Split Automations In Any ActiveCampaign Account

Active Campaign split automation.

In this video, we’re going to cover how to do a split automation in any active campaign plan, an example will be split testing the email subject line and that link there goes to a place where I share some code that you need to install on your web server for this to happen. So let’s dive right in.

You know, the reason I bring this up is because not every plan offers the built in Split automation capability that Active Campaign has. So if you notice, the professional and enterprise offer this by default. However, the lite and the plus do not. Now what I’m going to show you is a way to do this that works, but it has some limitations and I’ll show you as we go along.

Now to start with, you’re going to want to create an automation and eventually you want to put a split in there. So you might send some people down one path, other people down another, and if you do have the split automation capability in your account, no need to watch this video. As an example, I go here, I go to conditions and workflow and then I do split, you have a few choices and even split and then you can stop after a certain amount of contacts of how things split, and you can specify how you determine which path to send everyone down after that, or you can filter based on current date time.

Typically, I do never split indefinitely because I want to watch the results over time. Yes, I’m giving myself a little more work. But the result is I can be more sure that the results I’m getting are correct. So I’m going to go ahead and click on apply and literally that is it. You simply send people down the A path or B the path. From here, you could actually do another split if you want, but typically, you’d want to have two versions of the same email. So I’m going to go ahead and create a couple emails that are identical with the exception of the subject line.

Now obviously, I didn’t create the emails, but I just want to show you that I can go down two different paths right here and typically I’d like to split test the subject line to see what the open rate is, and usually what you can do is go in here and click on stats, and let me show you an account that has this setup.

So this would be a typical automation and not every email I’m going to split test, like someone gets put into here, Email 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It looks like we are testing email number 10. So there’s two versions of it and what ends up happening is we do an indefinite split. One goes to email 10, E10, the other one goes to email 10 A but notice they loop right back into the same path once they’ve completed this split test, and usually what I do is go to view reports and I want to grab these stats right here. So it’s been sent to 4970 of 4980 and 2764 have opened this.

So what I usually do is I go to a tool like this survey monkey has A/B split testing calculator and at one time, I may have known how the stats how this works. I just take the defaults. I know I want two sided because that takes into account whether it’s a positive or negative change and then I just leave the confidence the more the higher the number, the more confident is but it takes more data, there’s definitely a trade offs.

So 4980 open 2764 open, so I’m going to put that into here, which I’ve already done. So there’s only been 589 and 323 that have opened and I’ll let the calculator do the math. So right now it’s saying no, they’re not significant and yeah, those are pretty darn close. So I basically need to run this split test further. If it stays the same over time, I’m probably gonna say, you know what, there’s really no difference, stick with the original and make another variation.

So that’s why it’s pretty darn easy with the split automation capability. But what if that’s not available in the account you have. So what we can do is instead of split indefinitely, we’re going to use tags. Now, you need to have a script on your web server that will add the appropriate tag. So if you want to go to this URL here, and copy all of this code right down here, and then inside your hosting account, you want to go to File Manager, you want to go to this and then in here you want to create, for instance, a directory or a folder. I’m going to call it split and then Go into that directory, create a file called index.php, edit that file, paste that code in there and then we need to make some changes at the top, we need to get this information from your Active Campaign account, and then you need to come up with tags that you’re going to use to identify people depending on which leg of this split they’re in.

So I’m going to have one called split A. Okay, and it needs to be comma separated, so the next one is going to be split B. I’m going to go ahead and save that after I get the information I need. So I want to go down to this little gear icon. Open this, I’m going to go into developer, copy the URL. That’s your AC underscore URL, paste that in, copy the key, oops, go here, paste that in.

So you added three things, the URL, the key for the API. And then You want to add tags, typically two tags, and it’s going to be comma separated and I wouldn’t put any white space in there, you could but I recommend not doing that. So this is how we’re going to do a split test now or split automation. So instead of having this split here, I’m going to go ahead and delete this and you know, I’m just going to remove it all I’ll show you how to do it from start to finish.

So the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure no, the person that comes in here does not have any of those tags. Those are simply to use. So I’m going to say split A, remove that, remove that, save that. Now we want to put them into that wet send them to that web hooks so that a tag gets applied. So I’m going to go ahead and do that right here and I need to know the URL, so I’m going to go ahead and do a web hook here, which is the purple guy down here typically going to be HTTPS, your website and the subdirectory and then that’s it.

You don’t have to do anything else there, go ahead and click on Save. Now instead of that nice little split feature, we have to check which tag Do they have. So the first thing I’m gonna do is do they have split test split A tag, so I’m gonna go ahead and click on tag exists, split, and I want to do another if condition. So if they have the A tag, they’re going down here, and you know what, some people for whatever reason may not have a tag shouldn’t be the case. But I just want to be absolutely certain.

So I’m going to go ahead and go to tag again, and this time it’s going to be split B, and for whatever reason, if they get into here and they don’t have the tag, they’re going to go down this path. So I’m going to go ahead and send one of the two emails here, and my recommendation is to have a another variation not the same as this. So if there is the situation for whatever reason those tags don’t get applied, then you can at least send them the appropriate email.

Now similar to what I had set up earlier, I want everyone to merge back up and what I’m going to do is actually remove those tags so they can be reused again. So next thing I want to do, and then finally, I want to merge them back up and I am going to remove those same tags. There we go.

Okay, now, this is more proof of concept, typically an automation I would have multiple emails going out, and I could split test them, and I could read I can reassign those tags again down here and repeat this it gets a little busy, but it definitely works. So now what I need to do is put myself in here, make sure I get one of these tags, and then I go down one of the appropriate paths. So let’s make sure this actually works.

So I’ve been done this a number of times if you can’t tell already, but let’s do it again. And if I refresh, I should have split A or split B tag. So I’ve got the split B tag and I should be right here at this one day wait for the split B, and there. So that’s how I can end up split testing these emails. I’m going to go ahead and put everybody in here. None of these emails are going to get set sent because I’m there in draft mode.

So now, within a few minutes, I should have people here, here, and it’s going to be random. It’s not going to be a perfect 50-50 split, could be, but it’s going to be randomized. 30-28, not too bad.

So that’s how you can do split automation in any Active Campaign account.