Are You An Interior Designer That Needs More Time? Try Zapier!

Zapier Enables Connections Between Web Applications

Zapier is an automation tool that can save interior designers time.

Need your Freshbooks accounting software to move contact information to your MailChimp client newsletter list? No problem. Want to save new Instagram posts to Dropbox so that you can use them elsewhere? Zapier can do that too!

Your interior design website is the hub or your marketing efforts. It's how you engage and communicate with visitors, generate new leads and close sales. It's one of the most cost-effective and efficient ways to grow your business, but it takes a lot of effort and time to manage contact information and have your systems effectively share data with each other. Zapier is an app that can reduce the time spent on repetitive daily tasks.

Learn More About Marketing Automation

To guide a prospect through the sales process once a visitor converts to a lead on your website, you need to manage that contact and begin a process of nurturing them through their buying process to the sale. For many businesses, this is where the process falls apart. Failure to properly engage and manage the relationship through poor contact management or infrequent contact can lose you the sale and a potential long-term customer. This is where the power of automation can change the equation.

Automate Your Marketing Follow-Up

A benefit of digital marketing is the ability to automate much of the lead nurturing process. An effective inbound strategy can result in dozens of daily tasks including social media posts, adding conversions to your mailing list, creating introductory emails, follow-up nurturing emails, blog posts and announcements, the list goes on. Imagine if you could automate many of these tasks guiding your prospects through your lead funnel until they are ready to be contacted personally, and the sale closed. Today, it's possible to do exactly that! One application that makes automating repetitive, tedious tasks easier is called Zapier.

What Is Zapier?

Put simply, Zapier is an application that connects and manages other web-based applications. You can create simple scripts (called Zaps) that will automate tasks between applications like a website form builder, CRM, project management, and accounting software to save you time and make your lead nurturing more efficient and effective.

Zaps are simple “Trigger and Action” scripts that can work to automate various repetitive manual processes. Let's look at a simple example:

If your interior design firm uses Salesforce to generate and manage incoming contacts, and Trello cards for project management, Zapier allows you to create a Zap to automatically link the functionality of both of these applications.

Example Zap:

Save all email attachments of new emails that arrive in your inbox by connecting your Gmail and Dropbox account to Zapier. When a new email from Gmail comes in with an attachment, Zapier automatically saves the attachment to a folder in Dropbox.

You create and customize this Zap by using drop-down menus to choose the trigger app (in this case your CRM) and the action app (in this case Google Sheets, an XL type document). You can also use static text and customize fields. Every time a lead comes into your CRM, the data is pushed to your Google Sheets document. If five leads come into your CRM, five entries are created in Google Sheets. Without any additional effort, data flows from one application to the other automatically, saving you time and reducing the possibility of human error.

Deeply Functional Data Migration

With over 500 web applications supported, Zapier allows you to automate all kinds of tasks from project management and social sharing, to social media monitoring, web development, lead generation, lead nurturing, file management, and more. This functionality lets you create Zap chains that can take a task through several steps. For example:

Your website landing page offering a free report on “Creating Your Dream Kitchen” on the design details for the perfect space has been converting visitors. You use a Squarespace form to gather their email information. You can create a chain of Zaps that take that address from your contact list to an introductory email using three Zaps.

Zap 1 - Copy website form information to my CRM

Zap 2 - Copy all new CRM contacts to MailChimp

Zap 3 - Send introductory Gmail email to MailChimp list

These three simple steps have taken you from conversion through creating a new contact, to adding that contact to the appropriate MailChimp list, and then beginning the nurturing process by sending a personalized introductory email.

This is a very simple illustration of the power of automation. You no longer need to transfer names from your conversion forms to your CRM, then to your mailing list, then create a mail piece and engage. This can now all be done automatically, requiring no additional time on your part beyond creating the initial Zaps. Automating these repetitive manual tasks frees your time to focus on growing your core business.  Because Zapier supports over 500 applications, you can get tremendous depth to your automation taking a prospect from conversion through the sales process until they are ready to buy. Automating much of your marketing process allows you to grow your interior design business 24/7/365. This is the power of inbound marketing automation.

Additional Marketing Articles For Interior Designers

• How To Get Local Interior Design Clients - Eight Steps

• How Interior Designers Can Attract Better Clients With Email Marketing

• A Visual Marketing Plan for Interior Design Firms

---

About Michael Conway

I'm the owner and strategist at Means-of-Production. My firm builds Squarespace websites, Houzz profiles, and content marketing and advertising solutions for architects, interior designers, design-build contractors and landscape design firms. Our all-in-one marketing tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition.