Question: What is required to start using Act! Marketing Automation?
Product Details:
- Product Family: Emarketing
- Product: Act! Marketing Automation
Answer:
Act! Marketing Automation (AMA) was released with Act! v21 - to ensure Act! Marketing Automation is able to function correctly, make sure the below requirements are fulfilled:
- An active Act! Premium subscription with an associated AMA subscription is required. Ensure your installation of Act! is correctly registered as per the below article:
How to Register or Activate Act! from v21.1 Onwards - Your Act! API, either serviced by the Act! Web API or the Act! Connect Link, needs to be secure (accessed over https) and externally accessible. For more information on ensuring your Act! API connection has been correctly set up, please see the below article:
How do I set up the Act! API?
Please Note: We strongly recommend you update your Act! software to V21 Update 5 as a minimum due to some known issues that were resolved in this version of the software.
Updates for Act! are available to download here.
If your subscription package includes AMA, and your database has been correctly set-up to use it, you can access AMA by clicking on the "Marketing Automation" item in the NavBar on the left-hand side of Act!
Upon opening AMA, a new campaign setup screen will automatically appear, as shown in the image below:
To confirm that Act! Marketing Automation is set-up and ready to use, check that AMA is able to populate group data by going through the 2 step campaign setup process.
Please Note: This campaign is for testing purposes only. Once you have tested that you can see the Groups (as per the below), click the Cancel button so that the campaign is not saved.
First, select Blank Campaign, then click Continue.
On the next page, enter a quick name for the campaign. This campaign will not be saved, so you can enter something simple, like "Test". Then, click Continue.
Now, on step 2 of the setup, select the drop down under Groups. You should see a list of your Act! database groups. If you see your list of groups, you can click the Cancel button at the bottom of the setup screen, your assessment is complete:
These groups are pulled from your database via the Act! API - if this list is blank, refer to the knowledge base article below about setting up the Act! API.
How do I set up the Act! API?
If your Act! subscription does not include Act! Marketing Automation - or you haven't yet enabled the Act! Web API (see above), you will be presented with the "What is Act! Marketing Automation" info page:
In rare cases, AMA can sometimes display a security error if your installation has not been fully configured automatically:
See the below article for more information on resolving this issue:
Error: “Invalid JWT Token” when accessing Act! Marketing Automation