ListDefender Integration

ListDefender is an email list hygiene, advanced form protection, and engagement management platform that integrates with ActiveCampaign via API to continuously protect your sender reputation, improve deliverability, and keep bots and bad contacts out of your ActiveCampaign account.

Before you begin

You will need an ActiveCampaign account (any plan) and a ListDefender account
This is a bi-directional (two-way) sync - ListDefender both reads and writes data to your ActiveCampaign account
The integration connects via your ActiveCampaign API URL and Key (found at Settings > Developer)
ListDefender works with all ActiveCampaign plan types: Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise

ListDefender solutions

ListDefender is a comprehensive solution to repair or protect your email deliverability and reputation. Pricing starts at only $20/month based on email list size. ListDefender also offers a form-protection only version called “Essentials”.

With ListDefender, you get:

FormDefender: block bot submissions before they enter your account, automated honeypot protection, abusive IP filtering, auto-correct known domains, and configurable protection against vulgar, suspicious, role-based, tagged, free email providers, and geo-blocking.
Email List Cleaning: Full email list cleaning across your existing ActiveCampaign contacts
Email Engagement Management: Ongoing monitoring of subscriber engagement levels
Automatic Scans and Tagging: Scheduled scans that automatically tag contacts based on validation results
Configurable Quality Controls: Adjustable thresholds for what qualifies as a risky or invalid contact
New Subscriber and Slippage Monitoring: Detection of new subscribers that don’t meet quality standards and contacts whose engagement is slipping
Email Validation with FormDefender: Real-time email validation on form submissions via FormDefender
Catch-All Domain Filtering: Identification and filtering of catch-all email domains

How the ListDefender integration works

The ListDefender integration connects to your ActiveCampaign account via a secure, bi-directional API sync.

What ListDefender does with your data

With Form Protection Essentials, ListDefender protects your ActiveCampaign forms by:

Data ListDefender pushes back to ActiveCampaign

After processing, ListDefender writes results back to your ActiveCampaign account in the form of new tags and updated contact records. Tags created and managed by ListDefender are all prefixed with “ListDefender:” and can be viewed inside the ListDefender application. An example of tags created by ListDefender is shown below.

Contacts that are updated will have tags applied, and custom field values updated depending on settings chosen. Only those fields selected and configured by the user will be updated. All other Contact fields will remain unchanged.

Connect ListDefender to ActiveCampaign

To connect ListDefender to your ActiveCampaign account, you will need your ActiveCampaign API URL and Key. You can find this at Settings > Developer in your ActiveCampaign account.

Log in to your ListDefender account at listdefender.app (or create an account if you don’t already have one).
Click on “Connect your EMP now” and choose ActiveCampaign
Enter your ActiveCampaign API URL and API Key in the window that appears
Hit the Save button to save the credentials and close the window.
Configure settings in ListDefender including quality, engagement, new subscriber, etc.

6. Enter payment details and continue.

The integration is now active. ListDefender will begin processing your data. Results will appear in your ListDefender account when the scan ends. Simultaneously, your contact record in ActiveCampaign will be updated with results of the scan(s), including tags being set and, if configured, custom fields being added with values. Depending on the size of the contact list, it could be several minutes to several hours. Progress will be shown on the dashboard during the scan (the scan will continue if you close your browser window or tab). Once the initial scan is complete, ListDefender will send an email with your results (also available on your ListDefender dashboard).

Use FormDefender To Protect Your ActiveCampaign Forms

After creating your ListDefender account and submitting payment details, you can set up advanced form protection.

Navigate to the left side menu and select FormDefender.

2. A ‘default’ configuration has already been created. You can click the Settings button to verify options, rename the configuration, etc.

3. Click the “Get Code” button on your configuration and copy the code snippet.

4. In your ActiveCampaign account, navigate to your pages. Go to your Account, Websites, Pages.

5. Pull out the Embed Block onto your form and paste the ListDefender code in the Embed Block.

6. Save and Publish your page. Navigate to the live page and test it using a fake email. If the FormDefender notification pops up, it is working correctly.

Use ListDefender data in ActiveCampaign

Once ListDefender is connected, you can use the data it pushes (tags, custom field entries, etc.) to ActiveCampaign to trigger automations, create segments, suppress emailing certain segments (contacts tagged red, for example), all in an effort to improve your email targeting and deliverability.

Automations

Create ActiveCampaign automations that trigger based on ListDefender tags or custom field values. For example:

Automatically unsubscribe or suppress contacts tagged as invalid after a list scan

Route new form submissions through a validation hold before entering a welcome sequence

Send an internal notification when slippage monitoring detects engagement drops

Segments

Use the Segment Builder in ActiveCampaign to create segments based on ListDefender data. For example, create a segment of all contacts tagged as “Green” to ensure your campaigns only reach verified email addresses, or segment contacts flagged for engagement slippage (“Yellow”) to run a re-engagement campaign. We recommend avoiding engagement with any contacts marked as “Red”, either due to engagement or validation.

Disconnect ListDefender from ActiveCampaign

By default, canceling your ListDefender account will remove the connection between ListDefender and ActiveCampaign. No further action is needed.

Troubleshooting

Some of the most common issues and solutions when using ListDefender with ActiveCampaign:

Connection errors: Verify that your ActiveCampaign API URL and Key are correct and have not been reset. If there are ever issues, notifications will be emailed and displayed inside the application alerting you that settings need to be updated.
Form protection not working: Double check the correct platform was chosen from the drop down and that the code snippet was copied and pasted exactly as shown. If you are using an non-supported form builder platform and wanting to use FormDefender, reach out to support and ask about possible workarounds.