How to handle Event RSVP in ActiveCampaign

I run a pretty event heavy organization called 7CTOs which sees us gathering tech leadership minds to events where we learn from each other.

For all those using ActiveCampaign, here’s what I do to manage Event RSVPs so that I can utilize the very powerful workflow automation tools that ActiveCampaign provides.

1. Set up your RSVP form

Here is the general RSVP form I created. As you can see, there are plenty of hidden fields that we will use to populate with event data once integrated. You create hidden form fields by creating custom fields.

It is important to note that in ActiveCampaign, custom fields are all associated with a customer profile. So while you may be tempted to think of event data as temporary, it will be stored with a customer profile forever. Or, until it gets overwritten the next time the same customer RSVPs to another event.

Very important: Don’t set up the form to subscribe the customer to an e-mail list. We will take care of this through our automation. I have noticed that if you subscribe them to a list to which they need to “Opt-in”, the automation won’t kick in. I have my form set up to e-mail me the results of the form submission.

2. Integrate

Make sure you integrate the form into your site as an inline form. In my case, I have a Wordpress site so I had to use jQuery as opposed to the beloved $ directive. I also use an events plugin that uses specific classes for event rendering, but to give you some idea, I am including a screenshot of what my event detail page looks like.

I used the inspector tool to determine all the different classes and wrote the following jQuery:

jQuery(document).ready(function (){
  jQuery("input[data-name=event_title]").val(jQuery(".tribe-events-single-event-title").text());
  jQuery("input[data-name=event_ics]").val(jQuery(".tribe-events-ical").attr("href"));
  jQuery("input[data-name=event_date]").val(jQuery(".tribe-events-start-date").attr("title"));
  jQuery("input[data-name=event_url]").val(jQuery(location).attr("href"));
})

Notes about the above:

1. ActiveCampaign creates data fields for all it’s form input elements, so you’ll notice that our hidden fields are event_title, event_ics, event_date and event_url.
2. Depending on the CMS you’re using, you’ll obviously target different id’s and classes to find the information you need.

The event page now contains the ActiveCampaign form embedded and ready to go.

Once the page renders, you should have all four variables set by your version of the javascript example above and we should have the following values set in our DOM.

The DOM contains values set by our javascript snippet

3. Set up a work flow (or two)

Unfortunately we don’t have much of an RSVP system (yet). We now have to tap into the real power of ActiveCampaign by setting up two workflows. One for the e-mail confirmation, and one for a reminder e-mail.

Confirmation & deal stage automation

Of course my workflow heavily reflects the way we do things at my company but it is worth noting the following few things:

1. Once someone enters the workflow by submitting our RSVP form, you should tag them. This is an important way to maintain customer state between workflows.
2. I think using the Deals pipeline is a great way to keep track of who RSVP’d to your event. We are talking about marketing automation after all, so someone who is coming to your event should be entered into a stage in your deal pipeline.
3. You’ll notice how handy our custom fields are now that we have to build our customer communication and deal flow.
4. In my case, I deal differently with members of our organization vs. guests of our organization hence the big fat conditional in this workflow. If you’re a guest, you enter a stage in our deal pipeline. If you’re a member however, we simply add a note to your customer profile.

Reminder e-mail automation

I find ActiveCampaign’s automation triggers fascinating and was really excited when I found a data based trigger. With this trigger, we are able to not only send reminders, but close the loop on the state of this customer by removing the “Going to next event” tag.

If all goes according to plan, everyone marked with “Going to next event” should receive an e-mail which in my case, looks like this.

Once again you should notice the delicious use of personalization variables which we created as custom fields early on: EVENT_TITLE, EVENT_URL, EVENT_ICS, etc.

What I haven’t figured out yet

Although I have some ideas, I don’t yet know how best to handle headcount, cancelations and attendance. I’d love to hear about what you’ve come up with! I hope you have fun and feel free to connect with me if anything seems unclear or could be done differently.

Big thank you to Stephen McFarland.