ActiveCampaign delivers user value with their Calendly integration

Ever wonder how other developers use Calendly’s APIs? We do too, which is why we were so excited when ActiveCampaign offered to give us a peek behind their dev curtain. They’ve evolved usage of Calendly’s APIs over several years, delighting their customers by offering next level automation and ease. 

Since Calendly just launched our latest API update, we thought it was good timing to learn more about ActiveCampaign’s Calendly integration, including why they built it and how it’s improved their customer experience. 

Responding to user needs

Like many PLG (product-led growth) companies, ActiveCampaign has seen massive growth in recent years. Right now ActiveCampaign is the most popular Marketing Automation Software, according to G2 reviews. 

This isn’t by chance: scaling a SaaS product requires a deep understanding of your users’ needs. 

Because ActiveCampaign is a one-stop-shop for marketing and CRM, it’s a great lead generation platform. ActiveCampaign knew many of their customers use scheduling as their primary lead gen mechanism. The company also tracked increasing user requests for a Calendly integration, and kept a close eye on the massive market acceleration Calendly was propelling.

ActiveCampaign’s product team identified multiple alignments with Calendly: 

• overlap in customer bases

• alignment in use cases

• rapid acceleration in the SMB (small and medium-sized business) space

Further, Calendly’s use cases aligned perfectly with the early feature set ActiveCampaign laid out for their new developer platform, App Studio, making Calendly a great proof of concept for the tooling.

So in 2019, the ActiveCampaign product team decided to build a native Calendly integration.

How ActiveCampaign’s Calendly integration helps users

We touched on the use case alignment that encouraged ActiveCampaign to build the Calendly integration. Here are a few ways different user groups benefit from the ActiveCampaign + Calendly integration:

• Sales and CRM users

  • When a meeting is booked, contacts are created and updated, and can be added automatically to sales automation. 

  • Using these sales automations, team members can have deals automatically created for them. 

  • This info can then be fed into marketing flows within ActiveCampaign.

• Marketing users

  • Feed new and updated contacts into customized marketing automations — exposing prospects to drip nurture campaigns, segmentations, and messaging to convert and grow them.

  • Embed a Calendly booking page into a custom landing page within ActiveCampaign.

When you’re using ActiveCampaign as both your sales and marketing platform, the Calendly integration can be used to instantly automate a full customer journey — from booking a meeting, to adding information to your CRM, and then rolling customers into your marketing automations.

How they built it

When the first version of the ActiveCampaign Calendly integration was built in 2019, our API (v1) was publicly available for partners.

The ActiveCampaign product and developer teams worked with the Calendly v1 API, as well as a Calendly product manager. They built the integration with a version of OAuth, which allowed their users to sign up for Calendly directly from the integration. This meant ActiveCampaign users wouldn’t need to leave the ActiveCampaign platform to connect to the integration, even if they weren’t an existing Calendly user.

The Calendly integration is currently the only native scheduling automation within ActiveCampaign. In other words, it’s the only scheduling integration that ActiveCampaign has built and created themselves. 

What does this mean for Calendly’s co-users and integration adopters? When it comes to scheduling automation within ActiveCampaign, the Calendly integration is the most robust and powerful tool available. Not only does this combo provide ActiveCampaign’s existing users with an ideal scheduling app, it also levels up ActiveCampaign as a highly compatible tool for Calendly’s existing customers.

Rolling with the changes

Over the years since its introduction, ActiveCampaign has continued to enhance the Calendly integration, including upgrading to the latest version of Calendly v2 API to offer more solutions. Most recently, they rolled out an introduction of Calendly Event objects, which leverage ActiveCampaign’s new Custom Object capabilities.

Why? Customers were asking for the ability to automate all Calendly events for a contact, as well as visibility to view contacts in the CRM as a log. Additional updates and enhancements will continue to roll out for users as both ActiveCampaign and Calendly’s product and API offerings evolve.

If you build it, they will come

As part of ActiveCampaign’s robust app and integration offerings, the Calendly integration is available for their users via their app directory, as well as in-product under the Apps section. 

The integration is widely adopted and well loved, with over 10,000 active users, many who’ve connected multiple Calendly accounts to their ActiveCampaign account. 

The team at ActiveCampaign also offers pre-built automation recipes (for Calendly, and their other integrations) that can help kickstart user adoption. To name a few:

• Set up consultation call with calendar integration

• Engage prospects interested in pricing automation

• Initial appointment drip

• Notify when appointment made

• Move deal stage based on appointment

Any one of these pre-built recipes can get you started or accelerate your sales and marketing campaigns within ActiveCampaign.

The proof is in the pudding

Not only did ActiveCampaign have the confidence in Calendly to build a native integration, they’re also avid Calendly users themselves. Here a few of the ways their teams use Calendly internally to streamline their scheduling:

• Sales calendars: The ActiveCampaign sales team allows prospective customers to book a demo or business discovery call with a team member via Calendly.

• Customer Success calendars: The Customer Success team allows customers to book time with their enablement and onboarding teams, as well as their dedicated customer success managers.

• Internal calendars: ActiveCampaign has a team of Solutions Consultants that support both the Sales and Customer Success teams. When one of these teams identifies the need for an in-depth technical discussion with a prospective or current customer, they’re able to book an internal meeting or customer facing meeting directly with the Solutions Consultant available to them via Calendly.

Ready to build your own Calendly integration?

ActiveCampaign met the scheduling needs of their users by building a Calendly integration — and championing the product as users themselves. 

If you’re interested in how you can build a similar integration, Calendly provides everything you need on our newly redesigned Developer Portal. Read more about the APIs we offer, and the possibilities and benefits of building an integration.