How to Connect Salesforce to ActiveCampaign

Are you looking to boost sales? Or do you want to streamline your customer engagement campaigns and create automated workflows? 

You can achieve this by connecting two powerful platforms – Salesforce and ActiveCampaign.

Salesforce-ActiveCampaign integration can help businesses align their sales and marketing teams to improve customer segmentation and targeting, automate workflows, streamline activities like direct marketing, and gain deeper insights into customer behaviors.

In this guide, we’ll explore how to set up this integration and the key benefits of doing so.

Overview of Salesforce and ActiveCampaign

Both platforms offer unique capabilities that help businesses streamline their sales, marketing, and customer service. Here’s what they have to offer.

Salesforce Overview

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Salesforce is a cloud customer relationship management (CRM) platform. It provides features to help businesses manage and improve customer relationships with customer experience automation. 

Its infrastructure and customization options make it suitable for businesses of all sizes. The key features of Salesforce include:

Its key features include:

• Sales Cloud: Automates sales processes, manages customer information, and improves productivity.
• Service Cloud: Enhances customer support through efficient case management and omnichannel service.
• Marketing Cloud: Automates marketing campaigns, personalizes customer journeys, and tracks marketing performance.
• Commerce Cloud: Provides tools for creating seamless ecommerce experiences.
• Analytics Cloud: Offers advanced analytics and business intelligence to derive insights from data.
• AppExchange: A marketplace for third-party applications like Postalytics that integrate with Salesforce.
• Community Cloud: Enables the creation of branded communities for customers, partners, and employees.
• Einstein AI: Integrates artificial intelligence to provide predictive analytics and automation.

ActiveCampaign Overview

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ActiveCampaign is a versatile marketing automation platform known for its intuitive interface and feature set. It provides tools designed to enhance marketing efforts, streamline customer relationship management (CRM), and automate sales processes. 

Its integration capabilities with tools like Postalytics make it a popular choice for businesses. 

The platform’s key features include:

• Email Marketing: Design and send email campaigns with advanced segmentation.
• Marketing Automation: Create automated workflows to nurture leads and convert them into customers.
• CRM: Manage customer relationships with integrated CRM tools that track interactions and sales pipelines.
• Sales Automation: Automate sales processes to improve efficiency and close deals faster.
• Dynamic Content: Personalize content dynamically based on customer behavior and preferences.
• Messaging: Engage customers through SMS and chat for real-time communication.
• Site Tracking: Monitor visitor behavior on your website to tailor marketing efforts.
• Lead Scoring: Prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert.

How Do You Set Up the Salesforce and ActiveCampaign Integration?

Setting up ActiveCampaign Salesforce integration can be tricky if you don’t follow the right steps. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started.

1. Install ActiveCampaign for Salesforce

Here’s how you can install ActiveCampaign for Salesforce to start the integration process.

• Log in to Salesforce: Access your Salesforce account using your credentials.
• Choose Visit AppExchange: Navigate to the AppExchange marketplace from the Salesforce dashboard.
• Choose ActiveCampaign: Search for the ActiveCampaign application in the AppExchange.
• Click Install for Admins: Select the “Install for Admins Only” option to ensure that the integration is set up correctly for administrators.
• Complete installation: Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the installation process. This may include agreeing to terms and conditions and confirming the installation.

ActiveCampaign is now integrated into your Salesforce environment and is ready for configuration and synchronization.

2. Assign permission sets to Salesforce users

You need to ensure the appropriate users have access to the features and functionalities of the ActiveCampaign integration.

• Navigate to the Salesforce Setup page from the top-right corner of the dashboard.
• In the Setup menu, click “Permission Sets” under the “Users” section.
• Select the relevant permission set for ActiveCampaign integration.
• Click the “Manage Assignments” button to view and manage user assignments for this permission set.
• Click the “Add Assignments” button to assign users to this permission set.
• Select the users who need access and click the “Assign” button to complete the process.

3. Set up system connections

This step involves linking the two platforms so they can communicate and share data effectively. Here’s a process you can follow:

• Access ActiveCampaign Setup Assistant: Log in to your ActiveCampaign account and navigate to the Setup Assistant.
• Add ActiveCampaign API Key to Salesforce: Generate an API key from ActiveCampaign, then log in to Salesforce and input this key in the designated integration field.
• Authorize ActiveCampaign to Salesforce: Follow the prompts to authorize the connection, granting ActiveCampaign permission to access and interact with your Salesforce data.
• Click Finish: Once you have entered all the necessary information and granted authorization, click the “Finish” button to complete the setup process.

