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If you’ve been creating online courses for a while, you might have come across some tasks that are repetitive. Maybe you offer a coaching component to your course and you need to keep booking calls with each new student, or you find that you need to update student data in another software you use.

Whatever your workflow, you don’t want to keep doing this yourself. Wouldn’t it be great if everything could just work seamlessly from the moment a student purchases your course?

Well, with our new Zapier integration, you can now connect your Thinkific site with thousands of other applications, allowing to automate your entire workflow! Here are the top 29 ways you can automate your online course site with Zapier.

We’ve also partnered with many of these applications to give you over $700 in discounts! Head over to this link to get the deal.

Email Software

Online courses and automated emails go hand in hand. We recently did a webinar with ConvertKit (who we integrate with directly) on how to set up automated email sequences for your online courses. Whether you’re launching a new course, marketing an existing one, up-selling students, or just sending out follow-ups for courses that students are already enrolled in, you need an Email Software to automate that.

Fortunately, our Zapier integration allows you to connect your online course site with every major Email Software out there. Here are just some of the many softwares you can connect with.

Active Campaign

Active Campaign combines email marketing, marketing automation, and a CRM in one platform. Their pricing is based on a combination of features and number of contacts you have in your email list. The most basic price is their Lite Plan for $9/month and 500 contacts.

With our Zapier integration, you can send new students to your Active Campaign list and send automation sequences depending on actions that they take on your Thinkific site, like starting a course or completing one. For our promotion, you can get your first month free!

Zapier discount

AWeber

AWeber is an email marketing tool with powerful autoresponder features. These are automated emails that go out in a sequence with configurable time delays between each one. They have a 30-day free trial after which it starts at $19/month for 500 subscribers, but for this promotion they’re extending it to a 60-day free trial!

Our Zapier integration allows you to create new subscribers when someone signs up to your course, but we also have a direct integration with more powerful capabilities.

Zapier discount

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor has an easy drag-and-drop email design tool plus A/B testing and conversion rate optimization tools if you want to test different headlines and email content. Pricing starts at $9/month with a limit of 500 subscribers.

With our Zapier integration, you can add or update subscribers in Campaign Monitor when they sign up for your Thinkific site. You can also trigger emails based on actions they took.

Campayn

Campayn is an easy-to-use email and contact manager software. For up to 500 subscribers, you can get a free account with limited autoresponder and reporting features.

Our Zapier integration allows you to automatically create a new subscriber when someone signs up for your courses. As part of our promotion, Campayn is offering a 10% recurring discount on all their paid plans.

Zapier discount

Drip

Drip is a light-weight email marketing automation tool that allows you to customize your student’s email experience based on their behaviors and actions.

With our Zapier integration, you can add or update subscribers, trigger events, or tag them based on whether they signed up for a new course, completed an existing one, or any number of other actions.

GetResponse

GetResponse contains the full email marketing suite, with responsive emails, landing pages, forms, and even a built-in webinar solution. Their pricing starts at $15/month for 1000 subscribers.

With our integration, you can automatically create new subscribers from course signups. Get a 50% discount on your first 2 months when you sign up for our promotion.

Zapier discount

Gmail

Finally, there’s good old Gmail. Now it’s not an email marketing tool, and there are some limitations on how many emails you can send from your Gmail account per day, but if you’re really on a budget, you could try it out. Our Zapier integration allows you to automatically send an email to a person when they take an action on your Thinkific site.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation takes email marketing a step further and allows you to craft really custom user experiences for your students. You can get pretty advanced with some of the following tools, right from tracking their behavior before they sign up, to sending personalized yet automated messages after they’ve converted.

The big draw here is that you can free up a lot of your time especially if you’ve been repeating a lot of tasks by automating them with marketing automation. Plus, we’ve scored some deals for you so check them out!

Autopilot

Autopilot is a powerful marketing automation tool with drag and drop customer journey features. This allows you to easily visualize what your students see, whether they’re reading your emails, browsing your Thinkific site, or checking out your blog posts.

Pricing starts at $20/month and increases with list size, but with our promotion you can get the first month for free.

Zapier discount

Hatchbuck

Hatchbuck allows you to track your visitors across your site and send them targeted email messages based on their actions. It’s a little pricier, starting at $99/month, but a good option. Our Zapier integration allows you to create or tag students.

Route

Route starts tracking your visitors the moment they hit your site and allows you to create personalized messages based on their actions. You can trigger messages based on actions like signing up for a course or completing it. Our integration allows you to sync contacts and set up automated messages.

Pricing starts at $20/month but you can get your first 3 months at 50% off if you sign up via our promotion.

Zapier discount

Wishpond

Wishpond has a ton of tools packed into one software – landing pages, popups, email automation, lead scoring and more. It’s a pretty advanced tool and best for people with high-ticket courses who want to score leads and create automated sales messages. With our integration, you can sync your students with contact data in Wishpond.

Pricing starts at $45/month but with our promotion you can get 50% off your first month.

Zapier discount

Support

As an online course creator, you’re always going to have students asking questions. Some might ask questions before they sign up, and others might need help while taking a course. Either way, any online business that doesn’t provide support won’t be around for too long.

With the following softwares, you can sync your Thinkific students and identify them whenever they send a support request.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a combined help center and support software. By integrating it to your Thinkific site via Zapier, you can sync your students and data so that you know what courses they are taking when you get a support request. Pricing starts at $5 per agent per month.

