Zapier Automation Inspiration for Entrepreneurs
Zapier is a powerful automation tool that can be used to create complex workflows. But when you’re new to automation and integration tools, it can be hard to get started. Check out these simple starter workflows for Zapier automation inspiration that will benefit you from day one.
Zapier connects your favorite apps and services. These connections allow teams and individuals to automate more of their workflows. Every connection between two apps is called a “Zap” and they’re designed to make you work smarter, not harder. With over 4,000 apps to choose from, there are plenty of practical Zapier workflows for entrepreneurs to build.
1. Create Mailchimp Subscribers from Typeform or PayPal
How many marketing automation flows have you got set up in your business? Email is a perfect fit for this. Mailchimp is an email marketing service that lets you design emails, maintain a list of subscribers, email those subscribers, and then monitor the results of that campaign. But what happens when a customer isn’t a subscriber?
With this PayPal → Mailchimp workflow, Zapier monitors all sales made via PayPal and enters the customer’s email address into your email campaign in Mailchimp, effectively helping you to retain each new customer.
You can do the same thing with Typeform. Let’s say that you’re using Typeform to survey your website’s visitors about the user experience that they received. The Typeform → Mailchimp Zap will retain the user’s email address in Mailchimp so you can tell that user about the new version of your website, derived from the feedback that they originally offered.
2. Create Trello Cards from Gmail Emails and Update in Slack
With the influx of morning emails, it can be near-impossible to convert each one into an actionable task in a sensible amount of time. The Gmail → Trello Zap can fix that, helping you to reach “inbox zero” much faster. In short, Zapier scans your Gmail for emails with a certain label and creates a formatted Trello card from them.
The best way to get some automation inspiration is to start with simple workflows and identify ways of taking things further as you become more familiar with your tool. You can take this Zap a step further by automatically updating teammates about this new Trello card in Slack, so that the team can be notified about the task and complete it. All that from a simple label!
3. Get Notified of New Dropbox Files in Slack
I can think of a number of reasons why this Dropbox → Slack setup is epic. Firstly, Dropbox really drains your battery because it constantly checks for file updates, so having notifications in Slack can quite literally save you hours of battery life. But don’t worry, not only can you be notified in Slack of new Dropbox files, but Slack can import the file, making it searchable and downloadable from within Slack. Dropbox doesn’t even need to be switched on!
4. Create and Publish WordPress Posts in Evernote
Hate using a CMS? I feel you. Bloggers like to stay focused on the words, which is why a Zapier integration that allows you to control WordPress articles in Evernote, a note-taking app, is such a neat idea. Essentially you create a fresh notebook and Zapier uploads the “notes” to WordPress.
Notes can also be tagged and dated, which makes it super easy to categorize articles. You can make Evernote your new CMS today!
5. Record Both PayPal and Stripe Sales in Google Sheets
By using these two Zaps you’ll be able to automate the ordeal of having to export transaction data into Google Sheets, but rather than replacing a spreadsheet with an updated version, both the PayPal and Stripe Zaps log new sales on a new row. If you use PayPal and Stripe you could set up both integrations to copy new sales into the same spreadsheet.
6. Copy Google Drive Files to Dropbox (or Vice Versa)
Half the team uses Google Drive and the other half uses Dropbox — a typical “sigh…” situation. Everybody has their own reason for choosing one over the other.
Luckily, we can keep the two cloud storage services in sync by copying Google Drive files to Dropbox and vice-versa!
7. Create Trello Cards from Todoist Tasks
Many teams use Trello for task management, but for personal task management, services like Todoist are more popular. Even though I work within various large Trello boards I still find it useful to keep a private to-do list that incorporates only my tasks — this way I don’t have to sift through my assigned tasks in multiple Trello boards.
But rather than having to manage Trello boards and Todoist lists simultaneously, this Todoist → Trello Zap (or again, the vice-versa) can convert your listed tasks from Todoist into Trello cards, a workflow that benefits the task doers as well as the task managers.
Zapier Automation Inspiration: Next Steps
Zapier is that one friend that brings the group together — the organizer, the one that makes sure everybody is getting along. I only mentioned a handful of Zaps in this article, so I’d encourage you to search Zapier’s database to see how you can bridge the gap between the services that you use and get even more Zapier automation inspiration.
Want to build more complex automations? Check out some of our guides that use Zapier as integration glue:
