Are you truly maximising the effectiveness of your business tools? Learn how Zapier can automate common processes and free up your time.
Think about all the tools your business uses every day…
You have everything from Google Docs to Slack – and more. Underpinning everything is a CRM that retains your customers’ data. And of course, you have payment processing software, WordPress, and all that to deal with, too.
It’s enough to overwhelm anyone.
Having to go through these tools separately wastes a ton of time in your business. And while you’re shifting from one tool to the next, you’re less focused on providing your service.
Zapier aims to fix this.
First, let’s clear up a common misconception. Zapier is not a CRM. Instead, it’s an app that sits between all of the tools you use to run your business. Its purpose is to make using all of these tools in conjunction with each other much easier.
You can use Zapier to set tasks, which the platform calls Zaps, that involve these tools. When done well, this allows you to automate a lot of the busy work inside your business. Plus, it means that you can use your tools more cohesively.
Unfortunately, most people who use Zapier don’t know how to get the most out of it. They only create a few Zaps to handle basic processes, while missing out on the app’s full potential.
You’re not going to become one of these people.
With the help of this article, you’ll discover the Zapier hacks that you can use to improve your business today.
Hack #1 – Automate Buffer Integration
You spend so much time creating and uploading the posts on your website. And to ensure they get the most views possible, you also want to share them on social platforms. This starts the tedious process of uploading your blog onto everything, from Twitter and Facebook to LinkedIn.
If you post several times per day, you spend a lot of time navigating between these platforms.
The obvious solution is to use a tool like Buffer to do it for you. Using Buffer, you can schedule updates for your social media pages with content drawn from a central location, such as your website.
However, you still need to go into Buffer to create that schedule. Again, that’s time spent navigating through another tool.
This is where Zapier comes in.
Using the app, you can create a Zap that automatically informs Buffer whenever you post to your WordPress website. Buffer can then grab that post and spread it across your social media platforms – all without any interaction from you.
Hack #2 – Build Lists of People Who Share Your Content (And Market Directly to Those People)
Zapier integrates with several major mailing platforms, including:
- Campaign Monitor
- AWeber
- Constant Contact
- Mailchimp
This proves useful when you’re trying to build an email list. For example, you may have a form that collects details from prospects. Instead of manually entering those details into your email client, you can use a Zap to do it for you. Just set up the Zap to grab the details and port them straight into your email platform automatically. You can even create Zaps to send the data to multiple platforms at once.
Hack #3 – Automating Your Follow-Up Processes
Don’t underestimate the power of a good follow-up email.
According to email tool provider Woodpecker, follow-up emails have a 40% higher response rate than your initial email. In fact, adding just one follow-up email to your sequence raises reply rates from 9% to 13%.
And you can use Zapier to automate the entire follow-up process.
Best of all, you can do this even if you don’t use an emailing platform like Mailchimp. You can create a Zap that connects your lead form directly to your Gmail account. When somebody enters their details, the Zap triggers and automatically sends an email from your account.
This happens instantly, which means you make contact with a prospect at the moment they’re most engaged with you.
Hack #4 – Create a Client Onboarding Process
Anybody who operates a service-based business knows that they need to onboard new clients. This process can take a lot of time if you do it all manually. And if you have several clients sign up at once, it might take several hours to onboard them all.
Again, you can use Zapier to automate the entire process. You can create a Zap that covers the onboarding workflow, from the moment of sign-up to invoicing.
Need an example?
Here are the steps of a typical onboarding on Zap, using several tools that your business likely has access to:
- The client accepts your offer.
- Zapier sends an automatic notification to Slack to tell you that you have a new client.
- Zapier sends your proposal to a Dropbox folder created for that client.
- The app then creates a new Basecamp project for the new client.
- Zapier takes the client’s details and loads them into an automated email campaign for new clients.
- Zapier triggers a separate email that goes to your finance and onboarding teams.
- This email lets your team know to prepare for a new client. It contains all of the details that both teams need to process the client.
- Using QuickBooks, Zapier creates an automatic invoice that goes directly to the new client.
With that simple workflow, you have the client set up on your systems and ready to go. Notice how you don’t have to involve yourself in any of those steps. Your Zap does it all for you using tools that you already have. Of course, the actual tools used in the workflow may vary, depending on what you use in your own business.
Hack #5 – Set Up Notifications and Alerts for Crucial Tasks
Every business has essential activities that it needs to complete. In an ideal world, you get notifications for those activities when they become important.
Again, Zapier can help you here.
You can create Zaps to send push notifications or SMS alerts to your phone for any important task. Examples include:
- Customer service support tickets
- New content from people you subscribe to on YouTube
- Important events in your calendar
- Enquiries from clients
These notifications occur automatically, whenever the task they’re related to comes up. This means you always have reminders at hand to push you towards whatever is most important at the moment.
Hack #6 – Collecting Customer Feedback
Bill Gates once said:
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”
In your business, those people are your customers. They’re the ones who use your service, and they’re best-placed to tell you when something is wrong. Ignore their feedback and they’ll seek out a service provider who actually cares about what they want.
When you’re running a small business, it’s easy to stay on top of feedback. But as you scale up, the volume of messages you receive goes up too.
A Zap can be invaluable at this stage.
With Zapier, you can set up a Zap that connects your sales tool to a survey tool. Whenever you make a sale, the Zap activates and automatically sends a survey to your customer. You can use another Zap to collect the survey responses and load them into your CRM.
Now, you have an automated customer feedback loop that provides a constant flow of information. You can use this to identify common issues that you need to address with your service.
Hack #7 – Curating and Sending Useful Content
Crafting amazing content is a great way for your business to build authority. The challenge is figuring out what to talk about. You and your team have so much expertise that you don’t know what to share with your audience. Worse yet, you’re not sure if what you do share actually solves a problem your audience has.
A tool like Feedly can help with this. It allows you to aggregate news and trending topics into a single resource that you can use to create content ideas.
This is where Zapier comes in.
You can create a Zap that activates whenever a hot-button topic appears in your Feedly feed. The Zap can send that topic straight to your content-creation team via Slack. Now, you have a set-up for generating new ideas and an optimised flow for getting those ideas out to your audience.
Hack #8 – Post New Products Onto Social Media
Let’s say that you operate an ecommerce store.
Whenever you add a new product to the store, you want to inform your clients and prospects. The best way to do this is to share the product on social media. But that takes time and means you’ll have to bounce around different platforms. Plus, there’s always the possibility that you’ll forget to share your new product.
Again, a well-placed Zap can handle this for you.
Zapier can integrate with your website management system, allowing you to create a Zap to detect whenever you add a new product. That Zap then moves into an automated workflow that collects the key details and posts them onto your social platforms. You can even create templates for each platform to ensure the product displays properly.
Zapier Can Optimise Your Workflows
There’s one thing all of these hacks have in common…
Each of them allows you to automate an aspect of your overall workflow, with Zapier acting as the bridge between the tools you use in your company. And with the right Zaps, you ensure that those tools work in tandem with each other to the benefit of your customers.
Best of all, those Zaps will take a ton of work out of your hands. This means you’ll have more time to focus on building your business, rather than working in it.
All that’s left is to set up Zapier for your business.
That’s where the Automation Agency team comes in. Zapier is one of the dozens of platforms that we support for members of our Concierge Service. With our help, you can integrate Zapier with your CRM and a host of other tools.
The end result?
More efficient workflows for your business due to increased automation.
Would you like to find out more?
Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you to use Zapier.
