Using the Postmark CX App in ActiveCampaign
With the Postmark CX App integration in ActiveCampaign, you can easily use your ActiveCampaign's automations to trigger transactional emails to be sent through your Postmark account. Combine the power of ActiveCampaign's versatile automations with Postmark's legendary transactional email sending infrastructure.
🙋 Be sure to check out our FAQ for the Postmark CX App as well!
🗂 Jump ahead
🙋 Frequently Asked Questions#
We have a great list of frequently asked questions around the Postmark CX App that can be found here. Below are some of the more common points to help get you started:
- Q: Do I need both an ActiveCampaign and Postmark account?
A: You will need both an ActiveCampaign and an approved Postmark account to use the CX app integration. If you don't have a Postmark account, we have a great Getting Started With Postmark guide to help, as well as details on how Postmark's Approval process works. - Q: Is the Postmark CX App located in Postmark or ActiveCampaign?
A: The Postmark CX app lives and takes place within your ActiveCampaign account. The app sends the messages through your Postmark account, where you can view the message's activity and events. - Q: Does the CX App support personalization?
A: Yes, however ActiveCampaign's personalization placeholders use a different syntax in CX apps. If you are using personalizations in your ActiveCampaign templates, please be sure to use the correct syntax for your personalization fields. Only Contact fields are supported. More on that here. - Q: Does the Postmark CX App support conditional content?
A: No. At this time, the Postmark CX App does not support using conditional content. - Q: A contact triggered the automation, but no message was sent through Postmark. Why?
A; There could be an issue with your template content. If a link URL within your message contains more than one % character (used for encoded characters like %2F for example) the message will not be able to send through the integration. More on that here.
Check out our full list of frequently asked questions here!
Connect the Postmark CX App in ActiveCampaign#
Connecting the Postmark CX App in ActiveCampaign is simple. However, first make sure you have both an ActiveCampaign account and Postmark account created. Once done, head over to your ActiveCampaign account and there connect the CX app by:
- Within your ActiveCampaign account click the "Automations" tab on the left menu.
- Create or edit an automation.
- Add an action, and select the Postmark's "Send a transactional email" as a sending option.
- A connection screen will appear. Click the blue "Connect" button.
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⚠️ If you haven't created a Postmark account yet, click the " Sign up here" link to create one. We have more details here on how Postmark's account approval process works.
- You'll be brought to the Postmark login page. Enter your Postmark account's username and password and click "Log in".
If you're already logged into your Postmark account, you'll see a confirmation screen to confirm you are about to connect to the correct Postmark account. Click the blue "Proceed" button to log in, or the "Change User" button to logout and log in to a different Postmark account if needed.
- Click the blue "Authorize" button to allow ActiveCampaign to use your Postmark account.
⚠️ If your Postmark account is not yet approved you'll see a reminder letting you know, along with a button to request approval for your Postmark account. More here on how Postmark's Approval process works.
- Once connected, you'll see a connection confirmation screen. Click "Continue".
- Next, set your settings to use for sending the transactional emails through Postmark, specifically:
- Postmark Server
Select which Server within your Postmark account you wish to connect the Postmark CX app to.
- Message Stream
Select the Message Stream from your Postmark server that you wish to connect the Postmark CX app to. Only your server's Transactional Message Streams will be selectable.
- Template
Select a template from within your ActiveCampaign account that you want to use for the transactional email. If you are using personalization you will need to modify the template to support the CX App personalization syntax.
❗️ It is not possible to select a template that's within your Postmark server (however, you can take your Postmark template's HTML and import it into ActiveCampaign).
- Message Subject
A text field to enter your message's subject line, with the capability of adding personalization tags.
- From Address
The From address you'd like to use for your transactional email. This drop down will include all verified individual Sender Signature email addresses within your Postmark account. If you need to add a new FROM address for sending, you have two options within your Postmark account:
- Authenticate your entire domain
We recommend that you authenticate your overall domain using DKIM within Postmark, as that will greatly increase your deliverability when sending. More here on authenticating a domain using DKIM within Postmark.
Once the domain is verified, you will still need to add an individual Sender Signature email address—that's the email address that will be used as the FROM address when sending emails using the Postmark CX app in ActiveCampaign. Click the blue “Add Signature” button below your domain within the Sender Signatures tab and add the individual email addresses to use for the FROM address.
⚠️ Please note: Adding an individual email address to a DKIM verified domain will not trigger a verification email. The email address will automatically be verified once added. Easy!
- Verify a single email address
If you’re not able to authenticate an entire domain using DKIM, you can instead add individual sender signature email addresses. To do so, click on the Sender Signatures tab within your Postmark account, click the “Add Domain or Signature” button, and select the single email address option. A verification link will be sent to the added email address, and once confirmed it will appear in the Postmark CX App as a FROM address in the drop down menu.
- Authenticate your entire domain
- Track Opens
Choose whether to track opens for this message. Open tracking will only take place within Postmark, and not within ActiveCampaign.
- Track Clicks
Choose whether to track link clicks for this message. Click link tracking will only take place within Postmark, and not within ActiveCampaign.
- Postmark Server
- Click the "Finish" button and you're all set! When a Contact reaches this action in your automation, a transactional email will be sent using the options you selected in the Message Settings step.
Using ActiveCampaign Templates#
The Postmark CX app for ActiveCampaign will pull templates from your ActiveCampaign account, not from your Postmark account.
If you do not have an ActiveCampaign template built yet, you can do so by clicking on the "Campaigns" link in the lefthand toolbar, then the "Campaign Templates" option (you may need to click the ">> Show Navigation" button to see that option), and there you can create a new template by clicking "Create a Template".
Finally, select the template type you'd like to use for building your template: Email Designer, Classic Designer, or Custom HTML
Once created, the template will be selectable when setting up the "Send a transactional email" trigger.
Template Footers#
You'll notice that the automatic footers included within your ActiveCampaign templates are not included in messages when sent through the Postmark CX App. This is because transactional emails are one-off messages that would not require your recipients to opt-out of, like they might need to for marketing and other bulk messages. As such, the template's footer and unsubscribe link are automatically removed.
Below on the left shows how your template's footer will look like within your ActiveCampaign account. On the right shows how the message will appear to your recipient and when viewed within your Postmark account's Activity area, with the footer automatically removed:
Import your own HTML templates#
If you'd like to import your own HTML templates (for example, the HTML of one of your Postmark templates), you can use the following instructions to import the template's code into your ActiveCampaign account:
- In your ActiveCampaign account, click "Campaigns" > "Campaign Templates".
- Click the “Create a Template” button.
- Click the "Custom HTML" option and click "Continue".
- Paste your HTML content into the editor.
- If you are using personalizations, please be sure to update any placeholders in your content to use the correct syntax for this integration.
- Give your template a name by clicking on the "New Template" button and editing the text.
- Click "Save and exit".
Personalizations in ActiveCampaign template content#
In order for personalizations to work correctly within your ActiveCampaign's templates, the proper placeholder syntax must be used. The syntax for personalizations supported in CX apps is different from the normal personalization fields in ActiveCampaign templates. It is important to use the correct personalization syntax, or the fields will not be substituted properly and may be left blank in your message content.
❗️ At this time, the Postmark CX App does not support conditional content.
Syntax differences#
Standard Fields
For ActiveCampaign templates used in this integration, Standard fields must use “camelCase” rather than full uppercase as they normally would be in ActiveCampaign templates. The following Standard fields are supported:
- Email: %email%
- First Name: %firstName%
- Last Name: %lastName%
- Phone Number: %phone%
⚠️ If you use the personalization tag modal to choose the above fields, you will need to manually edit them in your template to use camelCase.
Custom Contact Fields
Only contact custom fields are supported. Deal and Account custom fields, and custom objects, are not supported at this time.
Custom fields are represented by the custom field id value rather than the name. For example, I have a Custom Field called “Favorite Color” with an id of 3. This would be represented by the personalization tag %3% rather than %FAVORITE_COLOR%.
Your ActiveCampaign templates must include the id-based syntax for personalizations or the substitutions will not occur properly. To find the correct id for your custom fields you can use the Personalize dropdown when setting up the app (see below) or you can make an ActiveCampaign API call to https://youraccountname.api-us1.com/api/3/fields.
Choose a personalization from the dropdown to see the correct placeholder to add to your templates:
If you are using this trick to find the correct personalization placeholders, please be sure to delete them from the text area afterward.
Using % characters in URLs#
If a link URL within your message contains more than one % character (used for encoded characters like %2F for example) the message will not be able to send through the integration properly.
This is due to ActiveCampaign's system detecting those % characters as personalizations due to the % sign matching ActiveCampaign's personalization syntax.
You will need to remove the % characters from your link URLs in order for the integration to send properly. So for example, you'd need to use "/" in your URL instead of "%2F".
Another option would be to store the entire URL as a custom field value, and then use a personalization for the full URL. This would mean you would need to add the URL as a custom field value for each contact.
Disconnect the Postmark CX App in ActiveCampaign#
To disconnect the Postmark CX App from your ActiveCampaign account, simply:
- Click the "Apps" tab in your ActiveCampaign account's lefthand toolbar.
- Use the search bar and search "Postmark".
- Click on the Postmark app.
- Click the blue "Disconnect" button.
- After confirming, your Postmark account will be disconnected from ActiveCampaign.
💌 Get in touch!#
And there you have it! Now you have a simple way to send transactional emails through your Postmark account, using ActiveCampaign's automations as triggers. If you have any questions or feedback about the integration, don't hesitate to contact Postmark's support team. We'd love to hear from you!
Be sure to check out our FAQ for the Postmark CX App as well!
💡 We're currently working on an even more in-depth integration between ActiveCampaign and Postmark, so stay tuned! If you have any thoughts or ideas on ways you'd love to see the two integrate, don't hesitate to let us know!