How to restart an ActiveCampaign automation

by Dave | activecampaign

Active Campaign restart automation.

In this video, we’re going to talk about putting a contact back into an automation at a particular step. And I use a combination of a tag plus goal. In this case, my tag is called panic because something went wrong and I need to fix it right away.

And this is useful if for whatever reason a contact mistakenly exited and automation a multi step automation. So let’s dive right in. But this is actually a an example of why you would want to use this or how you would use this.

And this is kind of a simplified version of a scenario I went through. So we have a drip automation that sends out emails over time. So customer gets put in here, wait a few minutes, send them a welcome email, wait until Monday at 8am, send them email one.

And then repeat that every week, send out an email. So it goes along great. Makes sense. You wait a few minutes, you send an email he wait a few more minutes. But let me show you how my implementation wasn’t quiet, right.

But in this case, I said email wait till 8am on Mondays and email one wait till Monday to an email to we tell we tell Monday I am email three. Now two and three are in draft mode. So there’s nothing there to be sent to them. So we want to make sure that they’re holding at that place. However, the way this is set up right now is when somebody comes here, they’re going to wait until Monday at 8am send an email.

And right here, they’re not going to wait till next week. If they meet these criteria, they’re going to keep passing through. So unless this starts, like at 859, 59 seconds, they’re going to pass on to this one, which will then go to here.

And guess what, hey, Monday, 8am, it’s still that time. So they end up we end up trying to send three emails almost immediately. Not good. What I wanted to have our send an email here, and then wait till here.

So a couple things to do. Or actually, one thing to do is put a delay right here. So I’m going to go ahead and put a weight and I’m going to do in this case, two hours, just to be absolutely certain it’s no longer 8am. Of course, one hour should work.

But I just want to do hours, it wouldn’t hurt to do days. But two hours is exactly what I need just to make sure. So every time there’s a wait until a current day of the week current time, I’m also going to put in a delay that just waits for a couple hours. And then they can go and wait until Monday the next week. So that’s that would have prevented that from happening.

But I still have the problem that the people that saw email one and are supposed to be waiting for this are already passed through, I need to get them back in waiting at this step. Or at least waiting here. And this is where my panic goal panic tag comes into play.

So if I can identify my contacts, I’m going to apply a panic tag, that’s going to put them right here. So let me show you how that works. So first thing is go in here, you want to create a goal.

And because it’s a panic situation, I call a panic, I use a tag called panic. And it’s important to make sure nobody else has this tag. So whenever you use it, you should also get rid of it.

So if that tag exists, do you want to pull them down to here, I’m just going to save that. And then immediately, I’m going to do cleanup. So for contact, I want to remove a tag at this point panic, that’ll put them back here into the two hour wait, wait till Monday 8am.

So the great thing is I’m going to put them in here, they’re going to pass all the way down here, they’re going to get cleaned up on the tag. And then they’re going to be back in business waiting till the next Monday. So let’s give it a try. First thing is, you really do want to make sure nobody has the panic tag.

So I’m going to go in here. And this is only this isn’t everybody in here. But let me just show you what I do. Edit. I’m going to remove tag. I’m going to remove the panic tag, apply those changes.

Go ahead and do that. I don’t want to do all the steps in one go round. Because I don’t want to collide with each other or one happens out of order. I want to make sure it’s cleaned up.

Next thing I want to do is I want to apply the tag I’m just to be safe. I’m gonna go edit this person. And do I have the panic take now whatever. Let’s let’s put the panic tag on there.

Then I’m going to stick them in the automation. I think it’s called drip. If I remember right click on OK.

Now I should jump down to where that panic goal is. If I refresh this, I’m probably going to see some information over here on the right so I reached a goal in here. So let’s go take a look.

So notice I was added I skipped over everything prior to the goal. I’ve got my panic tag removed. And I’m sitting here where I should have been after having that first email.

So at this point, I should not have the panic tag. But I’m sitting here waiting in the right place. There we go.

So that’s how you restart an automation inactive campaign.