Business Goals overview

In ActiveCampaign, Business Goals help you track and optimize your marketing goals in one place. With Business Goals, you can combine campaigns, SMS broadcasts, automations, and forms related to sign-ups and track their performance towards that goal in one place.

This article explains the Business Goals dashboard and how to create and manage business goals in ActiveCampaign.

Take note

• The number of active goals that you can have at one time depends on your plan:
  • Starter, Trial, and Sandbox = 15 goals
  • Plus = 25 goals
  • Professional and Enterprise = 200 goals
• You can tie one conversion to multiple business goals, but each business goal can only track up to 4 conversions
• Assets are available based on your plan and add-ons
• Business goals can have more than 1 automation, but an automation can only have 1 Business Goal

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How Business Goals work

A business goal is a group of assets, such as campaigns, SMS broadcasts, automations, or forms linked together by labels to track their performance towards one or more conversion goals. Creating a business goal allows you to collect all of your marketing goal efforts into one place to track their success.

For example, if your marketing objective is to grow your subscriber list, you can set this up as a business goal in ActiveCampaign. Start by creating a conversion such as “Has subscribed to a list – any list.” Then, add related assets, such as a “New feature announcement” campaign and a “Rollout nurture automation.” 

These elements work together to support your goal and allow you to track progress through the Business Goals dashboard. “Grow my subscriber list” is one of two pre-populated goals that you’ll be guided to set up through prompts.

The above is just one example, but other goals could include:

• Drive contact engagement
• Increase email clicks
• Generate form submissions

Alternatively, you can choose from pre-populated goals to help you quickly create business goals.

After you create a business goal, the Business Goal dashboard displays graphs and stats to help you track its success. Learn more about the Business Goals dashboard and Individual Business Goal Overviews.

If you see that things are not on track as you monitor your business goals, we will recommend ways to improve. For example:

• Trying a different subject line
• Adding additional assets like a landing page
• Retargeting contacts with a new automation

Business Goals dashboard overview

To access the Business Goal dashboard page, click the Business Goals trophy icon on the left menu. 

The Business Goals Dashboard is where you can:

• Hover over the Business Goal and click the arrows to view a quick performance summary.
• Click on any goal to open the Individual Business Goal Overview and explore performance and related assets.
• Click the star next to a Business Goal to move it to the top of the list.

Individual Business Goal overview

To access the Individual Business Goal overview, click the Business Goals trophy icon on the left menu, then click on the business goal you want to view.

The Individual Business Goal overview is where you edit your business goal to add or delete conversions and assets.

You can also view the conversion performance summary here. This summary shows a 30-day window of events. You can change the window, but you cannot expand it beyond 30 days.

In addition, AI suggestions are available to help generate emails or automations, which can be added directly to a goal. Click the AI suggestion you want to add to your Business Goal.

Create a business goal from the Business Goals dashboard

Business goals can be created from pre-populated templates or defined manually to suit specific business needs.

1. Click the Business Goals trophy icon on the left menu to open the Business Goals dashboard.
2. Write a prompt in the field for Active Intelligence to create a Business Goal for you, or click the “Start from scratch instead” hyperlink below the prompt field.

3. Click “Create a business goal from scratch,” or choose a pre-populated goal.

     If you choose a pre-populated goal, you'll have suggested assets to select from. However, you will need to manually add the assets to the goal.

4. In the "Details" box: 
   • Enter a business goal name in the "Name" field.
   • Enter a description of the business goal in the “Description” field.
   • Select a “Label Color.”
   • (Optional) Set an end date for your business goal. Click the check mark next to “This business goal has a target end date” above the conversion, then choose an end date in the calendar dropdown.
5. In the "Define success" box:
   • Select an existing conversion from the dropdown or click “Create a new conversion.”
   • (Optional) Set a target conversion goal for your business goal. Check the box next to “Set a target conversion goal for this business goal,” then select a “Goal type” and “Total conversion goal.” Note that this option appears after you have selected a conversion. We’ll help you track progress toward this goal after you set these options.
6. Click “Save.”

After saving, you’ll go to the Business Goals dashboard, where you can add assets and conversions.

Add conversions to an existing business goal

Conversions are an event you are trying to get a contact to do, such as a successful form submission or a click on a specific link. Use the following steps to add additional conversions to your business goal:

1. Click the Business Goals trophy icon on the left menu to open the Business Goals dashboard.
2. Click on the business goal you want to edit.
3. In the Individual Business Goal Overview, click the “Settings” button.
4. Click into the "Conversions" field and select an existing conversion from the dropdown, or click “Create a new conversion.”
5. (Optional) Set a target end date for your business goal. In the "Settings" menu, click the check mark next to “Add target end date” above the "Conversion" field, then choose an end date in the calendar dropdown.
6. Click "Save."
7. (Optional) Set a conversion target for your business goal. From the Individual Business Goal Overview, click the "Add conversion target" hyperlink to the right of the conversion name. Select a “Goal type” and “Total conversion goal.” We’ll help you track progress toward this goal after you set these options.
8. Click “Save.”

Add assets to an existing business goal

Assets are the campaigns, SMS broadcasts, automations, or forms you add to a business goal to track performance toward your conversion goal. There are two ways to add assets to a goal:

Add assets from the Business Goal dashboard

1. Click the Business Goals trophy icon on the left menu to open the Business Goals dashboard.
2. Click on the business goal you want to edit.
3. In the Individual Business Goal Overview, click the “Assets in this business goal” tab or click the "Add assets" button at the top right.
4. Click the “+ Add” hyperlink on the top right of the asset you want to add or, if you clicked the "Add assets" button, click the type of asset you want to add in the dropdown.

5. In the modal window, select the asset(s) from the dropdown. You can click on multiple assets in the modal.

     The name of the business goal will be added as a label to any asset you add to a business goal.

6. Click “Add.”
7. Repeat steps 4-7 to add other types of assets to your business goal.

Add assets from the Campaign, SMS Broadcast, Automation, or Form Overview page

1. Click on Campaigns, SMS, Automations, or Website > Forms on the left menu, depending on which type of asset you want to add to the Business Goal.
2. Find the asset you want to add on the Campaign, SMS Broadcast, Automations, or Forms Overview page.
3. Click “Add label/business goal” under the asset.
4. In the label/business goal modal, click the checkbox next to the business goal you want to add the asset to.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for each asset you want to add.

Convert a label to a business goal

If you have an existing label applied to campaigns, automations, or forms, you can easily upgrade it to a business goal:

1. Click Settings (gear icon) on the left menu.
2. Click Labels.
3. Click the “Upgrade to business goal” button to the right of the label you want to convert to a goal.
4. Select an existing conversion from the dropdown to choose a conversion goal.
5. (Optional) Set a conversion target for your business goal. From the Individual Business Goal Overview, click the "Add conversion target" hyperlink to the right of the conversion name. Select a “Goal type” and “Total conversion goal.” We’ll help you track progress toward this goal after you set these options.
6. Click “Create business goal.”

After you save, you’ll be redirected to the Individual Goal Overview for the new goal, where you can add additional assets or conversions.

Archive business goals

Once a business goal has been achieved or you need to delete it from your Business Goals dashboard, you can archive it. When you archive a business goal, performance tracking for that goal stops. The archived goal remains as a snapshot of its status at the time it was archived.

There are two ways to archive a business goal:

From the Business Goals dashboard:

1. Click the Business Goals trophy icon on the left menu to open the Business Goals dashboard.
2. In the Goal Card of the business goal you want to archive, hover over the top right corner and click the three dots.
3. Click "Archive."
4. In the pop-up modal, click “Archive” to agree to the terms.

From the Individual Business Goal Overview: 

1. Click the Business Goals trophy icon on the left menu to open the Business Goals dashboard.
2. Click on the business goal you want to edit.
3. In the Individual Business Goal Overview, click the “Settings” button.
4. Click the “Archive business goal” button.
5. In the pop-up modal, click “Archive” to agree to the terms.

Troubleshooting and FAQs

What do I need to do before creating my first business goal from scratch?

To make setup easier, we recommend creating a conversion that supports your business goal.
For example, if your goal is to get more students to sign up for your upcoming course, a helpful conversion might be: 'Has clicked on link' — this could be any link or a specific course signup link you're tracking.

Learn how to create a business goal from scratch.

Definitions

Business Goal - A grouping of assets - campaigns, automations, and/or forms - linked together by labels to track their performance towards one or more conversion goals.

Asset - Campaign, SMS Broadcast, Automation, or Form. Assets are available based on your plan and add-ons.

Label - Keywords you can apply to your campaigns, automations, and forms to help you stay organized by grouping relevant assets. Learn more about Labels.

Conversion - An event you are trying to get a contact to do (e.g., successful form submission, a click on a specific link). Conversions are a key metric to track progress toward. Learn more about Conversions.