Making meaningful connections with customers is the key to growing a business. Realizing this, more and more business owners are turning to CRM and marketing automation software like ActiveCampaign to help them connect with their customers.
However, getting the most out of ActiveCampaign often requires expert guidance.
So, most businesses engage ActiveCampaign certified marketing automation consultants to help them use the technology to build and implement campaigns that run on autopilot towards growing their businesses.
ActiveCampaign certified consultants are adept users of the platform who are approved to support ActiveCampaign users with customer experience automation. There are three steps to becoming a certified consultant - submitting an application, taking training courses, and passing a proficiency exam.
But what does being an ActiveCampaign certified marketing automation consultant entail, and what are the benefits of being an ActiveCampaign certified consultant? This “ActiveCampaign certified consultant” guide will answer these questions.
Let’s start the discussion with what ActiveCampaign is!
What is ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tool that can help you grow your business with customer experience automation.
ActiveCampaign has many features that can help you optimize each stage of your customer journey - reach, nurture, convert and grow.
ActiveCampaign features to help you reach your audience
PlusThis is built for a very specific audience in mind. It’s a niche product serving a niche market. But if you fit that group, you’ll likely see a lot of benefit from the product.
The ActiveCampaign features that can help you find the right prospects and grow your audience include:
- Website tracking. Site tracking lets you know the products, services, and information your site visitors are most interested in so that you can follow up appropriately and have a better chance of turning them into customers.
- Email marketing. ActiveCampaign has a simple drag-and-drop email builder that makes it easy to create beautiful emails. The builder allows you to personalize emails to create an even stronger connection with your visitors and better turn them into customers.
- Email segmentation. Different people care about different things. The ActiveCampaign segmentation feature lets you group your prospects, allowing you to send each group a targeted message instead of sending everyone the same message.
- Subscription Forms. ActiveCampaign allows you to create forms across your website so you can gather crucial information and use that to automate interactions.
- Deliverability. It’s no news that a lot of marketing emails are blocked or end up in spam and are never opened. ActiveCampaign helps to avoid that. It adopts six (6) email deliverability best practices that will increase the chances of your marketing emails getting to the inboxes of your target audience and being seen.
ActiveCampaign features to help you nurture prospects
ActiveCampaign has features that can help you grow your relationship with your audience, including:
- Marketing automation. ActiveCampaign is more famous for its automation. With it, you automate the sending of repetitive marketing emails based on your visitors' activities, allowing you to increase your qualified leads and grow sales.
- Messaging and Text. ActiveCampaign also allows you to automate the sending of marketing text messages, helping you to reach customers on the go.
- Dynamic Content. ActiveCampaign allows you to tailor email content based on customer preferences, leading to higher email open rates.
ActiveCampaign features to help you convert to customers
ActiveCampaign has many features to nudge your audiences to take the next step. These include:
- Landing Pages. The platform has a simple drag-and-drop designer that you can use to build beautiful landing pages (without needing to code). Sending traffic to a landing page helps you capture more leads and grow your audience.
- CRM & Sales Automations. ActiveCampaign adds sales automation to CRM software, so you can automate sales and always have the CRM tools to sell.
- Lead scoring. ActiveCampaign lead scoring feature helps you score your leads based on how they interact with your business. It helps you know and follow up on the leads that are most likely to close.
- Pipeline Automation. With ActiveCampaign, you can track the different stages of your deals and automate the subsequent actions (based on the stage of each deal).
ActiveCampaign features to help you delight your customers and grow
The ActiveCampaign features that can help you delight your customer to ensure loyalty and repeat business include:
- Conversations. ActiveCampaign features a live chat, automated chatbots, and a unified inbox to help you connect with your customers and offer timely support.
- Predictive sending. With this ActiveCampaign’s intelligent automation, you create your emails, and the platform will send them at the right time for each recipient - when the recipients are most likely to engage.
- Web personalization. ActiveCampaign allows you to show each of your site visitors the content that is most relevant to them. This way, they are more likely to buy more, leave more reviews, etc.
What is an ActiveCampaign Certified Marketing Automation Consultant?
As you may already know, a consultant is an expert in a particular field who provides professional advice to individuals and organizations in his/ her area of expertise.
