We just released a couple of updated pages for all hosted accounts.   The changes have to do with the subscriber import process and your main “lists” page.   Here is a brief overview of the changes to help you get started with the new options.

Updated import page

This page has been redesigned to make the importing process more intuitive.  Changes include:

• Ability to view current & recent imports (allowing you to see results on past imports)
• Easier visual selection of external services
• Simplified list selector

Updated lists page

Your “lists” page used to just contain a listing of all your “lists”   We have updated this to be a central hub from which you can perform all list related activities.  Changes include:

• 3 trending graphs (showing subscriber trend, interaction trend, and unsubscribe trend)
• Direct options to import & manage settings per list
• Easier segmentation (and display of segments) per list
• View recently engaged subscribers per list (hovering shows their action)

We recently updated all accounts to capture the geographic location data of your subscribers.  This means you can now see your subscribers Country, State/Region, City, Postal Code, and Area Code.

The geographic location data is collected automatically whenever your subscribers interact with your list and is free for all accounts.

View your subscribers location and travel history

When viewing an individual subscriber you will have access to their GEO location data right next to all of your other subscriber data fields.  Additionally you will now see a map just under the subscribers photo.  Clicking the map will show you a history of where that subscriber has traveled following by where we have determined that they live.

Send to specific geographic regions with list segmenting

Want to send a campaign to subscribers within a specific Country, Region, and/or City?  When creating a segment you now have full geographic location options for segmenting your list.

Personalize campaigns with GEO data

You can personalize your campaigns with geographic location data just like you can personalize with your subscribers name, email, and custom fields.  Simply click “Personalize” and select the data you would like to show in your campaign.

Create conditional content for specific GEO locations

Within a campaign you can create conditional content for different countries, regions, combinations of geographic location data, and more.

For example a sports store could send out a promo with a specific offer based on the state of the subscriber.  The single campaign could have different content (and discount codes) for subscribers in Illinois (promoting Bears gear) and for subscribers in Wisconsin (promoting Packers gear)

More on the way…

We already have plans to push our GEO capabilities and reporting to a whole different level.  Including some new segmenting options, list & campaign based map reports, and more.  If you have any suggestions be sure to let us know!

Please note: Due to some licensing reasons this feature is not available with the downloaded version of ActiveCampaign (that runs on your own equipment/servers)

We are happy to announce ActiveCampaign 5.4.  This update will give you an idea on our continually evolving product direction and our focus on making email marketing easy for small businesses.

Here is a quick overview of what you can expect with ActiveCampaign 5.4:

• New user interface & theme
• New subscription form editor
• New Facebook subscription forms
• New real-time activity stream
• New status alert system
• New automatic template, campaign, and subscription form previews
• Updated external services & new integrations
• Updated custom field manager
• Updated campaign creation process
• Updated forms & public page management
• Updated template category management
• Other new features & adjustments

New user interface & theme

When you login after being upgraded to 5.4 you will notice a brand new interface.

New subscription form editor

Creating subscription forms has never been easier with our drag and drop form editor.  Add fields, change text, re-order options, add custom HTML or images, and more.  You can even set a forms theme all while previewing live what the form will look like to your end users.

New Facebook subscription forms

With the rise of social marketing it is critical to integrate your email marketing efforts with your social media strategy.  One way of doing that (in addition to our built-in social tools) is to embed a subscription form on your Facebook page.

While many services offer a similar capability we have created a process that could not be easier.  Go to a form, click add to Facebook, and select the page from a dropdown containing all your pages.  Simple as that!

New real-time activity stream

Our users always tell us how they become addicted to our campaign reports and watching the interactions stream in from a single campaign.

We have taken the idea of live interaction data one step further with our real-time activity stream.  Watch as people open your campaigns, talk about your campaigns on Facebook & Twitter, subscribe to your lists, and more!

New status alert system

Your campaigns can be critical for your overall marketing objectives.  Thus if there is anything you should be aware of (such as campaigns requiring your attention, limits being reached, etc..) it is essential you know about it right away.   With our new status alert system you will be notified whenever your attention is needed or there is critical information you should know about.

New automatic template, campaign, and subscription form previews

We find most marketing platforms all end up looking the same.  Lists of text, numbers, and other data.  To help you find what you are looking for faster we are bringing previews of your campaigns, templates, and subscription forms into the work flow.  As you create templates, campaigns, and subscription forms we start to show screenshot previews to help you pick what you need when you need it.

