Zapier and Dubsado: A Match Made in Heaven

Dubsado is an incredible CRM that saves time and energy for photographers and business owners. But occasionally, it’s necessary to connect Dubsado to external software to enhance the rest of your workflow. That’s where a program like Zapier comes in. Zapier is a program designed to be an external connection point for software so that you don’t have to manually move steps or items between Dubsado and other software, like Flodesk, Google, or Trello. Today, we’re going to talk about why Zapier and Dubsado are a match made in heaven – and give you a few ideas about how to make your life even easier with these two softwares! 

Why Use Zapier

When you sit down to map out your client experience (read more about that here if you haven’t done this before!), you might notice there are steps that don’t fit naturally in Dubsado. Maybe it’s your editing workflow, or how you track and record leads. Maybe it’s how you connect people to your email list. Whatever it is, there’s probably a good chance that a few steps aren’t going to feel natural in Dubsado, and that’s okay. That’s exactly where Zapier comes into play. Zapier can create a connection between two (or more) softwares through what they call “zaps”.

Zaps are specific instructions you provide to automatically kickstart a task in a secondary program. For example, you can tell Zapier that when a new lead is made in Dubsado, a new line is added to your lead tracking form in Google sheets where you calculate your booking rate. Instead of having to manually go add those leads to Google, now Zapier does it for you. Dubsado and Zapier have a long-standing relationship, which makes it even easier to use these two programs together. 

How I Use Zapier and Dubsado

To be honest, there’s not too much I need to link between Dubsado and Zapier. However, I do a few tasks. The first is that Google sheet example I used! For my photography business, I track every lead that comes into Dubsado in a Google sheet. From there, it helps me determine my booking rate and I can review my conversions monthly. This helps me make sure I’m doing what I need to be doing each month – and as you know, I’m a firm believer in the power of knowing your numbers! 

Another example of using Zapier and Dubsado might be for you photographers who book mini sessions. If you already have your mini session slots set up in an external calendar system, like Calendly or Acuity, then you can link Zapier and Dubsado so that your clients automatically get the booking link from that external software – or that when they book using one of those platforms, a new project is automatically created in Dubsado. 

Zapier, Dubsado, and Your Project Management Tools

One of the best ways (in my opinion!) to use Zapier and Dubsado is with your project management tool. Your project management tool is different from your CRM (Dubsado). This is software like Trello, Asana, or ClickUp. The benefit to having a project management tool is that you can truly map out your SOPs and workflows. Again, if you look at your client experience workflow, you’ll notice not all steps can be automated. YOu can’t automatically edit your gallery or send sneak peeks. Those are things you have to track somewhere (just as examples). So by using Zapier to set up a new checklist in your project management tool when a project is booked or photographed, you can keep the flow of your tasks moving quickly and easily. One less thing to manage, remember, and create manually! 

Zapier, Dubsado, and Email Marketing

Finally, one of the other ways that you could use Zapier and Dubsado is to add people to your email marketing list. When someone has completed a project, you can use Zapier to then add them to your Flodesk, MailChimp or ConvertKit email list. Again, when you lay out your processes, look for places to connect these multiple platforms so there’s less you have to do manually. 

When it comes down to it, Zapier exists to help save business owners time. It’s a way to remove some of the manual tasks we have to do to connect various parts of our workflows. Dubsado and Zapier have lots of connection points, so I highly recommend sitting down with Zapier open and your client workflow next to you to determine what else you can automate to save yourself time and energy! 

🎙Would you rather listen to the full podcast episode about this topic? Click HERE 

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