4. Create dynamic field mapping

This process involves mapping contact fields from ActiveCampaign to contact and lead fields in Salesforce. You must do this to ensure data flows accurately between the two systems. While standard lead and contact mapping will already be configured, you can override this default setting and customize it yourself.  

For ActiveCampaign to Salesforce:

• In ActiveCampaign, navigate to the integration settings for Salesforce.
• Choose the contact fields in ActiveCampaign that you want to map to Salesforce contacts.
• Match these fields to the corresponding contact and lead fields in Salesforce.
• Save the field mapping configuration.

You can follow the same process for dynamic field mapping in Salesforce to ActiveCampaign contacts.

5. Configure outbound sync settings

The fifth step is to configure outbound sync settings. This step ensures that data is regularly and accurately synchronized between the two platforms.

The steps involved are:

• In the ActiveCampaign setup interface, choose to sync leads and contacts from Salesforce.
• Specify how often you want the data to synchronize. Options include real-time, hourly, daily, or custom intervals.
• After setting the synchronization preferences, click the “Continue” button to finish the configuration.

6. Activate ActiveCampaign CX Automation

The final step in connecting ActiveCampaign and Salesforce is activating ActiveCampaign CX Automation. 

• In ActiveCampaign, navigate to the setup page. Click the “Continue” button to proceed with the final configuration.
• Complete the setup by clicking the “Finish” button, which finalizes the integration process.
• Verify integration success by checking the connection status and ensuring the automation workflows are active and functioning as intended.

By completing these steps, you enable the powerful automation capabilities of ActiveCampaign, ensuring a seamless and efficient integration with Salesforce. This activation allows you to leverage the full potential of both platforms to improve customer engagement and marketing efficiency.

Benefits of Salesforce ActiveCampaign Integration

Salesforce ActiveCampaign integration can help businesses in a number of ways. Here are four major benefits.

Improved lead nurturing

Salesforce-ActiveCampaign integration allows for seamless synchronization of lead data. This allows for more personalized and automated communication strategies. Businesses can create targeted, timely, and relevant marketing campaigns with unified insights. 

Enhancing the lead-nurturing process results in;

• Higher engagement rates, 
• More effective lead conversion, 
• Increased sales efficiency and success.

Integrate your sales and marketing data

The Salesforce and ActiveCampaign integration allows for a holistic view of customer interactions. 

Businesses gain valuable insights into customer behaviors and preferences by combining sales pipeline data from Salesforce with marketing engagement data from ActiveCampaign. This approach enables more informed decision-making, targeted marketing efforts, and streamlined sales processes.

Automated workflows

The integration of Salesforce and ActiveCampaign enables the creation of automated workflows. For example, when a lead reaches a certain stage in the sales pipeline in Salesforce, ActiveCampaign can automatically trigger personalized follow-up emails or reminders to nurture the new lead further. This reduces manual effort, ensures timely communication, and increases conversions.

Alignment in lead scoring

The Salesforce and ActiveCampaign integration facilitates alignment in lead scoring. This ensures consistent evaluation criteria between sales and marketing teams. 

For instance, when a lead engages with marketing campaigns in ActiveCampaign, their actions and behaviors can automatically update their lead score in Salesforce. The shared scoring system allows sales teams to focus on prospects that are likely to convert.

Use Cases of Salesforce and ActiveCampaign Integration

The integration between ActiveCampaign and Salesforce offers various use cases:

• Create unified customer profiles by synchronizing customer data between ActiveCampaign and Salesforce. For example, when a lead engages with a marketing email in ActiveCampaign, their interactions and preferences are automatically updated in Salesforce. This synchronization gives sales reps a comprehensive view of the customer’s journey.
• Empower sales teams with valuable insights to accelerate the sales process. For instance, Salesforce can automatically notify sales reps when an engaged lead is ready for follow-up based on ActiveCampaign’s lead scoring.
• Identify opportunities for customer retention and upselling by utilizing data from both platforms. For example, Salesforce can notify the customer success team when a high-value customer shows signs of disengagement in ActiveCampaign. This insight allows them to intervene and prevent churn.
• Gain insights into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by attributing conversions to specific marketing efforts. Marketers can track how leads generated from specific email campaigns progress through the sales funnel.

Integrate Salesforce and ActiveCampaign With Postalytics

Salesforce and ActiveCampaign are powerful platforms that combine to automate workflows and create seamless campaigns. Following the steps in this guide, you can activate the integration and tap into its benefits.

Do you run direct marketing campaigns? Leverage the integration of these tools with Postalytics and create successful campaigns. To learn more about these integrations, register for free on Postalytics.