Save hours per week with these simple Zapier automations

Almost every day there’s an update for the apps and online tools we use every day at work and at home. Normally we don’t even notice them. Sometimes they’re substantial enough to make our lives a little bit easier.

But what’s really taken our work to the next level is setting up lots of little connections and automations between all of that software using a tool called Zapier. Now things that used to take a few minutes, or a few different people, happen in an instant.

What is Zapier?

Basically, Zapier helps your different web apps talk to each other and share data.

It can connect with over 3,000 software tools – which means that if you’re regularly moving information from one platform to another, you can probably automate it.

You can also customise those connections with conditions and filters to suit the way you work. For example, allowing different teams to get different information depending on what’s relevant to them.

Let’s look at a few automations you can use to save some serious time.

Lead Tracking & Nurture

Never add customers to your email lists manually again

Almost anywhere that you collect email addresses can be connected to your email marketing platform with Zapier.

You can add your contacts directly to your email marketing platform from your forms, Calendly requests, Facebook lead campaigns, Zoom webinars or even Woocommerce and Paypal transactions. Those contacts can then go straight into any email campaigns you have set up.

You can add tags to segment your database further, based on where they’re coming from and what information they supply in forms. This will help you give each prospect a personalised experience.

Did you know?

If you plan to send marketing messages or emails, you must first have permission from the person who will receive them. Consumer protection laws such as GDPR and the Spam Act carry serious fines for those who don’t play by the rules. Read more here.

Team Communication

Message your team on Slack (and beyond)

Many teams (like ours!) use Slack for internal communication. Slack is great at integrations too, so teaming it up with Zapier is a no-brainer.

Zapier can alert a Slack channel when:

• You make a sale
• A payment hits your account
• A prospect makes an enquiry
• A new job is created in your system
• A customer makes a support request
• Or basically anything else you can think of!

If you don’t use Slack, don’t worry – Zapier integrates with a huge range of team chat apps. See if yours is on the list!

Accounting

Automate your ingoings and outgoings

f you use one of the accounting apps that Zapier connects with, you can start automating and sharing information to make doing your finances a lot easier.

You can automatically generate receipts and invoices, track all of your online transactions, set up notifications and even use Zaps to create your budgets.

Here are a few more tips on using Zapier for accounting.

Data Collection

Create all the spreadsheets

You can add basically anything to a Google Sheet using Zapier – for example, form submissions, staff timesheets, sales or leads from your website or social media. It all updates automatically, so at a glance you have live visibility over whatever you’re looking to track.

You can then trigger an action when new data is added to the spreadsheet – you may want to receive an email or Slack alert whenever someone downloads your latest ebook, send off an invoice whenever you reach a certain number of hours worked on a particular project, or create a new task in your job management tool when you have a new prospect to follow up.

Now get zapping!

The beauty of Zapier is that it adapts completely to the way you work. Unlike new software or a big app update, there’s nothing new to learn – in fact, you’re doing the teaching. Once you have an ecosystem of Zaps in place, you’ll start to notice that your workload lightens and you have more time for the stuff you’re best at.