How to use Accounts in ActiveCampaign

The Accounts feature lets you capture details about the businesses you work with at an account level and keep it all in one place.

With Accounts, you can store and track details in account fields, see all contacts associated with a business, create segments, and personalize emails with account fields.

How the Accounts feature works

The Accounts feature lets you create a record for each business you work with. Depending on your plan, these records can house information such as:

• Account name 
• Account owner
• URL
• Physical mailing address
• Phone number
• Description
• Number of employees
• Annual revenue
• Industry/vertical
• Information collected in custom fields
• Contacts associated with the business
• Notes
• Deals (Applies to all Sales plans and the Sales & Marketing Professional or Enterprise bundle.)

You can use information collected in Account fields to segment contacts and personalize communications.

Create and manage an account record for a business or organization

You can create and edit account records from large companies and departments to smaller businesses, non-profits, families, and more.

Once you create an account, it will be listed on the Accounts Overview page where you can view and update it anytime.

Create a new account record:

1. Navigate to Contacts > Accounts.
2. Click the "Add an Account" button.
3. A modal window will appear. Complete all required fields in the modal.
4. Click the "Add" button.

The new account record will be added to the bottom of the last page of the Accounts list. Once created, you can open the account's record page to add and store data about the account.

Edit a single account record:

1. From the Accounts overview, open the account by clicking the account name.
2. Hover your mouse over the field you want to update and click the pencil icon.
3. Type the new value(s) in the field(s).
4. Click “Save Changes.”

Bulk edit account records:

1. From the Accounts overview, locate the accounts you want to update.
2. Click the checkbox(es) for each Account or click the checkbox next to “Account Name” to select all accounts
3. Click the “Edit” button.
4. Select or search the field you want to edit.
5. Fill out all available fields with the new values.
6. Click the “Apply” button.
7. Click the “Apply changes” button to confirm changes.

Learn more about how to bulk edit accounts for additional details.

Use fields to collect and store information about the account

The "General Details" section on the account record contains standard fields that you can use to capture and store information about a business.

You can also create custom account fields as needed to store additional information.

To create custom fields and populate account fields with values, visit Custom Account Fields Overview.

Add notes to the account

You can create a quick note about an account at any time. Once you make a note, it will save to the account record.

1. Click "Add a note" in the Notes box.
2. Type the note into the field provided.
3. Click the "Add" button.

Add and manage contacts on an account

The Contacts box displays contacts associated with the business account. You can add an existing contact to an account or create a new one.

Note that a single contact can only be associated with a single account.

Add an existing contact to the account

1. Click the "Add a Contact" option.
2. A modal window will appear. Type a name, email address, or phone number into the field provided.
3. Click the "Add" button.

The contact will be added to the account and appear in the Contacts box on the account record. In addition, the account name will appear on the contact's profile record.

Create a new contact for the account

1. Click the "Add a contact" link located in the Contacts box.
2. A modal window will appear. Begin typing the contact's name or email address into the field provided.
3. Click the "Create" button.
4. The modal will expand. Complete the additional fields for the contact.
5. Click the "Save" button.

A profile record will be created for the new contact. The contact will appear in the Contacts box on the account record. In addition, the account name will appear on the contact's profile record.

How to edit a contact from an account record

You can add/edit the first name, last name, job title, phone number, and email address for a contact from an account record.

1. Locate the contact you wish to update.
2. Hover your mouse over the contact and click the pencil icon.
3. A modal window will open. Type the updated information into the fields provided.
4. Click the "Save" button.

We will also display the updated information on the contact's profile record.  

How to remove a contact from an account record

You can remove a contact's association with an account. Removing a contact's association with an account will not delete their profile record.

1. From the Account Details record, locate the contact you wish to remove.
2. Hover your mouse over the contact and click the "X."
3. Click the "Remove" button that appears in the confirmation message.

