Zapier Guide

What is Zapier and what does it do?

Zapier is an automation platform that connects the different tools and software you use, allowing you to pass data between them and to automate manual work. You can build custom recipes for moving information between apps, and automating tasks, based on rules you set.

How to set up a Zap?

The process for creating a Zap through Zapier is very simple:

• Pick the apps to connect
• Add a trigger to initiate the recipe
• Add an action to perform (on paid plans you can add up to 100 actions as part of your recipe)
• Customize and map the fields
• Test your Zap
• Publish your Zap

The only part that can be tricky is the final steps of testing to make sure everything works properly. In some cases, you might find the Zap doesn’t immediately do what you are wanting (for example if you map the fields incorrectly) and takes a couple tests to get it to function properly. That’s why the final step of testing your Zaps prior to publishing is so important.

Tips and tricks for using Zapier

A great place to start with Zapier is to automate the repetitive tasks that you do frequently. Especially if it’s very formulaic.

Take stock of any processes that involve moving information from one app to another. As well as any admin / data entry tasks that don’t require much thinking. There are likely at least a handful of simple processes you can automate to start saving time immediately.

Examples of how Zapier can be used in your business

• Notify your team about new leads or customers
• Automatically create calendar events
• Add contact info of event attendees to a spreadsheet
• Automatically remind to your team to fill out a daily standup form
• Auto-followup with leads
• Aggregate form responses
• Create tasks from important events
• Automate social media posts
• Add leads to your CRM
• Create data backups
• Send out summary reports
• Send thank you messages to customers
• Add leads from your CRM to your email marketing platform
• Add leads from paid ads to your CRM or a spreadsheet

How to use Zapier to Automate Your Sales Process?

You can use Zapier to automate almost your entire sales process. Here are some ways you can automate your sales process, starting from initial lead conversion through to client communication and retention.

Automate Lead Conversion

• Use Zaps to instantly send leads to the right place so they get the right messages
• Keep track of new sales opportunities
• Send leads that fill out your forms to your CRM
• Send leads from your ads to your CRM
• Make sure leads are added to the right email nurtures
• Use automation to send leads from your CRM to your email marketing platform and vice versa. That way, you keep track of your leads and put them in the right email nurture
• Keep your team updated about new leads
• Send automatic notifications to your team when you get a new lead

Automate Client Communication

• You can set up Zaps that send automatic reminders and follow-ups, so your clients get quick responses and your team can focus on other value-added tasks.
• Send friendly reminders to your clients (notifications about upcoming meetings, time changes, or cancellations)
• Use Zapier to keep everyone informed about event changes with automated reminders
• Send prompt messages before (and after) meetings
  • Automatically send sales brochures, confirm meeting details, or provide agendas before your meetings. You can also schedule customized follow-ups as soon as your meetings end. That way, your clients get seamless communication—without adding extra items to your to-do list.

Automate Client Retention

• Immediately respond to clients – immediately letting clients know that you’ve received their form, request, or question—even if you can’t respond with a customized answer right away.
• Get client responses where you’ll actually see them
• Streamline your customer testimonial process
• Schedule automated check-ins with clients on a specific schedule as you work with them, including asking for referrals

Benefits of using Zapier

Zapier saves you time

Your business processes involve a series of manual tasks, typically with a lot of admin and data entry involved. With Zapier, you can connect all your apps and processes and automate repetitive tasks (sending an email, creating a calendar event, adding a transaction to your accounting app, etc.). This both saves time while also removing human error.

No more missed calls

Zapier can send reminders for calls, meetings, and any other appointments, to both you and the other recipients.

Zapier helps scale your business

Reviewing your processes, streamlining them, and then using Zapier to automate them frees time for your team to focus on the core business. Zapier also automatically scales with your business because the additional volume of tasks are handled by automations rather than needing to hire more people.

Zapier streamlines your customer onboarding

After you’ve made the sale, you still have a series of tasks to get the new customer set up on various systems and to get started working with them. This can be automated with Zapier, to make sure you never forget a step in the process, while also saving tons of time.

No more losing track of leads

Keeping your pipeline up to date with all your leads, their status, and immediate next steps takes a lot of data entry work to keep up to date. But losing track of this info means losing track of your leads, which means losing out on new business. Use Zapier to automate data entry into your CRM, to assign next steps on specific deals, or any admin tasks involved with keeping track of your sales pipeline.

