You can add a Simplesat survey to any ActiveCampaign campaign email without connecting the two tools. Connecting them makes two integrations available. One saves rating details on the ActiveCampaign contact who answered, in the contact fields you choose. The other brings your ActiveCampaign contacts into Simplesat as customers.
What the ActiveCampaign integrations do
You switch each integration on separately with Activate integration.
Integration | Listed under | What it does | Where it shows |
Sync ActiveCampaign contacts to Simplesat | Account-wide integrations | Adds your ActiveCampaign contacts to Simplesat as customers and updates them once a day | Customers, in Simplesat |
Update contacts with rating details | Survey integrations | Writes details from each response, such as the rating, to the contact fields you map | The contact in ActiveCampaign |
Before you start
The ActiveCampaign integrations are available on every Simplesat plan.
In Simplesat, you need the Manage integrations permission to connect ActiveCampaign and switch integrations on. Owner and Admin have it by default.
In ActiveCampaign, you need the API URL and the API key, which are under Settings → Developer. Each ActiveCampaign user has their own key, so the one you copy is yours.
Integration security, permissions and data flow lists what a connected tool can read and write.
Connect ActiveCampaign
In ActiveCampaign, click Settings (the gear icon), then Developer, and copy the URL and the key.
In Simplesat, on the Integrations page, open ActiveCampaign and click Authenticate.
Fill in the fields:
Field | What to enter | Example |
Account URL | The URL from the Developer settings, without |
|
API token | The key from the Developer settings |
Click Authenticate.
When the page shows Authenticated with ActiveCampaign, click Activate integration on each integration you want.
Before you rely on an integration, test it with a real response, as described in Testing an integration end to end.
Send surveys from ActiveCampaign
To put a survey in a campaign email:
Create or open the survey and select External email embed.
Under Choose where to add your survey, pick Active Campaign.
On Publish, click Generate embed code.
Select HTML, then click Copy survey.
In ActiveCampaign, open the campaign email you want the survey in and paste the code into its HTML.
Send yourself a test email and click a rating. The response appears on the Feedback page in Simplesat.
The survey code includes ActiveCampaign personalization tags, and ActiveCampaign fills them in for each recipient when it sends the campaign:
What the code carries | ActiveCampaign tag |
Customer email |
|
Customer first name |
|
Customer last name |
|
Company name |
|
Team member email |
|
Team member first name |
|
Team member last name |
|
Campaign ID, saved as the ticket field |
|
Heads up: An ActiveCampaign email has no ticket ID, so every click on a rating creates a new response, even a second click by the same customer.
If a response comes in without the customer's name or email, see Placeholders and merge fields.
Feedback in ActiveCampaign
Update contacts with rating details finds the ActiveCampaign contact whose email matches the customer email on the response, and writes to that contact. If the response has no customer email, or no contact has that email, nothing is written.
To set it up:
In ActiveCampaign, create the contact fields you want Simplesat to fill. For example, you could add a field named Latest NPS.
On the ActiveCampaign page in Simplesat, click Activate integration on Update contacts with rating details.
In Field mapping, find the contact field, choose Use data from response, and pick the Simplesat value to put there, like the rating or the comment.
Click Save.
Field mapping includes your ActiveCampaign custom fields. If you create one after connecting, it appears when you reload the page.
Simplesat writes to the contact at least five minutes after a response arrives, and again whenever the response changes, replacing what the field held.
By default, the integration runs on every response from every survey. To narrow it, choose Let me choose under When should this integration run? and switch on the surveys you want.
For the full detail on Field mapping and timing, read Writing feedback back, and mapping the fields.
ActiveCampaign contacts in Simplesat
Sync ActiveCampaign contacts to Simplesat runs once a day and only reads from ActiveCampaign. The first run imports every active ActiveCampaign contact. After that, each run picks up the contacts updated in the past day.
Each contact comes in as a customer with their name, email, company (the contact's organization) and ActiveCampaign contact ID. Contacts without an email address are skipped, and so are contacts that are unsubscribed, bounced or unconfirmed.
You'll find how contact syncs work in Contact sync from a connected tool.
Change the ActiveCampaign account or API key
To switch to another ActiveCampaign account or a new API key, you disconnect and connect again. Each integration keeps its settings, and survey code already in your ActiveCampaign campaigns keeps working.
Click Revoke access.
Click Authenticate and enter the URL and the API key you want to use.
Any integration that was on before switches back on by itself. Check that each one you use shows Deactivate integration. If one is still off, click Activate integration.
Heads up: Responses that arrive between Revoke access and Authenticate aren't written to ActiveCampaign, so do the steps in one go.
Troubleshooting
Ratings don't show up on my ActiveCampaign contacts
Check that:
Update contacts with rating details is active. If you've reconnected ActiveCampaign, it switches back on by itself if it was on. If it's still off, click Activate integration.
Field mapping has a Simplesat value set on each field you want filled, and you clicked Save.
The response has a customer email, and an ActiveCampaign contact has the same email. A survey sent in an ActiveCampaign campaign gets the email from
%EMAIL%.At least five minutes have passed since the response arrived.
If the integration is set to Let me choose, the survey is switched on.
A field I created in ActiveCampaign isn't in Field mapping
Field mapping reads your ActiveCampaign fields each time the page loads, so reload the page. If the field still isn't there, check that it's a contact field.
One of my contacts has several responses from the same campaign email
An ActiveCampaign email has no ticket ID, so each click on a rating creates a new response, and each one counts in your reports.
Authentication fails when I connect ActiveCampaign
Enter the URL from the ActiveCampaign Developer settings without https://, and check that neither field ends with a space.
My ActiveCampaign integrations stopped working, but the page still says Authenticated with ActiveCampaign
Simplesat checks the API key only when you connect. If the key changes or stops working in ActiveCampaign, for example when it's reset, the integrations fail while the page still shows Authenticated with ActiveCampaign. To fix it, click Revoke access, then click Authenticate and enter the current URL and key. Any integration that was on before switches back on by itself. Check that each one you use shows Deactivate integration, and click Activate integration on any that's still off.
If the page shows an error message, look it up in Integration error messages and what they mean.
Some of my ActiveCampaign contacts aren't in Simplesat
The sync brings in active contacts that have an email address. Unsubscribed, bounced and unconfirmed contacts, and contacts without an email, aren't imported. A contact added or changed today arrives with the next daily run.
FAQ
Can I keep each contact's latest NPS score in ActiveCampaign?
Yes. Create a contact field for it in ActiveCampaign, then map the rating to it in the Field mapping of Update contacts with rating details. Under When should this integration run?, choose Let me choose and switch on only your NPS surveys, so ratings from other surveys don't overwrite it.
Will Update contacts with rating details create a contact who isn't in ActiveCampaign?
No. It only updates an existing contact with the same email as the response.
Does the contact sync change anything in ActiveCampaign?
No. Sync ActiveCampaign contacts to Simplesat only reads contacts from ActiveCampaign.