Update: I’ve written a new post that goes over 3 potential methods to integrate Clickfunnels and ActiveCampaign. You may want to read that one first, but it will reference this post.

A year ago, a client wanted to switch from using Clickfunnels to manage their email to using ActiveCampaign. This was definitely a good idea due to the features available in AC. However, this wasn’t going to be effortless. We had dozens of funnels to work through and integrate.

Now, if you’ve done some research on this, you have probably seen that Clickfunnels provides a native integration with ActiveCampaign. That’s true, and it works pretty well. However, there are a couple of problems with it.

The first problem is that you have to manually turn it on for all funnels. That can be an arduous task if you already have a lot of them.

The second problem (which is arguably worse), is that the integration doesn’t work with AC’s site tracking. Normally, when a contact fills out an AC form their traffic will start showing up as a webpage view in their profile. But with the Clickfunnels integration, that won’t happen. You’ll only start to track their visits if they click a link to one of your sites in an email.

So, I’ll show you in two parts how you can integrate all your funnels with AC and also activate site tracking for all your forms. Unfortunately, the latter piece will be more time-consuming. But you can always take that part slower.

Integrate all your Clickfunnels with ActiveCampaign in a few minutes with Zapier

If you know what Zapier is but don’t use it, your objection is probably related to cost. That’s fair—Zapier can be expensive if you have high volume. This just comes down to a cost-benefit analysis for your company. Go the traditional integration route if you can afford the time to set it up manually.

This integration is very simple: we’ll have Zapier add all new contacts from Clickfunnels into ActiveCampaign, and tag them with the funnel ID they came from.

Step 1. Start a new zap with the Clickfunnels trigger “New Contact Activity”

Step 2. Set up any filters you want, if you’d like to stop certain funnels from sending contacts to ActiveCampaign.

Step 3. Use the “Create/Update Contact in ActiveCampaign” action step. Include any relevant information you’re collecting in Clickfunnels. If you have form fields that are not part of the ActiveCampaign default fields, you’ll need to create custom fields first so you can map all that information over.

Pro tip: you have to resist the temptation to use a field like “Source” to say they came from Clickfunnels. The information you import will overwrite anything already in those ActiveCampaign fields, so if the contact is actually from a different source you’ll overwrite it to Clickfunnels.

I’ll cover how to get around this in the next step.

Step 4. Set up a smart tagging system. I set mine up so that they are tagged with “Clickfunnels – [Funnel ID]”. Just type in “Clickfunnels – ” then select the funnel ID variable that Zapier provides.

Pro tip: if you set up your funnels with multiple potential opt-in pages that do different things, you may want to also add in the page ID to the tag separately. Example: if you have a funnel that has two separate opt-in pages with different calls to action or email autoresponders, you’ll need some way to distinguish between people who fill out the different forms. You should probably clean that up anyway, but I know there are legitimate reasons why you might do this.

So, how do you keep track of contacts that originated from a Clickfunnel page? In ActiveCampaign, create a field called “Source” if you don’t have it already. Add another tag, something like: “SOURCE – Clickfunnels”. Then, in ActiveCampaign, build an automation triggered by “Tag exists: SOURCE – Clickfunnels”. Use an if/then segment to see if your Source field is blank. If it is, you can replace it with “Clickfunnels”. If it’s not, you can leave it be. Finally, remove the tag if you’d like to keep your data clean. This is what your program will look like:

Pro tip #2: ActiveCampaign currently does not allow you to search for people whose tags contain certain words. I tried wildcards, and those don’t work either. It’s an unfortunate limitation. So if you want to be able to segment everyone who has ever come through a Clickfunnel, you may want to add a general tag for everyone from this group. In Zapier, you just have to add commas between the tags.

Taking this integration to the next level: categorizing funnels

My client had a unique problem. He’s running two businesses that are very similar, but target different audiences. Plus, he’s also doing funnels for his clients with separate email lists. How do you keep these separate in ActiveCampaign? (Skip this section if you don’t need to group together certain funnels and apply common actions).