About the Last "Contacted" date field

Each contact added to an account will have a "Last Contacted" date field. If you're adding a new contact to an account, this field will not display with a date. The "Last Contacted" field will update with a date when one of the following four events happen:

• A 1:1 email is sent to the contact
• A campaign or automation email is sent to the contact
• A contact task is completed
• A deal task is completed (this applies if the contact is the primary contact on the deal)

Create a deal for the account

Applies to all Sales plans and the Sales & Marketing Professional or Enterprise bundle.

You can create multiple deals for an account. When making a deal for an account, you do not need to associate it with a contact.

1. From the Details record for an account, click "Add Deal" located in the Deals widget.
2. An "Add Deal" modal will open. Complete the fields in the modal to create a deal for the Account.
3. When finished, click the "Add Deal" button.

The deal will be added to the selected pipeline and appear in the Deals widget on the Account Details page.

Using the Account Recent Activity stream

The Account Recent Activity stream lets you see contact and deal actions related to an Account. This is located on the bottom right corner of the Account Overview page.

This stream displays the three latest activities. Click “View all activities” to show more activities in the activity stream. You can click on any hyperlinked text to view more information and filter the actions in the expanded view.

Use the activities below to filter your recent activity stream. Note that each action has associated events:

Emails
For email activity to appear on the account activity stream, a contact must be associated with the account at the time of the event. The four types of email events that can appear in the stream are:

• • 1:1 emails sent from the Deal record or "Send a 1:1 email" automation action
  • Emails synced from a Deals CRM connected email address where there is a primary contact on an open deal in the TO, FROM or CC’d lines. BCC fields do not appear in any email activity
  • Email opens from 1:1 emails through deals or automations
  • Link clicks from 1:1 emails through deals or automations

Owner changes
Owner changes activities are created when the Account Owner field is updated:

• • Manual field updates will show the user who performed the action in the activity
  • Updates with the “Update an account owner” automation action will show the primary administrator of the ActiveCampaign account in the activity
• Tasks
  Task activities are only shown for completed tasks. The user who completed the task will be shown on the activity. Task Outcomes are also visible in the task activity. Learn how to turn on Task Outcomes.

User permissions for the Account Recent Activity panel

The actions that will display for users are based on your plan and user permissions:

Tasks activities
Users must have permission to see the contact or deal to see the task activity.

• • Contact permissions are checked by the users list permissions
  • Deal permissions are checked by pipeline and deal ownership settings

1:1 Email activities
Both contact and email permissions are checked for every user. The user must have both set up to see email activities here:

• • Contact permissions: Users must have access to at least one of the contacts associated with the email activity to see the email activity in the stream.
  • Email permissions: Users must have an email account connected to the Deals CRM. Users can then set up email permissions found in Deal Settings. The email permissions chosen will determine if only that user or any user can see these emails in the activity stream. There are two options for email permissions:
    
    • “Only I can see emails from this address” - only the user can see this email in the activity stream
    • “Anyone can see emails from this address” - any user can see the activity

Account owner changes
There are no user permissions needed. This information will show for any user.

Delete an account

If you no longer need an account record for a business, you can permanently delete it from either the Accounts Overview page or the account record.

Once you delete an account, all information will be lost and cannot be restored. This includes any deals created for the account. If any contacts were associated with the deleted account, they will remain in your ActiveCampaign account and can be accessed from the Contacts Overview page.

Before deleting the account, we recommend using the bulk editor to apply a tag to all contacts associated with this account for record-keeping.

Delete an account from the Accounts Overview page

1. Click Contacts, then click Accounts.
2. Click the checkbox next to the account you wish to delete.
3. Click the delete button.
4. A confirmation modal will appear. Click the "Delete" button.

Delete an account from an Account Details record

1. Click Contacts, then click Accounts.
2. Click the account you wish to delete.
3. Click the "Actions" dropdown. This dropdown is on the top right of the account record.
4. Click the "Delete Account" button.
5. A confirmation modal will appear. Click the "Delete" button.