In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m giving you the gift of getting to know Zapier for a year-round love fest. In order to fully love someone, you must at least pronounce their name correctly. Zapier rhymes with happier. Isn’t that great?
What is Zapier?
Here are some of the amazing things this tool can do, straight from their own website:
- Wave goodbye to busy work
- Take care of tedious tasks
- Do-it-yourself automation
- Connect the apps you use everyday
- Easy automation for busy people
They have an obscene (over 750) number of apps that you can connect to end busy work.
Real World Example
Here is how I implemented the use of Zapier for a statewide trade association just in the last two weeks. The database of records for this association is now housed in Airtable. If you are using Excel as a database, which is not the purpose for Excel, you NEED to check out Airtable.
We also have a MailChimp account for sending weekly newsletters, reminders, and other communication to the membership. Then, inside our WordPress website our Gravity Forms power membership applications, the contact form, event RSVP, and more. Because we use the developer version, we can also connect Stripe as our payment processor and use Zapier as an add-on to any form we create.
Membership Submission to Airtable
When a new member submits an application, each piece of their data is automatically entered as a new row in the Airtable database. Why should their staff spend time retyping all of that information when Zapier can do it for them?
New Email Address to MailChimp list
If we enter a new contact into Airtable who wants to receive our information, Zapier automatically sends the details straight into our MailChimp list; and in the particular group we want.
Is The Above Example Too Good to be True?
Here is the breakdown of cost so you can decide for yourself:
- Airtable: $0/mo.
There are 1200 records or less in the base (think spreadsheet). - MailChimp: $0/mo.
There are 2500 records or less in our list. - Zapier: $0/mo.
The “Zaps” I implemented have only two-steps per zap. - Gravity Forms Developer License: $199/one-time first year (I purchased mine with a discount code for $139.30), yearly renewal is only $99.50.
Since the developer license of Gravity Forms includes so much, you’re getting way more for your investment than just the ability to use it for the examples above. Do you need a “developer” to buy it? No. That type of license simply means that it includes all the tools that are possible for the investment.
For my friend Lissie:
When you receive an email to your Gmail, you can add a label to it and Zapier will automatically create a note in your OneNote. 🙂
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I hope you’re feeling the love and can see the possibilities for a beautiful partnership with Zapier. If you want some ideas for what is possible I would recommend visiting their explore page. You can type in any app you use to gather tons of ideas.