What is AE Connect?

Morgan From AE

Modified on: Thu, 7 Apr, 2022 at 11:22 AM

So...What is AE Connect? Good question!

This is AE Connect:

And this is AE Connect, too:

AE Connect is what allows your customers to connect to you. It's the software that handles customer social login so that you can start seeing their activity in your dashboard.

By default, AE Connect only lets members sign up with an email address and a password. So, before we start setting up AE Connect on your websites, you'll need to go to the AE dashboard and add the social networks you want your members to sign up with.

AE supports logins for 15 different social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Twitter, and YouTube.

If you've done Facebook or Twitter marketing in the past, you may already have some experience setting up social applications.

First-Time Setup

Depending on which services you want to use, setting them up for the first time might take 10 to 15 minutes. If you plan to use more than one service, we recommend setting aside an hour or two to configure them all at once.

Don't worry: this step of the process can be sort of a pain—but you'll likely only have to do it once. After today, your social apps will be set up and ready to use.

Create Login Options

You should activate logins that are important to the members who interact with your brand. For example, if your business makes a lot of videos on YouTube, you may want to connect with members using their YouTube accounts.

We recommend that you start by choosing three services that you think are important.

In the image below, you can see an AE Connect signup form that lets users sign up using Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, or their email address:

Setting up login options requires a couple of steps:

You retrieve client IDs and secrets from the social networks you want to turn on.
You turn the services on from the AE Connect page of your dashboard.

From the AE Connect page of your dashboard, click on the logo of the social network you want members to use and start entering the app data you retrieved from the social app:

If you don't know what an "API" is or what "client ID" and "secret" means, don't worry. These are passwords that AE will use to securely talk to services like Facebook or YouTube. We can show you exactly how to get this information in our step-by-step guides for each service.

Time to set up your first social application! Connect social networks:

Choose one that's a good fit for your customer base and connect it with AE using our step-by-step guides. Once you've set up all the social apps you need, it'll be time to install AE Connect.