A consultant provides expertise that a client does not have or support that a client cannot fulfill. So, consultants are hired for their expert knowledge and support to help the client organization solve a particular problem or reach specific targets.
An ActiveCampaign marketing automation consultant is an expert in the use of the customer experience software who provides professional advice and support to businesses, helping them to grow by making meaningful connections with their customers.
However, the title “consultant” has no legal protection, so anyone can wake up on a given day and adopt it. Sadly, the advice and guidance of many self-proclaimed consultants can have the opposite effect.
Thankfully, “certification” helps separate real consultants from self-proclaimed ones. A certified consultant is an expert approved by an official organization to do a particular job, having completed some training and passed an examination to prove his/ her expertise.
Thus, businesses look for certified ones when going for ActiveCampaign marketing automation consultants.
ActiveCampaign certified marketing automation consultants are expert users of the platform who exemplify their expertise through a rigorous proficiency exam and ongoing training and are approved by the platform to support ActiveCampaign customers with customer experience automation.
That said, the characteristic of an ActiveCampaign certified consultant include:
- An expert user of the platform (ActiveCampaign).
- Has completed special ActiveCampaign training and undertakes ongoing training to stay relevant.
- Successfully completed a rigorous ActiveCampaign proficiency exam.
- Has an official approval (in the form of a badge) from the platform, granting permission to provide support to ActiveCampaign customers.
- Listed on ActiveCampaign certified consultant directory.
Thus, the ActiveCampaign certified consultant seal is a mark of credibility.
When businesses see that you have the seal, they’ll know that you are a true ActiveCampaign expert familiar with the marketing and sales platform capabilities. They’ll know that you can help them leverage the platform to design and implement marketing and sales strategies that help them connect with their customers and grow their businesses.
What is the certification process to become an ActiveCampaign marketing automation consultant?
Becoming an ActiveCampaign certified marketing automation consultant takes three (3) steps:
- Submit an application.
- Take part in a live training.
- Take and pass the ActiveCampaign platform exam.
Step one: Submit an application
The first step to becoming an ActiveCampaign certified consultant is to fill out and submit an application form.
You'll find the form on the ActiveCampaign Certified Consultant webpage. To fill out the application form, you’ll need to provide the following information:
- Personal information - Your full name, address, email address, phone number, and Business Registration Number
- Account information - Your ActiveCampaign account URL
- Platform usage information - How long you have used ActiveCampaign, the ActiveCampaign accounts you have worked with, how well you know the ActiveCampaign platform, how many active customers you plan to migrate, etc.
After submitting your application, the platform will review it and inform you of its decision by email. If the application is approved, you’ll receive information about the live training.
Step two: Take part in a live training
The second step to becoming an ActiveCampaign certified marketing automation consultant is taking part in live training.
While those applying to become ActiveCampaign consultants would already be experts in the platform, they are still required to participate in live training sessions.
The first training is a two-day webinar that’ll run from 11 am to 5 pm CT daily. The training is not a course on email marketing or marketing automation because it is not designed to make you an ActiveCampaign expert.
All applicants are expected to be ActiveCampaign experts already. So, the training’s emphasis is on how to provide as much value as possible to ActiveCampaign users in a consulting role.Talk to us if you need help with ActiveCampaign
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Step three: Take and pass the ActiveCampaign platform exam
The third and final step to becoming an ActiveCampaign certified consultant is to take and pass the platform’s proficiency examination.
However, it is not the typical examination but an informal one-on-one web conference. The informal chat will last about 30 minutes, and ActiveCampaign will seek to know you, your business, and your proficiency in the platform.
In the chat:
- They may ask you to navigate to specific features in the platform and explain their uses.
- They will give you a hypothetical scenario and ask you to demonstrate how you will address it using the platform.
- They will ask you to use the platform to set up specific types of campaigns and automation.
- They will ask you questions about effective marketing and sales techniques.
Thus, the ActiveCampaign proficiency exam is not just about filling out a questionnaire or proving theoretical knowledge. You’ll also need to demonstrate your knowledge of the platform in specific use-case scenarios.
However, true ActiveCampaign experts should have no problem passing the exam. In addition to the webinar event (live training), ActiveCampaign will provide applicants with a study guide. If you attended the training and are familiar with the content of the study guide, you will pass the proficiency “exam.”
