
Our first goal is to get prospects to come back and watch the webinar. We understand that a two hour webinar is hard to get through when you’re not expecting it.
So the first three emails entice them with reasons why they should go back and watch, as well as indoctrinate them into our brand 🙂
After that we have a few value emails pitching them on the concepts we teach in the webinar.
The goal here is two fold …
1 – Get them really excited about our opportunity.
2 – Destroy any objections, false beliefs, excuses, or other reasons why they can’t take advantage of the opportunity in front of them.
So for about a week we hit them from multiple different angles, always with a different message.
Sometimes there’s no call to action.
Many times we invite them back to the webinar.
About two weeks in, we do something a bit different.
We tell them about an upcoming free training series.
It’s 5 days long – and it walks them through the entire Rank and Rent process.
In reality, it’s the webinar diced up into five separate videos and emails.
We found that when you “spoon feed” the audience like this, engagement and video views go waaayyy up.
And that’s what we want in this stage.
We want the prospects watching through our indoctrination webinar / videos so that resistance to the sell is reduced, and eventually eliminated.
Every email, video, or interaction with us needs to move them closer to the sale.
And so we continue with that for 45 days.
What Happens If A User Successfully Completes The Webinar?
If a user has watched through 75% or more of the webinar, they’ve seen our pitch and at least have a decent knowledge of our business, our program, and are moderately sold on the idea.
If they weren’t convinced it’s worth their time, they wouldn’t have spend an hour and a half with us.
So they instantly get 50 points and ActiveCampaign moves them into a special automation and list for prospects who watch through 75% or more of the webinar.
We’ve qualified that they’re in a higher stage of awareness.
So we can market to them differently.
We can begin promoting the course more aggressively and following up on their specific concerns and objections.
But this is not yet the “cream of the crop” or the “good for now” prospects.
Remember, attending the webinar only gets you 50 points … we need 80 to hit that magical “Good for now” score.
What Happens When A User Hits The 80 Point Mark?
Using ActiveCampaign’s automations, the system monitors all contacts for changes in their score.
If a score reaches a threshold of 80 or higher, they’re instantly added to a dedicated list and automation.
From there, we can market to them specifically through Facebook ads, website messages, text messages, and email.
We’re in the process of setting this up at the moment, but here’s what we intend to do …
- Create followup webinars that show prospects the value of signing up for our flagship program.
- Running limited time strategy call sessions where we get them on the phone and close them.
- Implement “Be helpful” campaign where we show them something cool currently happening in the program and offer them an opportunity to hop in.
These kinds of campaigns would not work well if we targeted the general list with them… but because we’re targeting our most active, hot prospects, they should convert at a much higher rate.
How To Create A Scoring System In ActiveCampaign: Tips And Tricks
#1 – Make Sure To Set Up Rules Properly
ActiveCampaign’s scoring system can be tricky at first – especially if you’re not used to it.
I had to learn to create ONE set of lead scoring rules … otherwise it gets messy and looks like this …
You’ll want to create one single set of rules initially and add different layers to them.
For example, take my set scoring rule set …
It uses ActiveCampaign’s segment builder to create AND / OR rules. In this case, select OR.
For example. Look at the first line. This says that when a user opens any campaign, they get 3 points. That’s the value of that action.
Every line after that is for a different rule. But it’s all calculated together.
And it’s all account wide.
It doesn’t matter what list or automation a contact is in. This rule set applies to everyone.
Starting out, it’s best to create one rule set and have all the individual rules inside of it adding and subtracting together.
Now – if you want to have specific rule sets for specific purposes, like say, have just an “Open email” score – that’s fine.
But my goal here is to create a total score based on virtually all main action s the lead can take.
So I will create one rule set and work based off that.
#2 – Use Automations To Add Or Subtract Points.
You’ll want to create specific automations to further manage your scores.
Here’s what my “Engagement” automation looks like with lead scoring …
With this automation, anytime a user opens an email or clicks on an email, they’re tagged with “Engaged” or “Active” and their “Total Activity Score” is increased by two points.
This automation is triggered for each email they open or click on.
So if a user opens 10 emails, they get 20 points.
You will want to do this for websites too – I have a second automation that sees when users visit the website (I use Site Tracking for that). That automation then adds points for visiting the website.
Simply put, your automations are responsible for continually adding points based on actions that are set in the rules. This was something critical I learned from Sam Ovens in Consulting Accelerator and UpLevel Consulting.
ActiveCampaign’s Technology Lets Us Build Powerful Systems That Talk To The Right Leads At The Right Time
The lead scoring feature, combined with automations and lists helps you talk to the right people at the right time.
It’s one of the reasons I love ActiveCampaign so much.
If you haven’t used it yet, you need to give it a try.
Click here to grab a free trial. [Yes – this is an affiliate link. Yes, we will make a commission off it. No – it doesn’t cost you anything. But if you do sign up for it with our link I’ll send you a free email marketing training showing you how I consistently get 30-50% email open rates].
