Active Campaign: How to Setup Custom Links as SMS Placeholders

Updated 3 years ago

ActiveCampaign can generate/create links if using their Campaigns to send emails. Since we are going to use their automations to send SMS, the steps would be different from Campaigns.

This article will guide you on how to add links to your messages and send them as SMS.

On ActiveCampaign Platform, go to Contacts that's located on the left sidebar menu.
Select a contact and click Manage Fields.
Click Add Field button. For this article we added "signup_link" as our reference. Group should be in General Details and Field type should be in Text Input.
Once added, this will apply all to your existing and future contacts. Means this added field will be present to all contacts.
Going back to the previous selected contact profile, look for "signup_link" field and add value.
After adding a value (or link) Save the changes.
Values are changeable at anytime.
Note: the value you added is applied specifically on the contact you add changes with. It is not applied to all contacts.
Adding values to each contacts is a long work. To shorten, use Import Contacts functionality. It allows csv file and other third party app such as Google Sheets. You just have to assure it has same field and values from were you are importing from.
Now go to Automations that is on the left Sidebar Menu. Then create an automation from scratch.
After adding trigger to your automation, drag ClickSend SMS from CX Apps list.
Configure ClickSend SMS. You can personalise your message. Fetch the link of the recent field we added. In the example below, we'll add signup_link placeholder to fetch the link.
The placeholder for signup_link is %15%. It is a generated short placeholder done by ActiveCampaign.
Proceed to finish when done. Remember to toggle the automation to Active.