Benefits of being a certified consultant
Being a certified ActiveCampaign marketing automation consultant comes with many benefits, including:
- You get an ActiveCampaign Certified Consultant badge to display
- You get another qualification to differentiate you from your competitors
- You get a place in the ActiveCampaign directory of certified consultants
- You earn a higher commission for referring people to ActiveCampaign
- It establishes a more formal relationship with ActiveCampaign
- It does not burden you with minimum sales quotas
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It gives you the ActiveCampaign Certified Consultant badge
Candidates who complete the required training and proficiency exam to qualify as ActiveCampaign certified consultants get a special badge they can display on their platforms.
The “ActiveCampaign Certified Consultant” badge shows you as an expert-level ActiveCampaign user qualified to teach and implement marketing and sales strategy.
It gives you another qualification to differentiate you from your competitors
In the digital marketing market, there are literally thousands of agencies advertising as experts and promising to help businesses leverage CRM and automation technologies to connect with their customers better.
While your competitors may have only their words to speak for them, with an ActiveCampaign certification, you’ll have more to speak for you. The ActiveCampaign certified consultant badge means that the platform’s builders themselves point to you as someone with the necessary training and qualification to help businesses implement marketing and sales campaigns.
Thus, the ActiveCampaign certification differentiates you from your competitors, instantly setting you out as a reputable ActiveCampaign expert.
It gives you a place in the ActiveCampaign certified consultants' directory
People who qualify as ActiveCampaign certified consultants not only get the special badge but are also listed in a “certified consultants” directory on the ActiveCampaign website.
When users ask ActiveCampaign for help beyond its scope of services, the support service will refer the users to this list of certified consultants.
Higher commission for referring customers to ActiveCampaign
The ActiveCampaign affiliate program allows you to earn a commission by referring people to the customer experience automation platform. All you need to do is share your unique referral link with your followers.
For any of them that click your link and make an ActiveCampaign subscription, you’ll receive 20% of the subscription price paid. That is, if the customer you share pays $100 in a month, you will get $20, and if he/ she pays $1000 in a month, you’ll get $200.
However, if you are an ActiveCampaign certified marketing automation consultant, you’ll get a higher commission, up to 30%. If the customer you share subscribes to a monthly plan, you’ll get a 25% commission, but if he/she buys a yearly plan, you’ll get a 30% commission. Thus, being an ActiveCampaign certified marketing automation consultant allows you to earn more passive income via the ActiveCampaign affiliate program.
Establish a more formal relationship with ActiveCampaign
When you become an ActiveCampaign certified consultant, you graduate from being just another adept user of the platform into an ActiveCampaign partner.
Certification establishes a more formal relationship between you and the platform - even closer than a sales affiliate partner. You become an essential part of the platform’s ecosystem of resources, such that if ActiveCampaign users seek help that will be too involved for the platform to assist with, the users will be directed to you.
No compulsory minimum sales quotas
As an ActiveCampaign certified consultant, you do not have to meet minimum sales quotas to retain your “certified consultant” status. The program focuses on providing value to users. So, you can concentrate on using your expertise to help businesses automate customer experiences without the pressure of meeting sales targets.
Conclusion
In this ActiveCampaign certified consultants’ complete guide, I’ve exhaustively covered everything you need to know about ActiveCampaign certified consultants and how to become one.
They are adept users of ActiveCampaign who are approved by the platform to help people leverage the platform to create automated marketing and sales processing to achieve their business goals.
Becoming an ActiveCampaign certified consultant involves participating in specialized training courses and passing a proficiency exam. So, ActiveCampaign certified consultants are credible experts familiar with ActiveCampaign and its capabilities. Businesses trust ActiveCampaign certified consultants to help them leverage the platform to create marketing campaigns and automation for achieving business goals.
Need help leveraging ActiveCampaign for your marketing campaigns? Contact the Blick Digital team. Blick Digital helps consulting businesses to correctly employ marketing automation tools to generate more qualified leads, turn more leads into customers, and get more repeat sales and referrals from existing customers.
Ready to grow your coaching and consulting business with marketing automation? Schedule an automation assessment and see how it works!