How to use Draftship with ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign's code editor accepts Draftship HTML cleanly. The personalization layer uses %FIELD% tokens. Here's the handoff for campaigns and automations without losing fidelity to the visual builder's wrappers.
ActiveCampaign sits in the SMB-to-mid-market sweet spot: better than Mailchimp at automations, easier than HubSpot or Marketo on price. Its email editor offers two modes, drag-drop and code, with a clear separation. Pasting a Draftship export into the code editor preserves your design without ActiveCampaign's drag-drop wrappers.
Where ActiveCampaign accepts pasted HTML
From the campaigns dashboard, click Create a Campaign or Create an Automation Email. Pick a template, then in the editor switch to Code Editor. The HTML pane opens. Paste your Draftship export.
For automation emails, the path is the same: Automations → New Email → Code Editor. The email object is reusable across automations.
Token mapping
ActiveCampaign uses percent-wrapped tokens.
| Draftship | ActiveCampaign |
|---|---|
{{ first_name }} | %FIRSTNAME% |
{{ last_name }} | %LASTNAME% |
{{ email }} | %EMAIL% |
{{ company }} | %COMPANY% |
| Unsubscribe link | %UNSUBSCRIBELINK% |
| Manage subscriptions | %SUBSCRIPTION_PREFERENCES_LINK% |
| View online | %MESSAGEVIEWLINK% |
Defaults use a different syntax than other platforms. ActiveCampaign uses conditional content blocks, not inline filters:
html%IF FIRSTNAME%Hi %FIRSTNAME%%ELSE%Hi there%ENDIF%
This survives the code editor without rewrapping. If you use the drag-drop, the same logic exists as a "Conditional Content" block but it locks the surrounding HTML.
Required compliance tokens
ActiveCampaign requires %UNSUBSCRIBELINK% somewhere in the body. The send fails compliance check without it. The physical postal address is set at the account level under Settings → Advanced → Email Compliance and gets auto-injected near the unsubscribe.
What ActiveCampaign does to your HTML
The code editor preserves pasted HTML faithfully:
<style>blocks survive.- VML conditionals survive.
- ActiveCampaign's link tracker wraps every
<a href>. If you've baked UTM parameters via the UTM builder, they're preserved through the wrap. - The system adds a
<meta>tag for content-type and a hidden tracking pixel. Both at the bottom of the HTML.
Sending: Campaign vs Automation
ActiveCampaign separates one-shot campaigns from triggered automations.
- Campaign: send to a list or segment, schedule, ship.
- Automation: triggered by tag, list join, event, or workflow position. Email is one node in a graph.
Both reference the same email body. If you build in Draftship and want to reuse across automations, save the body as a template under Email Templates before attaching to a workflow.
Test send checklist
- Use Send a Test with a real subscriber, not a placeholder.
- Run the rendered email through the size checker.
- Click every link to verify ActiveCampaign's tracker hasn't broken UTMs or added redirects you don't want.
- Confirm the unsubscribe footer renders the account address from your Settings.
When to use ActiveCampaign's drag-drop
For non-technical marketers and quick promotional sends, the drag-drop is faster. For everything else, the code editor with a Draftship handoff gives you full control.
For more on tracker behavior across ESPs, see UTM parameters for email marketers.