Integrations with AttendZen and Zapier. No code? No problem.

Ask a room full of event tech users what their biggest headache is and I guarantee 90% of them will say ‘integrations’.

Getting your event tech to work seamlessly with the rest of your organisation’s marketing stack is the holy grail when it comes to saving time, reducing errors and leveraging your attendee data for better insights and personalisation.

And yet, every week we talk to people who are still entering data separately into two or more systems and struggling with spreadsheets to run their events.

Why I ask? Why suffer like this?

Often, it’s because they assume that integrating their event platform with their CRM, marketing automation tool and other apps will be too difficult, time-consuming or expensive.

But it really doesn’t have to be. And with the recent advances in no-code integration systems (like our good friends at Zapier) smart, time-saving integrations are now within reach for every event planner – regardless of scale, in-house tech capability or budget.

Integrations 101

Broadly speaking there are two kinds of integration:

Native integrations – those built directly into a software platform to perform highly specific functions and workflows.

No-code automations – third-party web-based tools (like Zapier) that allow you to connect and automate tasks between lots of different software applications without coding.

Now, for large organisations running lots of events within the structure of an established, enterprise-wide marketing tech stack, we would usually recommend configuring a native integration. These work best for complex workflows and high volumes – and yes, they can be tricky to execute well – which is why so many event professionals have such bad experiences. And it’s also why we include bespoke integration programming within our enterprise packages at AttendZen. TL;DR we work with your marketing operations team and sort it all out for you until it’s perfect and you love everything about it.

But what if you don’t have a marketing operations team?! What if you don’t need enterprise features. What if you’re on a budget and you just want your event platform to update your CRM when someone registers? Or pull in an invitation list? Or update your cloud-based accounting software when they’ve paid? Or set a reminder on Slack? Or any other common but time-absorbing task like this?

This, my friend, is where Zapier could give you several weeks of your year back for not much more than the price of a latte.

How it works

Zapier is a tool that helps you automate repetitive tasks between two or more apps, without coding. This way, you can automatically move information from one app to another rather than manually going through the same process over and over again.

Zapier lets you create custom workflows called Zaps, linking together different apps to perform automated tasks. Every Zap has two fundamental parts: triggers and actions. Triggers start the workflow, and actions are subsequent steps.

Looking at the structure, every Zap follows the same logic: When this happens, do that.

The trigger is the event that starts a Zap. Think of this as the when. For example, when you get a new email from a lead.

The action is an event a Zap performs after it’s triggered. This is the do. For example, notify the sales team via Slack.

What you can do with it

Almost anything, really. But let’s look at some popular workflows.

CRM
Imagine you want to automatically save any new contact form data from an event registration in AttendZen, to your company’s CRM. You just create a Zap in Zapier where the trigger is a new registration, and the action is to add the attendee data to your Salesforce / Dynamics etc account.

What if the registrant’s email is already in your system? Just have a Zap with a simple logic rule to update the existing contact instead of creating a new one.

Does the sales department want a list of just the people who actually showed up to the event? Or even the people who attended particular workshops on different products? There’s a Zap for that.

Marketing automation
Would you like to have your email marketing tool stop sending messages about your event to people once they’ve registered? A single Zap to sync the data from AttendZen to Pardot or HubSpot will suffice.

Accounting
Maybe you waste time reconciling your event platform with your Stripe account and QuickBooks to keep track of who’s paid for what and VAT etc. Just set up a Zap to create a new transaction in your accounting software whenever a customer buys a registration. Carry over the net and gross amounts, the attendee’s tax ID and anything else you need.

Other stuff
Do you need to know when particular things happen with your event – so that someone on your team can take action? For example, when a VIP registers, maybe they should get a personal email from your CEO. Easy. Just set up a Zap from AttendZen to notify the event Slack channel so that someone can get right on it.

The possibilities are endless – and so is the list of apps you can connect to. In fact, there are over 8,000 you can integrate with spanning CRM, email tools, martech, accounting software, productivity apps – you name it.

Do all this with literally no technical knowledge

The thing we love most about Zapier is how easy it is to get exactly the functionality you want.

You don’t need to be able to write a single line of code to use Zapier, which means you can leverage the power of AttendZen’s platform without having any in-house technical expertise. Just like AttendZen, Zapier has a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy for anyone to set up triggers and actions using your event data.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that you could configure everything we describe in the examples above in a couple of hours. And if you did get stuck? We’re just a support call away and Zapier offers AI-powered Zap builders and AI-powered troubleshooting as standard.

Did we mention that our Zapier integration is free to use for all AttendZen customers? You’ll need a Zapier plan to get started, but helpfully Zapier has a free forever plan, and paid plans that scale with usage.

So what are you waiting for? Now there’s no need to continue wasting precious time on that soul-destroying admin work, switching between tabs, copying and pasting. Gah! I’m experiencing feelings of hopelessness just thinking about it!

Ask us about no-code integrations today and let us take you to your zappy place.

See what I did there?