Updated external services & new integrations

We love integrating with the services that you use to run your business.  Our new external services page highlights the various integrations we have available and guides you through using each integration.

Version 5.4 includes an updated Shopify integration and our new SurveyMonkey integration.

Updated subscriber field manager

Custom subscriber fields provide the data to make segmenting, personalization, and subscriber actions powerful tools.  Setting up new fields is considerably easier with our updated custom subscriber field page.  Additionally we now make it possible to create custom fields from the subscriber import process and the subscription form editor.

Updated campaign creation process

When creating a campaign you will see an improved campaign creation process featuring our new header that will allow you to save, continue along the process, and always know what step you are currently editing within.

Updated forms & public page management

Along with our custom subscription form editor we now make it possible to build & customize every public facing page.  From subscription confirmations, unsubscription confirmations, the forward to a friend pages, campaign archive pages, and more.  Add custom content, adjust the theme, and more.

Updated template category management

Previously we had static template categories.  You were unable to add new categories or edit the existing category names.  With version 5.4 you can tag your templates into any template categories that you choose.  Create your own, re-categorize existing templates, and more.

Other new features & adjustments:

• Subscription Form Segmenting
  You can now segment campaigns by the subscription form they subscribed (or did not subscribe) from.
• QR Codes for subscription forms
  You can now download QR Code images to use in your marketing that will direct people to your subscription form when they scan the code with their mobile device.
• Opt-In’s
   Opt-in emails are now directly related to subscription forms only.  You may only add “unconfirmed” subscribers (subscribers that would be sent an opt-in) from a subscription form.
• Duplicate Subscribers
  We no longer support the option that allowed duplicate subscribers in a single list.  You can still of course have the same subscriber in different lists – you just can’t have the same subscriber duplicated within a single list.  When you are upgraded to 5.4 we will remove duplicates and retain your oldest/most accurate subscriber record.
•  Remember Me (on login page)
  The “remember me” option has been adjusted to be “remember my username”  For security reasons we are no longer offering saved logins.
• Opt-Out Emails
  Emails sent to confirm an unsubscription are no longer supported as we believe in a single & hassle free unsubscribe process.
• Public Dashboard / Landing Page
  The public dashboard that had subscribe, unsubscribe, update, and archive options has been removed.  All options still exist – we just don’t have a default landing page that links to all these options.   By default we will now show a subscription form (of your choice) or redirect to the admin login page.
• API
  We have removed the following methods starting in version 5.4: form_add, form_delete, form_delete_list, and form_edit. The following methods are still available, but are deprecated in favor of new methods: form_list (use form_getforms instead) and form_view (use form_html instead).
• You will also soon be required to use a new API URL and API Key in place of the username and password, which we are slowly phasing out.
• The “require opt-in” user group setting has been removed at this time due to structural changes of how opt-ins now work.
• Users can only belong to a single user group
• We now show the number of subscribers obtained by a subscription form on the subscription form list page
• The downloaded version (that installs on your own server) will require PHP 5.2 or above

Note: At this time 5.4 is currently still being slowly rolled out to hosted accounts.  A downloaded (server-based) version of 5.4 is not quite ready yet – but a beta will be available in the near future.

We’ve been super busy building an entirely new version of ActiveCampaign, and we think you will like many of the changes and improvements. Below is a sample of the new appearance, focusing on the dashboard page:

If you are a follower on Facebook, you can view more screenshots of the new version.

We’ve also been busy in other areas, and have recently added two new integrations (available now): Shopify and SurveyMonkey.

With Shopify integration you can automatically add customers (that opt-in to receive email marketing updates) to ActiveCampaign as new subscribers:

With SurveyMonkey integration you can send out campaigns that contain a survey link, and then view results of your surveys from directly within ActiveCampaign:

We are also planning improvements to SurveyMonkey integration, including the ability to know whether a subscriber started and/or finished a specific survey.

We are excited for these new updates and improvements that will be a part of your ActiveCampaign experience.

Our Email Marketing software offers a full featured, easy to use API, with dozens of functions to choose from. Many of our clients have utilized our open API to integration our Email Marketing software with their websites, external databases, and other software applications. Perhaps the most common use of the API is adding new subscribers to the system, and updating existing subscribers.

