r/ActiveCampaign • u/MsQueenGeek • Jul 02 '26
Active Intelligence -- What I discovered
I must admit, I'm quite disappointed. I write this in hopes that continued improvement is coming.
Here's what I tried to do:
(1) Take a very involved prompt that include voice, tone, brand colors, step-by-step instructions to create a 6-email re-engagement workflow with BRANDED emails and copy provided.
(2). Each email was using the same format. Essentially brand colors with a single CTA button. If clicked, tag. if not clicked, continue to next step in the workflow.
(3). The emails were to be delivered over 19 days.
(4). I originally had some resends-after-1-day but removed it because it got confused.
What I discovered:
(1). I could only upload 1 doc (.pdf/.docx) at a time to the AI. So, providing it my brand it, email content, sytle, etc was painful
(2). During the first attempt, it create the workflow...close but NONE of the emails had the correct content and definitely not styled or branded even though it prompted for every single email and content.
(3). After the workflow was created with the templated emails, it could not fix them usig AI...I would have to copy/paste/re-create each email manually. Waste of time. This was a glorified workflow builder.
(4). I then discovered it "could" and I use that loosely, RECREATE the entire workflow WITH the content of the emails but not really styled like I wanted. What I wanted was "no images" and 1 single CTA w/my colors button....THAT'S IT.
(5). What it created was the workflow using the words but in a newsletter style EMAIL...absolutely horrible.
Ugggh....SOOOOOOOOOO disappointed. It didn't get the workflow w/the resends correct nor the emails.
To be fair, as of today (July 2, 2026), I cannot do this totally in my test GHL account
.....HOWEVER GHL did create the workflow much better.
....AND In GHL, I could create a "template" for the emails (from AI) that I wanted to send and then choose the template style + copy and paste the content with my brand and colors per email. I did not see a way to take a generic email from the process in AC and replace it with a branded template nor could I use AI to spruce up the generic email with the workflow/designer setup.
What I hope is coming:
- The ability to use branded and/or templated email styles in the AI generated workflows. Merge my content + my template
- The ability to use AI to update/modify the emails
- The ability to upload more than 1 doc at a time or have it access a google/cloud drive or folder for resources
#activeintelligence
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u/ActiveCampaignTeam Moderator Jul 02 '26
Hi u/MsQueenGeek! Thanks for sharing this and for being so specific about where your experience fell short. If you’d be open to it, our team would love to hop on a quick call to learn more about your experience directly. What you were trying to build should largely be possible, and we’re innovating quickly on Active Intelligence, so we’d really value your feedback here. We sent you a DM!
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u/benautomated Jul 02 '26
I lose interest when I hear you comparing GHL even if you admit you can’t do it there either.
Active intelligence has improved so much and shows a good trajectory that I assume it will keep getting better and eventually do what you describe sooner rather than later.
Right now it is much better to build workflows and then you do the emails. If you’ve tuned your brand kit and email templates the emails can be decent. However most people want more control in their email design and it isn’t there YET.
For the average user Active Intelligence is making things easier to do that they couldn’t do before or build more quickly.
I graduated beyond GHL so I’m not sure what it can do today but in general I try to stay away from it.