How do I connect Google Ads to ActiveCampaign?

Ask a question
,
1

You can use ActiveCampaign’s Google Ads integration to effortlessly create new audience lists and sync customer lists with Google Ads. You can also immediately initiate personalized follow-up campaigns and nurture prospects effectively once they submit a lead form.

Take note

  • You must have a Google Ads account to use this integration. If you are not a Google Ads user, you can create a new account directly from your ActiveCampaign account
  • Only Google Ads Admin users can set up this integration. When connecting your Google Ads accounts, only the accounts you have admin access to will display

About the Google Ads integration

This integration offers two different sync options: Lead Sync and Customer Match.

Lead Sync

Lead Sync includes inbound updates coming to ActiveCampaign from Google Ads lead form submissions. This setup is configured on the Google Ads App Listing page in your ActiveCampaign account.

With this option, contacts will sync to ActiveCampaign once they submit your live Google Ads lead forms.

Customer Match

Customer Match helps you reach and deepen relationships with existing customers, re-engage with them, and find new customers like them across Google.

With this integration, you can use Customer Match and ActiveCampaign in your automation workflows to perform outbound updates and retarget your customers using your Google ads.

This integration feature does not add tags to contact records for this option.

With this option, you can connect your Google Ads account to ActiveCampaign with the following automation actions:

  • “Google Ads - Add Contact to List” - This lets you create a new customer list in Google Ads or add contacts to an existing customer list
  • “Google Ads - Remove Contact from List” - This lets you remove contacts from customer lists in Google Ads

You must be eligible and comply with the Google Ads Customer Match Policy.

Inbound Action: Lead Sync

To sync contacts from Google Ads Lead Forms to ActiveCampaign:

  1. From your ActiveCampaign account, click Apps and search for Google Ads. If you have already connected Google Ads to ActiveCampaign through automation actions, go to Apps > Connected Apps.
  2. Click the Google Ads option to open it, then click the “Add an account” button.
  3. A modal window will appear. If you’ve already connected your Google Ads account to ActiveCampaign, click the “Select” button to set up inbound actions with the connected account. If you do not have an account connected or wish to connect a new one, click the “Connect” button instead and follow the authentication steps.
  4. After following the authentication steps, click the “Continue” button.
  5. Select the account and lead form you want to sync to ActiveCampaign.
  6. Click the “Continue” button.
  7. On the following screen, map your Google Ads fields to your desired ActiveCampaign fields. To map additional fields, click the “Add field mapping” button and the “Finish” button.

The email address field is required in ActiveCampaign. Only forms with the email address field available and mapped to ActiveCampaign’s email field will successfully sync contacts from Google Ads to ActiveCampaign.

Test your connection

To test your lead form connection:

  1. Once you connect your lead forms to ActiveCampaign using the steps above, log into your Google Ads account and navigate to Campaigns > Assets.
  2. Select Lead Forms and find the enabled lead form you want to test.
  3. At the bottom of the lead form, the webhook URL and Key will be populated. To test the connection, click “Send test data.”
  4. A test contact will be created in ActiveCampaign and have an email address of test@example.com. This is where you should see the contact, tags, and custom objects created successfully. If you send test data multiple times, you will see the custom object field “Form Received Date” with an updated date and time.

Outbound Actions: Customer Match

Using the automation actions in ActiveCampaign, you can now create new customer lists in Google Ads, find new customers similar to your customers, exclude profiles from advertising campaigns to acquire new customers, re-activate dormant customers, and more.

To add and remove contacts from your advertising audience lists, use the “Google Ads - Add Contact to List” and “Google Ads - Remove Contact from List” automation actions. To use this functionality, connect your Google Ads account to ActiveCampaign in the Automations section of your account.

Adding contacts to a Google Ads audience list

  1. From your ActiveCampaign account, click Automations.
  2. Edit or create a new automation.
  3. Drag the “Google Ads - Add Contact to List” action to your automation. This action is in the “CX Apps” portion of the Actions sidebar.
  4. A modal window will appear. Select one of the following:
  • If you’ve already connected Google Ads to ActiveCampaign, click the “Select” button for the account shown
  • If you want to connect a different Google Ads account, click the “Add a New Account” button
  • If you have not yet connected an account, click the “Connect” button and follow the steps to connect your account
  1. On the next screen, complete the following fields:
  • Use Google Ads as. This is your Manager account
  • Managed Account. If you have client accounts, select the account you want to use
  • Select Customer List. Note that you can create a new customer list or select an existing customer list
  • Name your new customer list. Use this option if you choose to create a new customer list. Once the new list is created, the name will appear in the “Create a New Customer List” field. It will not auto-populate in the “Select Customer List” field. Instead, it will appear in the list drop-down

Do not use special characters, (such as ‘!?) when naming your new list. If you do not name your new customer list, the name will default to “DefaultAudienceList_ActiveCampaign".

  1. Click the “Finish” button.

Contacts will be added to the list when they reach this step in your automation. To immediately bulk add existing contacts to your newly created or existing audience list:

  1. Ensure your automation has been set to “Active.”
  2. Navigate to Contacts.
  3. Segment your contacts accordingly and then select “Edit All.”
  4. Select “Add to an automation” and choose the active automation that includes the “Add Contact to List” automation action.
  5. Click Apply.

Clicking “Finish” will not create your new customer list if you have selected this option. This customer list will appear in your “Google Ads Audience Manager > Your data” segments once contacts have been synced from ActiveCampaign to Google Ads.

Removing contacts from a Google Ads customer list

  1. From your ActiveCampaign account, click Automations.
  2. Edit or create a new automation.
  3. Drag the “Google Ads - Remove Contact from List” action to your automation. This action is in the “CX Apps” portion of the Actions sidebar.
  4. A modal window will appear. If you’ve already connected Google Ads to ActiveCampaign, click the “Select” button for the account shown. If you want to connect a different Google Ads account, click the “Add a New Account” button.
  5. On the next screen, complete the following fields:
  • Use Google Ads as. This is your Manager account
  • Managed Account. If you have client accounts, select the account you want to use
  • Select Customer List. Note that you can create a new customer list or select an existing customer current list
  1. Click the “Finish” button.