Whenever you need to add a new subscriber to your system through our API, you must follow these steps:

1. Use subscriber_view_email first, to check and see if a subscriber with the same email address already exists.
2. If subscriber_view_email returns no response, then use subscriber_add to add a new subscriber.
3. If subscriber_view_email does return a response, then save the subscriber data that it returns, and use subscriber_edit to edit the existing subscriber while also retaining their original data (lists, fields, etc).

This blog post will explain how to check to see if a subscriber exists before adding them, and how to update a pre-existing subscriber.

Use subscriber_view_email to Fetch Existing Subscriber Details

Before either adding a new subscriber, or updating an existing subscriber, you must always check to see if that subscriber exists first, and fetch their existing subscriber details. This is extremely important! If you attempt to use the subscriber_add function to add a subscriber who already exists in the system, you will receive an error message telling you that duplicate subscribers cannot be added (unless the “allow duplicate subscriptions” setting is enabled, which is uncommon). Furthermore, if you attempt to update an existing subscriber without fetching their previous information first, you run the risk of accidentally unsubscribing them to previous lists, or losing custom field data.

To check and see if a subscriber already exists in your system, you can use the subscriber_view_email function. This API function only requires that you have the email address of the subscriber, and it will essentially search your database for any record of that email address. If the email address is found, it will return the subscriber ID, name, and all custom fields and lists that the person is subscribed to.

Below is a short example of how you might call the subscriber_view_email function using PHP:

(click to enlarge)

If the email address you are searching for does not exist in your system already, you would receive a response like this:

The result_code would be 0, and the result_message would say “Nothing is returned.” If you receive a response like this from the subscriber_view_email function, then the email address you searched for does not exist in the system, and so it is safe for you to use the subscriber_add function to add them as a new subscriber.

What if the subscriber already exists?

If a subscriber with that email address already exists in your system, the same API call from above would return an array containing all of the subscriber’s data — their subscriber ID number, name, date subscribed, the list(s) they are subscribed to, and all custom field data. This image shows a portion of the array that would be returned:

In this  example, a subscriber with the email address “test@activecampaign.com” is subscribed to one list, and the list ID number for that list is 2. This can be seen by looking at the “lists” array that is returned within the main array:

(Note: The “listslist” value, also shown in the above image, will include all list ID numbers for the lists the subscriber is subscribed to, separated by a comma.)

If you scroll down a little further in your API result, you will also see that there are two custom fields — Birthday, and City. The subscriber has a Birthday value, but does not have a value for the City custom field:

In this example, we will add this subscriber to a new list (ID number 3), and we will also add a value for the City field. However, because the subscriber already exists in the system, we cannot simply use subscriber_add — we must use subscriber_edit to update them while keeping all of their original data intact (subscriptions, fields, etc).

Updating The Subscriber

Below is a short, simplified code example that can be added under the subscriber_view_email call that was already shown above. This code example will read the array that is returned from the subscriber_view_email call, determine whether or not an existing subscriber was returned, and then determine whether or not to add a new subscriber, or update an existing subscriber.

(click to enlarge)

The above code looks at the result array that was returned from the subscriber_view_email function, and preserves the subscriber’s existing list subscription data, and existing field data. It is very important to always use subscriber_view or subscriber_view_email to look up the subscriber’s existing data before using the subscriber_edit function! Otherwise, you may accidentally erase custom field data, or accidentally unsubscribe the subscriber from their previous lists.

In this example, the subscriber was already present on the list with an ID of 2, and we needed to add them to list 3. If we did not include the foreach loop starting on line 52 — which finds all lists the subscriber was already present on and adds that subscription information to the $post array as well — then the subscriber would have been removed from list 2 when the API call was executed. Similarly, if we did not also include the subscriber’s previous custom field values in the subscriber_edit call, all of their previous custom field values would have been erased.

(Note that the subscriber_add call was not shown in this example, in order to keep the example short. To see a full example of how to use the subscriber_add function, feel free visit our API documentation section of our site.)

When combining the two code examples in this article, and calling the script, you should receive the following result from the susbcriber_edit function, indicating success:

You can perform another subscriber_view_email or subscriber_view (which uses the subscriber’s ID number instead of email address to look them up) call to verify that the list subscriptions and fields were updated properly — or you can view their subscriber details within the application’s administrative interface:

Putting It All Together

If you’d like to copy and paste the full source code used in this example, with comments included, please click here to download the full example script. (However, keep in mind that it is only a simple example — login details, subscriber information, and list and custom field ID numbers will need to be changed to suit your needs!) As always, if you have any questions or comments regarding our API, please do not hesitate to contact our support department, and we would be happy to help!

