In this article we’re going to review what Zapier is and how to use triggers from your CRM to send direct mail with LettrLabs.
Video Explainer Video
What is Zapier
Zapier is an online automation tool that connects your CRM or other app, such as Gmail, Slack, and more, to automate sending direct mail within LettrLabs without any coding or relying on developers to build the integration. It allows you to create "Zaps," which are workflows that connect your CRM and LettrLabs together. For example, you can set up a Zap to automatically send a Radius mailing around a pin address.
How to Use Zapier with your CRM and LettrLabs
How to set up your LettrLabs account to receive your Zaps. The first thing you will want to do is create a template that you will use to send your direct mail orders. See “How to Create a Template” for instructions on how to create a template.
Let’s get our template ready to be integrated. Click the “Use Template as Integration Order” button.
Name your Integration Order and click “Create”.
Now when you click on Integration Orders, you will see your Template is there and is in “Testing” Status. We will come back to this.
Next you will need to set up your Zapier account. From the LettrLabs portal, click on “Integration Orders” tab on the lefthand side of your screen, then click “Set Up Zapier” in the upper righthand corner of the page.
When setting up your LettrLabs account to be able to accept the integration from Zapier, we need to create an API key. To do this, you’ll first enter a name for your API key. (You can name your API key anything you want.)
After entering your API Key name, click "Add New". A popup will appear with a long string of letters and numbers. Copy the API text string to your clipboard. The API key will only appear once
(due to security policies), so make sure to copy it. If you need to create another one, you can. You can create as many API keys as you need. (You will see them listed below your API Keys field.)
Now that you have your API key copied, we can take that API Key and add it to Zapier to connect LettrLabs with your CRM.
Open Zapier and login or create a new account. Click Apps on the lefthand side, then click the Blue “+Add Connection” button.
Search for LettrLabs and add your API key that you have copied in your clipboard and then click the orange “yes, Continue to LettrLabs” button.
After you select LettrLabs you'll be asked to enter in your API key that we retrieved above.
Now your LettrLabs account is connected to Zapier and you can connect your CRM to Zapier. You will see it listed here. *You only have to add the API once. After it’s added your Zapier account and LettrLabs will be connected for all of your Zaps.
Create your first Zap. Click the Zap button on the lefthand side of your screen.
Click the blue +Create button on the righthand side of your screen. And then click “New Zap”.
Next, we have to tell Zapier what “Trigger” LettrLabs will use to send your direct mail order. We do this by setting up a Trigger.
Choose the app that Zapier will use to trigger your mail. This can be your CRM, a Google sheet, or one of 5,000 different applications.
In this example, I’m connecting to Google sheets. I’m setting this up so that every time I add a recipient to the google sheet the added recipient will get a card. The “Event” will be adding a new recipient in a new row on my Google sheet.
Now that we have our event added, let’s tell Zapier what to do with that information. Let’s choose an “Action”. Click on Action and search for LettrLabs.
This is how it will look after you select LettrLabs.
Here is where you have a choice. You can choose to either send a card to a single recipient or send cards to several addresses around a pin address. The process is the same so I’m going to add a Radius Order around a pin address.
To add a Radius order, click “Mail to Recipients Around an Address” then click Continue.
Choose an Account, this is the account you added your API Key for.
If your connection is successful, you will see the banner that tells you your test was successful. Click continue.
Add your integration order id#. You can find it in the LettrLabs portal here. It will change the Integration order id # to the name of your integration order in the portal.
Next, you will match up your fields from your Google Sheet with Zapier to make sure the data is transmitted properly. Click “Spreadsheet” and Search for your Google Sheet, then click continue.
In the Multi Use column, you can either enter your own fields or let Zapier fill them in for you. Choose Multi Use or Custom If you choose Multi Use, you can use the drop downs to fill in your data.
Choose either True or False (If false is selected the recipients may only be used in one mailing, however is true is selected recipients can be used as many times as you'd like in a one year period. Selecting multi-use costs an additional $0.01 ea.)
Next you will add the mailing list size. This is haw many recipients you would like to purchase and mail to. The minimum is 100 and there is no maximum.
Next you will name your order. This will help you easily find your Radius order in the LettrLabs portal.
The Address fields will be used as the Pin Address. The Pin address is the center location where we will search for the nearest X number of homes from. An example here if you're a Roofer would be your clients address, where then we would mail to their closest X number of neighbors.
If your system doesn't break out your address fields, but has it as one long value you can place this field in to Address 1 line exclusively. We will then split the values out on the back end. Alternatively or you can split it out in Address 1, Address 2 (Optional), City, State, Zip code. You can see I used the drop down to pull the pin address from the google sheet that’s attached.
Below this we have additional fields you can use to help filter down the recipients we find. If you want your list to be narrowed down by Household income, you can enter a minimum and a maximum here. If Household income isn’t a factor for you, leave it blank. *Do not include dollar signs or commas.
Here you can also choose to filter to send to only Renters or Owners. If this is unselected we will send to both.
Here you can choose your Property Type, Choose either Single Family homes or all other. All other includes Multi Family dwellings.
Here you can choose the Length of Residence for the list recipient. You can add a minimum length and a maximum length. If you don’t want length of residency included, just leave both fields blank.
Here you can choose the Year the house was built for the list recipient. You can add a minimum year and a maximum year. If you don’t want Year house was built included, just leave both fields blank.
After you have entered all of your Action fields, hit continue. Next we will test our step to make sure everything is pulling correctly. *Before testing, please review the data to make sure it’s correct.
If your test was successful, you will see a green check mark next to the Test section and it will give you a publish button.
Before you publish your Zap, you will want to head back to the LettrLabs portal and review the Radius Integration order. What were looking for is to make sure there are names & Addresses are appearing in the test list and that the quantity matches what we put in Zapier. *The list of addresses you will see in the LettrLabs portal are not actual addresses that will be mailed. They are for testing purposes only.
If everything looks correct in the LettrLabs portal and in Zapier, you can publish your Zap. Your Zap is on. (If not, you will want to Retest this step.)
I would also recommend naming your Zap.
After you are done testing, you will go back to the LettrLabs portal and set your Radius Integration from Testing to Active. *Any recipients received while in testing will not be mailed. *Any recipients received while in Active status will be mailed out.
You are done, you can sit back and watch as your Radius orders are sent out anytime there is an update with a new pin address to your google sheet.
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