Media training 101 for small businesses

-
Image
Great news: you just scored a big press interview to promote your business. The story will expose your brand to the perfect new audience and drive meaningful traffic to your website. So…don't blow it. Yes, just as quickly as the excitement for the opportunity arrived, the realization that you now have to do an interview sets in. I get it—press interviews can absolutely be intimidating. The resulting coverage represents a significant opportunity to acquire new customers, drive sales, or raise awareness, and you want to be sure to represent your brand well and really compel the audience to check out your company. On top of that, you have to contend with adrenaline and nerves in the moment. You may be thinking, "So many other business owners are so polished and articulate in their interviews. How am I going to pull that off?" Deep breath. A successful interview is usually the result of good media training: preparation and practice in advance of an interview. I've tr...
1 comment

How to automatically add new Shopify customers to a Mailchimp Audience

-

Getting your online store up and running is work enough, and keeping your customers updated on new products in your store can sometimes feel like a second full-time job. If you’ve ever spent hours manually copying customer email addresses into a spreadsheet, or uploading a CSV file to a newsletter app only to find out that it wasn’t formatted correctly, this Zap is for you.

“Zaps” are automated workflows that help save you time and energy by taking care of those repetitive tasks, like signing up new customers for your newsletter. If you use Shopify and Mailchimp, this Zap can take care of all of that for you in 6 steps:

  1. Set up your Shopify store, and make sure there is at least one Customer.
  2. Sign into your Mailchimp account, and make sure there is at least one Audience.
  3. Click the Use this Zap button below to use our template (it will prompt you to create a Zapier account if you haven't already).
  4. Sign in to Shopify when prompted and customize your trigger.
  5. Sign in to Mailchimp and customize how you'd like the customer’s info sent to your Audience.
  6. Test your Zap and turn it on.

If you have a mailing list in an app other than Mailchimp, we’ll have some Zap Templates at the end of this tutorial to help you get started!

Note: Be sure you're signing people up for communication they've opted-in to receive.

Before you begin

To set up this Zap using information unique to your store, you’ll want to log into Shopify and make sure that at least one Customer has been created. This guide from Shopify walks you through locating your Customer settings, and creating a new Customer if one hasn’t been created already.

Mailchimp uses “Audiences” to help keep track of your subscribers. You most likely created on when you first signed up for Mailchimp, but just in case this guide can help you create a new one. Mailchimp recommends that you have one “primary” audience that subscribers can be added to, then use tags and segments to help organize them down the road.

Connect Shopify and set up your trigger step

To get started, we’ll be using the Shopify “New Customer” trigger, which prompts your Zap to run each time a new customer is created in Shopify. That way, each time a new customer makes a purchase or provides their email address in your Shopify store, this workflow will run.

Go ahead and select Try It on the template below to create a new Zap with the Shopify “New Customer” trigger and Mailchimp “Add/Update Subscriber” action already added in.

Starting with the Shopify trigger, the first step will be to connect your Shopify account. Select Sign in to Shopify and a pop-up window will appear, prompting you to log into Spotify.

Sign in to Shopify

Once your Shopify account is connected, select Continue in the Zap, and it will ask you to test the trigger.

Test trigger

Testing the trigger is important because it tells the Zap to ask Shopify for an example of a recent Customer, which helps you make sure that the Zap is set up correctly. When a Customer’s information appears, select Continue to move on to the next step.

New Customer sample data

Connect and customize Mailchimp

In the next step, you’ll be asked to select the Mailchimp action that the Zap should perform after it is triggered. To add new subscribers, or update existing ones, select Add/Update Subscriber (using the Zap Template above will automatically select that option). Select Continue, and connect your Mailchimp account when prompted.

Connect Mailchip account

After signing into Mailchimp, select Continue again and you’ll be prompted to “map” data from Shopify to the Mailchimp action. This is how Mailchimp knows which email to use, and what audience to subscribe them to.

Mapping Mailchimp fields

The two required fields are Audience and Subscriber Email. When you click on Audience, a dropdown menu will appear showing all of your Mailchimp audiences. In our example, we have a test audience for Zapier’s support team.

Mailchimp test audience

In the Subscriber Email field, you can click anywhere in the field, and select the Email value that appears in the dropdown menu.

Selecting the email address

That will “map” the value to that field, so that each time the Zap is triggered by a new Shopify customer, the Zap will send their email address to Mailchimp in the “Subscriber Email” field.

There are several other optional fields that can be filled in using that same method, such as the subscriber’s First and Last Names, Phone Number, and Birthday. Spend some time reviewing those fields, to see if you’ll want to save that information to Mailchimp as well.

Learn more about setting up Zap actions.

Once all of the required fields have been filled in, you can select Continue at the bottom of the action, and you’ll be prompted to test it.

Test your Zap

Testing the Mailchimp action will create a new subscriber in the Audience you selected earlier, and you can see all of the data that it will send to Mailchimp in the “Send Data” section:

Send Data

If your sample data contains a real customer’s email address, and you’re not ready to sign that customer up for your mailing list, select Skip Test. Otherwise, select Test & Continue to send the information to Mailchimp.

Once the test has been performed or skipped, you can turn the Zap on! While it is on, any new customers in Shopify will trigger the Zap, and be automatically sent to Mailchimp as new subscribers in your Audience.

Related Workflows

If you’d like to save time and automate your mailing list, but don’t use Mailchimp, never fear! Zapier integrates with lots of other newsletter applications, and these Zap Templates can help you get started with other popular options. If you see the app you use, select Try It to create a new Zap and start automating.



from The Zapier Blog https://ift.tt/2Fkbj4L

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If Time-Tracking Apps Don't Work for You, Try a Productivity Journal

-
Image
Monitoring how you spend your time leads to a wealth of useful information: It can tell you what time of day you're most productive , help you create better estimates for how long tasks will take, and show you what activities you'd have to cut to focus your energy on a new idea or project. The most precise way to monitor how you spend your time is to use a time-tracking app . But these apps require a lot of overhead. You have to diligently log your hours (or make sure your app is logging them correctly) and sort your tracked time into categories. You have to pause after every task—no matter how brief—to capture time spent accurately. If tracking your time at such a granular level sounds like a punishment, but you still want insight into how and where you spend your time, consider the less menacing sibling of time-tracking apps: a productivity journal. What Is a Productivity Journal? I kept a journal as a preteen, though in those days I called it a diary. Snoopy and Woods...
Read more

The 25 Best Productivity Apps for iPhone in 2018

-
Image
The best productivity apps for iPhone make possible something that would otherwise be impossible, or they make something you need to do simpler and faster. Imagine being asked, unexpectedly, for a copy of a tax form from last year as proof of address during an important appointment that you traveled many miles to attend. In fact, it happened to me, and thankfully I had a copy of the document I needed saved to a file syncing application, which meant I could pull it up on my phone and show it to the gracious Customs and Border Protection officer who demanded to see it. If that's not productivity by way of efficiency, I don't know what is. Perhaps a more routine example is keeping track of time spent in an off-site meeting so that you can claim it as an expense later. If you have the right time-tracking mobile app, you can record the time on the spot rather than having to estimate it and remember to record it later. The use cases for productivity apps are infinite, and sometimes...
Read more

What's the difference between the Wiki and OneNote tabs in Microsoft Teams?

-
Image
It's easy, in a team chat app, for key points to get lost in the ongoing flow of conversation. That's why every channel in Microsoft Teams has a Wiki page, where you can store things like meeting notes or outline the current state of a project. You can also add a OneNote tab to every channel for similar purposes. The Wiki and OneNote tab are pretty overlapping features, so you might be wondering which one you should use. My answer, unhelpfully, is "it depends." Here's a quick overview: The Wiki is fast and simple but only works inside Teams. OneNote offers more features and can be used outside Teams. My advice: if the Wiki works for you, that's great. Use it. If you want more out of your note-taking, and the ability to reference notes outside of Teams, use OneNote. Let's go over both features with more detail, so you can choose the tool that works for you. The Wiki is fast and functional—but only exists in Teams You can probably find the Wiki in ...
Read more