As an online course provider, you wear many hats, juggling the tech, finance, customer service and marketing functions, to name but a few. Unless you are well established and have a team, then it can be overwhelming being responsible for so many tasks yourself. Automation can be a game-changer though, and we strongly believe that online course providers should learn Zapier to save time and be more productive.
As Ashley DeLuca, an email marketing course provider, puts it “I use Zapier to easily notify me of new leads and payments! It’s a great way to stay on top of everything and celebrate every moment of the business experience!”.
We asked more online course providers how they use Zapier, and we’re sure these ideas will inspire others to embrace automation and work smarter, not harder!
Automations from Thrivecart
Many online course providers (and digital businesses in general) use Thrivecart to optimise the checkout processes and encourage more sales.
For online course providers like Kimi Kinsey it makes sense to automatically integrate Thrivecart with their course platform, and in Kimi’s case this is Podia. As well as triggering when a purchase is made, the Thrivecart integration with Zapier has some other really useful triggers including when a cart is abandoned, when a subscription has been paused and when a payment has been declined.
James Seikel at Semi-Retired MD connects Thrivecart and Kajabi to add and remove customers to courses, and also manage upsells and bump offers.
Cait Blakley uses Zapier to trigger an email from Flodesk when members sign up through Thrivecart.
Connecting course platforms with your CRM using Zapier
It makes sense to integrate your course platform with your CRM rather than manually rekeying or copying and pasting student details from one to the other.
Laura Little from Females In Digital marketing links her CRM, Keap, with her course platform, Thinkific. Using Zapier she automatically enrols customers into her free course and sends welcome emails. Laura also uses it to automate requests for a testimonial.
Automating social media using Zapier
For online course providers, social media is a key marketing channel. Zapier is perfect for automating social media posts as it has integrations with Facebook Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram, amongst others.
Azhelle Wade from TheToyCoach.com loves using Zapier for social media scheduling. She says “One of the coolest ways I’m using Zapier is to automate posts on LinkedIn and Facebook whenever I add a new video to YouTube or a new item to my private podcast feed.”
Andrew Power uses Zapier to push his Pinterest posts to LinkedIn, and has an automation to add new email subscribers to his Google Sheets log.
Zapier makes it so easy to share content across different platforms and saves a significant amount of time.
Azhelle also uses Zapier to automate an email to people who ask for more information about her offers via her Tidio chat bot. She also manages student enrolments by adding new signups to the products they’ve purchased via Stripe and then removing them after their subscription has expired.
Connecting your course platform to other tools
Zapier has integrations to many popular online course platforms such as:
- Lifter LMS (available by invite only, but you can get an invite link here)
- Teachable
- Thinkific
- SkillJar
- Udemy
- Learnworlds
… and many more! If you’re thinking of launching a course and haven’t decided which platform to use then this Zapier blog post will help you choose.
You can then automatically enrol students into a course, whether it’s from your website, your marketing app or from a payment provider.
Business Coach Christie Miller uses Zapier to create a personalized Zoom link for webinar registrants. She loves it, saying “This makes it SUPER easy to tag who attended and who did not, because they are more likely to use the same email address when they register and when they show up.”
Christie has very kindly sent us her workflow which demonstrates how Zapier is a core part of her business.
Courtesy of Business Coach Christie Miller
Linking your email marketing platform
You can add new students to your email platform too, such as MailChimp or Active Campaign.
Using Zapier means that you can add tags too, which is great for segmenting your list. This often avoids the need to buy premium versions of the email software, which is handy when you’re just starting out. You can tag contacts based on where they signed up, or when they have completed a module or course. This allows you to focus your emails on those who need to read the content.
Automating finance workflows
Zapier has integrations with many popular financial apps such as Xero and QuickBooks. This allows you to create invoices automatically when new courses have been purchased.
Learn more about using Zapier as an online course provider
If you run an online course and have been inspired by our real-life examples then we suggest signing up for Zapier’s free version to get started.
We have a few resources which you can use to find out more:
- The Solvaa YouTube channel includes Zapier demos for some really useful zaps
- Our free e-book is the perfect introduction to business automation
- Our Zapier functions cheat sheet delves into the powerful inbuilt helper apps which can supercharge your automations
- Our founder, Kelly’s new book, Automate It with Zapier is available from the publisher, Packt, also available as in Kindle and print formats from Amazon. This will get you up and running and to the stage where you can build and debug advanced automations.
Solvaa: Strategy, Solutions, Support, Education
UK-based Solvaa® is a systems, process and automation consultancy specialising in improving business workflows. Solvaa® works with SMEs worldwide to implement digital tools, better processes, use business process automation and generative AI to boost productivity, enhance lead management, and remove unnecessary time, costs and hassles from stretched business owners’ days.
We help you simplify and streamline existing processes, integrate your business tools to make data transfer more efficient, and automate manual tasks. Our business process automation specialists have extensive experience using multiple cloud-based business tools, including Zapier, Pipedrive CRM, SmartSuite, Xero, Google Suite, ClickUp, Asana, Airtable, Hubspot, Active Campaign, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Quickbooks and many more. We are Zapier Certified Experts, SmartSuite Certified Partners, Pipedrive Certified Partners and Xero Certified Advisors. We also educate teams about using AI in their daily roles, mindset, governance and strategy in our Solvaa AI Academy.
Solvaa® was founded in 2016 by Kelly Goss, a no-code solutions architect, business process automation specialist and author of Automate It with Zapier (first edition) and Automate It with Zapier and Generative AI (second edition).
A thought leader on business process automation and digital adoption, Kelly attended an invite-only Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the UK government at No.10 Downing Street, providing insights and recommendations on how SMEs can benefit from productivity gains by using digital technologies, automation and AI. She has also been invited to speak at the House of Lords and at many other events.
Contact us today to find out how Solvaa can help your business make big savings on operational costs and time, and significantly increase productivity.
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