Work smarter, not harder

By using Zapier, you can focus more on the big picture. You’ll be strategically creating the process (by creating a zap) and be freed from the endless hours of repetitive admin tasks. Zapier helps you wear fewer hats and focus more on what you’re best at.

Popular integrations for Zapier

Integrations from Zapier’s list of 100 most popular apps

• Google Sheets: Create, edit, and share spreadsheets wherever you are with Google Sheets, and get automated insights from your data.
• Slack: Slack is a platform for team communication: everything in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. Offering instant messaging, document sharing and knowl
• Email by Zapier: Send and receive email via a custom Zapier email address at “zapiermail.com”. This is great for triggering off of emails and sending custom emails. (Max of 10 email sends per hour.) Have direct access to your own email servers? Check out our IMAP and SMTP services!
• Schedule by Zapier: Schedule is a native Zapier app you can use for recurring tasks. Trigger an action every day of the month, every day of the week or every single day. You can also select the hour of the day. If you’re a developer, this is similar to a crontab, cronjob or cron.
• Mailchimp: Share your ideas with Mailchimp email newsletters—then use its landing page and form builders to grow your lists and take marketing
• Google Drive: Google Drive is Google’s file sync app that lets you store all of your files online alongside your Google Docs documents, and keep them synced with all of your devices.
• Twitter: Twitter is the social network that shows what’s happening around the world in real time. Share your ideas in Tweets, follow hashtags to keep up with trends, and join in the global conversation.
• Facebook Lead Ads: Facebook lead ads make signing up for business information easy for people and more valuable for businesses. The Facebook lead ad app is useful for marketers who want to automate actions on their leads.
• HubSpot: HubSpot is your all-in-one stop for all of your marketing software needs.
• Trello: Trello is a team collaboration tool that lets you organize anything and everything to keep your projects on task.
• Discord: Discord is an all-in-one voice and text chat for gamers.
• Airtable: Organize anything with Airtable, a modern database created for everyone. Airtable is a fast and flexible way to create tables to keep track of anything, from sales leads to vacation planning to inventory management.
• Calendly: Conditional logic for your Zapier workflows. Paths let your apps take different actions based on conditions you choose.
• Paths by Zapier: Calendly is an elegant and simple scheduling tool for businesses that eliminates email back and forth. It helps save time so that businesses can provide great service and increase sales.
• ActiveCampaign: ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation (CXA) platform that helps businesses meaningfully engage customers. Access pre-built automations that combine transactional email and email marketing, marketing automation, ecommerce marketing, and CRM for powerful segmentation and personalization across social, email, messaging, chat, and text.
• Delay by Zapier: Put your Actions on hold for a specified amount of time before sending data to another app. You can set up scheduled emails, get notified of incomplete tasks, send automatic follow-ups, and automate other tasks on your timeline.
• Typeform: Typeform helps you ask awesomely online! If you ever need to run a survey, questionnaire, form, contest etc. Typeform will help you achieve it beautifully across all devices, every time, using its next generation platform.
• Google Forms: Google Forms is an easy way to collect data from the web with a simple UI and powerful editor. Works hand-in-hand with Google Sheets!
• Notion: A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It’s the all-in-one workspace for you and your team.
• Facebook Pages: Facebook Pages lets you connect with your customers, fans and followers on the world’s largest social network. Share relevant content to engage people who Like your page, create events to build and grow your community, and run a Facebook ad campaign by targeting location, age and more.
• YouTube: YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.
• Asana: Asana is a leading work management platform that helps teams orchestrate their work, from daily tasks to strategic initiatives. With Asana, organizations have a living system of clarity where everyone can see, discuss, and execute their team’s priorities.
• Pipedrive: Pipedrive is sales pipeline and CRM software for deal makers. Get super-organized. Close deals in less time. iOS and Android apps let you take your pipeline with you anywhere.
• Shopify: Shopify is a simple way to create an online store to list products, collect credit card payments, and ship your goods.
• Clickup: ClickUp is a productivity platform that allows you to manage your work and personal tasks in a beautifully intuitive environment
• Zoom: Zoom brings teams together to get more done in a frictionless environment. Zoom’s reliable, video-first unified communications platform provides video meetings, voice, webinars, and chat across desktops, phones, mobile devices, and conference systems
• Clickfunnels: Create beautiful landing pages and complete marketing funnels.
• Squarespace: Squarespace is a website builder, blogging platform, hosting service, commerce platform, and domain name registrar.
• Instagram: Instagram is a social network which is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your photos with friends and family.
• Dropbox: Dropbox lets you store your files online, sync them to all your devices, and share them easily. Get started for free, then upgrade for more space and security features.

Zapier Pricing and Plans

Zapier has several pricing options, based on the volume of tasks you need to automate, as well as some of their premium features.

Free forever accounts are available for limited use (100 tasks / month, and 5 total zaps)

The main paid accounts are $19.99 / mo or $49 / mo, again depending on the volume of tasks to automate, and the number of Zaps you’ll need.

Finally, there are super high-volume team accounts that can have unlimited users, 50k tasks per month, and some additional features (probably unnecessary for most).

To see the full pricing breakdown: Zapier Pricing

The future of Zapier

Since the pandemic, remote work has become more and more prevalent. Zapier is a perfect (possibly even essential) tool for remote workforcese norm for many companies changed the way we work, and as the work-from-home lifestyle became the norm, employees began to re-evaluate their expectations for work-life balance. Many workers quit their jobs because their needs weren’t being met.

According to recent surveys by Zapier about remote work:

61% of all people say they would leave their job if they had the option to accept a fully remote opportunity.

100% of people ages 18 – 24 would quit their job for a remote work opportunity.

64% say remote work has made them more productive.

While more and more businesses adopt remote work over time, Zapier has been consistently adding new integrations and functionality, keeping it as the leading platform for process automation.

In 2021, Zapier added >1,400 apps to their App Directory. That’s almost 4 new apps every single day!

And that trend will only continue through 2022 and beyond.

FAQs

What is Zapier used for?

Zapier is used to automate processes and pass information between different apps. This could involve copying over form submissions to a spreadsheet. Or triggering automated followup messages to leads that contacts you over a month ago.

How does Zapier work?

Zapier works by linking and synchronising the actions of most of the apps and software that you use in your business. You do this by creating Zaps, which include a trigger and the corresponding automated action. This can involve just passing data between systems, or even fully automating processes.

How much does Zapier cost?

Limited free accounts are available. Paid accounts cost $19.99 or $49 per month, with team plans costing $299 / month/

Which apps does Zapier work with?

Zapier connects with over 5,000 different apps, across a wide variety of industries. You can connect Zapier with apps for Project Management, Sales, Marketing, Admin, HR, and basically every other department in your business.

You can see the full list of apps here:Zapier Apps

How do I get started with Zapier?

Before you create your Zap, consider exactly what you are trying to accomplish by asking yourself the following:

• What apps do I want to use? (A form app and a spreadsheet app)
• What event will trigger my Zap? (When there’s a new submission in our form app)
• What event will my Zap perform? (Add the form submission to a spreadsheet)
• What information do I want to move between those apps? “(The contact’s name, email address, and the reason for contacting us)

Then follow these steps to create your zap:

• Pick the apps to connect
• Add a trigger to initiate the recipe
• Add an action to perform (on paid plans you can add up to 100 actions as part of your recipe)
• Customize and map the fields
• Test your Zap
• Publish your Zap

Is Zapier an API tool?

Yes

What are the disadvantages of Zapier?

According to GetApp some of the common issues with Zapier noted by some users:

• Zaps stop working by themselves (and they aren’t sure why)
• Customer support (for troubleshooting) isn’t always great
• Some users report that it’s hard to know when a zap stops working, unless you are logging in and checking every day that everything is running properly

Is Zapier a free tool?

You can use Zapier in a limited way for free

Get the full overview of pricing for Zapier here: Zapier Pricing

Can Zapier be used for marketing automation?

Yes – Zapier is an excellent option for connecting all your marketing tools and automating the processes between them. You can use Zapier to segment leads, send automate followups, and more.

What are some alternatives to Zapier?

There are some alternative automation tools available, but Zapier is definitely the leading option with by far the most integrations.

Some alternative options include:

• LeadsBridge
• ZigiOps
• API Fuse
• IFTTT
• Microsoft Flow
• Integromat
• CloudHQ