How do I connect Postmark to ActiveCampaign?

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Available as an add-on for the following plans:

Marketing Lite, Plus, Professional and Enterprise

Sales Plus, Professional, and Enterprise

Use the ActiveCampaign Postmark integration to send transactional emails from your automations. You can build your template in the ActiveCampaign designer or import your HTML template. Personalizations can be included in your templates to empower truly personal transactional emails.

Take note

  • You need an ActiveCampaign account and an approved Postmark account to use this integration. You can get started on a free plan with Postmark that will allow you to send up to 100 emails for free per month. If you want to send more emails, upgrade to a paid plan. If you don’t have a Postmark account, please see the Getting Started With Postmark guide as well as details on how Postmark’s approval process works
  • The Postmark CX app and integration setup lives in your ActiveCampaign account. This app sends messages through your Postmark account where you can then view the message’s activity and events
  • You can only use personalization placeholders with Contact fields, using either the %UPPERCASE% or %camelCase% syntax
  • This app does not support Conditional Content

Configure the Postmark CX App

  1. Click “Automations” on the left menu.

  2. Create or edit an automation.

  3. Drag the “Send a transactional email” action to your automation. This is located under “Sending Options.”
    Send a transactional email automation action.jpg

  4. A connection screen will appear. Click the “Connect” button.
    Send a transactional email modal.png

  5. Once you’re logged into your Postmark account, click the “Proceed” button to continue the connection process.
    Click the Postmark Proceed button.png

  6. Click the “Authorize” button to allow ActiveCampaign to use your Postmark account.
    If your Postmark account is not yet approved you’ll see a reminder letting you know, along with a button to request approval for your Postmark account. Learn how Postmark’s Approval process works.

  7. Once connected, you’ll see a connection confirmation screen. Click “Continue.”
    Postmark connection confirmation screen.png

  8. Next, set your settings to use for sending the transactional emails through Postmark, specifically:

  • Postmark Server
    Select the Server within your Postmark account you wish to connect the Postmark CX app to.
  • Message Stream
    Select the Message Stream from your Postmark server that you wish to connect the Postmark CX app to. Only your server’s Transactional Message Streams will be selectable.
  • Template
    Select a template from within your ActiveCampaign account that you want to use for the transactional email. If you are using personalization you will need to modify the template to support the CX App personalization syntax.

It is not possible to select a template that’s within your Postmark server (however, you can take your Postmark template’s HTML and import it into ActiveCampaign).

  • Message Subject
    A text field to enter your message’s subject line, with the capability of adding personalization tags.
  • From Address
    The From address you would like to use for your transactional email. This drop-down will include all verified individual Sender Signature email addresses within your Postmark account. If you need to add a new “From” address for sending, you have two options within your Postmark account:
  • Authenticate your entire domain

DKIM and DMARC authentication is required beginning February 2024 following upcoming changes by Gmail and Yahoo regarding authentication requirements. ActiveCampaign highly recommends all senders set up DKIM and DMARC.

For more information on these changes see our blog post A Guide to Google and Yahoo authentication Changes in 2024.

In order to achieve basic deliverability you will need to authenticate your overall domain using DKIM within Postmark, as that will greatly increase your deliverability when sending. More here on authenticating a domain using DKIM within Postmark.

Once the domain is verified, you will still need to add an individual Sender Signature email address—that’s the email address that will be used as the “From” address when sending emails using the Postmark CX app in ActiveCampaign. Click the “Add Signature” button below your domain within the Sender Signatures tab and add the individual email addresses to use for the “From” address.

Adding an individual email address to a DKIM verified domain will not trigger a verification email. The email address will automatically be verified once added.

  • Verify a single email address
    If you’re not able to authenticate an entire domain using DKIM, you can instead add individual sender signature email addresses. To do so, click on the Sender Signatures tab within your Postmark account, click the “Add Domain or Signature” button, and select the single email address option. A verification link will be sent to the added email address, and once confirmed it will appear in the Postmark CX App as a “From” address in the drop-down menu.
  • Postmark Tags
    Add a descriptive tag (like “payment-reminder” or “booking-confirmation”) to the message. This can be useful to categorize and view your messages within the Statistics and Activity tabs in your Postmark Message Stream. There is a one-tag limit. Keep your tags below 30 characters (we’ll automatically truncate tags that are longer) and don’t use spaces (we’ll automatically replace those with dashes).
  • Track Opens
    Choose whether to track opens for this message. Open tracking will only take place within Postmark, and not within ActiveCampaign.
  • Track Clicks
    Choose whether to track link clicks for this message. Click link tracking will only take place within Postmark, and not within ActiveCampaign.
  1. Click the “Finish” button.

When a Contact reaches this action in your automation, a transactional email will be sent using the options you selected in the Message Settings step.

Campaign templates

You can use an existing template or create a new campaign template to use with this integration. Note that the default footer containing the unsubscribe link will appear in the email designer, but will not appear in the send.

To import your existing HTML templates:

  1. In your ActiveCampaign account, click “Campaigns” on the left menu.
  2. Click “Campaign Templates” on the left sub-navigation menu. Note that you may need to expand this menu to select “Campaign Templates.”
  3. Click the “Create a Template” button.
  4. Click the “Custom HTML” option then click “Continue.”
  5. Paste your HTML content into the editor.
  6. If you are using personalization, please be sure to update any placeholders in your content to use the correct syntax for this integration.
  7. Give your template a name by clicking on the “New Template” button and editing the text.
  8. Click “Save and exit.”

Personalizations in the campaign template content

You can add personalization to your ActiveCampaign templates using contact fields, using either the %UPPERCASE% or %camelCase% syntax.

:exclamation: At this time, the Postmark CX App does not support:

  • Conditional Content
  • Message Variables
  • the %WEBCOPY% personalization tag
  • Deal or Account custom fields
  • Custom objects

Custom Contact Fields

Only custom contact fields are supported. Deal and Account custom fields, and custom objects, are not supported at this time.

You can use Custom Contact Fields to populate personalizations into your templates and message details. You can use the Custom Contact Field’s name or ID value to populate the field’s values.

For example, say you have a Custom Contact Field named “Favorite Color”, with an id of 3. You can use the field’s name %FAVORITE_COLOR% or the id %3% to populate the “Favorite Color” field’s value.

Using % characters in URLs

If a link URL within your message contains more than one % character (used for encoded characters like %2F for example) the message will not be able to send through the integration properly.

This is because our system detects those % characters as personalizations due to the % sign matching our personalization syntax.

You will need to remove the % characters from your link URLs for the integration to send properly. So for example, you’d need to use “/” in your URL instead of “%2F”.

Another option would be to store the entire URL as a custom field value, and then use a personalization for the full URL. This would mean you must add the URL as a custom field value for each contact.

Can I use the %WEBCOPY% tag for messages sent through the CX App?

No, it’s currently not possible to include ActiveCampaign’s %WEBCOPY% personalization tag in the ActiveCampaign templates being used for sending through the Postmark CX App. If the tag is included, the web copy link will not render correctly when the message is sent through the Postmark CX App.