Ok, here is a quick and dirty video about how I’ve been doing this - http://www.screencast.com/t/bkL6iGwwU
I’ll be making a better one for my blog, but hopefully this will help some.
Beautiful, thank you. I’m using a different trigger, but the Action part of the Zap is the same. Very useful!
Also, your tip on “Inspect” was something I needed. It wasn’t easy for me to find the ID values for the task types. Thanks!
We’re close here! The problem I’m running into now is that AC gives certain custom fields a field name of “field” where x is a unique number. If I put that in the query string, that field is not auto populating. So auto population only works on system (the default) fields.
So the link you provided above works, but if I add a textarea field to my URL, the text area does not populate. https://myapp.activehosted.com/f/10?email=my_email@test.com&firstname=Test&field[14]=(some URL encoded text)
Hi Andrew,
I added a few test fields and couldn’t duplicate the field[x] format. Quick question, can you edit the Personalization Tag for that field (and then use that tag in your URL)?
That worked!
I didn’t expect that to work because the personalization tags are not in the HTML, but after testing, it does seem to work!
(Here’s a screenshot of the code for one of the textarea fields)
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That’s great! Thanks for letting me know, I’ll put that one in my AC notebook
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Ok, so after a month, I’ve got a bit of feedback.
- When you have many form fields, it can cause some REALLY long URLs to appear within the feed on a deal’s page. They were really too long to be useful to me. Right now, Zapier does not integrate with any URL shorteners, so I had to install the open source software at yourls.org to shorten my URLs. Works much better now.
- Now that it’s more useful, I’m discovering more problems
One problem is that forms are tied to email addresses, so you can’t use a form to change a contact’s email address. - A second problem is that the form data isn’t pulled from the contact’s record, it’s recorded in the URL. I was creating the URL when the deal is created, but the problem with that is that it’s using the contact’s data as it’s entered at that time. It isn’t pulling the contact’s current data. So if a contact record is updated manually, and you go to click the link to use the form, then you’ll lose that manual update.
Thanks for sharing your feedback. I can see how those types of problems can arise.
I’m not sure if we can do much more other than writing some code that works with the API. I’ve been trying to avoid that as it’s not my main skill set and I know how much time I burn when I do stuff like that . I’m hoping there will be something in the new contact record release that might be of help. I believe I’m “in line” for that but haven’t seen it yet.
Hi Rebar
I was trying to use your first proposal, as what I want is asking contact to complete/update some of their data. I already have his/her name and email.
Your proposal sound nice to me. I describe it in my own words, and highlight where I am getting lost.
I have found the Subcription Update form and beingn able to add the fields I need to it.
I can design a nice e-mail to the contact telling them why we are requesting additional information, and if they agree they can do two things (any of them is good for me, and preferred the second)
a) Either they can click into a button that will send to a page with the Subcription Update form.
b) We can show the suscription Update form in the e-mail body.
I have the following problems:
I´m unable to find the Subcription Update form URL
I don’t know how/whwere to use the %UPDATELINK% personalization tag. And I have been looking intensively for tit.
Any suggestion on this. Is there any documentation available to read? (all I found is too generic)
It looks like they may have moved the subscription update form. Look at the bottom of this thread for directions to access it - https://community.activecampaign.com/t/changing-update-details-form/499/4
To add the %UPDATELINK% to an email, first click on the “Personalization” button in the email builder. Then:
HTH,
Bill
Thank you very much for your information.
I’m afraid I didn’t make the proper question.
Let me provide some background in order to have a clearer view of what I need.
It’s a I have contact that has described himself with a subset of data: The name and the email.
But for our purposes we need additionally the phone number.
For that reason we build an automation that sends the contact a nice email informing that we need his phone number, why we need it and how we will use it. If he agrees with that we ask him to provide us with the phone number.
In order to do that what I want is that the email has a button. If the customer clicks on it, will display a new page of the browser with a form that has the already collected information from him, allow him to introduce his phone and update his information.
What have I tried?
1.- To use a custom defined form. The problem with it is that, from an automation, I was unable to provide the form with the customer currently available information in order to display it in the form.
2.- To use the “Subscription update” process from the “Integration settings for list”. The East with this process is that the initiative to launch it comes from the contact. This was not the case as I need to take the initiative myself. I am the one that needs to send the customer the email. So I discarded this approach.
3.- to use only a small piece of his “Subscription update” process: to use only the “Form to update subscription”.
What I did was to Design the “Form to update subscription” using the tools available in the system.
Once done that I created the automation with an email that includes button with the following instruction: Provide phone
And it worked nicely. The contact received the email, he can click on the button. Then a new page was displayed in the browser with the form already fulfilled with the contact data but the Phone number. He may provide the phone number and then update all his information.
It has only one issue. If the customer is subscribed to several lists, then I have no control which form is displayed. It can be the “Form to update subscription” of any of the lists.
Any suggestions on how can I ensure from an automation that the “Form to update subscription” displayed is the one belonging to the list I need?
Very grateful in advance for any advice.
How do you add personalization links like %UPDATELINK% to a direct email? Here is my scenario:
Contact emails me asking how they can update their email address that we have with them.
I want to reply to that email through ActiveCampaign (the original message shows up in their contact) with the link they need to go to in order to update their email address to whatever they want.
Edited to remove incorrect info.
When I did a test of the %updatelink% it sent me an address that just took me to an AC login screen. I sent the email to an email address that is not the email associated with my account and opened it in incognito mode.
I know it works just fine when I send a campaign but when I send a direct email it is giving me this login screen.
Maybe it has something to do with my IP address and the email will go out just fine to someone else?
Hmm. That’s odd. Will you please open a ticket with support so they can investigate? My understanding is these personalization tags should work fine in one-to-one emails so there might be some kind of issue we need to fix or there might be some kind of nuance to using that particular tag that I’m not aware of.
Hi Jen,
I spoke with our support team about this and they said that if you test in an incognito browser, it shouldn’t do this. If that’s not true for you, please submit a support ticket so we can look at the settings of your account and investigate possible causes.
hey Brian thanks for responding. i submitted a ticket and they said that %UPDATELINK% doesn’t work on one-off emails, only in campaigns or automations. is this correct? tks!
That’s correct. My earlier response was incorrect. I’ve edited it to remove the incorrect info.
Many personalization tags will work in one-to-one emails. %UPDATELINK% will not.
Gotcha - and there’s no way to create a regular hyperlink to send?