Contact Details Update Forms

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.

@Brian i’m having the same issue - any word if this got resolved? Tks!

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?

No, those links are contact specific so there isn’t a single link that applies to everyone.

Hi Bill, Thanks for being so helpful here. I want to have my contacts update their records, but I have not seen a way to make some of my Custom Fields *Required on the Subscription Update form. Any suggestion?

I have built a Form with the fields I want to require but I don’t see how to auto-populate with the contact’s existing data.

These fields are NOT required to subscribe to the list, but when the contact wants to take certain action e.g., download a lead magnet, I want to require the data.

Cheers,
Jack

Hi Jack,

I believe you are correct in that the Subscription Update form doesn’t allow you to mark fields as required. I think you’ll have to build a “regular” form to do that.

If you want the same fields to be required in one instance, but not another, I think you are going to have to build 2 different forms and direct your users to them accordingly (using the form with required fields for your lead magnets,etc.)

To populate the prep-populate the form, you can create a URL using the personalization tags. Using the example from the top of this thread, I would build this link:

https://myapp.activehosted.com/f/10?email=my_email@test.com&firstname=Test

Like this (in the email builder):

https://myapp.activehosted.com/f/10?email=%EMAIL%&firstname=%FIRSTNAME%

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any questions.

BTW - since this thread started, AC announced their integration with ConvertFlow (https://www.convertflow.com/). I haven’t used ConvertFlow, but it looks like it may help - look at the progressive profiling section.

Bill

Thanks Bill. You are right - I need to build 2 different forms. No problem.
I think I have masted building the URL to pre-populate fields in the form. I have one working.

I have not found a way to set up prepopulating the fields with an embedded form, only with the hosted form using the URL. That’s a “would be nice.” It would allow me to add more content on a page with the pre-populated form. If you have a suggestion, send it along!

Thanks again for your help!

Hi,

I am trying to get a tag for the users who updated their info. I have not found it in Automation. Is there a way to do it?

cheers