Well, you have a few options. The most obvious option is to create automations in ActiveCampaign for each funnel ID, and add additional tags to contacts that come in with that ID (or perform actions like subscribing them to a specific list).

But I found this option really time-consuming and problematic. You might have to end up creating dozens of automations by hand, which will clutter up your account. If you add a new funnel, you have to make sure you add a new automation to categorize it. It’s just… a pain.

My scalable solution is using a little hack with Google sheets. I created a sheet that looks like this:

On the left is a funnel id, and on the right is a list of tags to apply. (Some client names blurred out for privacy).

Then, I added a Zapier action right before ActiveCampaign that looks at the Google Sheet and pulls the correct tags based on the funnel ID.

I also set it up to add any new funnel IDs and tag them as “Unknown Funnel”. this is what I call a fail-safe mechanism. If I create a new funnel and forget to add the correct tags in this sheet, those funnel IDs will be recorded here. I set up an automation in ActiveCampaign that notifies me when a contact has the tag “Unknown Funnel”. This instantly alerts me that something is wrong.

And, most usefully: the funnel ID is recorded on the contact by Zapier automatically, so I can go through and find everyone who came through an unknown funnel and give them the proper tags. (Then I can remove the Unknown Funnel tag from them all). You can do this in bulk using the contact search and bulk edit in ActiveCampaign.

How to integrate Clickfunnel forms with ActiveCampaign for web site tracking

You could always embed an ActiveCampaign form in Clickfunnels, but that’s a lot of work to style correctly and it can break Clickfunnels functionality. Plus using the direct integration method, as discussed earlier, does not activate web tracking upon a form submit.

So, here’s the weird method you need to use.

Update: you’re in luck, I came up with a better way. Check it out here.

Step 1. Build a form in ActiveCampaign. Make sure it has the exact same fields you’ll be using for Clickfunnels (pay attention to full name vs. first name + last).

Add any followup actions you’d like to this form, such as tagging or starting an automation.

Step 2. Click the blue Integrate button on the top right. Copy the embed code, and delete all the <style> and <script> tags. You want to just keep everything between <form> and </form>. (I do this in notepad or a code editor like Sublime Text).

Step 3. Go to your Clickfunnels page, edit it, and go to Settings > Integrations on the top. Under “Select Integration”, choose “null (Html Form)”. For the “Action”, select “Integrate Existing Form”.

Step 4. Paste your <form> code from ActiveCampaign into this box and click the blue parse button. This will show up:

Step 5. For each dropdown, select the corresponding field name from Clickfunnels.

Step 6. Copy the URL for the thank you page and add that under the form options in ActiveCampaign.

Now, make sure to save and test your form. There’s a few ways it could have gone wrong, so you want to make sure it’s airtight.

Money-saving pro tip: You can gradually phase out Zapier if you manually do this for all forms. Under the form actions, add the tags that your Zap would normally add. Then, edit your Zap to filter out all contacts that are coming through this funnel (use funnel ID). Zapier’s billing is based on the number of actions, and filtering a user out of the Zap will not count as an action.

Sending Clickfunnel purchase info to ActiveCampaign

Anywhere that you have a product, you’ll likely need an autoresponder email from ActiveCampaign that reacts to the purchase event. 

This integration is pretty straightforward: you’ll want to follow these instructions to add the ActiveCampaign integration to Clickfunnels. 

Now, edit your product in Clickfunnels. Go to the Follow-up Actions tab, and choose “Add contact to list with tag” under ActiveCampaign. 

I personally use a tag format that goes like this: “Clickfunnels – [Funnel ID] – Purchased – [Product name]”. It’s lengthy but detailed. However, if the same product is purchased on many different pages or if you need to trigger an action for any purchase, you might want to add a second tag that’s more generic. Perhaps just “Purchased” or “Purchased – Product Name”. 

Again, this is due to the fact that ActiveCampaign does not currently allow you to search for “Tag contains“.

Need help getting this integration and automation done right?

Hire a professional who can customize the automation to fit your unique business needs, plus set up top-notch email marketing automation and high-converting funnels.