Intercom

Intercom has a number of tools to engage and support students on your site, within a course, and via email. You can pop a chat box, or send a notification when they’re taking a course. Our integration allows you to sync student data and tag them with notes or events.

HelpScout

HelpScout organizes support requests around conversations. You can make it extremely personal, giving students the impression that you’re right there with them the whole way. With our integration, apart from syncing student data, you can even initiate new conversations based on their actions on your Thinkific site.

Webinars

Webinars are a powerful marketing strategy, especially for online course creators. Just ask one of our customers, Chris Newman, who makes five figures each week selling his online course on webinars.

They’re also a great way to increase the value of your online courses. You can have two pricing tiers, one for just your online course, and the other for your online course with a live coaching component using webinars.

When you get a new subscriber to your Thinkific site, you can automatically invite them to join your webinar via our Zapier integration with one of the following softwares.

Crowdcast

Crowdcast is the new kid on the block but they’re already making waves. What’s interesting about them is that they have payments integrated, which means you can charge for premium webinars. Use our Zapier integration to pre-register every new student into a webinar.

Pricing starts at $49/month but you can get 30% off for 3 months with our Zapier bundle.

Zapier discount

GoToWebinar

GoToWebinar has been around for a long time. It’s a bit complicated to use but it’s pretty powerful. It also has built-in chat and allows you to record webinars, which you can then embed in your Thinkific course as a new chapter.

Zoom

Zoom is great if you have smaller numbers and want to allow your students to be seen on camera as well. You can use it for small group coaching as an add-on to your higher pricing tiers. You can even do 1-on-1 coaching and automate registration with our Zapier integration.

AnyMeeting

AnyMeeting is a flexible solution for both large webinars and small coaching calls. It’s pretty affordable compared to other solutions and if you use our Zapier integration you can either auto-register students for a webinar or a coaching call depending on the pricing tier they picked.

YouCanBook.Me

Though not quite a webinar software, YouCanBook.Me provides you with a simple solution for students to book coaching calls with you, which you can then run on Skype or over the phone. If someone purchases a course with a coaching component, you can trigger an automated message asking them to book their call with you. This gets synced automatically with your calendar.

YouCanBook.Me usually costs $10/month but you can get your first 3 months free with our Zapier bundle.

Zapier discount

CRM

While Thinkific has a built-in CRM where you can see and manage all your students, you may need a third-party software if you’re trying to sync contacts across multiple systems. Our Zapier integration allows you to automatically send new students to your CRM, and you can even use a multi-step zap to transfer them over to another system.

Google Contacts

Google Contacts is the address book that’s built into Gmail. If you’re using Gmail to keep in touch with students, you can sync their information with our Zapier integration.

Google Sheets

You can also send student details to a spreadsheet in Google. This might be useful if you rely on spreadsheets for reporting and other business operations. You can then push the data from Google Sheets to other apps.

Trello

While Trello is not a CRM, it can still be used as one with our Zapier integration. Maybe you want to track student progress through your coaching calls or other external activities, using lists and cards within Trello. There’s a lot you can do with this integration, like adding students to a card, or updating existing cards.

Evernote

Evernote is really a note taking software, but you can still use it to keep track of students and make custom notes for each one if you’re offering them in-depth coaching along with your courses. For example, with our Zapier integration, you can create a new note for every new student, and even add reminders to follow up with them. The next time a student contacts you, surprise them with how much you remember from your last talk!

Highrise

Highrise combines a CRM with task management for you to keep track of customers, collect their data in one place, and create follow-up tasks for each one. Our Zapier integration allows for numerous combinations of automated workflows.

Task Management

If you don’t need a full-fledged CRM, you can use a task management software instead, to keep track of things that you need to do when someone starts or finishes a course. Our Zapier integration connects your Thinkific site with the best task management softwares out there, so you’ll never forget to do something again.

Google Tasks

Google Tasks is a simple task management system built into Gmail. It’s free and works seamlessly with your Google Calendar as well. Use our Zapier integration to automatically trigger a new task.

Todoist

Todoist is a really simple task management app with features for collaboration. That means you can automatically create new tasks in Todoist through our Zapier integration, and have your VA take care of those tasks without any work from you!

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is a well-designed tasks app with features like collaboration and reminders. Again, with our Zapier integration you can automatically create a new task, or sub-task, and then have someone take care of it.

Invoicing

For most people on Thinkific, invoicing is not a problem. Thinkific handles the basics seamlessly so you don’t have much to worry about. However, if you’re growing, have coaches or customer support reps on your payroll, and need to combine your expenses and incomes in one place, you’ll need to integrate with one of the following softwares.

Wave

Wave is a powerful software that combines accounting, invoicing and payroll. This integration will probably be more useful for larger businesses with multiple employees.

Freshbooks

With Freshbooks, you can design custom invoices for your high-ticket training programs. Our Zapier integration allows you to sync student information and automatically trigger a new invoice.

Start Automating Today

Setting up the Zapier integration for your Thinkific site is pretty straightforward.  You’ll need a Zapier account, which you can sign up for free here and then you can go nuts connecting Thinkific with thousands of other apps. Setting up a Zap is as simple as a few clicks. Read the instructions here setup the integration.

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