Creating Automated Marketing Tools with Zapier

Creating Automated Marketing Tools with Zapier or Make

In today's fast-paced business environment, automated marketing tools have become essential for enhancing efficiency and optimizing the customer experience. When you need to post marketing ads on multiple platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, it often requires a significant amount of time and effort.

With automation platforms like Zapier and Make (formerly Integromat), marketers can easily connect various applications, creating seamless workflows that allow them to focus on more strategic tasks. This article will introduce the basic steps to create automated marketing tools using these platforms.

I started from scratch to learn and choose a platform to establish an automated workflow, which took about half a day. If it's just a simple process, it might only take about an hour.

Specific Steps

1. Choose a Trigger

To create an automated workflow, you first need to determine the trigger, which is the event that initiates the automation process. In Zapier, this is called creating a "Zap," while in Make, it is called a "Scenario." Common triggers include:

1. Form Update: When you update new marketing tasks in Google Sheets and fill in the relevant information, the newly added row can trigger subsequent automated posting actions.
2. New Customer Registration: When a new customer registers, they are automatically added to your CRM system, and a welcome email is sent.

2. Set Actions

After choosing the trigger, the next step is to set actions, which are the tasks the system will perform once the trigger event occurs. These actions can be single or a combination of multiple actions. Common actions include:

1. Send Welcome Emails: Automatically send welcome emails through an email marketing service (such as Mailchimp), providing relevant information or offers.
2. Set Posting Channels: After reading the newly added tasks from Google Sheets, send different content to different social media channels.

3. Test and Activate

After configuring all the triggers and actions, it is crucial to test the workflow. Testing helps ensure each step works as expected and allows you to identify and fix any potential issues. Once testing is complete, activate your Zap or Scenario to start the automated process.

Detailed Case Study

To provide a more intuitive understanding of the convenience of automated marketing, here is a case study. The specifics involve: reading a row of marketing copy from Google Sheets, generating a beautiful marketing display image through the Edgeone image rendering API, and then posting the generated image to Twitter and Facebook.

1. Open Zapier and Create a New Workflow

Here, we use Zapier as an example. First, you need to register for a Zapier account or log in using your Google account.

2. Choose a Marketing Template from Edgeone Image Renderer

We choose to use Edgeone's image rendering tool because it is free and easy to use, making it ideal for learning.

For instance, I chose a travel ad image template that requires three parameters: bgImg, title, and desc. Therefore, I need to create a Google Sheet that includes these three columns. Each row in the sheet will represent data for a complete marketing ad image.

3. Create a Data Spreadsheet in Google Sheets

Each row in the Google Sheet will represent a complete set of marketing image data. Next, in the Zapier workflow, the system will read each newly added row of data and use it to call the image generation API. The generated image will then be posted to different platforms.

4. Create the Automated Workflow in Zapier

This establishes a basic workflow. When you add a new marketing event in Google Sheets and save it, the workflow will be triggered, automatically executing marketing actions on multiple platforms. Of course, the trigger method and timing can be customized as needed.

The specifics of creating the workflow won't be detailed in this article, as Zapier provides comprehensive tutorials.

Conclusion

Creating automated marketing tools with platforms like Zapier or Make can greatly enhance your marketing efficiency, optimize the customer experience, and free up human resources to focus on more strategic tasks. These platforms offer powerful integration capabilities and flexible configuration options, making them accessible even for those without a programming background.