Is there a way to set an automation based on the last contact with someone? Specifically, I’d like to use AC as a “tickle file” (an old sales term) - as a way to remind us to reach out and touch base with a warm lead that we haven’t heard from in a while.
We could set manual reminders each time, but as our lead database grows it would be tenuous to keep up with. I’d rather have a tag assigned to a deal, and then have a marketing automation condition that says something like:
IF [last communication/edit made/note entered/etc] => x days ago THEN [alert/follow up email/sms/assign task/etc].
We plan to run drip campaigns as well against various pipelines of leads, but there are times that we want specific, personal touches to go to certain leads - and that is where this automation would help ensure none slip through the cracks.
Hopefully it could be an easy addition (if it doesn’t already exist) and add some powerful functionality to the CRM side of the program.
I’m going to suggest the most straightforward way to do this first, let me know if it fits your needs or not. If not, let me know why.
You could have an automation that begins when a contact with an open deal replies to your email or opens your emails. That automation would essentially be a long wait condition (2 months, or whatever makes sense). It would be set to run multiple times so each time they reply or open, it would restart itself. If the wait condition ever expires, the next action would be to create a task to reach out to them and notify the assigned salesperson.
I think I already know the answer to this, but just to confirm:
If I set “opens an email” as a trigger, the email must have been sent via Active Campaign, correct? We have our gmail linked to AC, and plan to do all of our emailing through the gmail system. I notice that the emails import into AC, but I lose the “contact opened an email” notifier (since gmail doesn’t use the AC pixel tracker, I assume).
That means the trigger is limited to when a contact with an open deal replies to the email, and won’t include when the contact opens it, right?
One way would be to add a trigger based on when they are last sent an email - regardless of what they do or don’t do with it - but I don’t see that option… they all seem to be limited to the contact taking an action with the email.
Any ideas? The scenario I just outlined (where it’s based on when we last reached out, rather than when they last took action) is preferable anyways, as I want it to fire off every X days since we’ve last touched them. At that point we can either reach out again or move them out of the pipeline.
I would have two triggers on the automation… one for replies and one for opens because open tracking isn’t 100% accurate.
I can’t think of a way to trigger an automation on the basis of the last action that you took unless you manually started the automation when you sent (which the Chrome extension makes very easy… but it depends on you remembering to do that every time you interact with a contact).
There isn’t a default way to do this but you could create an automation that tells you when the last field was updated…
You’d create a custom date field. Give it a name along the lines of “Last update.” Then create an automation that is triggered by any custom field change and have it update the value of the “Last update” field with the current date using an “Update contact” action.
