Conversion Rate Optimisation / Marketing Automation

Autopilot and ConvertFlow: Epic Marketing Automation

January 28, 2020 , 6 minutes
Autopilot and ConvertFlow

This is a guide on how to integrate Autopilot and ConvertFlow. You will learn how to leverage these best of breed tools to deliver epic marketing automation that is a pleasure to use.

We have extensive experience with many CRMs and marketing automation platforms and pride ourselves on being platform agnostic. However, today I want to show you how to integrate two best in class tools: Autopilot, one of our favourite marketing automation platforms, and ConvertFlow, an amazing conversion optimisation tool.

Autopilot and ConvertFlow are a match made in heaven. Why?

Well, because they:

  • Require no code for users to create sophisticated visual journeys
  • Very simple to use (e.g. drag and drop) yet also performant
  • Robust and powerful (trusted by big companies)
  • Tightly integrated with each other and Salesforce (and many other systems).

What is Autopilot?

Autopilot is an Australian-based marketing automation platform.

It is widely used by large international companies around the world including Atlassian, Microsoft, Samsung, TypeForm, Instapage, Lyft and more (according to their website).

It is also the number 1 ranked marketing automation tool of G2Crowd for ease of use. ?

Autopilot clearly states that they are not an ‘all-in-one’ tool. They focus on doing one thing and one thing well, namely marketing automation.

Autopilot’s top features

Autopilot’s marketing automation features include:

  • Multi-channel marketing – Email, SMS, Heads Up messaging, Facebook Ads, Google Ads and sending physical postcards.
  • Visual customer journey builder to automate repetitive tasks
Autopilot journey builder
Autopilot journey builder
  • Drag and Drop email builder
Autopilot email builder
Autopilot email builder
  • Website tracking so you know what pages people visit on your site
Autopilot website tracking
Autopilot website tracking
  • Marketing analytics dashboard
Autopilot marketing analytics
Autopilot marketing analytics

Why we love Autopilot

We love Autopilot (especially for B2B) because of its:

  • Ease of use – #1 rated on G2Crowd
  • Native integration with Salesforce
  • Responsive Australian based support-team
  • Integrates with best of breed tools
  • Reliability
  • Comprehensive functionality.

Autopilot pricing

Autopilot is also really cost-effective:

  • US$49 per month – Up to 2,000 contacts
  • US$149 per month – Up to 5,000 contacts
  • US$249 per month – Up to 10,000 contacts
  • Custom pricing – More than 10,000 contacts

Annual pricing is available at a 20% discount to the listed prices.

What is ConvertFlow?

ConvertFlow is a platform for converting website visitors. 

That’s all they do. ConvertFlow is best in class conversion optimisation software. They don’t try to be all things to all people. They don’t even do the email confirmation side of things – for this you need to integrate with a marketing automation tool, such as Autopilot.

Many large companies, including marketing automation platforms, provide glowing testimonials for ConvertFlow, including:

  • InvisionApp
  • AWeber (Marketing Automation Platform)
  • ActiveCampaign (Marketing Automation Platform)
  • Zapier

If marketing automation platforms are using ConvertFlow and providing glowing testimonials, you know it must be good!

ConvertFlow’s top features

No coding is required to use ConvertFlow. It allows you to create, personalise and launch really sophisticated calls to action (CTAs) such as…

  • Forms – single and multiple-step
ConvertFlow form builder
ConvertFlow form builder
  • Popups including exit-intent
ConvertFlow popup builder
ConvertFlow popup builder
  • Surveys and quizzes
ConvertFlow survey and quiz builder
ConvertFlow survey and quiz builder
  • Landing pages hosted on your own subdomain
ConvertFlow landing pages
  • Sticky bars that hover at the top of a website
ConvertFlow sticky banners
ConvertFlow sticky banners
  • Site messages which are highly personalised
ConvertFlow sticky banners

Why we love ConvertFlow

We are huge fans of ConvertFlow because…

  • It is very easy to use
  • No coding is required 
  • Excellent integration with loads of marketing automation tools
  • Drag and drop builder that allows single or sophisticated multiple step forms – it’s different to other builders on the market but really easy to use once you know how it works.
  • Awesome customer support
  • It works very, very well.

ConvertFlow pricing

ConvertFlow has a number of pricing points with a range of different features starting at US$39 per month for 2,500 visitors up to US$300 per month for 250,000+ visitors.  Full details are on their website.

Alternatively, you are able to use our multi-site account if you’d like. Just contact us 😉

How to Integrate Autopilot and ConvertFlow

1. Create a journey in Autopilot

The first step in integrating Autopilot and ConvertFlow is to create a journey in AutoPilot that you’ll use for a follow up campaign when people.

There are various ways of triggering journeys in Autopilot, such as when people are added and removed from lists or when certain fields are updated.

When integrating Autopilot and ConvertFlow we tend to use the ‘API Trigger’ workflow. You can also use a List trigger but our preference is the API trigger.

Here’s an example of a real eBook Download journey that use the API trigger.

Autopilot API trigger journey

2. Create a CTA in ConvertFlow

Once you’ve created a journey in Autopilot, the next step is to create a Call To Action in your ConvertFlow account.

A call to action is simply anything that is designed to collect a person’s details on a website, such as an embedded form, popup or landing page.

Thankfully, creating a CTA in ConvertFlow is really easy thanks to their huge library of great templates.

Here’s an example of a multiple-step exit intent popup created in ConvertFlow.

ConvertFlow CTA Step 1
ConvertFlow CTA Step 1
ConvertFlow CTA Step 2.
ConvertFlow CTA Step 2

3. Connect AutoPilot and ConvertFlow

Once you’ve built your journey in Autopilot and a CTA in ConvertFlow, the next step is to connect them together.

This is all done in ConvertFlow. First open one of your websites in ConvertFlow (integrations are at the website level not the account level).

To do this, select Settings in the main menu, select Integrations in the drop down and click ‘Connect’ on the Autopilot card in the Integrations page.

Connect Autopilot and ConvertFlow
Connect Autopilot and ConvertFlow

Enter your AutoPilot API key…

Enter Autopilot API key in ConvertFlow
Enter Autopilot API key in ConvertFlow

Once you’ve connected AutoPilot to ConvertFlow, open your CTA and select the form component…

ConvertFlow CTA
ConvertFlow CTA

Then click on the ‘Confirmation Actions’ in the right hand panel.

ConvertFlow CTA confirmation actions
ConvertFlow CTA confirmation actions

Then select the relevant Autopilot automation. As we used the ‘API Trigger’ we would select ‘Trigger a journey’ and then select the relevant journey from the drop down list.

ConvertFlow and Autopilot automations
ConvertFlow and Autopilot automations

Note that you can also trigger multiple confirmation actions and fire scripts (e.g. Facebook conversions) in the CTA confirmation actions but we won’t go into that here.

Wrap up

I hope you’ve found this brief tutorial helpful in someway. Hopefully, it’s demonstrated how relatively easily it is to integrate Autopilot and ConvertFlow – two best of breed tools that work like a charm together.

Feel free to contact us if you’d like to discuss marketing automation or conversion rate optimisation.

By Matthew Clarkson