We updated our recommendation for list cleanup and tracking contact engagement. Read our "Expedited List Cleanup" article to learn more.
With ActiveCampaign, you can use the two-part Engagement Tagging automation recipe to track contact engagement with your emails.
Tracking engagement gives you insight into how effective your email marketing strategy is. You can use this information to keep your list(s) healthy, and it can play a part in maintaining good deliverability. It also lets you see which contacts are not engaged, allowing you to reach out to them using different channels.
Take note
- These two automations reference each other. You need to configure both automations for them to work
- These automations only consider engagement from the moment you implement them. They cannot determine retroactive engagement
- The Engagement Tagging automation recipes are available on all ActiveCampaign plans
- You can learn more about this and other topics at our live, small-group workshops. Sign up and explore ActiveCampaign workshops
Watch a video
To see an overview of the Engagement Tagging automations and learn tips on how to use them, watch the Improve your email engagement and deliverability video.
How the Engagement Tagging automations work
These two "Engagement Tagging" automations work together to add and remove a series of engagement tags to your contacts. As soon as a contact interacts with an email or visits your site, they are added to these automations.
Where to locate the two-part recipe
Both recipes are available in the "Create an automation" modal that appears when you click the "Create an automation" button on the Automations overview page.
You can also access these recipes from our Marketplace:
Part 1 - Engagement Tagging automation
This automation will add/remove the following tags to contacts:
- Engaged
- Recent activity
- Disengaged
- Inactive
The tag added to or removed from contacts depends on how much time has passed since they engaged with an email or visited a webpage with site tracking enabled. While this automation already has intervals included for you, you can change them to fit your needs better.
Note that using website visits to track engagement requires site tracking enabled in your ActiveCampaign account.
Part 2 - Engagement Tagging automation
The purpose of this automation is to pull contacts into this two-part workflow as they engage with you. This automation will either feed contacts or remove them from the Part 1 automation.
Contacts will be added to this automation through the following triggers:
- Reads any email
- Clicks a link in any email
- Visits a web page
Each trigger is set to run multiple times, which allows the same contacts to re-enter the automations.
Add the Engagement Tagging automations to your account
Document the activation date for this two-part recipe. This gives you a frame of reference for when the engagement and non-engagement tags are applied to your contacts.
- Click "Automations" on the left menu to navigate to the Automations Overview page.
- Click the "Create an automation" button.
- The "Create an Automation" modal will appear. Click "Part 1 - Engagement Tagging" then click the "Continue" button.
- The Automation Builder will load the automation. Click "Automations" on the left menu to go back to the Automations Overview page.
- Set the automation to "Active."
- Go back to the Automations Overview page.
- Click the "Create an automation" button.
- The "Create an Automation" modal will appear. Click "Part 2 - Engagement Tagging" and then click the "Continue" button.
- The Automation Builder will load and display a preview of the automation. Click the "Get Started" button.
- The "Automation Setup Wizard" modal will appear. Follow each prompt to complete the automation setup.
- Set the automation to "Active."
Contacts who meet the trigger conditions for Part II can now enter your automated workflows.
How to see past engagement
You can view your campaign and automation email reports to see which contacts opened and clicked your emails. Our Reports page displays the following information on a per campaign and automation email basis:
- Open rates
- Click rates
- List of contacts that opened
- List of contacts that did not open
- List of contacts that clicked a link
- List of contacts that did not click a link
To access these reports, click "Reports" located on the left menu.