Welcome to this lesson of the Growth Hacking Academy, on Zapier.
What is Zapier? What is it for? How do you build a Zap? How do you automate tasks with it? You’ll have heard plenty about it lately, and if you’ve landed here you’re certainly asking these questions.
In this lesson we’ll clear up every doubt about Zapier, so let’s not waste time — here we go!
Need a list of growth hacking tools?
Need tools to grow your business? Want to use growth hacking for your clients and work out which tools are available? No problem, we’ll give you the full list. FREE!
Request the free growth hacking tool list
What is Zapier?
Zapier (go to the official site) is an automation tool delivered online as a service (SaaS) by Zapier Inc.
Conceived in 2011 during a startup weekend in Columbia, Missouri, by Wade Foster, Bryan Helmig and Mike Knoop, the winning idea was a platform for connecting and integrating different applications and web services. The aim is to let apps such as Gmail, Facebook Lead Ads, Google Sheets, Dropbox, Slack and many others share data with one another.
The service currently supports around 1,500 web apps and is among the most widely used, particularly by people doing growth hacking.
What is Zapier for?
Having covered what Zapier is, let’s see exactly what it’s for.
With this tool a website or ecommerce store can now automate a great many repetitive, time-consuming jobs. Automatically you can, for instance, save to Dropbox the attachments or an entire email arriving in your Gmail account; post to your Facebook page an article just published on your WordPress site; or add new Eventbrite events to Google Calendar.
Image from zapier.com
Examples of Zaps
The workflows (Zaps) a website, blog or ecommerce store can run automatically with this tool are numerous. Here are more examples:
- sharing notes with colleagues before a meeting;
- sharing new products and content on Facebook, Twitter and the other social networks;
- keeping track of new customers’ details by adding them to a CRM or a spreadsheet;
- monitoring your brand by tracking mentions on social networks;
- building an email list by adding contact details gathered in different apps;
- collecting information about customers or internal teams from forms and sending it to apps such as Trello, Dropbox or Google Sheets;
- adding new subscribers to the newsletter service in Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign and other email marketing tools;
- …
A list of more than 350 Zaps, split into 16 categories, is offered by Zapier itself (click here for the full list).
Need a list of growth hacking tools?
Need tools to grow your business? Want to use growth hacking for your clients and work out which tools are available? No problem, we’ll give you the full list. FREE!
Request the free growth hacking tool list
The advantages of Zapier
Let’s go through the advantages:
- the service proves effective and precise, and allows high productivity. It’s no accident that Zapier went from zero to more than 600,000 users in its first three years (more here);
- another factor is that using it requires no code at all — you simply enter the elements into the relevant fields in the wizard. There’s no need for a developer to build these capabilities, which is particularly valuable for small businesses with a tight budget;
- the tool proves particularly useful for web apps that have no plugins or extensions letting them talk to one another but that do have APIs — the interfaces through which external software can communicate with web apps. The tool is often described as a translator between web APIs (more here).
How does Zapier work?
How does Zapier work? In short, the platform creates automated workflows between two apps (take the Zapier–WhatsApp integration – more here – or the Zapier–Amazon integration – more here), called Zaps.
That flow can be pictured as a visual diagram like the one below.
Image from zapier.com
A Zap has two parts: a trigger and an action.
The trigger is the event in one app that starts a Zap (e.g. for the Zap “save Gmail attachments to Dropbox and alert me on Slack”, the trigger fires only when an email arrives carrying attachments).
The action is the event that completes the Zap (in our example it’s both saving the attachments and posting an alert in Slack to say new files are in Dropbox).
Every individual data exchange between two apps handled by a Zap counts as a task. In other words, if your Zap adds 100 files to Dropbox automatically, 100 is the measure of its work.
So how do you build your first Zap? The first step is creating a Zapier account.
Creating a Zapier account
Here’s how:
- go to Zapier (here) and enter your name, an email address and a password in the form, or use your Google account;
- choose your role from the menu (entrepreneur, consultant, designer and so on);
- click the icons to say which apps you use. Some of them — Shopify, Facebook Lead Ads, PayPal and others — can only be selected with a premium subscription. Others are in beta;
- that last step completes the setup.
The Zapier dashboard
Once setup is done (or once you’ve logged in), you arrive at the Zapier dashboard. It carries a “what would you like to automate today” box from which you can build a Zap from scratch easily, or use one of the popular Zaps listed.
On the right there’s another box with guidance and links on building Zaps, multi-step Zaps, filtering unwanted data out of a Zap, or constructing advanced workflows.
From the “App Directory” at the top, next to Home, you can see the list of available apps (here they are). The “Explore” page is an excellent place for ideas and suggestions on new Zaps.
“My Zaps” gathers the Zaps you’ve built and are using, or that you can edit again for a new purpose.
Image from Zapier.com
The Zapier Chrome extension
Building and starting new Zaps is easier still with the new Zapier Chrome extension.
To use it:
- go to the Chrome Web Store (here), search for the extension and, once you see it, click “add extension”;
- create a free account on Zapier (here) following the steps described above;
- click the extension and then the button to create a Zap. Enter the date, time, and the name and link of the page where you clicked the button. Where useful, add extra information in the Push Zap fields;
- click the button in the Zapier Chrome extension to start the workflow you want to automate.
If you need it, there’s a tutorial –> here it is
What Zapier costs
Zapier Free is the free tier, though it’s limited to a maximum of five active Zaps and 100 runs a month.
If, as is likely, your needs go beyond that, the premium service starts at €20 a month and runs to €250 for a full team. That subscription comes with a 14-day trial.
Image from Zapier.com
Alternatives to Zapier
The market offers solid alternatives to Zapier, such as those below. For a fuller list, see this page.
IFTTT
IFTTT is a free app available for iOS and Android that lets you connect two web applications in order to automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Beyond the app, the service can also be used from the website.
Automate.io
Automate.io is available as freemium and is a solid alternative to Zapier. It lets you create single or multiple integrations between cloud applications in a few minutes.
With it you can, for instance, automate sending a message by email after events a user triggers in a CRM or a payment system. Or run email marketing campaigns based on what prospects do or don’t do. You can also build engagement with prospective customers on social networks by sending personalised messages by mobile or social media, and plenty more.
Skyvia
Another all-in-one cloud service, Skyvia lets you integrate, run, access and manage cloud data and, through its unified interface, connect various data sources with different applications.
CloudHQ
CloudHQ is a web platform offering, for a fee, a complete suite of Gmail productivity tools. The suite includes an email tracker and templates, plus real-time data protection and a backup of every G Suite account.
Image from Zapier.com
Useful resources
Here are some resources you may find useful:
- if you’re new, the Zapier guide (here it is) or this post may help;
- how to build a Zap (click for the resource) helps you construct the Zaps you need properly;
- to stay current, read this practical ebook from the Zapier Learning Center (here it is).
Conclusion
By now you’ll have a clearer idea of what Zapier is, how it works and how you can use it for your website, blog or store. What may still be unclear is what growth hacking is. Plenty of people talk about it, but few genuinely know what it is or how it works.
This lesson has given you a grounding in one of the most widely used growth hacking tools, and in the lessons ahead we’ll go deeper into growth hacking topics and tools.
Stay tuned to your favourite Growth Hacking Academy!
Want advice on growing your business? Get in touch! With growth hacking we’ll work out and implement the best strategy for reaching your goal.
Want to become a growth hacker? Get in touch! We’ll find the right course for you.
Want to ask us something or just talk to us? Get in touch! That’s what we’re here for.