Connect Thinkific with ActiveCampaign to create and update contacts based on events so you can utilize ActiveCampaign's robust email marketing and CRM tools alongside your Thinkific course site.
In this article:
Install the ActiveCampaign App
Sending Custom Fields to ActiveCampaign
Removing the ActiveCampaign App
ActiveCampaign Event Types
Our ActiveCampaign app allows you to create or update a user's activity based on the following events:
- New sign up: Triggered when a user creates an account on your Thinkific site.
- New order: Triggered when a user completes a purchase of a course or bundle (including when using a 100% off coupon). An order is not generated when a user enrolls in a free course if you are using our two page checkout. If you have opted into our single page checkout, orders are generated for free courses.
- New enrollment - preview: Triggered when a user enrolls in a content-limited free preview version of a course.
- New enrollment - full: Triggered when a user enrolls or a site admin manually enrolls a user in the full version of a course.
- Course completed: Triggered when a user completes a course at 100%.
These events will show on the contact's "Recent Activities" section in your ActiveCampaign account. Events that are for a specific product will include that course / bundle's name.
For example, in the below image, you can see that the student enrolled in a course called "assignment":
Installing the ActiveCampaign App
- Log in to (or create) your ActiveCampaign account
- In ActiveCampaign, go to Settings
- Click on the Developer tab
- Copy your ActiveCampaign API key and API URL.
- Make sure you are logged into Thinkific, then locate the ActiveCampaign app in the Thinkific App Store
- Click to Install the app
- You will be returned to the ActiveCampaign app details page — copy your API key and API URL into the appropriate fields
- Click Save
- Once the settings are saved, you should see a Settings button — click the button!
- In the Settings page, start by clicking on Add Domains
- Next, retrieve your tracking code from ActiveCampaign by heading into Website and clicking on the Site Tracking tab. You will find the tracking code under the Tracking code section. Copy and paste it into the Tracking code box in Thinkific.
- In this default tracking code from ActiveCampaign, add the snippet: vgo('setEmail', Thinkific.current_user.email); directly above the line: vgo('process');
- Next, retrieve the Event Key and ACTID from Active Campaign by heading into Website > Site Tracking. Find your Event Key in the Event Tracking section. To find ACTID, in the Event Tracking section, click on Event Tracking API and find the ACTID in the popup window.
- Then, place the Event key and Event ACTID in the relevant fields in Thinkific.
- And finally, hit the toggle to activate any of the following events to track in ActiveCampaign. Activating these events creates a new user if one doesn't exist or updates an existing user in ActiveCampaign based on when that event occurs, and adds the activity to their activity feed. This allows you to create powerful automations based on these events.
- Whenever you create a new course or bundle, remember to come back to this page and click the "Create events" button for the new courses so the events associated to the new course and bundle can be tracked in ActiveCampaign. This applies to New order, New enrollment - preview, New enrollment - full, and Course completed.
And, that's it! If you have any questions on setting this up, feel free to get in touch.
Sending Custom Fields to ActiveCampaign
With this app, your student's first name, last name, and email address details will be passed through to ActiveCampaign. Custom fields can also be passed to ActiveCampaign when a new user is created if there is a custom field in both Thinkific and ActiveCampaign with the exact same name (case sensitive).
If you have multiple custom fields in your Thinkific site, you will want to make sure you have added all of these fields into your ActiveCampaign account as well, regardless of whether or not the custom field in Thinkific is required or optional. If you do not add all fields into your ActiveCampaign, Thinkific will not send any of the custom field information to your ActiveCampaign account upon new user sign up.
To learn more about adding fields in ActiveCampaign, see here.
Important Considerations for Custom Fields
When creating custom fields in Thinkific, do not use the following names for your custom fields:
- Phone
- Organization
- Country
Fields with these particular names already exist in ActiveCampaign, so they will not populate. We recommend adjusting the names slightly like Phone Number, Your Organization and Your Country to make sure your student information is sent to ActiveCampaign!
Testing Your App
Once you have set up your Active Campaign, make sure to test that everything is working as expected.
In step 7 above, when you click Create events in Thinkific, you can return to Active Campaign to double check that the events were created to confirm you've used the correct code.
In ActiveCampaign, go to Website > Site Tracking (the same area where you copied the tracking code originally). You'll see that there's an Events section there. The Events section should be populated with a variety of events for the courses you've created.
If the events are not created, make sure to double check you followed all of the steps listed above!
Next Steps
Now you'll need to set up your automation in ActiveCampaign.
Get started here: ActiveCampaign: How to Create Automations
Removing the ActiveCampaign App
To remove the ActiveCampaign app:
- Go to the Apps section in your Admin Dashboard
- Click on Settings option in the Active Campaign app
- Select Uninstall
- Confirm the removal by selecting Yes, Uninstall
Not quite what you wanted? Looking for more apps? We're adding new apps to the platform every day. Check out the Thinkific App Store!