Active Intelligence overview

ActiveCampaign's Active Intelligence is a conversational tool that helps you create campaigns, build automations, and analyze insights.

The unified interface maintains context, i.e., understands what you’re working on, allowing you to:

• Create a campaign and immediately analyze similar past campaigns for optimization ideas
• Build an automation, and then ask questions about how similar automations have performed
• Review insights about underperforming content and immediately create improved versions
• Test different approaches and compare results by asking questions using everyday language. Active Intelligence will remember what you've talked about before in that specific chat

This integrated approach enables you to make data-driven decisions while streamlining your marketing workflow, from creation to analysis and optimization. This article walks you through how to use Active Intelligence.

Take note

At this time, we do not use the data that you input into our services about your contacts or marketing content to train AI models. 

How to access Active Intelligence

Active Intelligence appears in two places in ActiveCampaign::

ActiveCampaign homepage with Active Intelligence 

This is the page you see when you first log in to ActiveCampaign. You can return to this page at any time by clicking the ActiveCampaign logo at the top left of your screen. With Active Intelligence on the homepage, you can:

• Ask questions about your account and get answers
• Tell it what you want your campaign to do, and it will build it for you
• Get tips to make your current campaigns work better

Active Intelligence sidebar

The Active Intelligence sidebar appears on the right side of your screen when you click the Active Intelligence icon from any page except the homepage. The Active Intelligence sidebar understands what you're working on and provides help in real-time by

• Showing you contact groups that might work well when you're looking at your contacts
• Suggesting what should trigger your automations and what they should do when you're building them
• Giving you helpful tips based on what you're working on, without navigating away from your workflow

Other Active Intelligence options

While you are in either Active Intelligence view, after you have started a chat, at the top left under the ActiveCampaign icon, you can also:

• Click the plus symbol to start a new chat
• Click the hamburger icon to see your chat history

Set up your Brand Kit

Before using Active Intelligence, you'll want to create a Brand Kit to ensure all generated content matches your brand voice and includes your company information:

1. Click Active Intelligence on the left-hand menu.
2. Click the "Create a Brand Kit" button if you haven't already.
3. Complete your brand information to help Active Intelligence automatically align idea cards and content with your brand.

Learn more about Brand Kit in ActiveCampaign.

Create Campaigns

Active Intelligence helps you easily create marketing campaigns. Instead of writing email campaign content from scratch, you can provide a few details and let Active Intelligence generate personalized email campaigns for you. 

1. Click Active Intelligence on the top menu.
2. From Active Intelligence, you can either:
   • Type in a prompt to create a campaign. For example: 
     • “Write a product launch email that builds excitement with compelling benefits, addresses how it solves customer problems, and drives action with a clear call-to-action”
     • “Create a monthly newsletter email with diverse content including industry updates, company news, customer spotlight, and actionable tips that keep subscribers engaged and informed”
   • If you are in Active Intelligence workspace, click one of the campaign-related idea cards under the prompt field
3. Active Intelligence will create the campaign. Review the generated campaign.
4. Edit the campaign with the following options:
   • Type a follow-up prompt to edit or update the campaign; context is remembered within each chat tab
   • Click into the campaign to make manual adjustments from the Active Intelligence
   • Click “Edit in campaign designer” to make more advanced edits. This will open the campaign designer in a new tab, allowing you to click back to the Active Intelligence tab if needed

5. Click the “Send test” button to send a test campaign to the email associated with your ActiveCampaign user to review your campaign.

     Test emails do not require you to set up your sending domain.

6. When you are done creating the campaign, click the “Review and send” button. 
7. Complete the information on the Campaign Summary page.
8. Once you have completed the information on the Campaign Summary page, send your email. 

Build Automations

Active Intelligence helps you easily create automations. Instead of manually setting up complex workflows, you can use simple prompts to build automation sequences that engage your customers.

1. Click Active Intelligence on the top menu.
2. From the Active Intelligence, you can either:
   • Type in a prompt to create a campaign. For example:
     • “Design a 4-email lead nurturing automation: Email 1 provides valuable industry insights, Email 2 shares customer success stories, Email 3 addresses common objections, Email 4 presents a clear offer with urgency”
     • “Create a 3-email welcome automation: Email 1 welcomes new subscribers and sets expectations, Email 2 shares the brand story and builds connection, Email 3 introduces key products/services with soft call-to-action”
     • “Create a 3-email re-engagement automation: Email 1 acknowledges the subscriber's inactivity and asks what content they'd prefer, Email 2 shares the brand's best content and value proposition, Email 3 offers a special incentive to stay subscribed or an easy unsubscribe option”
   • If you are in Active Intelligence workspace, click one of the automation-related idea cards under the prompt field
3. Active Intelligence will create the automation and campaigns. Review the automation and campaign(s) created.
4. Edit the automation and campaign(s) with the following options:
   • Type a follow-up prompt to edit or update the automation; context is remembered within each chat tab
   • Click into the campaign(s) to:
     • Make manual adjustments from Active Intelligence
     • To make more advanced edits, click “Edit in campaign designer.” This will open the campaign designer in a new tab, allowing you to click back to Active Intelligence tab if needed
5. Click the “Send test” button to send a test campaign to the email associated with your ActiveCampaign user.
6. Once you are satisfied with the automation and campaigns, click the “Review and activate” button. This will open the Automation Canvas in another tab, allowing you to click back to the Active Intelligence tab if needed.
7. Review the final automation and make adjustments as needed.
8. Once you are satisfied with the automation, click “Activate” to enable it.

Analyze Performance 

Active Intelligence allows you to ask questions about your campaign performance and get instant answers. Instead of navigating through multiple reports or dashboards, you can simply type questions and receive data, charts, and actionable recommendations.

1. Click Active Intelligence on the top menu.
2. Ask a question. For example:
   • “How did my May newsletter perform?”
   • “Which campaigns got the most clicks?”
   • “Why did my open rate drop last week?”
3. Review the results, which can include a chart or performance summary.
4. Type a follow-up prompt to explore the results further; context is remembered within each chat tab.
5. Rate the response to help improve the experience.

Draft SMS replies and summarize conversations

Active Intelligence can help you draft replies to incoming text messages as well as provide conversation summaries. To use these options:

• You must have the SMS add-on as well as a dedicated, registered phone number in the United States, United Kingdom, or Australia
• You must enable each AI functionality separately, under SMS Inbox settings

Learn more at Use the SMS Inbox for two-way text messaging.

Additional features available

Details on additional features available as part of the Active Intelligence beta are listed in the table below: