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2-way Pipedrive-ActiveCampaign sync

Sync contacts and engagements between Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign.

Updated this week

What is the most common point of frustration people have when using Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign? The integration options for connecting the two systems are limited.

ActiveCampaign's own Pipedrive app offers contact syncing two ways but only supports updating Person fields (no organization or deal info), which is limiting for B2B companies. You can also use marketing engagement as a trigger in ActiveCampaign's Automations, where the output can be creating or updating Contact/Deal records in Pipedrive (but not recording such engagement on the contact profile in Pipedrive as an Activity) — so Sales are missing out on key context.

Outfunnel's sync is purpose-built for B2B companies who want 2 key things from a sales-marketing integration:

  1. Keep sales and marketing contact lists in sync and

  2. Automatically record marketing engagement in sales CRM for the salespeople to see.

Outfunnel's solution syncs your Pipedrive contacts to ActiveCampaign, keeps the lists up to date, and records all email engagements as activities on the contact profiles in Pipedrive.

With just one setup, your marketing can use the contact lists defined in the CRM for their campaigns, and give sales full visibility into leads' engagement, so they can sell smarter.


Connect Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign today

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How it works

  • Make all Pipedrive contacts or subset(s) you define with filters available in an ActiveCampaign list, along with your custom contact and company fields.

  • Keep the two databases in-sync going forward. E.g. if a custom text field is updated in Pipedrive, this is updated in ActiveCampaign automatically.

  • Record email engagement on your contact profiles in Pipedrive when people open or click on ActiveCampaign email campaigns (one-off and automation campaigns).

  • New ActiveCampaign subscribers can be copied to Pipedrive as contacts. Alternatively, new contacts can be copied to Pipedrive only when they open or click on an email campaign.

  • Record web visits and custom lead scores in Pipedrive with Outfunnel's own Web tracking and Lead scoring as additional lead signals.


Set up contact sync

Sync contacts from Pipedrive to ActiveCampaign and create contacts in Pipedrive from new ActiveCampaign subscribers.

Watch this quick integration how-to video or follow the steps below.

1. Authenticate your apps. Head to Outfunnel > App connector, select Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign and authenticate as per on-screen instructions if you haven't done so already.

2. Select the connection type. Click on Connect and choose Contact sync as the connection type

3. Set up contact sync rules. You can set up the contact sync from Pipedrive to ActiveCampaign or ActiveCampaign to Pipedrive.

  • Pipedrive > ActiveCampaign. Choose whether to sync all Pipedrive contacts or only contacts you’ve defined with a Pipedrive Person filter and select the ActiveCampaign list you'd like to sync them to. As you are syncing contacts, not Deals, then only Pipedrive People filters are visible in Outfunnel. Learn how to set up Pipedrive People filters.

    You can sync different Pipedrive filters to different ActiveCampaign lists (eg. separate email lists for different regions or pipeline stages) or you can sync multiple Pipedrive filters to the same ActiveCampaign list (eg. a filter with open Deals for each sales rep, all synced to one big newsletter List)

  • ActiveCampaign > Pipedrive. Choose a list that you'd like to record new subscribers to Pipedrive as contacts and specify the contact owner. Once the contact is created in Pipedrive, a "Contact Created" activity is added under the contact profile. Note that currently, Outfunnel creates contacts in Pipedrive. Lead creation support is coming soon.

    • A new subscriber will not run be created from mass inserts such as contact imports.

    • The contact will only be added if they are subscribed to a list

💡 Adding contacts

  • Outfunnel subscribes contacts to the ActiveCampaign list.

  • Outfunnel resubscribes contacts that had unsubscribed in the past. To avoid this, simply remove the contact from the Pipedrive filter.

💡 Removing contacts

  • If a contact is deleted or removed from the Pipedrive filter, Outfunnel removes the contact from the respective list in ActiveCampaign. The contact still remains in the overall contact database in ActiveCampaign.

💡 Things to keep in mind

  • Contacts do not get unsubscribed from ActiveCampaign if you remove the contact sync rule or change the target segment.

4. Set up field mapping. Navigate to the field mapping step to select which fields or custom fields you’d like the sync to consider.

Note: If the desired ActiveCampaign field isn’t showing up in the dropdown list, please make sure the field is available in the specific list you have selected. You can check this by going to the advanced options in the field settings in ActiveCampaign.

5. Activate. Activate the connection. The first sync can take up to 5 minutes based on the number of contacts in the sync. From there, Outfunnel checks for segment changes once every 2 hours. For example, if you add or remove a contact from the target segment then it will take a maximum of 2 hours for the data to sync. Field changes for contacts that are already in sync are updated in real time.


Set up engagement sync

Outfunnel supports recording engagement from ActiveCampaign single email campaigns and automations. If you've already set up a connection, skip to the second step.

1. Authenticate your apps. Head to Outfunnel > App connector, select Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign and authenticate as per on-screen instructions if you haven't done so already.

2. Select the connection type. Click on Connect and choose Engagement sync as the connection type

3. Choose the list. Choose the ActiveCampaign list or automation for which you’d like to record email engagement (opens, clicks, unsubscribes, etc).

4. Define how engagement gets recorded. Then define how you’d like email activities like opens, clicks, bounces, or unsubscribes recorded in Pipedrive – or simply use our default settings.

💡 Pipedrive has note limitations. You can have up to 100 notes per deal, person, or organization. If you want to keep syncing engagement past this number, please switch to activities instead.

5. Set up field mapping. When Outfunnel syncs an engagement for a contact that does not yet exist in Pipedrive, a new contact is created with the defined field mapping. Navigate to the field mapping step to select which fields or custom fields you’d like the sync to consider.

6. Activate. Activate the connection. By default, Outfunnel records engagement from emails that have been sent after activating the connection but you can also choose to sync engagement events from the last 30 days when activating the connection. The sync runs every 2 hours automatically thereafter or you can trigger an instant sync anytime by clicking on Sync now.


See what has synced

Once the connection is live, navigate to the Status tab to see how many contacts are in-sync, how many are errored (and why), and when the last sync ran.


Tips, observations, and useful definitions

General

💡 Pre-create field values. Single and multiple option fields need to have the options pre-created in ActiveCampaign and Pipedrive (case insensitive)

Contact sync

💡 Outfunnel supports two ways to manage your contacts between Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign

  • Option A. Master database of all contacts in Pipedrive, contacts synced to ActiveCampaign for emailing via Outfunnel. To enable this, first collate your whole contact list (Pipedrive + ActiveCampaign) into Pipedrive and sync all contacts, or a selection you define with Pipedrive filters, into ActiveCampaign with Outfunnel.

  • Option B. Contact list in ActiveCampaign is separate from prospect/customer list in Pipedrive. If a contact, defined by their email address, exists in both Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign, we log email engagement to Pipedrive to the right contact.

💡 Best results with a new list. We recommend to set up a brand new ActiveCampaign List to ensure everything works flawlessly, but syncing data to an already existing List works as well in most cases.

💡 Single source of truth is Pipedrive. Outfunnel currently treats Pipedrive as the “single source of truth”, and any changes you make in Pipedrive will be reflected in ActiveCampaign. This doesn’t work the other way around. If you’d like to edit the contents of a field in ActiveCampaign, please make the changes in Pipedrive and let Outfunnel take care of syncing this to ActiveCampaign.

💡 Make edits on the Pipedrive end only. Furthermore, making changes to fields or contents of fields that are synced via Outfunnel on the ActiveCampaign end may result in partially disabling Outfunnel automations.

Engagement sync

💡 Supported campaign types. Outfunnel supports one-off and automation campaigns.

💡 Activities are added to my calendar. Please note that if you've set up calendar sync in Pipedrive, then all activities are automatically added to your Google or Outlook calendar. To turn this off simply uncheck Outfunnel activity types in Pipedrive > Company Settings > Calendar Sync

These are the types that Outfunnel creates: Newsletter Sent, Newsletter Opened, Newsletter Clicked, Newsletter Bounce, Newsletter Unsubscribe, Contact Created, Newsletter Reply, Form Submitted, Visited Website

💡 Unsubscribe recording. Outfunnel only records end-user initiated unsubscribes in Pipedrive and manual unsubscribes in ActiveCampaign are not recorded. When a contact is unsubscribed manually but they still match a filter in Pipedrive that is targeted by an automation, then Outfunnel will resubscribe them in ActiveCampaign. If you'd like to manually remove a contact in ActiveCampaign, they need to be permanently deleted under the contact profile in ActiveCampaign.

💡 Email activity is registered on the Contact level. If someone has sent an email, or they open or click in an email, this is registered independently of the deal stage or pipeline in their Contact profile.


💡 Notifications. If you’d like to receive email notifications about people opening and/or clicking your newsletters, you’ll need to turn on Email notifications feature in Pipedrive. (See how). Once enabled, each user can turn on Email notifications by going to Settings > Personal > Preferences > Notifications.

Do you use web forms to collect leads to your lists? See the following integrations to automate lead capture sync to Pipedrive:

Don't see your preferred web forms listed above? Browse the upcoming connections and sign up for early access.

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