We’ve recently released a streamlined partnership program for our hosted service. Resellers can now take advantage of an easy-to-use interface for managing their individual hosted accounts, which includes adding and removing accounts, branding each account, and updating your billing profile and available credits.

The reseller panel gives you complete control over the email marketing experience for each of your clients:

Head on over to our help section to learn more about reselling hosted accounts and re-branding the software.

Don’t forget to fill out our partner application to get started! Let us know if you have any questions.

Need to find out how your customer service is going or how your client is perceiving you? Get some valuable feedback from your most loyalest customers with this beautiful blue and grey free survey email template. The bright orange button will surely grab attention as the only focus for a call-to-action. Seeing that businesses can benefit from having a Google Plus page to gain some traction in their organic ranking, we’ve decided to help you out and included a Google Plus social button at the bottom of the template; get some more followers in your Circle!

As always, head over and download your free copy in our free email template gallery here.

A couple quick updates regarding social sharing:

Link only

You can now (additionally) obtain just the link for each social sharing service, instead of just the linked-icon that we provide, so you can apply the link to any text or image in your mailing.

For example, %SOCIALSHARE-FACEBOOK% returns this icon, linked-to the Facebook post page:

If you’d rather use another image, or perhaps just a text link, you can use this alternate personalization tag:

%SOCIALSHARE-FACEBOOK-LINK%

This will return just the URL, as in this example:

http://YOURACCOUNT.activehosted.com/social.php?c=33&m=33&s=76f410bb411339c68d07a4e2ccb16c7a&ref=facebook

This immediately redirects to the Facebook post page:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F12345

Do this for all other social sharing personalization tags as well. (Just append -LINK to the very end.)

Google Reader removed

We’ve also removed the Google Reader/Buzz share icon as “Note in Reader” no longer works, and Buzz no longer exists. In place of this we have included Google+ sharing. You’ll find the “Share on Google+” link in the “Personalize Message” window:

The individual personalization tag for Google+ is %SOCIALSHARE-GPLUS%, and of course %SOCIALSHARE-GPLUS-LINK% will work as well.

With the arrival of winter we’ve design this pretty bright blue email template to remind us how much we’ve already missed summer. With hazy blue clouds and utility poles that give off that hot summer day feel to it, we can only wish that summer isn’t too far away.

We’ve included a bonus here; this email template has a background image that is displaying for Outlook 2007 & 2010. Here’s an old post on how to add background image in Outlook. I will go into details on how we’ve accomplished this for this specific template.

How to Display Background Image in Table Cell

Include the following code into the <html> tag of your document:

xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"

Example:

<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml">

For this specific template design, we’re going to want to show the logo over the background image in a table cell — unlike our previous post where we wanted the image to show in the background of the body, we’ll want to show the background only in a certain cell. This method create another problem in Outlook; Outlook will add an unwanted 5 pixel spacing underneath this table cell. To solve this little bug, we’ll have to specify a height and width using the code below. You must remember to specify the width and the height for both the <v:image> and <v:shape>.

...
<td background="images/image_9119314.gif" style="background-image::url('images/image_9119314.gif');">

	<!--[if gte mso 9]>
	<v:image xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" id="theImage" style='behavior: url(#default#VML); display:inline-block;position:absolute; height:109px; width:600px;top:0;left:0;border:0;z-index:1;' src="images/image_9119314.gif"/>
	<v:shape xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" id="theText" style='behavior: url(#default#VML); display:inline-block;position:absolute; height:109px; width:600px;top:-5;left:-10;border:0;z-index:2;'>
	<div>
	<![endif]-->

		<table>
		INSERT OVERLAY TEXT OR IMAGE HERE
		</table>

	<!--[if gte mso 9]>
	</div>
	</v:shape>
	<![endif]-->

</td>
...

For this specific email template, the logo (or text) that we want to display over the background image would be contained within the table (or paragraph tags) that is wrapped around using the <v:image> and <v:shape> tags. So remember, the only thing that needs to change in the above code is your height and your width.

For our typical Friday template release we’re offering a unique template design perfectly coded for businesses offering e-commerce, blogging, travel, education and services. This unique newsletter template shows off a worn-out, grungy design with bold beautiful yellow and brown colors that really stands out over the softer beige in the background. Download your copy by clicking on the template image below: