1. Terminology

Zapier automates repetitive tasks in your business 🪄First: terminology 📖

- A “zap” is an automation in Zapier

- A "trigger" starts the automation

- An "action" is the resultNormally, you'd write code to build automations.Zapier does it for you 💯

2. What to automate?

What should you automate? Anything that….🔀 Involves moving data between apps (for example, adding Google Form responses to Mailchimp)🕐 You do on a schedule (for example, receive a weekly email with your Google Analytics data)

3. How does it work?

Zapier is the ✨magical✨ “glue” that connects apps together.

But how? It uses a something  called an API . API's allow apps to "talk" to each other and manipulate data. Without Zapier, you'd have to write custom code for each app you'd want to connect to.

4. Build visually

Time to build! 🏗️

Zapier lets you build automations visually 👀, without code.

For each zap, we want to think about:

1. The apps we want to connect.

2. What's the trigger?

3. What's the action?

4. What data do I want to transfer?

5. Send data

Let's send data from Google Form to Mailchimp! ✉️

First, select your trigger and connect your GSuite Account.

Make sure you have sample data in your Google Form before building the zap (this is an easy mistake to make!)

6. Create an action

Now we are in the "action" step!

All we have to do here is set the fields.

In our case, we're just setting one field (the email the user entered in the Google Form).

Building an automation is that easy 🤯

7. Trigger your automation

So.... how often will this automation run?

Each app has a different type of trigger.

1. Polling triggers run every every 1-15 min (depending on your plan).

2. Instant triggers run, well… instantly ⚡

8. Advanced features

Let's talk about some more advanced features.

🔽 Filters let you only run the zap on specific conditions

🔀 Paths let you run different actions based on conditions

These let you build some pretty complex workflows 💪

9. Zapier transfers

Zapier also covers one-time bulk transfers!It's called a Zapier Transfer ↗️

Perfect for moving large amounts of data once, instead of the ongoing Zaps we went over earlier.

10. That's it!

If you understand these fundamentals, you’ll be building Zaps and automating your business in no-time.

Want to learn more about Zapier (including more complex Zap examples and features)?

Check out the No Code MBA Zapier Masterclasss.